Filler

American Science Funding

2012-01-16T21:17:00.000-08:00

Just encountered a really good article about the sorry state of American science funding over at ScienceBlogs.com.

2012-01-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

This is fun. For those who haven't followed this particular political mini-drama, the Newt Gingrich super PAC, "Winning Our Future," has been running a "documentary" excoriating Romney for the time he spent at Bain Capital, a company that bought businesses, fired their workers, and sold off their assets for a profit.

Repurposing the assets of failed or failing businesses is a necessary task in a free market economy, but it makes Romney look like he got rich(er) by firing people, so the Gingrich camp is using it to reinforce the anti-populist image of Romney that they (and the other candidates) have been trying to build in their attack ads.

This is where it starts to get good. Since he legally can't "coordinate" with it, Gingrich publicly called on the super PAC (which is populated with his former staffers and business associates) to stop running the ad. And....

Wait for it....

They refused.

So now Gingrich gets to have his cake and eat it, too; he can run attack ads while publicly denouncing attack ads. What can poor old Newt do if these scallywags insist on running ads he doesn't approve? The law says he can't "coordinate" with them, so he just has to sit there and watch helplessly as his good friends drag his opponents through the mud.

Poor, poor Newt.

Obligatory Presidential Race Breakdown

2012-01-05T18:27:00.000-08:00

I called the 2008 election for Obama in March of that year, but I was told by a friend that he remembered me making the call at a New Year's Eve party, a full ten months before the actual election. As an exercise in having the courage of my convictions, here is my layout of what's going to happen in presidential politics between now and November.

Romney's going to get the Republican nomination. Santorum may carry a bit of momentum into the other caucuses, but it's going to fall off. There may be Gingrich resurgence in a couple of states, but it won't last. Ron Paul's crazy ass is going to keep on keepin' on and will probably attract enough of the right wing fringe vote to help minimize the damage done by Romney's centrist cred. It will be exciting. It will be dramatic. It will be good television.

All the liberals who have been disappointed in Obama will remember why they loved him when the general election comes around. Watch for Obama to hammer away at the fact that he ended Don't Ask Don't Tell, and watch for him to seriously put the screws to Congress. Expect big promises on clean energy, education, and healthcare. Expect paternal disapproval of partisanship.

I'd say Romney had a chance if he weren't up against a sitting president. Nobody can call Barack Obama inexperienced any more, and that was his biggest weakness last time around.

Obama beats Romney in November.

Calling It For Obama

2011-11-01T10:13:00.000-07:00

I've been calling the 2012 election for Obama in private for a while. I figured it was time to put it up here.

Romney is going to be the nominee. While Herman Cain is an amusing sideshow, he'll never actually get the nomination, and Rick Perry's terrible debate performance has dispelled his initial aura of gravitas.

So Romney takes the Republican nomination, but he can't beat Obama because he's weak with his base. This is true both on the political front due to his tenure as governor in the heart of east coast liberalism and on the cultural front due to his religion. Obama's base is mad at him, but not nearly that mad.

So, once again, it is my considered opinion that Barack Obama will win re-election to the presidency in 2012. Now strap in for the Congressional elections, because those should be a lot more interesting.

Wiregate Rundown

2011-05-16T16:58:00.000-07:00

There's an excellent article over on Wired that contains a rundown of the latest wiregate info. Most striking is that the NSA had an anonymized version of their software and intentionally removed the features designed to protect Americans from illegal dragnet surveillance. Wow.

Facebook "Privacy Default" Law in Play in California

2011-05-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

Just encountered this article on California's pending SB242, which would require online networking sites to alter the information-sharing defaults in new accounts to show only the user's name and city of residence. Sharing anything else would require that the user actively change the privacy settings.

I discussed the power of the default bias at some length in my philosophy Master's thesis, and I think requiring that users affirmatively take action to reveal personal information isn't a bad idea.

No matter how many times they're told otherwise, people on Facebook still seem to forget that bosses can see photos of them at amusement parks on "sick days," or that crazy exes can get street addresses from profile pages. While it's reasonable to assume a degree of sophistication from a contemporary internet user, the complexity of a social networking site (especially one as developed as Facebook) demands time to come to understand. Technicalities of information sharing policies take even longer.

Leveraging the default bias to protect users' privacy makes good legislative sense in this context. Protect the legally recognized right to privacy, but let sophisticated users who understand the ramifications of their decisions do whatever they like.

What caught my eye, though, was a portion of the response from a Facebook spokesperson:

"This legislation is a serious threat both to Facebook's business in California and to meaningful California consumers' choices about use of personal data.... Any legislative or regulatory proposal must honor users' expectations in the contexts in which they use online services and promote the innovation that fuels the growth of the Internet economy."

"Honor users' expectations?" So your argument is that legislators shouldn't help ensure users' privacy because by now we should all be used to getting data raped by everyone who has the opportunity to profit from our inattention?

Your abuses have created the norm. To appeal to that norm in arguing against legislation seeking to mitigate those abuses is irony indeed.

PS3 Jailbreak Battle Continues

2011-03-22T11:14:00.001-07:00

I just ran across this article on the battle over the PS3 jailbreak released by GeoHotz, famous already for multiple iPhone jailbreaking tools.

The interesting thing about this case is that the iPhone jailbreaks were ultimately permitted. The DMCA, which broadly prohibits circumventing manufacturer security measures, includes a provision requiring periodic review of the technology environment and permitting fine tuning of the law in response. In the last review, the panel decided that smartphone jailbreaking was permissible. It still voids your warranty, but you won't end up in court for it now.

So why should the PS3 and other gaming consoles be treated differently? The panel specifically addressed smartphones only, but an analogy could easily be drawn for gaming consoles. If the underlying purpose of the smartphone exemption is to legitimize end users' attempts to escape monopoly-reinforcing functionality-reducing "security" measures, then gaming consoles are a prime candidate for a similar exemption. Sony actually went so far as to remove (via firmware update) the ability of PS3 users to install Linux on the machine, which was a highly publicized feature at launch. PS3 users sued, and that case is moving through the courts as well.

Arguments in the case are still about jurisdiction and venue, but once the trial reaches the merits of Sony's claim, this could get very interesting very fast.

EDIT: It would seem Sony isn't stopping with GeoHotz.

Obama's Refusal to Continue Defending DOMA

2011-02-25T08:08:00.000-08:00

While I applaud the sentiment behind Obama's order that the Department of Justice stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act, I have a pretty serious problem with that particular approach. DOMA is the law, whether the President likes it or not. He doesn't get to decide whether it's constitutional; that's the Supreme Court's job.

The most troublesome thing about this decision is that President Bush used an analogous tactic with his signing statements. Bush declared, for instance, that the prohibition on torture passed by Congress (and signed by Bush himself) unconstitutionally limited his powers as Commander in Chief.

I said then and I say now that this is executive overreaching. I'm disappointed to see Obama follow this approach, even if I agree in principle with the results.

Thoughts on the Wave of Revolutions

2011-02-23T21:13:00.000-08:00

I, along with the rest of the world, have been watching the wave of revolutions that is propagating through the Arab world, and I have a couple of thoughts I thought were worth putting here.

First, the Egyptian government's decision to shut down the internet serves as an important lesson in the importance of information infrastructure to democratic rule. The so-called "internet kill switch" legislation that popped up last year was once again raised in Congress only days before a repressive regime used precisely the same tactic in an attempt to undermine a peaceful democratic revolution. The potential for abuse of such a power is simply so high it outweighs the potential benefits to national security in the event of an emergency. The bill has been quietly buried since then, but when it pops up again, remember the name Hosni Mubarak.

Second, the influence of the contemporary media environment has been the single most fascinating thread in this cascade. I'm not referring to the characterization of the Egyptian demonstrations as a "twitter revolution," but rather to the capacity of the global information network to influence geographically distant populations. We can see this playing out in two very significant ways here.

Most obviously, the notion of revolution was sparked by Tunisia, caught on in Egypt, and then swung back through Libya. There are rumblings about a renewed push for democracy by the Green movement in Iran (whose seemingly imminent victory was quashed by fraudulent elections and military force back in 2009), and even the Saudis are beginning to stir. The next several months will be tumultuous.

Much more interestingly, to my mind, is the effect of immediate global access to events as they unfold. My local NPR affiliate carried BBC's "Have Your Say" for several days during the Egyptian revolution, complete with a live audio feed from Tahrir Square and phone calls from protesters on the ground. Americans are actually asking their television providers for Al Jazeera news thanks to their reporting.

And today, President Obama reminded Muammar Gaddafi that the world is watching when he goes on state television and rants about the protesters being on drugs. This isn't entirely new, either. Several philanthropists have teamed with the U.N. and Google to purchase time on monitoring satellites to capture images of atrocities committed by dictators.

In short, democracy thrives on information, and the increasing pervasiveness of media is dramatically changing global politics for the better by exposing the acts of repressive regimes to universal scrutiny. It will be interesting to watch these trends develop.

Right Again

2011-01-03T22:36:00.000-08:00

Just saw this article on upcoming Congressional subpoenas from the GOP.

The Tea Party Loses

2010-11-09T15:35:00.000-08:00

I’m writing this on Wednesday, November 3, the day after the 2010 congressional midterms, and I have to say, I’m pleased to see that the Tea Party rhetoric I’ve been enduring for the last year and a half has proven to be almost entirely hype.

While the Republicans have managed to eke out a majority in the House, the Senate remains in the hands of the Democrats, albeit by a thin margin. The Republican resurgence promised by establishment and Tea Party Republicans alike (not to mention various news outlets) has simply failed to materialize.

Most heartening to the moderate-minded are the losses of fringe Tea Party candidates across the country. With a few exceptions, the core representatives of Tea Party ideology have lost their bids for relevance in American politics.

Alaska’s senate contest is a case in point. Joe Miller won the Republican nomination by claiming the mantle of the Tea Party, but his establishment challenger, Lisa Murkowski, refused to bow out of the race. Instead, Murkowski ran a write-in campaign without the formal blessing of the Republican party, and as I write this, she seems poised to actually win the Senate seat. Look forward to months of desperate legal wrangling as Miller pulls every dirty trick in the book to get Murkowski’s write-in votes tossed out on technicalities.

Nevada’s truly incompetent Sharron Angle also went down in flames, saving the career of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Angle is a candidate who exemplifies the demagoguery of the Tea Party: completely without ideas, running solely on the phrase “take back our country” without any notion of what that might substantively mean. Angle has actively refused to discuss her positions on the issues, even going so far as to tell an interviewer asking foreign policy questions, “I will answer those questions when I'm the senator.” Uh, what?

Most delightful of the Tea Party failures is Christine O’Donnell’s monumental loss to Chris Coons by a whopping 17% (according to the count at the time of this writing). Readers will recall O’Donnell as the evolution-denying anti-masturbation whackjob from Delaware. O’Donnell claimed during a debate that the Constitution doesn’t call for separation of church and state. (Check the First Amendment to be sure!) At a Tea Party rally, that probably would have gone over well. The debate, however, was being held at a law school, where people know the law, and the crowd actually laughed at her. Here’s hoping that sets a pattern for the foreseeable future.

And then there are the illusory Tea Party wins, where establishment Republicans have wrapped themselves in the Tea Party mantle and run as the most disingenuous of “outsiders.” Tom Coburn of Oklahoma is a paradigmatic example. Coburn has been a cog in the Republican machine since election to the House back in 1994, but this term he slapped a “Tea Party” label on himself and got elected to a second term in the Senate. Yes, the “outsider” got elected to a second term. Look for Tea Partiers to claim this as a victory, and never mind that Oklahoma’s senate seats have both been occupied by Republicans for 15 years.

Jim DeMint of South Carolina is almost exactly the same story: re-elected to a second term in the Senate after a career in the House. The only difference is that DeMint was elected to the House in 1998 instead of 1994.

In a somewhat less clear-cut case of faux Tea Party “wins,” Rand Paul has been elected the successor to a Republican Senate seat in Kentucky. This despite his history of insane right wing claims (arguing that businesses ought to be able to refuse service to minority patrons, for instance). While this nudges the Senate a bit to the right ideologically, it doesn’t change the balance of power between the two parties because Paul is taking a seat that was already held by a Republican. Though Paul has more credibility as an “outsider” than Coburn or DeMint, he has proven himself willing to toe the party line time and again over the course of his campaign.

Don’t get me wrong, there were a few real Tea Party victories this year, but not enough to establish them as a political force of any real significance. For the most part, “real” Tea Party candidates got shellacked, and establishment cogs simply rode the wave of popular resentment right back into power.

It remains to be seen, however, what Republicans will do with their newfound power in the House. While both President Obama and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are uttering the usual platitudes about working together, I have my doubts, especially in light of the last few months Republicans have spent promising to stop the federal government in its tracks.

Further, the last time Republicans took control of the House under a Democratic president, they used the opportunity to flood Bill Clinton’s White House with muckraking Congressional subpoenas, one of which culminated in his impeachment. I expect to see Republicans undertake the same tactics again, but only time will tell.

EDIT: This column was run by the GSU Signal under the title "Tea Party's rhetoric is empty."

And Again, the Rest of the World Catches Up

2010-11-05T06:55:00.001-07:00

I ran across this article about Republican leadership realizing Sarah Palin is unelectable. I said the same thing when she quit as governor back in July of 2009.

Once again, the rest of the world catches up.

President Requests New Electronic Surveillance Tools

2010-11-02T18:31:00.000-07:00

NOTE: I'm writing for the Georgia State University Signal once again. This and the next few posts are articles published by the paper.

A few weeks ago, the media spent about ten minutes discussing a new proposal by the Obama administration which would require telecommunications carriers to install special government-only “backdoors” permitting the decryption of many different kinds of electronic communications. The story faded fast, but I nonetheless find myself continuing to ponder this news.

On the one hand, my immediate response as a libertarian is one of horror. It scares the bejeezus out of me that the government is even asking for this kind of access to citizens’ chat conversations, text messages, and other electronic communications. I’ve been extremely wary of electronic surveillance since back in 2002 when AT&T, Verizon, BellSouth, and several other telecoms quietly acceded to the National Security Administration’s now-famous (and illegal) warrantless wiretapping program.

On the other hand, there are several safeguards in this proposal that distinguish it from the NSA program. For starters, this is an ordinary law enforcement program, not a national security program. This means the process is unlikely to be kept tightly secret, as the NSA program was until the New York Times broke the story. Less secrecy means more oversight, which in turn means that the new surveillance tools are less likely to be abused.

Further, the proposed legislation requires that law enforcement agencies obtain warrants before they begin monitoring a person’s communications, which is a major difference between the two programs. This means that a judge must find probable cause and sign off on any proposed surveillance before law enforcement agents can actually use the backdoor system. Theoretically at least, this puts the law on the same footing as most other surveillance laws.

In the abstract, I have no objection to a law that makes it easier for the government to track down murderers, drug dealers, and white collar criminals. The government of course needs the tools to enforce the law. If the police have a judge’s authorization, it doesn’t make sense for them to hack through private encryption to track suspects’ communications. On the face of it, the backdoor provision makes perfect sense.

But long experience has taught us that government employees are no less susceptible to temptation than the rest of us, and the sheer scope of the proposed power is worrying. Once a law enforcement officer obtains the means to decrypt electronic communications, what assurances are there that she will not misuse that tool in the future? What is to prevent her from snooping a bit more than required once she has access to the system? The current proposal seems to contain little in the way of safeguards to prevent this sort of abuse.

The first thing that came to my mind when I read this story is the recent firing of a Google engineer, David Barksdale, who used his special access privileges to monitor the accounts of several (incidentally underage) private citizens, including Gmail, Google Voice, and Google Chat accounts. Barksdale had rather high level access to Google’s systems because he needed it to do his job, but instead he decided to pursue personal goals with those tools. Indeed, it wasn’t until Barksdale revealed to his victims that he had been monitoring them that he was caught. His victims’ parents contacted Google, and Google quietly fired him. In the case of an overreaching law enforcement officer, justice is not likely to come so easily.

Though the idea sounds good in principle, this plan strikes me as an invitation to abuse unless it is revised to include much more comprehensive safeguards.

Edit 11/4/2010: The version of this story published by the Signal has some minor wording differences. Unsurprisingly, I like my version better, but in the interest of posterity, here's a link to the "official" version.

Hostages

2010-09-18T10:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, so there's been a lot of politicking around the impending expiration of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. You know, back when Bush told us to go out and spend money or the terrorists win. Those tax cuts were enacted on the assumption that they'd expire. At the end of this year.

Democrats are arguing that we ought to extend the cuts for people making less than a quarter of a million dollars a year and let them expire for those above that line. Despite the fact that Republicans have been howling about the deficit since about ten seconds after Obama took the oath of office, they nonetheless maintain that we shouldn't raise taxes on anybody at all.

Now the Republicans are threatening to let taxes go up for everyone if the Democrats insist on keeping them low for anyone, holding a middle class tax cut hostage to the interests of the wealthy. And it's a threat I really can't see them carrying out any time soon.

Think about it. Republicans are going to force a tax increase on the middle class to let the Democrats increase taxes on the rich? Great! It's an untenably anti-populist position for the Republicans at a time when their party is being overrun with populist sentiment. If they have a chance to keep the Bush tax cuts from expiring for the middle class and they don't because they are beholden to their big business donors, they'll get eaten alive.

If the Democrats talk it up in the next few weeks and the Republicans form ranks to oppose it, I think the Republicans will get hurt in the November midterms. With the Tea Party biting at their heels, there's no way the Republicans can just dig in and say, "tax hikes for none, or tax hikes for all." (And you can bet the family farm that Republicans are going to frame it as a new tax hike rather than the end of a tax cut.)

But if Democrats don't press the issue until after the midterms are over, then the Republicans have a much better chance of opposing it with no significant consequences in the Presidential race in 2012 because that's a long ways off and people forget.

Remember Democrats trying desperately in 2008 to remind everyone about the Republicans' plan to privatize social security? Remember them pointing out over and over again that the financial crash would then have destroyed the entire social security system? Yeah, me either, because they know that political memory fades fast. If Democrats want to make their plan work, they'd better do it soon.

And The Rest of the World Catches Up

2010-07-01T14:24:00.000-07:00

Just saw this article on the politics of privatizing space travel.

Another Odd Political Inversion, Explained

2010-06-05T06:30:00.000-07:00

One of the potential space shuttle replacements, SpaceX's Falcon 9, successfully completed its first major test flight on Friday. You'll recall that SpaceX is one of several companies vying for lucrative government contracts literally to do the "heavy lifting" for the space program, including supplying the International Space Station.

There have been a lot of vocal opinions on the decision to privatize the single most critical aspect of NASA's operations, with luminaries no less than Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin coming down with equal passion on opposite sides of the issue. This latest milestone on the road to privatized spacefaring, however, brings with it a slew of politicians weighing in on the policy as it goes forward.

And here's the weird thing: Republicans hate it, and Democrats love it.

And this is totally backwards.

Republicans are for small government, right? They hate the NSF, the NEA, and all those other government programs that waste taxpayer money on things better handled by the market, right? So why would they be in favor of continued government involvement in a program as notoriously overrun by cost as NASA, especially when the market is showing that it's ready to step up with potential solutions? And Democrats, conversely, would seem to want the government to be in control of something as important as human space exploration.

And this inversion has bugged me ever since the story hit, but I think I've figured it out.

Republicans support NASA out of Cold War defense-spending mentality, and never mind that the really cool military space stuff (like the X-37B) is being done directly under military auspices now. The same knee-jerk reaction that gets DARPA and Pentagon projects effectively infinite funding leads the Republicans by and large to support continued government sponsorship of NASA.

Democrats, on the other hand, have always thought that NASA is a giant waste of money that could be spent on social infrastructure, and that makes supporting privatization a win-win scenario. Either free market ideology will pan out and the government will get a decent space program at less cost, or the whole thing will be an abysmal failure and a Democratic government can quietly eviscerate or altogether ditch the space program.

Stupid schizoid politics.

EDIT: Here's an article I found on other contenders for privatizing space travel.

Proof Glenn Beck is a Nine-Year-Old

2010-06-02T18:45:00.000-07:00

Found here, and so help me, I thought it was funny too.

Space Exploration Tidbit

2010-06-01T08:17:00.000-07:00

Just caught a story about the Japanese Hayabasu asteroid mission. It's just headed home from a near-Earth asteroid named Itokawa, where it may or may not have gotten a sample. Two interesting things about this story.

First, Hayabasu's chemical engines leaked out, losing absolutely all of its fuel. Luckily, the Japanese outfitted the Hayabasu craft with shiny new ion thrusters. Mostly used for low energy adjustments of Earth-orbit satellites' trajectories, this is only the second time an ion engine has been used by a craft exploring further out into the solar system, and the first time it's ever brought anything back. Way cool.

But even more intriguing is the fact that mission control doesn't know whether Hayabusa got the asteroid sample they were after. They know that it landed on the asteroid twice, and they think they know that the sample collection apparatus (a hunk of metal fired into the asteroid to kick up debris) didn't activate as planned. But waitaminute--

Shouldn't they be able to calculate how much mass the craft has picked up by measuring the change in thrust required to move it? If the satellite managed to grab anything at all, it would take the engines longer to accelerate the craft, especially if they're using weaker ion thrusters.

Simple Newtonian physics, right? F=MA. Presumably the force from the ion thrusters remains constant when the craft initiates a burn, so if you know the acceleration you can derive the mass.

Compare the mass on the return trip with the mass on the trip out and you can deduce whether you have any extra mass, which would presumably be a sample.

Any word on whether this has been done? Can't find it anywhere in the news stories.

EDIT: A little more research on the Hayabusa page on Wikipedia reveals that all Hayabusa was intended to collect was asteroid dust. It's possible the mass of such a tiny sample is negligible compared to the mass of the craft itself and thus doesn't factor into navigational calculations. The Apollo astronauts rode orbits calculated with only three digits of pi, so maybe interplanetary navigation isn't as precise as I'd assumed.

Republicans Take the Extremely Direct Approach

2010-05-16T11:26:00.000-07:00

More wingnut Righties pushing their agenda in the classroom. This time, though, they didn't even have the courtesy to pack a school board with whackjob creationists or something to mask their propagandizing.

How's This for a Litmus Test?

2010-04-21T22:42:00.000-07:00

The next Supreme Court Justice has to live in the 21st century with the rest of us

A Belated Word on Citizens United v. FEC

2010-04-17T18:34:00.000-07:00

You all know Citizens United, even if you don't know it by name. It's the case where the Supreme Court overturned damn near a century of precedent and whole volumes of campaign finance law by ruling that corporations have a right to free speech than includes a right to spend literally unlimited amounts of money.

The most disgusting thing about this decision is that it comes from the ridiculously-named "conservative" wing of the court (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, and ever so slightly less "conservative" Kennedy). Roberts particularly ought to be ashamed of himself. After literally days of hearings filled with bullshit analogies and promise after promise after promise of judicial restraint, Roberts has joined with the most activist opinion the Court has written in recent memory.

"Conservatism" and "originalism" are such a great guise for judicial activism because they unravel all the way back to the founding, and anything done since then is up for grabs. You just decide exactly how "original" you want to be and then select a case from some point in history to which you are "returning" the law, or say that every single case ever decided on the matter was wrong and misconstrued the "original" version of the written law (that's where you get to claim the "strict constructionist" mantle as an added defense for your blatant activism).

I've been irritated with the blatant misuse of the phrase "judicial activism" to tar exclusively left-wing judges for a while now, but Citizens United really makes it clear how deep this ridiculous doublethink goes. The "conservatives" on the Supreme Court are anything but.

God Says No Faggots in Our Club

2010-04-17T06:25:00.000-07:00

Off to act as a witness in a mock trial today, so this will be unusually short. This story over at the Washington Post is a pretty good overview of a case trickling up to SCOTUS.

The short version is that a public law school denied a christian group authorization as a student organization because their charter bars homosexuals, among others, from joining the club. Now the christians are suing, claiming that their hateful, bigoted, discriminatory faith is being discriminated against because the state won't sponsor their hateful bigotry.

The scary thing is that I'm really not sure which way the Roberts court will rule on this one. Keep an eye out.

Georgia Law Criminalizes Wearing a Niqāb in Public

2010-04-04T16:50:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting little tidbit. I was spelunking around in the Georgia Code (as I imagine most law students do more frequently than can really be explained) and I came across OCGA §16-11-38, entitled "Wearing mask, hood, or device which conceals identity of wearer." The OCGA is hosted in an extremely annoying Lexis database that prevents internal linking, so I've reproduced the statute in its entirety below.

This is an old anti-Klan section of the law, but it occurred to me that it bars practitioners of Islam from wearing a Niqāb in public. The statute makes it a misdemeanor to wear anything that obscures the identity of the wearer, which some versions of the Niqāb definitely do.

The statute includes four exceptions, but ironically, because the Klan used religion as a cover for its violent activities, the statute doesn't allow for a religious exception. Does anyone know if this section of the OCGA has ever been challenged on religious grounds? There's a case from 1990 in which a Klan member challenged it (and lost) on free speech grounds, but I haven't seen a religious challenge. The law seems to be still in force, too, having apparently been used against the Anonymous protesters.

For those wondering, the exceptions included are Halloween, trade garb (think baseball catchers and welders), theatrical productions, and gas masks (almost certainly as a result of WWII / Cold War paranoia at the time of the drafting in 1951).

§ 16-11-38. Wearing mask, hood, or device which conceals identity of wearer

(a) A person is guilty of a misdemeanor when he wears a mask, hood, or device by which any portion of the face is so hidden, concealed, or covered as to conceal the identity of the wearer and is upon any public way or public property or upon the private property of another without the written permission of the owner or occupier of the property to do so.

(b) This Code section shall not apply to:

(1) A person wearing a traditional holiday costume on the occasion of the holiday;

(2) A person lawfully engaged in trade and employment or in a sporting activity where a mask is worn for the purpose of ensuring the physical safety of the wearer, or because of the nature of the occupation, trade, or profession, or sporting activity;

(3) A person using a mask in a theatrical production including use in Mardi gras celebrations and masquerade balls; or

(4) A person wearing a gas mask prescribed in emergency management drills and exercises or emergencies.

Dancing with Sotomayor

2009-07-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

Another confirmation hearing, another elaborate shooting match. Yesterday was nothing more than speechifying from the blowhards on the judiciary committee, and today begins the ritual waltz of question-and-avoidance. Why do we bother with these hearings again?

-I love the Republicans' attempts to destroy Sotomayor for having the temerity to admit that objectivity and impartiality are impossible (but nonetheless worthy) aspirations for mere mortals.

-I'm also amused by their attacks based on "her" opinion in the Ricci case, which was actually a per curiam opinion from the entire court and which agreed with precedent from several other circuits. The Supreme Court actually decided to change the standards for discrimination claims when they took Ricci, meaning they changed the law. Sotomayor was just unfortunate enough to be on the panel that heard the case before SCOTUS made the change.

-In responding to Russ Feingold's questions about executive power, Sotomayor says she hasn't had enough cases on the Youngstown Steel framework to answer his questions. WHAT?!? Who's supposed to believe that? That's from Con Law I, lady, and it's one of the most significant legal questions raised by the previous President's misbehavior. Really? You really didn't study up on that one for a congressional hearing? Really?

Republican Suicide?

2009-07-06T10:52:00.001-07:00

It's been a few days since Palin's decision to retire hit the news, and I am still happy as a kleptomaniac on a commune that she says she wants to run for president. I see four possible outcomes, two of which are good and two of which are great.

First option: Palin might flash for a week or two and then fade away like she should have on November 5. The Republican machine will forgive her her trespasses and appoint her to some party sinecure (like the Democrats would have done with Howard Dean if he'd been incompetent), and she will vanish from the public eye, except for occasional commentator spots on Fox News. Who wins? America, because that ignorant demagogue is gone.

Alternatively, she might manage to keep enough momentum to make it into the Republican primary, which is still a free-for-all and, with luck, will remain so. If this happens, things can go three more ways.

Second option: Palin loses to an old white male (because the Republican Party's base simply will not change) and gracefully bows out to campaign for him. Republican forgiveness, sinecure, disappearing act, America wins.

Third option: The crazy bitch will run as an independent, drawing the critical Michigan militia and beehive hairdo demographics away from the Republican party. The Republican nominee gets Nader'd and we've got a second term for Obama no matter who the Republican nominee is. Winner: Probably the Democrats, depending on what happens in the congressional elections. Woo!

Last option: The Republican Party collectively loses its mind and actually nominates Palin instead of someone more sensible like Bob Dole's mouldering corpse or a stuffed eagle painted like the American flag. The entire nation runs screaming in terror, directly into the arms of the left. Democrats sweep congressional elections, Obama gets a third term, the Republican party disbands, truck nuts are outlawed, and clean, free energy is available to all. Well, maybe not those last few, but it will be a deathblow to the Republicans.

I mean, seriously, what sort of sycophantic morons does Palin have advising her? Anyone with a pulse and at least 75% of their brain can tell that she is over. Admittedly the last election was primarily a battle between a wizened old man and a sprightly newcomer promising change, but there's no denying that Palin as candidate for VP hurt the Republicans badly. Now she wants to run at the top of the ticket? Oh man, I hope she makes it.

Sotomayor

2009-05-26T12:58:00.000-07:00

So I've lay quietly watching for the last few months and there really hasn't been much worth commenting on. Oh, sure, Obama rolled back most of the decisions Bush made by executive fiat, like abstinence-only "education" and the ban on stem cell research, but this was so obviously coming that its occurrence seemed more like a pro forma press release than an actual event. Sotomayor's nomination seems the same way, but it's important, so here goes.

Sonia Sotomayor comes to the Supreme Court from the Second Circuit, encompassing Vermont, Connecticut, and New York. She has the classic background of the liberal ethnopolitical giant: born into a racial minority, raised in a single-parent home, lifted herself into Princeton undergrad and Yale law school by her own boot straps, worked largely in public service. From what I've read, she seems an able and competent jurist with center-left leanings; when her appellate decisions were overturned by the Supreme Court, it was usually the conservative majority that did the overturning. Even if the identity politics is a bit stifling, I nonetheless approve.

In fact, damn near everybody approves, and they've been approving of her since Souter decided to retire. No, not since that flap over Bush v. Gore, just since he announced it publicly. Even two weeks ago, SCOTUSblog was publishing in-depth analyses of her decisions.

And her confirmation is a foregone conclusion. She's a logical successor to Souter who won't significantly alter the balance of the court, her personal narrative is absurdly compelling, and when push comes to shove, Obama has the votes he needs.

It will be interesting to see what the Republican smear machine tries to throw at her. Get the popcorn!

Toldja So

2008-11-04T22:25:00.001-08:00

That is all.

A Reminder

2008-11-04T09:46:00.001-08:00

I've been calling this one for Obama since June, and I still am.

EDIT: I underestimated myself. I appears I've actually been calling it since March.

Congress Listens for Once

2008-09-29T17:53:00.000-07:00

I'm thrilled the House has voted down the bailout package. From what I've heard, there are new proposals being floated as an alternative to simply handing over a trillion dollars to foolhardy Wall Street sharks. They're taking their time, and I couldn't be happier. Get it fucking RIGHT!

Cottle-ing Palin

2008-09-23T17:23:00.000-07:00

There's a really great piece about Republican tactics in the culture war over at The New Republic. Go check it out.

For God's Sake, Congress, Take Your Fucking Time

2008-09-22T21:17:00.000-07:00

So now we have Paulson and Bush arguing that Congress needs to shove through a legislative response to the markets right fucking NOW OH GOD NOW DO IT NOW, the exact same way it shoved through the Authorization for Use of Military Force in 2001. You know, the document that was meant to justify a war with the Taliban and instead authorized seven years of American forces occupying a large chunk of the Middle East? Oh, and let's not forget the USA PATRIOT Act blitzed through Congress in 2001 as well, which has been used to justify all sorts of unconstitutional dragnet surveillance on the domestic population of America.

Quick action in a committee is almost never good idea because something inevitably gets fucked in the process. To respond to such a massive paradigm shift in the American market with a quick fix is unconscionable.

For god's sake, Congress, take your fucking time drawing up that rescue plan, and don't let the lame duck quacking in your ear rush you into a poor decision.

Titans Falling

2008-09-21T22:05:00.001-07:00

Well, that's it. There are no more major private investment banks in America. So long, free enterprise. Welcome to the New Capitalism.

How much will it cost taxpayers? We don't know. This is a particularly thorny issue. Putting a specific value on the fallout requires pricing the securities that are collapsing, and the securities are collapsing precisely because their value is difficult to determine.

Expect more updates.

Socializing the Economy

2008-09-20T22:57:00.000-07:00

"America privatizes profit and socializes loss." The current plan for an $800 billion bailout is an atrocity that will only encourage investors to take more and bigger risks in the future. I'm no free market dogmatist, but this is plainly bad policy. More as events develop.

Wow

2008-09-19T08:51:00.001-07:00

Funniest. Photoshop. Of. McCain. EVER.

Interesting Palin Info

2008-09-04T18:12:00.001-07:00

Seems like not all of Palin's constituents cared for the way she governed. This is good information from an informed citizen who has apparently had her eye on Palin for some time.

McCain Tries To Fail (And Will Almost Certainly Succeed in Failing)

2008-08-29T18:33:00.000-07:00

What? Some beauty queen from Alaska? What the hell was McCain thinking? I mean, I've made no secret of the fact that I would rather be skinned alive and thrown into a pool of sulfuric acid than live through a third Republican term, but this seems like it is positively designed to fail. Let's look at just three of the reasons this is a horrible, horrible choice.

(1) Ted Stevens. "Alaska" and "indictment" have gone hand in hand for the last few weeks since the senior Senator from Alaska was charged with accepting bribes. Somehow, the bastard managed to get himself reelected anyway (probably because he famously brings a great deal of federal money to his state; anyone still remember the "bridge to nowhere?"), but the first thing on many voter's minds when they hear this will be corruption charges.

(2) Beauty Queen. Remember McCain's address to the Harley Davidson convention? The one where he suggested his wife participate in the Ms. Buffalo Chip beauty pageant? You know, the pageant that is regularly topless and often bottomless? That is some good, wholesome family entertainment right there. The simulated 69 is good, but I think my favorite part is the contestant who eats a banana. I think McCain needs to steer clear of pageantry for a while.

(3) Rank Amateur. This is the most important problem. Who the hell is this person? Governor of BFE, that's who. No experience, no credentials. All jokes about his age aside, McCain will already be bucking the average human lifespan when he enters office, so the possibility that he will die while President is very real. I said some time ago that if he ran, I would be watching his VP choice very closely, and this was not the right decision. Palin can't lead a nation; she's never even held a federal position. Up against a political powerhouse like Joe Biden, Palin looks like a preschooler with a lollypop. This is a joke.

So, once again, I'm calling this one for Obama, and I'm more sure of it than ever. No amount of media exposure will make me comfortable with Palin's lack of experience, and I think that's true for swing voters in both parties. What the hell is wrong with you, John?

Obama Wins

2008-06-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

In the wake of polls showing Obama pulling further and further out in front of McCain, and in light of the tremendous public backlash following Dobson's accusation that a 2006 Obama speech was twisting the Bible, I think I'm ready to call the November election for Obama. The guy has shrugged off every dirty tactic that's been thrown at him, and he's making inroads with the Christian ignorati to boot.

So here it in, on the record: Obama will win the Presidency in 2008.

For The Record

2008-03-30T20:13:00.000-07:00

I think I'm ready to say that Obama will win the Presidency. I considered waiting until after the next round of primaries, but I really don't feel the need. You heard it here. This should be an interesting 7 months.

Romney's Religious Rant

2007-12-12T11:51:00.000-08:00

Great article over at Reason Magazine on Romney's atheist bashing. A quote:

Romney's justification for treating all religions as presumptively good, no matter how wildly contradictory their teachings, is that they all share a "common creed of moral convictions." He enumerated three: "the equality of human kind, the obligation to serve one another, and a steadfast commitment to liberty." Yeah, there's no way an atheist could believe in those things.

When in doubt, pander!

New Wiregate Info

2007-10-16T15:01:00.000-07:00

More information about the government's monitoring of American phone calls has broken as the customers of AT&T, Verizon, and Bellsouth take our telecom providers to court over their cooperation with the Bush administration's illegal monitoring of Americans' telephone activity. It has also recently come to light that the NSA has gained access to internet activity as well as phone calls on these networks. Because these three companies are so large, their networks route a sizable percentage of all internet traffic through government monitoring stations. That means that even people who are not customers of these companies are being monitored by the government equipment installed in their switching centers.

One company absent from the list of those being sued, however, is Qwest Communications. CEO Joe Nacchio turned down NSA requests for access to its customers' phone calls, concerned that the program might be illegal. Recently, Nacchio was convicted on six counts of insider trading, and one of the arguments he advanced in his defense was that the NSA canceled several lucrative deals with Qwest over his refusal to go along with their surveillance measures. The interesting thing about that filing is that Nacchio alleges that the Bush administration started monitoring Americans' communications in February of 2001, barely two months after Bush moved into the White House and more than half a year before 9/11.

While one is tempted to dismiss such allegations as a last-ditch defense from a ruined man, now the plaintiffs in the AT&T/Verizon/Bellsouth action are claiming that the program was initiated just elevens days after Bush took office. It is now clear that, far from being an overreaction to the legitimate threat of international terrorism, the creation of Big Brother has been a policy goal of this administration from the very beginning. I've been arguing for a long time now that this sort of thing is foreboding, but this latest news is downright chilling.

EDIT 11:20 AM, 10/19/2007:
Good rundown of all the info available here.

Andrew Meyer Had It Coming

2007-09-24T21:38:00.000-07:00

9/20/07, 12:35:00 PM:

So for anyone who hasn't seen the video of Andrew Meyer getting tasered, here it is. I'm not going to waste any time describing what happened because it's all right there in the video for anyone to see. Here's the bottom line: this douchebag broke the rules and resisted duly appointed law enforcement officials when they tried to remove him. He tried to take over the microphone, he was ranting without giving the university's invited (and paid) guest a chance to respond, and when the people in charge of keeping order tried to remove him, he started screaming at the top of his lungs and trying to pull away, so they incapacitated him. I've got no sympathy for this prick.

EDIT:

Turpitude said...

and at what point did this not violate free speech?

Okay, boys and girls, let's settle in for a quick First Amendment lesson. Americans enjoy the right to free speech. It's a good thing. We want people to be able to express their ideas, especially their political ideas, the notion being that people ought to be exposed to viewpoints and allowed to judge for themselves. It also means the government can't arrest someone in a public park for ranting about alien invaders. But what if he's in the middle of the street in a residential area at three in the morning with a bullhorn? There's clearly some balancing to be done.

The most important thing to remember about the Andrew Meyer media event is that it didn't happen in a park; it happened on university property. The university went to the expense of providing the forum and paying the guest, so it gets to make the rules. When someone breaks the rules, as Mr. Meyer did, the university has the right to remove them.

Mr. Meyer's freedom of speech isn't at issue here, and that's the misunderstanding that needs to be corrected. The question isn't whether it was okay to remove him from the premises. He was pretty obviously in violation of all sorts of university policies, not to mention being just plain rude. According to the author's comments on the video linked above, Mr. Meyer was being disruptive from the moment he entered the event. He apparently interrupted another student to take the microphone, even though Senator Kerry said he wouldn't be taking other questions. When security moved to intercept Mr. Meyer, Senator Kerry told them he would take the question and to please let Mr. Meyer speak. Frankly, I think it's an impressive display of tolerance that this douchebag got to use the mic in the first place.

As you can see in the video linked above, Mr. Meyer's "question" very quickly turns into a screed about inconsistencies in the 2004 Presidential election, assertions that President Bush is going to invade Iran, a call on Kerry and (presumably) the rest of America to impeach Bush, and questioning Kerry about his membership in the Skull and Bones society. He was clearly "sticking it to the man" in his own juvenile way. What happened? The university's duly appointed security officers tried to remove him from the event. When Mr. Meyer continued to be loud and obnoxious, they didn't do a thing, just kept moving him towards the door (here's a better video of the scuffle with the campus cops). It wasn't until he tried to break away and stay in the auditorium that he was tackled, and at that point he's resisting law enforcement officers. Sorry dude, you lose.

If Mr. Meyer were outside the auditorium protesting in the parking lot, I'd have a big problem with him being ordered to leave, let alone tased. Even if Meyer were a fringe lunatic, he has the right to speak his mind, and most of the stuff he brought up is actually of legitimate public concern. Even some of the nuttier-sounding accusations merit investigation.

But he didn't go that route. He didn't march around, didn't make a sign, didn't buy a megaphone, didn't write a leaflet, didn't take advantage of the multitude of options open for him to express himself. He decided to hijack someone else's event and use it for his own purposes. I mean seriously, what a dick.

Dicks get to talk just like everyone else here in our infotopian nation, but freedom of speech means you have the inviolable right to say whatever you want however you want, not wherever and whenever you want. You don't get to stand in the middle of the grocery store and scream about how much you hate your representative on the City Council if the store owner tells you to leave, even if you buy things at that store. Why should you get to stand in the middle of an auditorium yelling about how much you hate the President when the person in charge of the event tells you to leave? Just because you're a student?

This guy is facing two criminal charges: one misdemeanor count of disturbing the peace and one felony count of resisting arrest with violence. I don't think I've ever seen better-documented crimes. And seriously, what a dick!

Cheney Flatly Says that Congressional Resolution "won't stop us"

2007-01-25T08:36:00.000-08:00

For those of you still unconcerned about Executive overreaching, Darth Cheney has stated that the Bush administration will flatly ignore the Congressional resolution opposing escalation of the war in Iraq. What annoys me about this is that he also said that if Congress really wants to stop the war, they'll cut the funding. Only problem with that is that the whole "oppose the war, support the troops" thing makes it politically impossible for Democrats to cut funding for the war. If they do, then the Republicans will start screaming about our fighting men and women overseas having no armor and spending their own money on necessities.

PS3 Post-Launch Malaise

2007-01-15T22:25:00.000-08:00

News articles like this one and this one abound as the launch sales of the Wii and the PS3 begin to taper off post-holiday. I think the lack of good games for the PS3 this early in the life of the console isn't a serious problem; the new Sonic game is due out at the end of this month, which will satisfy the need for a good old fashioned platformer (the first video on this page is a good example of the gameplay). Also, Grand Theft Auto IV hits the 360 and the PS3 in October of this year, and you know Rockstar is going to take full advantage of the capacities of the next gen consoles. Their bizarre Xbox Table Tennis game and the forthcoming PS3 game L.A. Noire both look like pilot projects for the development technology being used to create GTA4. Once this title hits, I predict a surge in PS3 sales against the Wii, whether or not there's an accompanying boost in Xbox sales. I, for one, still look forward to getting my hands on a PS3.

Incredible Computer Overlay

2007-01-14T18:45:00.000-08:00

Here an excellent video demonstrating "Augmented Reality," the practice of overlaying video of a person with interactive computer generated objects in real time. This one is particularly impressive. The person in the video is holding a computer generated television screen by a small handle, and the entire thing rotates according to his hand motions, including fine finger motions. At one point he even tosses it into the air. I think that once the technology becomes widely available, this is going to completely change the way we interact with computers. Imagine a public space like a park wired for augmented reality, where visitors wearing VR goggles with cameras in the front see the real space overlaid with the computer generated creations of the other visitors, perhaps selecting one of multiple channels, much like chat rooms, to avoid the problem of "overcrowding" the virtual space. Damn, I love the future.

One Million Pixels Project

2007-01-07T13:16:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine is running an experiment to see what kind of image a million people will create by selecting one pixel each. I'm curious to see how much cooperation there will be in forming a recognizable picture. The interface is pretty basic at the moment, but I'm told they're working on better ways to pinpoint the pixel you want.

Virtual Resident Sues for Real Profits

2006-09-21T08:07:00.000-07:00

The first suit over virtual real estate has been filed in Pennsylvania. The case was filed by Marc Bragg against Linden Labs, a company which runs an online world called Second Life. SL aims to be exactly what its title suggests: a virtual world that is every bit as real as the physical. Users can create and customize a 3D avatar to represent themselves online, and there are Linden Dollars (more commonly known inworld as L$) which are used in the thriving virtual economy.

Sign up is free if you just want to look around or a mere $6 a month if you’d like to own a small plot of land and receive a modest monthly income. This isn’t to say that there’s no way to get money with a free account, though. Residents all have access to an incredibly intuitive object building system which they can use to create everything from clothing to houses to musical instruments. Once you’ve built a suit of robotic mech armor or a working light saber, other residents will pay you for a copy of it.

Bragg v. Linden Research concerns a purchase of land in Second Life at an extraordinarily low price. By entering the code for a piece of land that wasn’t for sale yet, Mr. Bragg was able to purchase parcels of real estate at auction without any competitors. He did not have to hack through any security or find a back door into a system that wasn’t online; all he had to do was change a single parameter in a web address to access a page that was online and publicly available. He argues that his purchase was perfectly legitimate; if Linden didn’t want people to purchase the land yet, then it shouldn’t have been accessible to the general public. Linden argues that he knows what he did was wrong and they are perfectly justified in banning him and confiscating his inworld property.

As a citizen of Second Life, I think this is intriguing. In SL, land is effectively server space. All the things on your parcel of land are held on computers owned by Linden Labs, but users create everything you see in SL. One of the extremely cool steps that Linden has taken (and one of the reasons I pay for my account rather than simply using a free one) is that the things I create belong to me. They are my copyright, my patent, my property; the catch is that there’s no way for me to make my own copy.

Further, there is a highly active currency exchange on which L$300 go for about $1, so when Mr. Bragg's account was suspended as punishment for his questionable real estate deal, he lost access to a lot of inworld property that has realworld value. Bragg had taken several parcels of land and built nightclubs and casinos, turning the virtual property into a healthy and active business. Now that Linden has frozen his account, Bragg claims damages in excess of $8,000, which is not unrealistic given the amount of property he owned.

Joshua Fairfield, a specialist in internet law at Indiana University, thinks this case is unlikely to set major precedent in the area of online property because the arguments will likely revolve around whether Bragg violated the user agreement. Since that agreement constitutes a contract, any breach would entitle Linden to suspend his account, realworld value or not. Irrespective of the legal issues involved, my first instinct here is to side with Bragg. Sure, he took advantage of a hole in Linden's auction system to bid on properties with no competition, but the appropriate measure is to rescind the land deal and impose some smaller sanction, not to summarily ban someone so heavily invested in the SL world.

Some of the provisions Linden has made are good common sense, like the insistence that Linden Dollars are "not redeemable for monetary value from Linden Lab." Other provisions, though helpful in regulating the SL world, are going to have to give way for virtual economies to truly take off. For example, "Linden Lab has the absolute right to manage, regulate, control, modify and/or eliminate such Currency as it sees fit in its sole discretion, and that Linden Lab will have no liability to you based on its exercise of such right."

In fact, the term "sole discretion" shows up in the agreement fifteen times. This is like the U.S. government telling you, "Our money is the only way you can pay for things in America, but we can give or take away money on a whim." Linden further reserves the right to regulate the currency exchange in any way they like. Would you invest in a country where the government reserved the right to simply take or destroy your money completely without cause?

The license specifies that "Linden Lab has the right at any time for any reason or no reason to suspend or terminate your Account.... In the event that Linden Lab suspends or terminates your Account or this Agreement, you understand and agree that you shall receive no refund or exchange for any unused time on a subscription, any license or subscription fees, any content or data associated with your Account, or for anything else."

So even though you own the content you create, Linden reserves the right to deny you access to it or even to delete it. This is intellectual property, though, so shouldn't you just regularly back up what you create so that it will be available to you if you should ever lose access to your account? Yes! But you can’t! You cannot so much as save a texture file that's embedded in an SL object, let alone save the object itself.

Once Linden takes your account, everything you built inworld is just gone, but they don't reserve the right to keep it, just the right to destroy it. In fact, they expressly limit their use of user-created content to marketing, debugging, and support. When you consider companies like Geocities and AOL own everything their users have written and posted there, this is a pretty big deal.

Bragg made a substantial amount of money from his activities inworld, and though he supplements his SL income with the money he earns as an attorney, there are some people who make their real life living entirely on SL. I understand the magnitude of having so much effort simply taken away because I own land, create content, and buy and sell virtual objects myself. The economy of Second Life, if it is to be a successful virtual economy, must not be subject to the whims of Linden; those who work and play there must have legally protected rights in the property they create.

Is the right way to do that through the courts? Probably not, or at least not yet. The owners of such virtual worlds should not be legally required to handle their residents in the same way at this vital stage in the development of the technology. The goal of Linden's project, however, is a stable virtual world which mirrors the real one, complete with a working currency exchange. By unilaterally banning people for infractions like this, they undermine confidence in the stability of the gameworld and access to the things one creates and theoretically owns.

Creating something good enough to sell on SL takes a while. The object creation system is very intuitive and easy to use, but creating anything complicated enough to sell demands an investment of time and patience. Further, creating objects that do something rather than simply looking pretty requires a knowledge of LSL, the Linden Scripting Language. For people like me with a limited background in programming, the learning curve can be pretty steep.

The amount of time I've spent learning to use the SL system and creating objects is not something I take lightly, and I only use SL for fun. If I made real money doing what I do, I would be furious. Mad enough to sue, in fact. What Linden needs to do is give its users assurances not only that the content they create belongs to them but that they will have access to it except in cases of extreme misbehavior. A fraudulent land deal can be solved with sanctions and a rescission of the contract of sale, and Linden would do well to remember its citizens are watching.

If you'd like to look me up, my name is Horatio Malaprop.

*Note: Those of you who have been following my blog will recognize this as a revised version of this article I wrote over the summer. I'm hoping Mr. Bragg will grant me another interview to let me know how his case is progressing. If and when he does, I'll get back to you with more details.

Keep Your Goddamn Religion Out of My Government

2006-08-28T16:05:00.000-07:00

"If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you're not electing Christians then in essence you are going to legislate sin."

-- Florida Representative and current Senate candidate Katherine Harris. Full article here.

ABA Task Force Slams Presidential Signing Statements

2006-08-27T14:56:00.000-07:00

The American Bar Association is the largest association of lawyers in the nation, responsible for everything from law school accreditation to model legal codes, and on July 24, they released a report unrelentingly attacking the use of Presidential “signing statements” to distort the law. At the national meeting on August 8, the ABA officially adopted the report as policy. That’s right: the body of lawyers responsible for setting professional standards across the nation officially discredited the administration’s legal theories.

The signing statement, now notorious thanks to more than 800 uses by Bush II in the course of his five and a half years as President, is a more versatile version of the line-item veto, a practice held by the Supreme Court in 1998 to be an unconstitutional invasion of Congressional lawmaking power. The President is now claiming the power to decline to enforce portions of laws which he deems unconstitutional.

The use of signing statements in this way makes the President a legislative agent, capable of amending laws after they have already passed Congress and been signed into law by the President himself. Minor civics review: making law is Congress’ job, not the President’s. The President gets to sign or veto the bill, and once it becomes law he’s in charge making sure that the law is carried out. Now, though, Bush is claiming that he doesn’t have to carry out unconstitutional laws, even if he just finished signing them with his own hand!

By signing laws and then refusing to enforce them, Bush is not only derelict in his constitutional duty to enforce the law but also stealing the power of Congress, which is responsible for deciding what laws should and shouldn’t be made. What happens if the rest of us, including the entire Congress and the Supreme Court, think he’s wrong in his interpretation? Not jack.

That’s right, the President is not only changing the law passed by Congress, he’s claiming full-fledged and independent authority to declare duly enacted laws to be unconstitutional, completely bypassing the Supreme Court. The President claims the authority to unilaterally suspend enforcement of laws he deems unconstitutional, without any judicial review. Further, he asserts that because these determinations are part of his Constitutional role as President, the Court cannot review them. No wonder he’s only had to use his veto once since he was elected!

The principle that the executive, legislative, and judicial functions should remain separate is one of the cornerstones of American government. In the earliest days of the nation, James Madison said that the accumulation of all three in the hands of a single individual was “the very definition of tyranny.” The President, by using signing statements in this way, has appropriated to the executive branch portions of both Congress’ legislative power and the Supreme Court’s judicial power.

The theory of Presidential power backing the use of signing statements has such far-reaching implications it has been used as the administration’s defense in everything from the Abu Ghraib torture scandal to the current wave of NSA Wiregate trials, but the Task Force is very careful to emphasize that this is not a crusade against George W. Bush. Though he is the worst abuser, Clinton, Bush I, and Reagan all used signing statements in this way.

Several of the Justices on the Supreme Court, including both of Bush’s recent appointees, have been quite willing to give away Congressional power to the executive. Their authoritarian stances may falter, however, when the time comes to support the President at the expense of their own power. This stance will be challenged, likely as part of the Wiregate trials, and with its own neck on the line, the Court might just do the right thing.

Thursday’s Wiregate Ruling Will Matter Only in the Arena of Public Opinion

2006-08-22T06:45:00.000-07:00

The first wave of lower court rulings in the Wiregate scandals has just begun to break against the steadily eroding edifice of the Bush presidency. Last Thursday, a Federal judge in the Eastern District of Michigan ruled the President’s constitutional authority insufficient to support one of the illegal NSA wiretapping programs. The case, ACLU v. NSA, concerns unsanctioned government monitoring of phone calls between people in the United States and those outside if one party is “reasonably suspected” to be affiliated with Al Qaeda in any way. No authorization of any kind is required or even sought from anyone other than the President himself. There is no review of the program’s legitimacy or effectiveness by anyone other than the President himself.

The President’s lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel have argued in this case and others like it that the Executive has independent constitutional authority to do pretty much whatever the hell he wants when acting as Commander-in-Chief. Use of surveillance is an incident of war, they say, and since we are in the midst of a War on Terror® declared by Congress via the Authorization for the Use of Military Force in the wake of 9/11, the government is free to surveil. The White House is also asserting the state secrets privilege in this case, which would bar the matter from judicial scrutiny altogether. Bush is not only arguing that he doesn’t have to stop, he’s arguing that the courts can’t even say whether it’s legal!

John Yoo, an influential legal scholar and one of the primary architects of this framework, argued in public less than a year ago not only that the President has the power to order a suspect watch his or her child being tortured (including crushing his testicles) in order to make the suspect talk, but also that this power is so deeply rooted in the constitution that Congress cannot pass a law forbidding it. This kind of dictatorial barbarism is ludicrous, but even the President’s own lawyers concede that it is the logical extension of the very same theory of executive power they advance in defense of simple surveillance powers.

The array of laws violated by the program is rather impressive; the judge held the scheme to be contrary to the First and Fourth Amendments, statutory wiretapping laws like FISA, and the “Separation of Powers principle” which states that Congress makes the law and the President carries it out. The judge felt that nearly all of the claims could be supported on the basis of information already made public but, interestingly, sustained the national security objection with regard to the count of datamining.

Judge Taylor’s opinion is grandiose and palpably annoyed with this abuse of Presidential power, but the effect of her words will probably be quite small. The fact is that this case is headed for the Supreme Court, and Taylor’s oratory will have little effect there. Indeed, the case itself is not even the most important one of its kind trickling through the courts.

The real bombshell in this line of cases is going to be Hepting v. AT&T, which was filed by an irate customer with the backing of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Not long after The New York Times broke the story about international calls being tapped, an AT&T employee by the name of Mark Klein came forward with testimony about datamining equipment being installed in AT&T facilities by NSA personnel. The EFF is accusing the Bush administration of tracking every phone call that crosses U.S. communications lines, including personal calls between citizens of America not even suspected of illicit activity.

This case is going forward also, but slowly. Most recently, the judge in the case ordered a public trial, rejecting the government’s requests for a secret trial on the basis of (you guessed it) national security. The wisdom of the courts has thus far held, but the ultimate decision of an increasingly executive-friendly Supreme Court is the only one that matters. The lower court decisions serve merely to keep the public aware of the controversy and foster discussion about what an unrepentant autocrat we elected.

Good News in Wiregate Trial

2006-07-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

The federal judge in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against AT&T has ruled that, despite the government's national security arguments, the case will go forward in open court.

My apologies for not being more active the last week or two; between a Constitutional Law final and planning a move, things here have been hectic. Things should be back to normal soon.

Conservatives Against Totalitarianism

2006-07-08T18:30:00.000-07:00

I found a good article on conservatives who oppose the authoritarian lawlessness of the Bush administration. This is an interview with Bruce Fein, a constitutional scholar and conservative activist who believes that Bush's disregard of the law is not a partisan issue. Kudos to Mr. Fein.

Another Terrorist Plot Uncovered

2006-07-07T07:12:00.000-07:00

So apparently we've foiled another terrorist plot. This one may or may not be more credible than last month's Chicago Crazies arrests. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, a Democrat, has praised intelligence gathering efforts for this capture, and this makes me nervous. Without weighing in on the merits, I'd like to point out that for four years following September 11, we never heard a peep. Not one story of a foiled terrorist plot, no names, no locations, nothing. Now, when Bush's domestic spying program has been revealed to the American people, we've gotten two highly publicized terror arrests in as many months, complete with specific plans, details on the method of infiltration and capture, the whole nine yards. The first one was pretty obviously trumped up, and I'm willing to bet this one won't turn out to be much more credible. We shall see; more as it develops.

Bits and Pieces

2006-07-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

The seven men arrested for plans to blow up Sears Tower were carefully cajoled into adding targets to their list and allying themselves with Al Qaeda. Entrapment, anyone? Full story here.

Also, Army Lieutenant Ehren Watada, famous for calling the Iraq war illegal and refusing to go, was charged yesterday with conduct unbecoming an officer, failure to follow a direct order, and badmouthing the President. HEIL!

A speech that was never given was used in a Supreme Court brief for Hamdan v. Rumsfeld as evidence of legislative intent. Very 1984.

An Excellent Point

2006-07-01T17:15:00.000-07:00

Regarding flag desecration:

"[T]he best way to fight this amendment is to undermine it from the word Go, to prove (without having to be incarcerated) how stupid and pointless this thing would be. So right here and now I promise: the day the 38th state legislature passes this amendment into law, I go into business for myself. Making what? Flags, of course.

What kind of flags? Well, I'll tell you. The flag I have in mind has 13 stripes, alternating red and white. In the top left hand corner, I figure I'd put a blue rectangle, and fill it with white, five-pointed stars, in alternating rows of five and six, numbering, oh, about 50 or so. But where that last star would go, maybe I'd put a circle instead, or a square, or a pentagon, seeing that's it's five sided and all. It'd be 99% the Flag of United States of America, and 1% filler.

It would look like that American flag, it would feel like an American flag, and if I ran it up a flagpole, someone would probably salute it like an American flag. And why not? It's close enough in form and content to evoke all the responses that the American flag would. I'd bet you that even from a close distance, most folks would swear that's what it is. But it's not. What to call it? Something catchy, like "Not The Flag of the United States," "United States Flag Substitute," or, my personal favorite, "I Can't Believe It's Not the American Flag!"

What could I do with my new flag? Why, just about anything I wanted:
Bob: Say, John, what are you doing over there?
Me: Well, Bob, I'm thinking of roasting this here entire pig on the hibachi! But first I must stoke the cooking fire!
Bob: Say, John, isn't that the Constitutionally-protected American flag that you are laying over those red hot charcoal briquettes?
Me: It sure looks that way, doesn't it? But see that tiny white dot over there?
Bob (squinting): Why yes I do! It's so small!
Me: Thanks to that trivial detail, this is Not The Flag of the United States! And I can burn it at will!
Bob: Hey, that's great! Could I use your United States Flag Substitute? I've got a heap of leaves in the back yard I need to take care of!
Me: Sure, Bob! It makes great kindling!

I could wear it, wax my car, swaddle small, incontinent children, potty-train my turtle, towel off after mud wrestling, turn it into a hammock, use it as bandages in a emergency situation or just shred it into fibers with a weed-whacker. Whatever I wanted. God forbid I would want to burn something in political protest, I could set it aflame outside the steps of the United States House of Representatives."

I'd buy them. Read the whole thing here.

LULAC v. Perry

2006-07-01T12:54:00.000-07:00

I ran across a good article on the Texas re-districting case. For those who missed it, former House majority leader and all-around asshole Tom DeLay gerrymandered the voting districts in Texas back in 2003, resulting in 6 House Democrats losing their seats to Republicans. A bunch of people sued, and the Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld all but one of the changes because the complaints were almost entirely based on racial divisions. Justice Kennedy, who wrote the court's opinion, was very wary of claims that simple racial division was enough to constitute unfair districting practices and focused instead on the socio-economic status of the voters. Although the redistricting was unquestionably a corrupt political move and I think DeLay should be imprisoned for what he did, this ruling looks like a step in the right direction for real equality. More once I've read the case.

Hamdan v. Rumsfeld

2006-06-30T08:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a good story on the case striking down the Guantanamo tribunals. More once I've read the opinions myself.

Culture War Politics

2006-06-30T07:27:00.001-07:00

The flag burning ammendment is the latest in a string of GOP efforts to whip their base into a frenzy as the November Congressional elections approach. Let's go through the list, shall we?

The whole thing started back in May with the immigration bill. This is a strong area for Republicans, and xenophobic nationalists love nothing more than to hear about how illegal aliens are stealing our country.

Then, at the beginning of June, they began to fan the flames with the vote on a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. This was a measure designed to fail, but it put to Republicans back in the spotlight on their "moral values" platform.

Next, we saw the arrest of seven "terror suspects" in Miami. Theoretically, they were planning an attack on the Sears Tower, but no one in Chicago ever even heard about it. Turns out these guys were a bunch of cultist wackos working from a run-down warehouse. I love the smell of scare tactics in the morning....

They wasted no time berating the New York Times for publishing a story on yet another government surveillance program (one that might even be legal for a change), but we can hardly thank the Republicans for instigating that one. No, their next maneuver was the flag burning amendment I mentioned earlier.

What next? Well, I'll tell you what next. Stem cells! As more and more research come out showing that stem cells can do everything from fighting cancer to curing paralysis, the Republicans are quickly backpedaling. Will we see a lift on the supply limitations of federally-funded research? Almost certainly not, but laughable threat of a Presidential veto aside, the Republicans will make it look like they care by throwing money at the problem. Expect to hear a lot of debate about this new method of harvesting the cells without creating a viable human embryo.

Oh how I love an election year! Can't wait to see what the GOP wants us to talk about next.

That Was Too Close

2006-06-30T06:50:00.000-07:00

For those of you who've been living under a rock at the bottom of a trench on Mars, on Wednesday the Senate failed by a single vote to pass a Constitutional ammendment giving itself the power to punish "physical desecration of the flag." To be perfectly honest, I was almost certain they would pass it this time. Nationalist sentiment in America is at a height I didn't know was possible; Ann Coulter has even published a book saying Joe McCarthy was actually a true patriot who was just demonized by a liberal smear campaign. This shit scares the hell out of me. I wonder if my law degree would be useful in Nairobi....

One other thing: I recently found a really good government tracking site. You can select your interests from a set of tags, pick a particular Congressman to watch, and monitor specific bills or committees. They publish the text of the bills and transcripts of debates on the floor, and they offer the option of daily or weekly e-mails about the issues and people you've decided to track. Needless to say, I'm keeping an eye on my Georgia Congresspeople and the judiciary committees of the House and Senate, among other things.

More later.

Bush I on Atheism

2006-06-29T10:16:00.000-07:00

This shouldn't surprise me, but every time I run across something so shockingly politically incorrect, it takes my breath away. Really, who the fuck do these people think they are? If someone said the same thing about Hinduism or a Judaism, they would be flayed alive by an angry mob. And to think Christians consider themselves persecuted....

Further Notes on the Touch-Screen Vote

2006-06-25T20:07:00.000-07:00

Waaay back in September of 2004, I wrote a piece about the touch-screen voting machines then coming into vogue. Here are some interesting facts about those machines that have come to light in the two years since.

Prelude to the End of the War?

2006-06-24T21:12:00.000-07:00

The Iraqi Prime Minister has drafted a reconciliation plan calling for a definite time-table for American withdrawal and amnesty for Iraqis who have attacked U.S. forces, among other things. If this passes, Bush will be placed in the position of accepting what he has called defeat or overruling the elected body of what he assures the world is a legitimate sovereign nation merely seeking our help. I wondered how long this would take.

North American Union?

2006-06-23T08:16:00.000-07:00

I ran into this story (Warning: Generates pop-ups) on the website of the ultra-conservative mag Human Events the other day. I don't give it much credibility on its own, but it's true that treaties are considered the supreme law of the land. These screaming right-wingers may actually have a point. More to come once I've researched the matter.

SNAKES ON A PLANE!!

2006-06-20T14:21:00.000-07:00

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ahem. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

A Little Known Fact About Net Neutrality

2006-06-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

There is an important point being overlooked in the net neutrality debate. Those who oppose laws preventing ISPs from charging for preferential treatment of content couch their debates in libertarian terms; slogans like "Hands Off the Internet" have been propagated for months by various astroturf organizations (translation for the politically disinclined: fake grassroots organizations which are actually funded and organized by big business). The ISPs (Comcast, Verizon, etc.) insist that they have no plans to implement the pay-to-play speech restrictions envisioned by those supporting net neutrality laws, so why legislate against a nonexistent problem?

The way they phrase their arguments, it sounds like one day somebody just went, "Holy shit! AT&T could charge content providers like Google and J. Aaron Brown for speedy service!" Then this hypothetical person (with excellent taste in blogs, I might add) ran down to the local Congressperson's office and demanded that action be taken to stop this imaginary threat quickly, before the same idea occured to the telecommunications industry.

What you never hear is that laws preventing telecoms from discriminating against their competitors have been on the books since 1934; apparently the telecoms thought it up a long, long time ago. Phone companies were prevented from demanding a fee to connect calls to competitors' equipment over quality lines. AT&T, for instance, couldn't put Sprint customers through second-rate phone circuits if Sprint refused to pay a fee. Until last August, that law applied to the internet too.

And then the Federal Communications Commission created an exception for telecoms that provide internet service. You read that right. Bush's FCC, the same one ramming the theo-conservatives' moral agenda down the public throat, created a very narrow, carefully tailored loophole in a 71-year-old regulation.

They must have just decided to do this out of thin air, right? I mean, the FCC makes decisions to do random things like this all the time, don't they? Guess again. If the FCC changes a regulation, it's either because the old one doesn't work (clearly not the case here since you're reading this) or because big business lobbied for it and the President told the FCC to do it. And why would the telecom industry spend good money lobbying to have that standard changed (not to mention all they money they've dumped into organizations opposing the regulation) if they didn't intend to take advantage of it?

I favor net neutrality regulation more and more strongly the more I learn about the situation. The telecoms argue that regulation like this is unnecessary and will stifle the growth of the internet, but the truth is that the internet has not flourished because it was unregulated. During the fastest growth in its history, it was regulated, in exactly the way proponents of net neutrality seek to have it regulated again, and the telecoms are the ones behind the removal of the regulations in the first place. Don't buy the bullshit; this is a ploy to fuck us all.

(Damn, it's liberating to be able to say that! Hooray for an absence of editors! Long live the internet!)

A Blow to the Surveillance Society?

2006-06-18T13:40:00.000-07:00

An Arizona man is taking a speeding ticket to the U.S. Supreme Court. Why? Because it was issued by a computer. A video camera snapped a shot of his license plate when it registered the speeding car, but the picture doesn't show the driver (who, incidentally, claims he wasn't speeding). This guy has spent thousands of dollars appealing this case all the way up from the county court level, but whether the Supreme Court will hear his case is another matter entirely.

I'm Sick of Hearing About "Activist Judges"

2006-06-18T00:06:00.000-07:00

I've been reading up on some of the criticism being levelled at Judge Constance Russell of the Fulton County Superior Court in the wake of her decision invalidating the Georgia gay marriage ban. She didn't strike it on the basis of civil rights; instead, she recognized that the wording of the ban violated a requirement that ballot measures be designed to accomplish only one purpose. The ban does several things beyond defining marriage, including invalidating civil unions, preventing the Georgia legal system from recognizing same-sex marriages which were validly established in other states, and removing jurisdiction over same-sex divorce actions.

Governor Sonny Perdue used the most common juridical criticism, "activist judge," to signal his disapproval. This is seriously starting to piss me off. People with political agendas accuse judges of having political agendas when the court rules against them; it's just that simple. The judge held that because people might be against gay marriage but in favor of civil unions, the bill was unnecessarily broad.

That sort of conflict is precisely what the single purpose rule is designed to prevent, irrespective of the political charge of the issues at hand. This was a good call made by a good judge. Perhaps it will be vindicated when the case goes to the Georgia Supreme Court. More on this story as it develops. Back to you, Tom.

For the Record

2006-06-13T10:49:00.000-07:00

I favor Net Neutrality. I think the megacorps have too much control over the internet already without enforcing restrictions on access to alternate views.

Blind Spot

2006-06-12T07:28:00.000-07:00

Hey, look! The rest of the world is finally beginning to see what I've been saying about executive power for over two years now.

Washington National Monument

2006-06-11T19:18:00.000-07:00

Somebody posted a comment about crazy people who think the Masons control the government. Now, I'm not saying he's wrong, but....

GPS coordinates are 38 48' 26.93" N, 77 03' 52.86" W if you want to check this for yourself. Great how Google Earth has resolution so good you can see the black helicopters parked at Area 51.

Update: Bush Signs Bill That Didn't Pass Congress

2006-06-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

Here's the best article I could find on the issue. Essentially, the Republicans used the tactic to undermine the Democrats' opposition to a change in the Medicare bill. This is, in fact, a big deal. I also found the letter Henry Waxman wrote in protest and legal advice sent to Nancy Pelosi.

Another Interesting ABA Post

2006-06-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

This is a story I've not taken too seriously but kept my eye on. I guess some people are still convinced that they don't have to listen to the federal government. Nice to know they lost.

Bush's Signing Statements

2006-06-10T20:39:00.000-07:00

Just a quick link to a really good article on Presidential signing statements at the American Bar Association's website. I'm happy they're forming a task force to examine this.

Also, to those who don't like PrisonPlanet, I'll only say that I've never known them to get their facts wrong. I have a lot of respect for Alex Jones.

Bush Signs Bill That Didn't Pass Congress

2006-06-09T12:36:00.000-07:00

Still looking into this one. Read the story here.

Hooray for Alan Specter

2006-06-09T12:26:00.000-07:00

The Republican head of the Senate Judiciary Committee has been vocally protesting the White House's warrantless wiretapping program, and his efforts are finally paying off. In a letter, Cheney told Specter that he was willing to work with Congress on legislation to control the President's intelligence-gathering activities. Importantly, this is a step back from the absurdly strong view of executive power the Justice Department has been pushing for the last several years; Cheney's acquiesence is an admission, albeit a small one, that the President cannot act with the impunity he has claimed. Then again, let's see what the law they pass looks like before we start dancing in the streets....

Republicans Pissed at Double Standard

2006-06-09T12:06:00.000-07:00

On another note, this story about students learning Islamic dogma in the classroom caught my attention. Republicans are furious with the Ninth Circuit's ruling that a three-week course on Islam did not violate the separation of church and state, and frankly I agree. The interesting thing to me is that the Republicans have left themselves with a choice between two equally untenable positions. Either they think that separation of church and state is good, so god should be taken off the money, out of the pledge, etc. along with all this Allah crap, or they think that separation of church is bad, god gets to stay, and public schools should be able to instruct their kids in how to become a muslim.

The text of the decision itself is unpublished, but the briefs for each side are of course available to the public. The most shocking thing is that the school district defended the program by saying that none of the students demonstrated "devotional intent," as though the kids had to start praying to Mecca five times a day before this can be considered a problem. The case is Eklund v. Byron Union School District, 2005 WL 3086580.

Drop the Hammer: Tom DeLay's Farewell Address

2006-06-09T11:25:00.000-07:00

Ah, the joy of watching this jackass crash and burn. Among other political atrocities, DeLay is responsible for the partisan gerrymandering of Texas electoral districts back in 2003, a challenge to which is slowly working its way up to the supreme court, and the unprecedented procedural irregularity of holding a vote open in the House of Representatives for over three hours to ram through the Medicare bill that cost over $100 billion more than we were told it would. He is a partisan hack who would rape and burn his own mother if he thought it would help another Republican. To watch this jackass finally be caught by his nasty tricks and forced into retirement pleases me immensely.

In the speech, DeLay attacks bipartisanship and those who lack the spine to declare all-out war on their political opponents. After denouncing those who use their retirement speeches to reminisce about the "good old days" of cordial discourse and cooperative legislating, DeLay asserts, "Partisanship, Mr. Speaker, properly understood, is not a symptom of democracy's weakness but of its health and its strength."

He wraps himself in the mantles of smaller government and tax cuts, values that have gone the way of the coelacanth in the Republican party: they're still out there, but not many of 'em, and for a long time it looked like they were completely gone. DeLay and the other Theo-Conservatives don't want smaller government, they want bigger government that will stop people from doing what they want with their own bodies, fine into bankruptcy any company that broadcasts material they find objectionable, and pound Christian propaganda into the heads of schoolchildren. His party has presided over the largest single increase in government in American history, inflated the deficit to nearly $10 trillion, and he self-righteously attacks Democrats for wanting more government.

He sets up two principles that must never be compromised to defend his actions: human freedom and human dignity. Of course, when he talks about fighting euthanasia, he relies on dignity; when he talks about getting rid of welfare, he relies on freedom. When he talks about banning abortion, he relies on dignity, and when he talks about occupying a foreign nation, he relies on freedom.

What kind of doublethink is this sack of shit peddling? Fuck you, Tommy.

An Apology

2006-06-06T09:07:00.000-07:00

My sincere apologies to those of you who've been faithfully returning and finding nothing (both of you). It's been a very busy couple of weeks for me and is likely to remain rather busy until at least this Monday. Between weddings, summer school, and the eternal jobhunt, I barely have time to read the news, let alone comment on it. There's plenty to talk about, though, so check back in a week.

A Little Perspective

2006-06-01T14:20:00.000-07:00

This puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

Bipartisan Solidarity in Response to FBI Raids

2006-05-24T20:18:00.000-07:00

Don't know how many of you heard about the FBI raid on Democratic Congressman William J. Jefferson's office. This has never happened before; Congressmen accused of taking bribes are indicted, not searched. In response, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House issued a joint statement. It's about fucking time these idiots put down politics to fight overextension of the Executive branch.

In a rush tonight, full story can be found here. More in a couple of days.

Virtual Resident Sues for Real Profits

2006-05-23T17:28:00.000-07:00

The first suit over virtual real estate has been filed in Pennsylvania. The case of Bragg v. Linden Research concerns a purchase of land in Second Life (SL) at an extraordinarily low price by manipulating an online auction. As a citizen of Second Life, I think this is intriguing. One of the extremely cool steps that Linden has taken (and one of the reasons I pay for an account with benefits rather than simply using the free accounts) is that the things I create belong to me. They are my copyright, my patent, my property. Further, Linden dollars, or L$ as they are more commonly known inworld, have a worth of about $1/L$300, so when this guy's account was suspended for a real estate deal, he lost access to a lot of inworld property that has realworld value. He claims damages in excess of $8,000, which is not unrealistic given the amount of property he owned.

Joshua Fairfield, a specialist in internet law at Indiana University, thinks this case is unlikely to set major precedent in the area of online property because the arguments will likely revolve around whether Bragg violated the user agreement. Since that agreement constitutes a contract, any breach would entitle Linden to suspend his account, realworld value or not. I'm cautious about picking sides just yet due to the lack of information available on this case, but irrespective of the legal issues involved, my first instinct here is to side with Bragg. Sure, he took advantage of a security hole in Linden's auction system to bid on properties with no minimum and no competition, but the appropriate measure is to rescind the land deal and impose some smaller sanction, not to summarily ban someone so heavily invested in the SL world.

Bragg, from what I understand, made a substantial amount of money from his activities inworld, and though I don't know the extent of his involvement, I do know that there are some people who make their RL living entirely on SL. I understand the magnitude of having so much effort simply taken away because I own land, create content, and buy and sell virtual objects myself. The economy of Second Life, if it is to be a successful virtual economy, must not be subject to the whims of Linden; those who work and play there must have legally protected rights.

Is the right way to do that through the courts? Probably not, at least not yet. The owners of such virtual worlds should not all be legally required to handle their residents in the same way at this vital stage in the development of the technology. The goal of Linden's project, however, is a stable virtual world which mirrors the real one, and by unilaterally banning people for infractions like this, they undermine confidence in the stability of the gameworld and access to the things one creates and theoretically owns.

Creating something good enough to sell on SL takes a while. The object creation system is very intuitive and easy to use, but the precision of the work demands a very large investment of time and patience. Further, creating objects that do something rather than simply looking pretty requires a knowledge of LSL, the Linden Scripting Language. For people like me with a limited background in programming, the learning curve can be pretty steep. The amount of time I've spent learning to use the SL system and creating objects is not something I take lightly, and I only use SL for fun. If I made real money doing what I do, I would be furious. Mad enough to sue, in fact. What Linden needs to do is give its users assurances not only that the content they create belongs to them but that they will have access to it except in cases of extreme misbehavior. A fradulent land deal can be solved with sanctions and a rescision of the contract of sale, and Linden would do well to remember its citizens are watching.

Addendum: Thoughts On Re-Reading the 6,300-Word SL License

Some of the provisions Linden has made are good common sense, like the insistence that Linden Dollars are "not redeemable for monetary value from Linden Lab." Other provisions, though helpful for corporate autonomy in regulating the SL world, are going to have to give way for virtual economies to truly take off. Example: "Linden Lab has the absolute right to manage, regulate, control, modify and/or eliminate such Currency as it sees fit in its sole discretion, and that Linden Lab will have no liability to you based on its exercise of such right." In fact, the term "sole discretion" shows up in the agreement fifteen times. This is like the U.S. government telling you, "Our money is the only way you can pay for things in America, but we can give or take away money on a whim." Linden further reserves the right to regulate the currency exchange in any way they like. Would you invest in a country like that?

Here's the real kicker, though, and the thing that convinces me Bragg is going to go down in flames:

"Linden Lab has the right at any time for any reason or no reason to suspend or terminate your Account, terminate this Agreement.... In the event that Linden Lab suspends or terminates your Account or this Agreement, you understand and agree that you shall receive no refund or exchange for any unused time on a subscription, any license or subscription fees, any content or data associated with your Account, or for anything else." [Emphasis added]

So, even though you own the content you create, Linden reserves the right to deny you access to it or even to delete it. "But Q!" you say. "This is intellectual property, not subject to the vagaries of physical property. Shouldn't you just regularly back up what you create so that it will be available to you if you should ever lose access to your account?" And to you I say YES! But you CAN'T! You cannot so much as save to your hard drive a texture file that's embedded in an SL object, let alone save the form of the object itself. No, once Linden takes your account, everything you built inworld is just gone.

But they don't reserve the right to keep it, just the right to destroy it. In fact, they expressly limit their use of user-created content to marketing, debugging, and support. When you consider that Geocities owns everything their users have written and posted there, this is a pretty big deal.

Addendum

Mr. Bragg has been kind enough to agree to an interview. I'll let you know what I find out.

Three Cheers for Geek Media

2006-05-23T16:39:00.000-07:00

WIRED magazine has posted the full text of AT&T whistle-blower Mark Klein's report on their illegal cooperation with the NSA's data mining program. In a statement about their reasons for doing so, WIRED said that both their own analyses and those of outside experts suggest there is no reason for this information to be kept secret. It poses no threat to AT&T's business, either from hackers or competitors. The judge in the case prohibited only the EFF from disseminating the information, and he specifical denied AT&T's request to prohibit Klein himself from spreading the information. The magazine has joined other news organizations, including the Associated Press and the LA Times, in petitioning for intervention in the case, which would give them access to the documents the court has deemed protected.

In other news, I just ran across a bit of the exact text of BellSouth's carefully-worded denial. Misleading headlines have screamed "BELLSOUTH DENIES INVOLVEMENT IN NSA WIRETAPPING SCHEME." That's wrong.

"We have no contract with the NSA and we have not turned over any customer information to the NSA." What does this mean? Why, precisely what it says! Of course BellSouth didn't form an official contract with the National Security Agency to spy on American phone calls. That would be madness from the outset. And of course BellSouth isn't providing customer information. All they're providing is phone records, detached from names! The NSA has to use a reverse phone directory themselves to find out who the customers actually are.

Teenage Bloggers Beware

2006-05-23T16:00:00.000-07:00

A school district in Illinois is forcing students to sign a pledge stating that the school has the right to comb their blogs and MySpace accounts for signs of unacceptable activity. In the event that an underage kid writes about how drunk he got last night, he'll be treated as though he showed up to school drunk. Where the hell are the parents on this, and what the fuck happened to privacy?
Read the story here.

Least Trusted American Minority

2006-05-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a story for you. Who do people trust less than Jews, African-Americans, Muslims, or homosexuals? Atheists! Why? Good question. The survey specifically said that people felt these groups didn't "shar[e] their vision of American society." The leader of the study, Penny Edgell, called the plight of atheists "a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years." I'm reminded of a line from Family Guy: "It doesn't matter what race we are. What's important is that we're all the same religion."

Frankly, though, as an atheist I find it insulting to have atheism be classified as a religion. The premise of this study, that atheists are a cohesive group, is just absurd. Atheists agree on one thing: no god. From there, it's anything goes. I've met professed atheists who still believe in animism or some greater cosmic harmony inherent in the structure of the universe itself, music without musician. Me, I call that transcendentalist bullshit. I'm a metaphysical materialist, and I don't believe in, well, anything.

I consider my ideology to be freedom from dogma, not another form of it. Susceptibility to information imparted at a young age is built into the human animal, but religion is no longer useful or necessary as the basis for an ethical code of conduct. The contradictions of the standard western Judeo-ChrIslamic model are all too apparent to one who is willing to engage in simple logical analysis, completely aside from the flaws in their accounts of biohistory and cosmogony made obvious by modern knowledge. This is not a matter of competing mythologies; this is deeper than that. At issue is whether one will believe what one is told or what one can see.

So am I saying animists and Raelians aren't atheists? No, they follow the basic premise: no god. What I am saying is that they're ignorant douchebags trapped in exactly the same sort of mythohistorical narrative used by all major religions. Believing humanity was seeded by an extremely advanced alien species is no better than believing god blew on some dirt and there was man; neither has the slightest shred of credibility.

The reason atheism is the most distrusted premise for developing a systematic interpretation of reality is because it sets off the heretic alarm in every religion. Christians can say that Buddhists have an instinctive connection with the peace of god, a Hindu will simply smile and tell you that you will learn more about the Atman in your next life, and Muslims actually are commanded against waging war on the other Abrahamic religions (Judaism and Christianity) in the Koran.

Atheists? Fuck 'em. Unconvertible, contrary bastards without the willingness to develop the doublethink necessary to adhere to any major religion. Kill the heretics/infidels/pagans/whatever. Because atheists reject the basic "invisible superman" theory of nearly all religions, they are in turn rejected as a self-defense mechanism. Remember, religions evolve just like organisms, and those that do not encourage conversion when possible, insulation if necessary, and murder if they can get away with it will fall prey to more ruthless codes. A xenophobia reflex is useful in a religion, and atheists set off all of them.

Note: If the link to the article above doesn't work, try this mirror.

BRILLIANT!

2006-05-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

This is easily the funniest comment I've seen on the creation/evolution controversy yet.

PS3 is $600?!

2006-05-16T10:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, I promise not to let my video gaming habit take over the blog in the face of the upcoming Console Wars, but GOD DAMN, what was Sony thinking? I just saw this story at MSNBC about the the price of the PS3. You know, I can afford $599 for a high-end gaming machine, but I ain't gonna pay it. The console comes with high-speed internet capability, wireless connectivity, and a 60 GB hard drive. What the fuck, I already own a computer! I don't want you to tack $200 onto the price of your VIDEO GAME CONSOLE for this unnecessary crap. Give me the option of a peripheral if I want to play online instead of charging an extra $50 on the console and then another $25 a month for your online gaming service! What's wrong with using USB memory keys as data storage instead of a hard drive that costs another $75? What if I don't want to use the wireless card in my VIDEO GAMING CONSOLE to turn on my computer or control the fridge of the future or set my alarm clock?

This is just waaaay too ambitious. I won't pay a cent over $450, and it'll take so long for the console to drop to that price that it probably won't even be worth it for the Bluray player. ***SIGH*** I guess I'm stuck with my PS2 for a while yet, cause god knows I'm not coughing up more than $50 for an X-Box 360!

USA Today Breaks Newest Wiregate Revelations

2006-05-14T17:43:00.000-07:00

This was the story I wanted to write so badly I spent 12 hours tracking down, correcting, and posting more than 50 newspaper columns in a brand spanking new blog. Exactly one month after I published this story based on information I found at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, USA Today broke the same story on their site, adding Verizon and my very own BellSouth to the list of offenders. One of the things that story glosses over, however, is the fact that the NSA was also tracking AT&T customers' internet use, including a list of specific web addresses accessed. I wouldnt be surprised to find out they were doing the same thing with Bellsouth and Verizon.

I called BellSouth to complain about this the day I found out; call me crazy, but it seems like a little customer outcry is in order. The poor girl who answered the phone of course knew nothing about it, so I asked to speak to her manager. 45 minutes and two botched transfers later, I finally got a nice, patronizing management type. I told him I objected in the strongest possible terms to BellSouth's illegal cooperation with unauthorized surveillance of American citizens, that I was seeking an alternate phone carrier immediately, and that I have every intention of joining the inevitable class action law suit against them. He would, of course, neither confirm nor deny anything, and when I told him I was recording our discussion, he said "I'm sorry, I can't continue this conversation" and hung up.

One class action suit has already been filed by the EFF on behalf of AT&T customers. The U.S. government, as expected, is invoking the state secrets privilege; they have filed a Statement of Interest in an attempt to get the case dismissed on grounds of national security. In light of the stggering amount of media coverage this betrayal of the public trust has generated, claiming that it's a secret seems a laughable defense. To my knowledge, there have been no suits filed against Verizon or AT&T; please drop me a line if you know anything about either of these.

Kudos to Qwest Communications, though! When the NSA approached them about the program, CEO Joe Nacchio asked the company's legal department to request a court order. The NSA refused on the grounds that they weren't sure they could get one! Needless to say, Qwest is up there on my list of alternate telecommunications carriers.

The NSA swears up and down that they don't actually eavesdrop on the conversations themselves, merely tracking every call made to and from a specific number, but given that in November they said that the government doesn't engage in warrantless surveillance, then in December we were being assured that they were only listening to phone calls where at least one party was outside of the United States, and then in February they claimed that purely domestic calls were fair game only where one party was suspected of terrorism, I don't believe a word of it. Be sure to say hi to the NSA when you call Mom today.

The EFF has set up a site to help you contact your Congressperson about the program. Here are a couple more stories about Uncle Sam's other underhanded attempts to create Big Brother:
Court Upholds Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking
Government-Mandated Tracking Systems Installed in Millions of Printers and Copiers

I'll keep you posted.

Proof That EVERYONE Was On Drugs In The 60s

2006-05-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, I figure my first actual post should be something stupid like you normally see on blogs. I had heard this, but never seen it. Just remember, he wasn't famous then. You'd have done it for the chicken feed they offered too, and you would have smiled just like Spock.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Ballad of Bilbo Baggins by Leonard Nimoy:

Addendum: Fraggle asked, "Was this intended for 60s television in North America, being as Tolkien was not published until 1976 in the United States?"

Hmm, interestingly I see mac.com has had to take it down because someone complained that it was a copyright violation. Luckily for me, Google is hosting this copy and I just embedded their code in my site. I've discovered that the copyright on this is indeed 1968, but the video is apparently from Nimoy's guest spot on a show called Malibu U. This particular episode aired July 28, 1967. I found a site here citing the first date of American publication of The Fellowship of the Ring in October of 1954, and this Wikipedia site places the first American Publishing of The Hobbit in 1938. Don't know if it was popular by the 60s, but apparently somebody had heard of it.

Brief Explanation

2006-05-13T13:12:00.000-07:00

My name is J. Aaron Brown, and I do not trust those who run my government. The willingness of the American people to believe lies which directly contradict widely available evidence simply because they spill from the mouth of a government official nauseates me. The propaganda war is succeeding, and it is time to fight back.

Everything antedating this post is an archive of the work I've done over the past two and a half years for two different student papers, The Current Sauce at Northwestern State University (1/04 - 5/05) and The Signal here at Georgia State University (9/05 - Present). Unfortunately, I sometimes find the word limits and the weekly format a bit restricting. Solution? Blog! I'll also continue to update this page with my weekly column when the paper starts again in the fall. The post dates on all columns should be the same as the date of publication.

So here are my thoughts on the future of the republic. Read, discuss, and complain as needed. Comments and e-mails welcome! Informed discourse is the soul of liberty.

All material here is copyright J. Aaron Brown, 2004-2006. Please seek permission to re-publish; it will almost certainly be given.

More Dirt Churned to the Surface in Wiregate

2006-04-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

April 11, 2006

Alberto Gonzales took a beating from the House Judiciary Committee during an oversight hearing last Thursday, accused by Republican chairman James Sensenbrenner of “stonewalling” the body’s investigation into the NSA’s illegal domestic wiretapping program. The scope of the power which Gonzales claims for the President, however, has only widened in the face of spreading opposition.

When he announced the program’s existence in December of last year, the President claimed a limited, very specific authority to listen to phone calls between a party in the U.S. and a party in a foreign country if one party was under suspicion of terrorism. In his testimony, however, Gonzales explicitly declined to say that the President lacks the power to tap purely domestic calls placed from one place in America to another.

And with good reason, too; it turns out that such a claim would jeopardize the credibility of legal arguments Gonzales already knows he will have to make. Last week the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a leading cyberprivacy watchdog group, filed a class action lawsuit against AT&T for going along with the NSA’s program. Mark Klein, a former AT&T employee who is testifying for the EFF plaintiffs, says that in 2002, an NSA agent visited a San Francisco facility to discuss the installation of monitoring tools, and in January of 2003, the company began construction of a small room adjacent to its switching center.

Regular technicians were asked to route switching data from both phones and internet connections through the room while NSA personnel installed a sophisticated monitoring system inside. As he was helping to connect the regular network to the surveillance equipment, Klein learned of similar efforts in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Think this sounds like something from the prequel to V for Vendetta? Just wait, the fun’s not done! The company also gave the government illegal access to over 312 terabytes of subscriber information which AT&T itself has been collecting since 2001, including lists of phone numbers dialed and web pages visited. The EFF alleges that such actions violate the First and Fourth Amendments, several federal wiretapping statutes, telecommunications laws, and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

There is speculation that the Bush regime may invoke the state secrets privilege, which received a handy boost when a federal appeals court ruled in favor of a wide interpretation late last year. Under the doctrine, the government can put a stop to any legal action if it is deemed a threat to national security, even if the government isn’t a party to the suit.

This would neutralize the EFF lawsuit, but popular outrage with the criminal conduct of the administration must eventually force the issue. John Dean, an administration lawyer whose testimony helped bring down Nixon in the 70s, called the program “worse then Watergate” in a speech to the committee given about a week before the Gonzales hearing. Calls for Bush’s resignation are growing.

This story speaks for itself. I know I write an opinions column, but I think there’s as much room for “opinion” regarding this as there is regarding thermonuclear warfare: practically nobody wants it and those who do should be locked away. It feels surreal to report on a secret, illegal domestic spying program enacted by the American government against its own citizens, but it’s happening. Bad judgment in military engagements, poor choices in domestic policy, financial handouts to big businesses, a personality like an extra from Deliverance—all of these I can tolerate in a President, but for intentional misuse of executive power in an attempt to create Big Brother, Bush should be impeached and imprisoned.

Scalia Tells Critics “Fuck you”

2006-04-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

April 4, 2006

My editor brought an interesting story to my attention last week. It seems Antonin Scalia was asked by a photographer what he thought of those who might question his impartiality as a judge in light of his public religious observance, and he responded with a Sicilian phrase and gesture meaning “fuck you.” In a church. And someone got a picture.

Why is this a big deal? First off, Scalia is the rockstar primadonna activist on the court. Clarence Thomas is the other offender, but he’s much more dour than Scalia. It’s obvious from reading the man’s opinions that he doesn’t give a flying hunk of koala poo what you or me or the other Supreme Court Justices think, and this latest should be nothing shocking for those who know the man’s temperament.

Unsurprisingly, Scalia and the Supreme Court’s P.R. office went into overdrive. In a letter to the Boston Herald, which published the shot, Scalia claimed the gesture was intended simply to be dismissive. He attacked the author of the article for watching too many episodes of “The Sopranos” and assuming all Sicilian gestures must be obscene.

This is less than convincing. Scalia’s gesture was a flicking of the fingers away from the bottom of the chin, but the meaning he cites in his letter to the Herald derives from a motion which sounds much more like a disinterested chin scratch than the thrusting motion described by the photographer. Really, why can’t he just own up?

Frankly, I’d like nothing more than to jump on the Blue State bandwagon and bash a guy I dislike, but this is really kiddy stuff. Despite his libertarian rulings, I think Scalia is bad for the country and bad for American jurisprudence, but I’m not going to hound the guy over the equivalent of giving someone the finger, even when the “detractors” he flipped off include me. I disagree with the man politically and professionally about 99% of the time he’s handling anything other than judicial routine, but Scalia does his job according to his own principals, with fire and disregard for armchair jurists, and I respect that.

Remember, Supreme Court Justices are people too, perfectly capable of being pissed off by unreasoning antagonism. I know he gets enough crap from the press and peons like me that an occasional finger is probably in order. You grab the pitbull of the judiciary after church to question his ability to keep his personal and professional life separate and then act outraged when he has a real live emotional response? Anybody can see this is just scandalmongering, with no more substance than Theresa Kerry telling hecklers to “shove it.” Frankly, I’m more concerned about the Vice President’s recent “F-You” on the floor of the Senate.

Speech, Silence, and the Solomon Amendment

2006-03-21T12:49:00.000-08:00

March 21, 2006

We would all like to think that discrimination is a thing of the past, relegated to backwater holes and hardnosed bigots. The sad fact is that discrimination is alive and well not only in the hearts and minds of hardnosed bigots but also enshrined in federal policy. The fact that it operates on sexual orientation rather than skin color or religious preference is considered by many to be an excuse of some kind, but I fail to see how. Millions have been silenced in the name of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, a guideline so controversial it has earned proper noun status.

The most recent attempt to overturn the policy was the Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights’ lawsuit over the 1996 Solomon Amendment, which requires recipients of federal funding to provide military recruiters the same “access to campuses and students that is provided to any other employer.” Several law schools have objected on the grounds that such a regulation constituted a violation of the freedoms of association and speech. They argue that providing career fair access to an employer who doesn’t meet their non-discrimination policy expresses approval of the policy itself. The Roberts court reached a unanimous decision against the law schools, holding that facilitating military recruiter access is more conduct than speech and that the law schools were not “associating” with the recruiters simply by giving them access to the job fairs.

There are several interesting things about this opinion. First, Roberts managed to get the entire court to sign on to a single opinion in a case that involves two public opinion hot potatoes: civil liberties and alternative sexuality. (Not just homosexuality! Remember, the military doesn’t care what you consider your orientation; if you’ve “performed homosexual acts,” you get kicked out.) Roberts managed to persuade his fellow justice by holding that there was no limitation on speech at all, not that this was an acceptable limitation on speech. In fact, Roberts specified that the schools were welcome to post signs, send out e-mails, and hold rallies denouncing the military’s discriminatory policy. Second, Roberts completely avoided any holding regarding the policy itself. Without a word as to the policy’s constitutionality or whether it was even discriminatory, Roberts ruled in its favor.

The third issue, though, is Roberts’ sleight-of-hand with the definition of “access” in the phrase “the access…provided to any other employer.” Rather than holding that mere consideration for participation in the job fair is “access,” Roberts held that the military must actually be allowed in with full privileges. It seems to me that being allowed to apply for a spot in job fairs constitutes access and that the military ought to be considered against the same non-discrimination policies as all other prospective employers. The purpose of the law is to prevent schools from excluding the military, not to grant the military special access to campuses, but the court held that “the access…provided to any other employer” means the highest level of access to the event itself. Holding that schools must violate their own discrimination policies in favor of the military’s policy would of course be anathema; by placing “access” inside the context of the fair itself and completely ignoring the application process, Roberts has managed to avoid such a draconian holding.

Nonetheless, the policy itself is completely inexplicable. If the military had imposed a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy which required one to remain silent or risk expulsion if one were not Christian, the entire country would be up in arms. If one had to wear make-up to cover one’s skin color, there would be riots. But not acting gay? Nothing to it, right?

Because censorship and discrimination still operate against those of us who are not heterosexuals, I’d like to voice my support for GSU Law School’s Day of Silence, sponsored by OUTLaw, our GLBT organization. This Thursday, March 23, 2006, many law students will be wearing black and taking a 24 hour vow of silence to remind our peers that the hate is still rampant and even the legal obstacles to true equality still remain. I’m sure campus-wide participation is welcome. Visit www.dayofsilence.org or drop by the lobby of the Urban Life Building during the day Monday-Wednesday for more information.

Stupid Christians Still Can’t Keep Their Hands Off My Government

2006-02-28T12:48:00.000-08:00

February 28, 2006

The latest assault on the barrier between church and state is being mounted less than 500 yards from where I attend classes every day. The Georgia House recently passed HB 941 by a whopping 140 to 26, with the intent “to recognize America’s religious heritage” by plastering a quotation from a holy book on courthouse walls next to political documents. The bill proposes to sidestep the prohibitions against posting the Ten Commandments in public buildings by sticking them in with the Mayflower Compact and the Declaration of Independence. Theoretically, tacking on some vague claptrap about the educational intentions driving this pathetic attempt to ram the Christian god down the public throat will camouflage its blatant illegality. What’s worse, they expect you and me to pay for it when their pious crusade comes under attack.

I don’t mean they expect us to finance the manufacture and installation of the displays; that much is obvious from the fact that it’s in a public courthouse. No, in Section 2 of the very bill which enacts the displays, the legislature makes a provision requiring the Attorney General to “defend and bear the costs of defending any and all municipalities” that put up the document. Now why in god’s name (ha ha) would the legislature insert such a provision unless they knew damn well that what they’re doing is illegal? No reason to expect a flood of lawsuits if what you’re doing is okay, right?

The argument that the Ten Commandments is somehow a historical document like the Mayflower Compact or the Declaration of Independence is a sick joke in the first place. The latter two were generated by settlers and pioneers of America for political purposes, with the intent to draw together a community and provide the framework for a legal process. The Ten Commandments, on the other hand, were supposedly handed down from god to a wandering desert tribe thousands of years ago. Uh, and this is relevant to American law how?

The Code of Hammurabi from ancient Mesopotamia, the first written set of laws, would be more appropriate. It has religious overtones, granted, but it also prescribes punishments, methods of determining fact, rules for the behavior of the judiciary, and a host of other much more relevant regulations than “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.” The judicial system set forth in the commandments? Well, presumably god will strike you with boils or something if you screw up.

The first four commandments don’t even relate to what we think of as ethical or legal behavior. First, there’s “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” This isn’t a social law, it’s religious law intended to enforce theistic purity. The second is a prohibition on idol worship, which serves the same purpose, and the third specifically calls the Christian deity “thy god.” What’s more insulting than walking into a public building and being told who “thy god” is? The final religious requirement is the most easily defended; we do have Sundays off from business and school, after all. When it’s all said and done, there are only three of the commandments that one can actually be charged with a crime for breaking!

Hell, if we’re going to equate the history of American law with the history of religious dogma, why not include some Catholic doctrines or Jewish kosher laws? Come to think of it, the Ten Commandments are in the Torah also; why all the talk in the accompanying statement about the Christian values of America when the exact same code is followed by another religion that also fled to America to escape persecution? To top it off, most of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence weren’t even Christians; they were deists! This is not only illegal, it’s bad history.

But the legislature thinks that by playing Hide the Button it’s going to get away with murder. The Supreme Court has backed Ten Commandments displays that place the document in a “historical context,” but the Georgian attempt to squeeze its religious agenda under that umbrella is pathetically transparent. It will pass, though, and us taxpayers, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, and atheist alike, will get stuck with the bill. So much for “we the people.”

Why the ‘Culture War’ is a Bad Model for Discussion of American Politics

2006-02-21T12:46:00.000-08:00

February 21, 2006

You hear it all the time in the media; I’m guilty of using it as a metaphor myself. There are two viewpoints available in social and political discussions, and they are engaged in a “Culture War.” Whichever side you pick, you are instantly locked in to a position on abortion, taxes, the War on Terror, private school vouchers, Social Security, civil rights, and a host of other controversial issues. The red state, blue state mentality frames the ongoing political discussion in America as a fight to the death between two mortal enemies, a battle that will end with the total victory of one side by achieving the other side’s total annihilation. This is bad.

Just a reminder: no issue in American politics is limited to two extremist, absolutist sides, and it’s all too easy to frame it that way for a knee-jerk reaction. Abortion, for instance, is not threatened with complete annihilation by the increasingly possible overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. Instead, the death of abortion as an extension of the Constitutional right to privacy means one simple thing: States get to choose whether abortion will be legal and how it may be regulated. I’m against that for a variety of reasons, not least among them my concern for any rollbacks of the Constitutional right to privacy when Uncle Sam is proving himself so well-informed already, but to hear the debate rage, it sounds like there are only two choices: Roe stays and everyone gets abortions or Roe gets overturned and no one does.

That’s just not how it works; instead, the idea is that the federal government just butts out, which in principle fits pretty well with my preference for free personal choice in areas of ethical controversy. Unfortunately, it also means the State government butts in, and that’s just as bad. Any government intrusion into so controversial and personal an ethical choice is risky at best; society is perfectly capable of resolving the problem without the paternal hand of Führer Bush. Being from a small town, I know there is a strong disincentive to have even a legal abortion when the people around one disapprove. Many in more accepting areas refuse on the basis of their own beliefs even when those around them think a child is a very bad idea. Each situation presents extremely hard and very private decisions that differ from those problems posed by the other, and if prevailing norms come to dictate more widely that the practice of abortion is unethical, we will know because its use will dwindle without the necessity of any government intervention. Let the People decide.

The issues of national security and personal rights have also been framed in a duel-to-the-death dichotomy. Either the President will personally read your e-mail with his morning coffee every day and probably tell your wife that you’re cheating on her with that hot little secretary at the office or the terrorists will be able to coordinate their attack plans in real-time using Yahoo! Messenger and you can expect your local elementary school to be nuked at the exact instant that the entire city of New York is obliterated. But the continuing barrage of legal argument from the administration over the NSA’s warrantless wiretaps is more than a government attempt to cover its own ass after breaking the law in conducting its investigation; it’s an underlying legal strategy of the entire Bush White House to claim extended Executive power, immunity from law on the basis of executive privileges, and a wide-ranging authority that is not only potent where Congress has not spoken but also louder than the voice of the People itself.

Richard A. Posner, a judge serving on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals who is famous for his economically focused opinions, has proposed a solution to the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping, and at first glance it looks reasonable. Allow the President to wiretap suspected terrorists as he likes, but refuse to allow any evidence so gathered to be used in prosecuting crimes unrelated to terrorism. It’s not perfect, but it’s a simple and at least partially effective solution to this problem. This looks like a good idea—if you’re caught up in the mindset of security versus civil liberties. The plan preserves your right to not be prosecuted for your private acts—as long as you’re not the one they’re looking for.

Even in defusing the public’s fears of being haled into court over their private phone calls, the rationale of such immunization requires an expansive reading of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress in the wake of 9/11. The absurdly broad reading the White House is trying to push proposes that the AUMF grants the President extra authority by putting him perpetually in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces when dealing with terrorism, subject solely to internal review and authorized to do everything “necessary and proper” to bring the perpetrators to justice—including signals intelligence gathering like the NSA wiretaps. Thus it makes sense to exclude information unrelated to terrorism and the President still avoids the law.

Nixon famously said, “When the President does it, it’s not illegal.” Bush essentially argues, “When the Commander-in-Chief does it, it’s not illegal.” The plain language of the statutes themselves provide no basis for the argument, and something tells me that this exception was not imagined by Congress when they passed FISA or the AUMF, but now, in an attempt to exempt itself from charges of even having broken the law, the Bush regime is going so far as to suggest that the FISA regulations they are accused of violating may not be Constitutional themselves precisely because they limit Presidential power contrary to the theory of the Executive Branch that the Bushies advance.

And it’s such an easy issue to polarize! Ask anybody on the street whether she thinks the President ought to be able to simply ignore the law when it suits his purposes, and she will almost certainly say no. Ask her if the President ought to be able to bend the law to save lives and you can expect a yes. Ask if she supports broad authority for the office of the President at the expense of the power of the Congress and you get a much more interesting discussion. What could he do before and why doesn’t that work now? How broad an authority does he seek? How do we balance the two? Well, now there’s a whole universe of possibilities, and the applications are much more important.

And unfortunately, this isn’t what you hear in politics, and certainly not from the partisan hacks in the mainstream media. You hear “listening to your phone calls” from one side and “could blow up a school” from the other. Nobody reminds you that the man in office now will not stay there; even if you believe Bush is a good man who will steer the country well, remember that his successor could be much less careful with the broad powers you gave to the last guy. By forcing ordinary people to come down on one side of the “war” or the other, you shut down the discussion of the important issues; you stop people from thinking and encourage them only to fight. Not argue, fight. Everyone knows the underlying arguments for Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security and the “alternative” of nationalizing health care, so why bother arguing for anything else?

Noam Chomsky, a man with many strange ideas and a couple good ones, said of politics, "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum - even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

Nothing is a more limited spectrum than a dichotomy, and when identification with one side implies adherence to a host of doctrinaire positions, the possibility of results-oriented thought goes right out the window. What’s worse, some of the current issues have been so simplified and stripped of their significance by sensationalist political framing that the screaming matches aren’t even about the important questions. You can love your country, believe the War on Terror is a just and noble cause, and still be against broad powers for your President to overrule the will of the Congress. You can believe that equality for all means food and basic healthcare for all, support strict environmental regulations, and still believe in a powerful President to protect our nation from harm. Think for yourself. Just a reminder.

White House Alters Scientific Documents at NASA to Reflect Administration Policy

2006-02-14T12:46:00.000-08:00

February 14, 2006

The hottest new cronyism scandal from the Bush regime relates directly to a column I almost published a few weeks ago. Right at the end of January, a story broke about James Hansen, the physicist in charge of the space program’s efforts to model the Earth’s climate using supercomputers. Hansen, who is 63 and has been working at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for over thirty years, began sounding alarms about global warming (for which he is now famous) in the late eighties, and in 2004 he gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention criticizing the President’s energy policy. Needless to say, he made some enemies. I kept the story in the back of my mind to watch it develop, and now the truth is out.

Bush’s refusal to join the Kyoto Protocol looked hypocritical if our own agencies were issuing reports about the dire consequences of global warming, and the White House had apparently had enough of Hansen’s politically inconvenient complaints. Even before the election, Hansen began raising protests that the NASA administration was trying to censor his work. In early 2004, orders passed largely by word of mouth started filtering back from Washington to the various research divisions; all NASA labs were to emphasize the various elements of Bush’s “vision statement” in their earth science publications.

In December of 2004, one NASA scientist made some questionable claims in a press release for the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, but when his colleagues pressed him about the matter, he e-mailed the White House and admitted he had simply made something up to fulfill the new requirements. The NASA administration removed the quote from the release—but the Washington public affairs office ran the original version. White House pressure did not decrease.

The twist that makes this a story of Bush regime cronyism is George C. Deutsch, a presidential appointee at NASA and one of the first casualties of the purge initiated by the Times story. Not only had Deutsch garnered his post at the public affairs office in return for work in the “war room” during Bush’s reelection campaign, but it has recently come to light that he doesn’t even have the B.A. in journalism listed on his resume.

Deutsch had ordered, among other things, that press access to Hansen be restricted, and in October of 2005 he issued a memo requiring all mentions of the Big Bang be accompanied by the word “theory.” In his memo, Deutsch explained that the Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion,” and that it was “not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator." Hansen was furious with this heavy-handed manipulation; the White House clamped down on him even harder.

At first, agency officials denied the charges that White House appointees had ordered an internal review of all Hansen’s work before it was published. Deputy assistant director of internal affairs Dean Acosta would say only that Hansen was subject to the same restrictions as other NASA employees who might be considered setters of administration policy. Hansen said the he intended to flatly ignore the increasing restrictions and was threatened, he says, with “dire consequences.”

Since the New York Times article on the story broke, several other NASA scientists and public affairs officers have come forward with reports of political appointees trying to control the flow of information from the Agency by delaying publication of certain items, making alterations, and using similar tactics to reinforce the White House’s political agenda. Michael D. Griffin, NASA’s head administrator, issued an e-mail to all 19,000 employees barely a week after the article was published, saying, "It is not the job of public-affairs officers to alter, filter or adjust engineering or scientific material produced by NASA's technical staff."

Now that the tide has shifted at NASA, we can hopefully expect these administration stoolies to be flushed from the space program’s bureaucracy, but this is symptomatic of a much, much larger problem. Warping scientific publications to reflect to worldview of the Republican party is a lie, and a lie to the American people is tantamount to treason because people can only make good choices when properly informed. The Bush regime has become a totalitarian threat to Americans (red and blue alike) and the entire world; they run the nation like a Gestapo state, obsessed with controlling and restricting the flow of information.

Unauthorized wiretaps, government alteration of scientific documents, legal maneuverings to make atrocity laws inapplicable to the head of the nation—these are tales one would expect from Soviet Russia, not modern America! Only in ignorance can one fail to be outraged, and bland public reaction to news like this is indicative of how successful the propaganda campaign has been so far. Bush is the new Nixon; I hope he falls much, much harder.

The Oregon Right-to-Die Case Is Not About Suicide

2006-01-31T12:45:00.000-08:00

January 31, 2006

As many of you have no doubt heard, the Oregon Death With Dignity Act recently withstood a legal assault at the Supreme Court. The ODWDA immunizes physicians who prescribe lethal overdoses of drugs to terminally ill patients from both civil and criminal suits, but only in cases where two doctors agree that the person contemplating ending his or her life is mentally fit to make the decision and will likely die of an incurable disease within six months. The attending physician can prescribe the drug, but they are barred from actually administering it.

The case was prosecuted under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, which regulates everything from Tylenol to heroin by placing it in one of five “schedules.” The drugs used by doctors to end terminal patients’ lives are almost entirely Schedule II drugs like morphine, which means that under the CSA, they must be prescribed by an attending physician for a “legitimate medical purpose.”

The case was initiated by former Attorney General Ashcroft in 2001 and was picked up by Alberto Gonzales’ Justice Department when he took office early last year, becoming Gonzales v. Oregon. The law was not challenged on any Constitutional basis; in fact, it wasn’t challenged on the basis of any law at all. Instead, Ashcroft issued an “Interpretive Rule” which brought physician-assisted suicide under the purview of the Act, simply declaring by fiat that physician assisted suicide is not a “legitimate medical purpose.” Then he filed his complaint. Make no mistake, that means exactly what it sounds like: the Attorney General made it illegal and then he took it to court.

Janet Reno was asked by several members of Congress to do the exact same thing in 1997, but she declined on the grounds that the CSA didn’t allow the federal government to substitute its judgment for that of the states when it comes to regulating the medical profession or determining what constitutes legitimate use. The ODWDA was passed in 1994 and actually survived an Oregon ballot measure seeking to have it rescinded in 1997, no doubt instigating the Congressional effort to overturn it at the federal level. There was even a bill introduced into the House in 1998 seeking to amend the CSA to explicitly prohibit physician-assisted suicide, but it failed!

Unsurprisingly, the case came down 6-3, with Chief Justice Roberts joining Justices Thomas and Scalia in opposition to the ODWDA and the rest of the court solidly in favor of Oregon. Given the absence of clear Congressional intent to exercise its power in the matter, the Supreme Court declined to invalidate the law, and rightly so. The Attorney General is simply not allowed to steamroll a democratically selected state statute which does not contravene federal law by “reinterpreting” federal law. The ODWDA has been in place for nearly 12 years and has survived several legitimate attempts at its removal. Once again, Bush is testing the limits of Executive power to overcome the democratic process and remake the law in the guise of interpretation, but this round, at least, goes to the People.

Alito’s Confirmation and the Authoritarian Presidency

2006-01-17T12:44:00.000-08:00

January 17, 2006

One year ago, I watched Bush appoint a slew of executive-friendly legal counsel and predicted that in his second term, he would no longer bother violating the law but would instead seek to change it. (The New Law, November 18, 2004; Chertoff Indicative of More Legal Manipulations, January 20, 2005) The more I learn about Samuel Alito, the more certain I become that I was terrifyingly right.

Unless you’ve grabbed this paper hot off the presses, Alito will be on his way to the Senate by now, likely with fewer token “no” votes than John Roberts earned. During the Roberts hearing, Biden called the process a “kabuki dance,” and having now watched two of the proceedings in their entirety, I must agree. Alito’s attempts to talk circles around the Senators of the Judiciary Committee were successful with frustrating frequency, and the Senators’ comments were disappointingly (but unsurprisingly) verbose, rambling, and non-specific. Questions with multiple elements were issued whole as bulleted lists, which of course allowed Alito to gloss over the points he didn’t care to address. Questions asked of no one in particular, rhetorical points made for the cameras, and meaningless charts were the hallmarks of yet another round of play-to-the-folks-at-home political soapboxing.

This doesn’t make the formalities uninformative; it just makes the information extraction process ridiculously oblique. More can be gleaned from what Alito refuses to say than from what he actually says in response to questions. Senator Specter opened the proceedings with an inquiry into Alito’s position on the right to privacy, in which the right to an abortion is rooted, and Alito quickly and unequivocally asserted that it is protected by the Constitution. Specter wasted no time jumping into the political powderkeg of Roe v. Wade, questioning Alito abut his stance on stare decisis, the technical term for the doctrine that past judicial decisions should be followed in deciding future cases. Alito, unsurprisingly, blandly recited the standard platitudes about precedent establishing stability and constancy in the law, but he was disturbingly careful to emphasize former Chief Justice Rehnquist’s oft-quoted opinion that stare decisis is “not an inexorable command” every time the topic was raised.

He also played the advocacy card early on, but he stopped short of disavowing his 1985 statement that the Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion. His reasoning was identical to that of John Roberts: lawyers are advocates of their clients’ interests, often expressing views with which they might personally disagree. Alito claimed that because he was an advocate for the administration at the time, it should come as no surprise that his stated views neatly toed the party line. He refused to comment further, however, on the grounds that the issue might come up before the court.

When questioned on the issue of the Supreme Court’s role in checking the President’s power, he resorted to mealy-mouthed statements to the effect that no one is above the law. When pressed, he fell back on quotations from Justice Jackson’s concurring opinion in a 1952 Supreme Court case, which set forth three ways of categorizing Presidential actions. First, there are those actions the President takes which are backed by Congress; this is when the President’s power is at its zenith. Second, there are actions which are outside the scope of Congress’ prior consideration; in such a vacuum, Presidential power is only middlin’ strong. Finally, if the President acts against an explicit Congressional mandate, his power is at lowest ebb. Does this tell you anything about what Alito thinks of Presidential power? Me either.

This is not a small question! The latest authoritarian revelation from the Bush regime is the warrantless and completely unauthorized wiretapping of American citizens, a story broken by the New York Times last month. This is in direct opposition to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, but Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claims the “all necessary and proper force” language of the Authorization for Use of Military Force passed by Congress in the wake of the 9-11 attacks gives the President carte blanche to do as he damn well pleases when it comes to prosecuting the war on terror. (Uh, how do we reconcile that with the administration’s position that the war on terror is unending? Now all the President has to do is point and scream “Terrorist!” before he attaches the car battery to your nipples.) Of course, Alito actually has a perfectly valid reason to sidestep any questions specifically about FISA; it’s almost certain to come before the Supreme Court, and Alito, if confirmed, will have to enter an opinion.

But there is also the issue of the unitary executive theory, which stems from a very fine-grained reading of the Constitutional grant of Presidential power. The first sentence of Article II states, “The executive Power shall be vested in the President of the United States of America.” Simply put, the theory holds that executive power is indivisible, vested solely in the office of the President, because it is referred to as “the” executive power. This authority is apportioned out to several different organizations, like the military and the Environmental Protection Agency, but these organizations serve as arms of the executive. The upshot of this is twofold. Procedurally, it means no part of the executive branch may sue another part because this would be, in effect, the President suing himself. The substantive aspect of this theory, however, is that the President gets to define the scope of his own power, a decision which may not be reviewed by the judiciary. John Yoo, principal defender of this position and influential White House legal strategist, argued publicly less than a month ago that the President has the power to order a suspect’s child tortured in front of them if he so chooses-including crushing the child’s testicles.

Alito has also expressed the belief that the President’s signing statements declaring his understanding of a bill’s intent should be given as much deference as the statements of Congress contained in the bill. In signing the McCain torture ban into effect, for instance, the President issued a signing statement that completely eviscerated the bill by exempting the Presidency, and thus the entire executive branch, from its purview. Bush has been shockingly willing to sign anything that comes across his desk, the first President since James Garfield to go an entire term without vetoing anything (and Garfield was assassinated after only a few months), but his reasoning now seems simple: why veto a bill when you can just change it with a signing statement? In fact, Bush has used this trick more than 500 times since he took office.

Alito has given every impression of candor and forthrightness in his confirmation hearing, but he has carefully stopped short of outright denouncing the radical Right views that make the voting public skittish. It’s the things Alito won’t say that shock the attentive viewer. He refuses to disavow the notion that the President’s “signing statements” carry equivalent weight to the actual words of the legislation he signs. He won’t flatly and directly state that the President cannot override the law or immunize others who break it. He declines to comment on whether the President is the only one who can determine the extent of Presidential power. This is madness!

The real elephant in the room, however, is whether we can even trust what Alito actually does say. Senator Schumer pointed out that both Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas expressed great respect for precedent in their confirmation hearings, yet these two vote to overturn precedent as though it were mere conjecture and suggestion. In his confirmation hearing, Scalia even criticized Thomas’ propensity for voting his personal opinion over established law whenever the two conflict. What is to bind Alito to his statements more closely than his colleagues-to-be? Absolutely nothing.

Of course, now everyone wants to know whether there will be a filibuster. The Democrats, faced with their last chance to make serious use of the tactic in stopping a judicial nominee, have very itchy trigger fingers, but Alito has been so careful to keep his actual opinions under wraps that there may not be any real justification. Nevertheless, Democrats may filibuster the Alito nomination simply to force the Republicans’ hand on the so-called “nuclear option” of removing the filibuster from the Senate rules altogether. That the Republicans even threaten such a thing is evidence of their obsession with pushing their agenda at the expense of everything else and symptomatic of their lack of respect for the political process. Forcing them to actually exercise the nuclear option, however, would set off a firestorm in Washington, and with the upcoming Congressional elections, the Republicans really can’t afford to look bad.

The verdict? Loathe though I am to admit it, Alito will likely pass, but it’s going to be a hell of a show. Those of you who love soap opera politics, stock up on popcorn and stay tuned. Those of you who realize you have to live in this country, stock up on bottled water and start digging your bomb shelter. It’s a scary time to be an American.

Fanatics Founder in Florida

2006-01-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

January 10, 2006

The right wing’s attempts to hijack government funding for their religion hit another road block last week when the Supreme Court of Florida declared a private school voucher program to be in violation of the state constitution. Coming on the heels of the Pennsylvania federal ruling recognizing “intelligent design” for the theological hokum it is, the Florida ruling is neither shocking nor revolutionary. This case is merely the latest in a long line declining to provide government aid to help accomplish the infinitely expansionist agenda of the “evangelical” Christian church.

The pivot of the Florida decision is a clause found right at the beginning of the education section, Article IX of the Florida Constitution, specifying that “[a]dequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools….” The court cites a 1927 ruling that if a law defines a specific way of accomplishing its goals, it impliedly prohibits any other method. Because the constitution imposes a duty to educate the state’s citizens and specifies “free public schools” as the method of doing so, vouchers for private schools are right out.

Further, and to my mind more importantly, the court held that the requirement of uniformity was also violated. Private schools receiving voucher students weren’t required to meet the same standards as public schools. Because the government gives the money to the family of the voucher student instead of directly to the private school itself, the school is able to sidestep all the requirements aimed at “schools receiving public funds.” What does this add up to? Non-uniform schools.

Though the two dissenters argued that there was no evidence before the court that the schools were actually non-uniform, the five-member majority held that such evidence was unnecessary. To hold such regulations inapplicable in the private school context is impliedly to say that it is okay for private schools to deviate from them. This is like declaring that prohibitions on murder don’t apply to Tom, then, when someone complains, ruling that such regulations don’t need to apply to Tom because the plaintiff can’t show that Tom actually committed murder.

Interestingly, and I think rightly, the court did not rule on whether the part of the Florida constitution regarding separation of church and state had been violated. Diverting funds from a public project to a competing private project is definitely the main issue here; the use of tax money to subsidize private schools in areas of low school performance is completely counterproductive. The Florida scheme diverts money from the school district in which the child lives to fund a private education, so bad schools lose students, then funding, then get worse, then lose more students, and then more funding, ad inifinitum. What sense is there in just watching while underperforming schools slowly crash like this?

The theory is one of markets. Proponents of vouchers theorize that if a school is forced to pay for the private education of students who choose to leave, it will work harder to improve and keep its funding by keeping its students. This is great in a free market economy, where a profit motive would drive the owner of the school to enact more effective educational policies, try to attract students, and to find out what the students’ parents are looking for in an education for their kids. That’s not how it works when school is governmentally-mandated, though. Everyone is required to send their children to school; they have the option of doing it for free at a government institution or paying a private enterprise for specialized schooling. Either way, they have to go. Once the government starts giving public money to private schools, such schools are better funded than they would have been before and the public schools are proportionately poorer. Eventually, the public schools must be abandoned in favor of unaccountable, government-subsidized private schools.

State governor Jeb Bush said that he was “disappointed” with the ruling and remarked that “the public never benefits from the government protecting a monopoly.” First I’d like to point out that public schools are owned and operated by the government, and they certainly don’t turn a profit. Trust me, no one drives a Lamborghini because Ben Franklin Junior High has cornered the market on eighth grade diplomas in north Jacksonville. More importantly, though, there is a buttload of competition with public schools. My mother, for instance, worked at a private Montessori school that had several hundred students. Keep your eyes peeled on your next trip to the grocery store and you’ll see Our Lady of Really Bad Earaches Catholic School or Goldenleaf Military Academy. The assertion that there is somehow no choice regarding public schools evinces a failure to separate governmental and business endeavors.

We have provided for the support of our citizens by providing free necessities, and if you prefer a different variety from that which is provided, then you’re free to go about getting it for yourself. To say that those who are unwilling or unable to spend money on private schooling are somehow being mistreated by the government is like saying that those who are unwilling or unable to buy themselves caviar are being mistreated by the soup kitchen. Beggars can’t be choosers, so either try to brainwash your children on your own time or come up with the cash to let a professional do it for you, and quit trying to steal public funding for your crusade.

A Semester's Worth of Corrections in 800 Words

2005-12-13T12:42:00.000-08:00

December 13, 2005

I’d like to take my last column of the semester to correct some of the more pervasive, persistent, and pernicious legal misunderstandings likely engendered by one of my fellow columnists. (My editors tell me I can’t say which one, but I imagine the regular and discerning reader will know of whom I speak.)* The author in question labors under the illusion that the function of the Constitution is to grant the government power; this is a patent falsehood. The document which forms the basis of American federalism does not operate to give the government license to do anything; the mandate of government is presumed to be unbounded. Instead, the purpose of the Constitution is to limit and apportion national power, creating organs to exercise the authority which it divides.

My colleague (loathe though I am to use that term with reference to one so willfully ignorant) not only misses this point, he or she refuses to acknowledge it. Apparently, this person missed out on high school civics and American history. Clearly we’re not dealing with a political science major here. This position has led my fellow columnist to some fantastically absurd conclusions. This writer has claimed at various points that state governments have no right to establish public schools and that making public transportation available “is directly contrary to Constitutional law.” I would invite my readers to examine the Tenth Amendment, which states quite simply, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” On re-reading, I don’t see any prohibition against either schools or transit in the Constitution. Oh, that must be the problem—reading!

The author in question further cites the existence of state churches and religious tests for state office up through the 1830s as evidence that the First Amendment does not impose a separation of church and state, but this is only further evidence of ignorance. Originally, the Constitution was assumed to apply only to the federal government. It was understood that the several states could undertake any measure they wished, provided it was not in violation of a direct and explicit Constitutional limitation of state power. That all changed when the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 (which was, incidentally, after the states abolished the practice of state churches on their own). Under a doctrine called Incorporation, the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment developed to extend the Bill of Rights, including the separation of church and state put forward in the First Amendment, to the states.

This happened in the courts through a series of cases starting in 1897 (Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railway Co. v. Chicago), ramping up in 1925 (Gitlow v. New York), and continuing into firm establishment by the 1940s and 1950s. Even under the judicial philosophy known as Originalism, the Establishment Clause holds for the states, though Justice Thomas would contend its framers never intended it to be so restrictive. John Bingham, the person largely responsible for the wording of the amendment, regularly made remarks to the effect that the 14th Amendment would "finally" mandate that the Bill of Rights be enforced in the states. The legal development of the Establishment Clause in these cases is perfectly in line with the intent of those who passed it.

This writer wrote a letter to the editor calling me a “closet Constitutional scholar,” but there is nothing closeted about my interest in the law which draws together the fifty states and forms the basis of American society. I’ve been writing about it weekly, in one paper or another, for three years now. As a first year law student, I’m not claiming complete and total knowledge of American Constitutional jurisprudence, but this is pretty basic stuff. I hope those of you who doubt the accuracy of my research look into the matter for yourselves. For a democracy to work, the populace must be informed; otherwise all is merely “bread and circuses.” Go read the Constitution with your own eyes. Nothing beats starting at the source.

I promise to go back to talking politics when we return in the spring! The revelation of Alito’s repeated statements concerning his belief that the Constitution does not underpin the right to an abortion will be a fascinating thread in the upcoming confirmation hearings, and the downfall of Conservative icons Duke Cunningham and Tom DeLay are hopefully just the first buckets of chum in the political shark tank, leading inevitably to a feeding frenzy that will hopefully skeletonize the Republican party. Oh, who am I kidding; there’s always another head on the hydra. I hope everyone has a relaxing break, and in defiance of the outrage of the religious right over the most ridiculous little things, I wish you all Happy Holidays.

*Addendum: Now that I have no editors, I'm happy to say that the poorly informed loudmouth in question is Ben Hodges.

Posse Comitatus Sticks in Bush's Craw

2005-11-15T12:42:00.000-08:00

November 15, 2005

In his speech in Jackson Square following Hurricane Katrina, Bush called for a greater military role in disaster relief and a “reconsideration” of a 130-year-old civil rights law: the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. The Latin phrase means “power of the county,” deriving from roots which roughly translate to “capable of being joined with a retinue or force.” Enacted in the wake of the Civil War Reconstruction, the PCA expressly prohibits local government from giving civil police duties to the military without authorization from Congress. The move is gaining increasing support at all levels of the armed forces, which comes as no surprise given military disdain for civilian inefficiency.

Of course, after the abuses of the Reconstruction, many people were a bit gun shy about letting the military police their streets, but the underlying reasoning of the Act is simple federalism. Local governments should be responsible for their own day-to-day operations, including running their police forces. There's no denying that a large-scale natural disaster like the hurricane that took out New Orleans hardly constitutes “day-to-day operations,” but there are several exceptions to the law specifically to deal with events local police forces just aren't organized or equipped to handle.

The most obvious way to get around the statute is expressly provided in the act itself: get the authorization of Congress. They have a tendency to move slowly, but anything catastrophic enough to justify the use of the military as a police force is almost certainly going to be important enough to justify an emergency meeting of Congress. This is just exactly what happened in the wake of Katrina, except Congress passed funding resolutions instead of military authorizations.

A much more important exception is the National Guard. The Guard is not considered part of the military unless explicitly called upon by the federal government, so they are exempt from the PCA. They may be used as a police force under the authority of a state's governor when local law enforcement is overwhelmed. In fact, the National Guard was mobilized to provide support days before Katrina even made landfall. Governor Blanco's August 26 declaration of emergency called the Guard into action three full days before Katrina hit land. By August 28, they had supplied the Superdome with food and water and established over 500 troops as security.

Further, the 1984 Stafford Act specifically authorizes the use of military forces under FEMA authority. If a competent bureaucrat (okay, maybe that's an oxymoron) instead of a Bush lapdog (but that's redundant) had been in charge of the Agency at the time, he might have invoked this power instead of writing memos to his staffers asking how his tie looked on TV.

One member of New Orleans' City Council complained that the police and National Guard's time was being eaten up by preventing theft and violent crime when they should have been out rescuing people, but this reasoning is exactly backwards. The PCA has been treated as an exclusion of the military from the most basic powers of the police: search, seizure, and arrest. It has long been held that the military may lend facilities and equipment to law enforcement, as well as providing assistance by way of advice and reconnaissance. Consequently, it's perfectly legal and, I would argue, more logical to use the armed forces for search-and-rescue operations.

The benefit of using the military in disaster relief is to allow local police to be police while the people who have experience jumping out of helicopters to retrieve prisoners of war put their skills to new use pulling helpless flood victims off of rooftops. Remember, the purpose of law enforcement is to prevent crimes, not punish those who commit them. The last thing we want to see is local police with little experience in disaster control trying to mount rescue operations while soldiers with years of “shoot to kill” training under their belts endeavor to control theft and violent crime.

To encourage a review of the PCA in these circumstances is unnecessary and suspicious. Certainly, the military has a role to play in natural disaster situations—but it's the role of rescuer, not of the police. Let those who know the streets patrol them, and let the ones who can drop a bomb on a target from 30,000 feet drop food on a family from 300 yards. It just makes more sense to stick with what you do best.

'Scalito' Even Worse Than His Namesake

2005-11-08T12:41:00.000-08:00

November 8, 2005

Apparently I’m not the only one who thought Miers was set up to fail. (Bush Regime Nominates Stealth Candidate, October 11, 2005; Losing Miers' Religion, October 18, 2005) Now that she actually has, half the press seems to agree that everyone knew she wasn’t the “real” candidate all along. Makes me wonder why they didn’t say so at the time. Why did the Bushies do it? Not only can they now claim to have at least tried to replace O’Connor with another woman, they have an excellent position from which to argue the immateriality of ideology. “Look, our own party went nuts when we tried to nominate a moderate. Hell, the Democratic minority leader endorsed her! Now when we nominate someone who is both competent and will please our base, you cry foul on ideology? This is an impossible position! You know, we think you dirty Democrats just don’t want a new Supreme Court Justice at all. Poor, poor Justice O’Connor, who wants nothing more than to retire from the court and spend some quality time with her ailing husband, is being forced to decide case after case because you rats are holding up the nomination process!”

It’s a good line of patter. Don’t buy it for a minute.

Miers also made the newest pick look impeccably qualified. And to be fair, that wasn’t necessary; Alito is definitely no slouch. Princeton undergrad, Yale law school, and straight into a clerkship with a federal judge on the Third Circuit. He was appointed to that circuit himself by Bush Sr. fifteen years ago, and he has amassed such a conservative record that he’s actually nicknamed “Scalito.” (I bet he hates that.) The reality, though, is that he breaks with conservative tradition even less often than Scalia, who actually has quite the respectable libertarian streak.

The real public fireball here is Alito’s dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a case in which the court was asked to rule on the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania statute placing certain restrictions on abortion. The court, 2-1, ruled that none of the provisions imposed an “undue burden” except for one requiring a woman to notify her spouse. The dissenter was Alito, and on reading his opinion, he actually sounds sensible.

First, the woman is only required to notify her husband, not seek his permission. This is not a regulation making it impossible to get an abortion if ones spouse does not agree to it. Second, the major objections to this law centered around the implications for victims of domestic violence. Battered women who seek abortions may well suffer violent repercussions if their husbands are notified that they are doing so, but Alito points out that the law specifically exempts those who fear they may suffer physical harm as a result of giving notice. The law also exempted women who were pregnant as a result of spousal sexual assault, those who could not find their husbands to notify them, and, significantly, those who believe that their husbands are not the father of the fetus they intend to abort.

This seems to make pretty good sense until you look at the ideology underlying these arguments. The implication here is that abortion, if not murder, is at least morally suspect. Alito’s belief that an abortion is something more than a health decision on the part of the woman in question is a right-to-lifer position, a curtailment of individual liberty.

Indeed, his concern for individual rights in general seems to be pretty much nonexistent. In his dissent from one 2004 case, Alito said that there was nothing wrong with strip-searching a ten-year-old girl on the basis of a warrant issued only for her father, who was the subject of a long-term narcotics investigation, and those of his “business” associates who were present at the time of the raid. One of the two judges voting against him was current head of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, a man not exactly known for his libertarian leanings. No Supreme Court Justice’s rulings are this draconian.

Alito becomes much more concerned for civil liberties, however, when it comes to expression of religion. He distinguished a case in which two Muslim police officers claimed a religious underpinning for keeping their beards from a Supreme Court case barring Native Americans from using peyote for even religious reasons. Many expected the peyote case to be controlling precedent, but Alito managed to wriggle around it by pointing out that the police department allowed exceptions to the beard rule for medical reasons and so should allow a religious exemption as well.

Alito’s record on the separation of church and state, on the other hand, is less than stellar, to put it charitably. In the 1999 case ACLU-NJ v. Schundler, a district court declared a publicly-funded Christmas display featuring a nativity scene, a menorah, and a Christmas tree unconstitutional and ordered the display suitably removed. The city appealed and, while the appeal was pending, added Santa, Frosty the Snowman, Kwanzaa decorations, and a sign saying that the purpose of the scene was to celebrate cultural diversity. The appellate court didn’t buy it. The three judge panel affirmed the lower court’s decision that the first display unconstitutional and remanded the issue of the second display back to the district with a statement of strong skepticism. The district followed the appellate court’s lead and held the second display unconstitutional also.

When the city appealed the matter of the second display, however, the panel included Alito. In a stunning display of insouciance, Alito took the exceedingly rare measure of contradicting a ruling by a panel on the same circuit; the court upheld the constitutionality of the new display 2-1. In the opinion of the court, Alito argued that the court’s skepticism in the previous case was mere dicta, advice which does not constitute legal precedent. The dissenter Judge Nygaard, who sat on both the first panel and Alito’s panel, wrote a pissed off opinion accusing Alito of improperly weighing the previous decision.

Alito also upheld a preliminary injunction allowing the Child Evangelism Fellowship, a group describing their mission as “evangeliz[ing] boys and girls with the gospel” and “discipl[ing] them in the word of god and in a local church,” to distribute literature to students in a public elementary school during school hours. Alito argued that since such groups as 4-H and the PTA were allowed to distribute material, preventing this unabashed proselytizing somehow constituted viewpoint discrimination. This is a direct and blatant violation of the First Amendment.

The problem with using these cases to predict what Alito will do in the future is that lower court judges are restricted by precedent from higher courts. Sitting on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, Alito was bound by the decisions of the Supreme Court—and nothing else. It is considered the mark of a bad judge to be overruled by higher courts, but even so, Alito was overruled following an opinion in which he upheld the sentence of an inmate who was given incompetent counsel. If he is placed on the Supreme Court, nothing will stop him from radically enforcing his own far-right views.

When the Neo-Conservatives try to portray Alito as a mainstream conservative, don’t listen. He’s even more radical than Scalia, and when there is no higher authority waiting in the wings to put him in his place, he won’t have to delicately dance around prior decisions. He can do some of his own overruling for a change.