As usual, Dan Gilmor has the skinny on what's really going on in the Oval Office. And it's damn scary.

NY Times: Court Hears Case on U.S. Detainees. The Bush administration yielded no ground before the Supreme Court on Wednesday in arguing that the open-ended military detention of United States citizens as enemy combatants, without criminal charges or access to lawyers, was justified both in law and as policy.

It's incredible that this is even thinkable. But our collective fear from the Sept. 11 attacks, and Congress' absolute spinelessness in defending the Constitution it swore to uphold, has given Bush what he so plainly wants: the opportunity to be the president who asserts, and gets, absolute power.

Absolute power is always abused. Always. This kind of absolute power -- making leaders the prosecutor, judge and jury -- is the lynchpin of tyranny.

If the court upholds this abuse of liberty, it will be assisting in a crime: If this assault on the Constitution succeeds -- if the Constitution has truly become meaningless on something so fundamental -- then we will have destroyed America to save it.

The stakes are that high.

NOTE: Slate's coverage of the court arguments yesterday has a smart additional feature. There are inserts linking to the audio of specific exchanges.

[Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Posted by mikki at 10:16 AM | Permalink

So let's use religion to silence political opposition. What a fabulous idea!

ROME, April 23 -- A top Vatican official said Friday that Roman Catholic politicians who support abortion should be denied communion, as church officials in the United States debate how to respond to Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry's position in favor of abortion rights. [Washington Post: Front Page]

Posted by mikki at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dan Gilmor often has important insights into how the world is working. This one is something that's been bothering the Psycho Sensei for a long time. Read on.

There's a lot more to the story of the photos of coffins of the brave men and women who died in Iraq. As the New York Times reports today, the firing of the civilian contractor who gave such a picture to the Seattle Times only underscores government hypocrisy. As the Times article notes:

The firing underscored the strictness with which the Pentagon and the Bush administration have pursued a policy of forbidding news organizations to showing images of the homecomings of the war dead at military bases. They have argued that the policy was put in place during the first war in Iraq, and that it is simply an effort to protect the sensitivities of military families.

Executives at news organizations, many of whom have protested the policy, said last night that they had not known that the Defense Department itself was taking photographs of the coffins arriving home, a fact that came to light only when Russ Kick, the operator of The Memory Hole, filed his request.

The other lesson here is the way independent news operations like the Memory Hole are helping to reshape journalism. The little guy, once again, beat the rest of us.

[Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

Posted by mikki at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ok, so you tell me... is this a good use of our resources? The FBI won't listen when you have logs that prove that some hacker is trying to wreck your network (even if you're a relatively large company) but if you're the RIAA, they will SWOOP down upon even children to stop the heinous crime of, not terrorism, not bomb building, not planning assaults, or Columbine type massacres, but song swapping. It would be one thing if the FBI didn't have lots of other things to do, but when will this madness stop?

While the FBI has had trouble tracking down Osama Bin Laden and other terrorists, they appear to have had no problem locating and raiding another group of alleged lawbreakers: public school children.

Federal agents in Phoenix and elsewhere in the country raided schools and other targets in a national crackdown on pirated music CDs and movies.

Agents poured through data and records at a computer command center for the Deer Valley School District in the northwest Valley and blocked the office from the public. It was among other places in Arizona and "quite a few other states" where sealed search warrants were served, the FBI said.

DOJ Press Release on the raids, which not surprisingly, doesn't mention that public school children were amongst the targets. [Copyfight]

Posted by mikki at 07:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Psycho Sensei is sad to have to do this yet again, but thieving scum of the earth comment spammers have again gone after my weblogs. What is a comment spammer? Merely a low life form of sub humanoid who steals the hard work of another in order to promote their useless business of selling abject crap such as penis enlargements (since theirs are obviously inadequate and they are trying to fix that by taking your money), porn of different types, casinos, and other crap that some people are stupid enough to buy, thus fueling the desire for the spammers to continue riding on our backs to advertise their useless parasitic garbage.

So why do they do this? Because when someone does certain types of web searches, they will come up with the spammer's crap, hosted by YOU. So, like spam, YOU get to pay for the bandwidth for them to mooch off of you. Add to this, the time it takes you to find their crap and eradicate it from your weblog. Remember each time someone tells you to "just delete spam" that spammers of comments as well as spammers in your in box are STEALING from you. And I, for one, would rather not let them get away with it.

So, until MoveableType comes out with their new system where those who wish to leave comments must register, you can send comments to ooblick at ego dot org, and I will post the good ones :-).

Posted by mikki at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ed Felten has a typically insightful post on his Freedom to Tinker blog concerning the incoherency of universal, transparent digital rights management (A Perfectly Compatible Form of Incompatibility). After all, how can one have such a universal, transparent system when:

The whole point of DRM technology is to prevent people from moving music usefully from point A to point B, at least sometimes. To make DRM work, you have to ensure that not just anybody can build a music player -- otherwise people will build players that don't obey the DRM restrictions you want to connect to the content. DRM, in other words, strives to create incompatibility between the approved devices and uses, and the unapproved ones. Incompatibility isn't an unfortunate side-effect of deficient DRM systems -- it's the goal of DRM.

A perfectly compatible, perfectly transparent DRM system is a logical impossibility. [emphasis in original]

Read on...

Posted by mikki at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, guess our "Coalition of the Willing" is no longer so willing, eh? How interesting.

Russia's Emergencies Ministry plans seven flights, using Il-62 aircraft, to evacuate an estimated 553 Russians and 263 persons from other nations of the Commonwealth of Independent States from Iraq [Pravda.RU: World]

Posted by mikki at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So the TSA lied to the Senate, eh? Given the current brilliant idea of Pseudo Pope John Ashcroft (see here for more about how we love him) to turn the attention of the American people from the importance of combatting terrorism to that naughty practice of PORN to placate his fundamentalist sensibilities, I wouldn't be surprised if the idea of lying hadn't "trickled down" to TSA. Seems the whole Administration's best legacy thus far is based on how well they can lie.

In the wake of American Airlines' admission that it shared passenger data with federal contractors, two senators ask Transporation Security Administration officials why they denied having acquired airline passenger records when in fact they had. By Ryan Singel. [Wired News]

Posted by mikki at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We have this lovely new kitty whose name was "Petey." Since that's a lousy name, we desire a new name for the poor little guy. He's a very sweet rescue kitty, about 6 years old, and an ocicat, even though he doesn't look like one. Seems to have thrown back his Abyssinian roots. He's a really great cat who has bonded quickly to Morgan.

So if you have a name for the little guy, please send it along in a comment. Thanks :-)

Posted by mikki at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

According to this news articles you can get yourself a gun right there in the airport if you just hang around the rest rooms long enough. Egads

U.S. Air Marshal Forgets Gun In Restroom

POSTED: 11:52 pm EDT April 10, 2004
UPDATED: 12:00 am EDT April 11, 2004

CLEVELAND -- A federal air marshal accidentally left her gun in a restroom at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, an airport spokeswoman said Friday.

A passenger found the semiautomatic handgun Thursday and notified an airport employee. The employee then told airport police, who secured the weapon, said the spokeswoman, Pat Smith.

"They later found it belonged to a federal air marshal who apparently was using the restroom and put it up on the shelf while she was washing her hands and forgot about it," Smith said.

Dave Adams, a spokesman for the federal Air Marshal Service, said the marshal, whose name was not released, probably would be suspended.

"The air marshal realized within five minutes that she had lost her weapon, went back to the police department and it was subsequently returned to her," Adams said. "Obviously, we are very concerned about the situation."

There were no delays or other disruptions at the airport

Posted by mikki at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Walter Cronkite has long been my hero, having stood for the simple concepts of honesty and integrity in news gathering and reporting for my entire lifetime. Now he speaks on the current administration, and furthers my resolve to vote it out of office.

Secrets and Lies Becoming Commonplace
By Walter Cronkite
King Features Syndicate

The initial refusal of President Bush to let his national security adviser appear under oath before the 9/11 Commission might have been in keeping with a principle followed by other presidents -- the principle being, according to Bush, that calling his advisers to testify under oath is a congressional encroachment on the executive branch's turf.

(Never mind that this commission is not a congressional body, but one he
created and whose members he handpicked.)

But standing on that principle has proved to be politically damaging, in part because this administration -- the most secretive since Richard Nixon's -- already suffers from a deepening credibility problem. It all brings to mind something I've wondered about for some time: Are secrecy and credibility natural enemies?

When you stop to think about it, you keep secrets from people when you don't want them to know the truth. Secrets, even when legitimate and necessary, as in genuine national-security cases, are what you might call passive lies.

Take the recent flap over Richard Foster, the Medicare official whose boss threatened to fire him if he revealed to Congress that the prescription-drug bill would be a lot more expensive than the administration claimed. The White House tried to pass it all off as the excessive and unauthorized action of Foster's supervisor (who shortly after the threatened firing left the government).

Maybe. But the point is that the administration had the newer, higher numbers, and Congress had been misled. This was a clear case of secrecy being used to protect a lie. I can't help but wonder how many other faulty estimates by this administration have actually been misinformation explained
as error.

The Foster story followed by only a few weeks the case of the U.S. Park police chief who got the ax for telling a congressional staffer -- and The Washington Post -- that budget cuts planned for her department would impair its ability to perform its duties. Chief Teresa Chambers since has accepted forced retirement from government service.

Isolated incidents? Not really. Looking back at the past three years reveals a pattern of secrecy and of dishonesty in the service of secrecy. Some New Yorkers felt they had been lied to following the horrific collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Proposed warnings by the Environmental Protection Agency -- that the air quality near ground zero might pose health hazards -- were watered down or deleted by the White House and replaced with the reassuring message that the air was safe to breathe.

The EPA's own inspector general said later that the agency did not have sufficient data to claim the air was safe. However, the reassurance was in keeping with the president's defiant back-to-work/business-as-usual theme to demonstrate the nation's strength and resilience. It also was an early example of a Bush administration reflex described by one physicist as "never let science get in the way of policy."

In April 2002, the EPA had prepared a nationwide warning about a brand of asbestos called Zonolite, which contained a form of the substance far more lethally dangerous than ordinary asbestos. However, reportedly at the last minute, the White House stopped the warning. Why? The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which broke the story, noted that the Bush administration at the time was pushing legislation limiting the asbestos manufacturer's liability. Whatever the reason, such silence by an agency charged with protecting our health is a silent lie in my book.

One sometimes gets the impression that this administration believes that how it runs the government is its business and no one else's. It is certainly not the business of Congress. And if it's not the business of the people's representatives, it's certainly no business of yours or mine.

But this is a dangerous condition for any representative democracy to find itself in. The tight control of information, as well as the dissemination of misleading information and outright falsehoods, conjures up a disturbing image of a very different kind of society.

Democracies are not well-run nor long-preserved with secrecy and lies.

Posted by mikki at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hippo Birdee Two meeeee. I'm older now. And what do I have to say about aging? It SUCKS! Yes, indeed. The bones are creaking, the joints are hurting, the muscles are aching and that is a bummer at my spry age of 44. The parents sent a beautiful bouquet. The husband sent a dozen roses. The insane Grandmaster threw a surprise party. All was fun and well.....UNTIL THE DREADED KAROKE!!! Save MEEEEE.

All is well. All survived. Maybe next year I won't tell anyone.

Posted by mikki at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ya think there are actually people wrongfully identified on this rotten list? Ya think that maybe there are people who should be identified who aren't? Ya think maybe we should have a mechanism to change the incorrect information, and maybe even get rid of the "list" completely? Let's see what the court says.

The American Civil Liberties Union plans to file a lawsuit Tuesday to challenge a list maintained by the feds that prohibits certain travelers from flying. The group says some people are wrongfully identified as threats. [Wired News]

Posted by mikki at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So much for the argument that school children can just leave the words "under god" out of the pledge. Now it seems that this school system is mandating religion, by punishing a high school student for NOT saying "under god." Hopefully, this will make it easier for the Supremes to rule.

Student takes 'under God' out of pledge, feels the heat

MARTHA MODEEN; The News Tribune

A Spanaway Lake High School senior has been banned from TV production assignments for the rest of the year because he altered the Pledge of Allegiance during a student-produced broadcast.

The student, Kenny Hess, removed the words "under God" from the pledge, which is shown with an American flag background on classroom TV throughout the school. Hess also declined to recite the phrase and, instead read, "one nation ... indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

School officials said they've punished Hess for misusing school equipment to deliver a personal message.

"He made a poor choice," said Mark Wenzel, Bethel School District spokesman.

Hess apologized and now wants his broadcasting privileges restored. He's also drawn sympathy from a California physician, who last week argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that the words "under God" should be removed from the pledge because it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

"Good for him," said Michael Newdow.

Every day, students at Spanaway Lake and other schools across the state begin their day by reciting the pledge, as required by state law.

Hess, an avowed atheist since sixth grade, thinks he's forced to listen to a religious statement when he hears the pledge. Last week, his world current events class debated Newdow's case. After one student said, "Christians are forcing us to listen to this," Hess vowed that he could make students not listen to the words. The phrase "under God" was added to the pledge by congressional vote in 1954, during the Cold War.

"I took it out to prove we don't have to hear it," Hess said.

On Tuesday, several Spanaway Lake students and teachers complained after hearing the altered pledge.

On Wednesday, school officials told Hess he would be permitted only to read books during his broadcasting class.

Hess, 18, plans a career in broadcasting and wants to finish his assignments.

"I want my privileges back," he said. "It's not right to take them away."

School officials said Hess should have chosen to write an article for the school paper or produce an opinion piece for the school newscast.

Administrators said Hess' actions put the school out of sync with state law, though lawyers note that there is no criminal or civil penalty for not saying the pledge. State law allows students to remain silent during the pledge.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that "under God" is unconstitutional. But that ruling is on hold while the the U.S. Supreme Court considers the matter.

"Our interpretation as a school district is that the law says we say the pledge," said Greg Eisnaugle, Spanaway Lake principal. "'Under God' is still in it. If the court says it comes out, that's what we'll do."

The 9th Circuit Court ruling raises legal issues, said Stewart Jay, a University of Washington constitutional law professor.

"If I were this kid's lawyer, I'd argue that he was asked to do something illegal," he said. "Accordingly, he can't be disciplined."

Newdow thinks Hess was upholding the constitution, which bars the government from involving itself in religion.

"It's incredible he would be penalized for this," Newdow said.

Hess has drawn sympathy from the Humanists of Washington, whose membership is composed largely of atheists.

"Good grief, this is severe," said Barbara Dority, HOW president. "This could have been used as a learning experience. It's too bad that the adults in this situation reacted as they did."

Hess on Thursday sat in class but refused to read books until his punishment is reconsidered by school officials.

"I told them I wasn't going to read anything until I talk to the principal," he said.

Martha Modeen: 253-597-8646
martha.modeen@mail.tribnet.com

Posted by mikki at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just what we all need. NOT. Once again the Content Cartel scores a win and US Consumers score a big lose.

A House of Representatives panel approves a sweeping new copyright bill that would boost penalties for peer-to-peer piracy and increase federal police powers against Internet copyright infringement. [CNET News.com]

Posted by mikki at 07:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A seventh-grade history teacher has been placed on administrative leave, less than four months after he filed a lawsuit alleging the school district violated his First Amendment right to free speech by requiring him to adhere to a European history curriculum that emphasizes only the evolution of Christian civilization. (By A.J. Higgins, Globe Correspondent) [Boston Globe: Local]

Posted by mikki at 07:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Our nanny, Lucy, left for a vacation in Columbia on March 18. Last night, here we were, quietly sleeping in our bed (well maybe as quietly as is possible given a snoring big black dog :-)) when at 1:22 am, the phone rings. The imbecile identified himself as "someone who is delivering a bag" and he "got his information from American Airlines." Excuse me? American Airlines is giving out personal travel information of people without bothering to check their itineraries and realize that the person in question is not even in the country? Furthermore, they are giving such information to people with no ID, who are stupid enough to call a private home at 1:22 am?

But wait, it gets better. He informs me that he is at the front door, then admonishes me for not answering the phone all the other times he's called. Uh, what? Why in the holy name of the Goddess does this idiot think he has some right to wake someone out of bed at 1:22 in the morning, and then complain because the phone wasn't answered?

Posted by mikki at 08:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)