From Mother Jones, great moments in IP:

VENICE INTRODUCED the patent concept in 1474. Infringers were fined 100 ducats.

IN 1982, Motion Picture Association of America head Jack Valenti told Congress that “the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.”

A DAY AFTER Senator Orrin Hatch said “destroying their machines” might be the only way to stop illegal downloaders, unlicensed software was discovered on his website.

BILL GATES had the 11-million-image Bettmann Archive buried 220 feet underground. Archivists can access only the 2% that was first digitized.

AMONG THE 16,000 people thus far sued for sharing music files was a 65-year-old woman who, though she didn’t own downloading software, was accused of sharing 2,000 songs, including Trick Daddy’s “I’m a Thug.” She was sued for up to $150,000 per song.

MICROSOFT UK held a contest for the best film on “intellectual property theft”; finalists had to sign away “all intellectual property rights” on “terms acceptable to Microsoft.”

ONLY ABOUT 5% of patents end up having any real commercial value.

IN 2002, Valenti described Hollywood’s antipiracy campaign as “our own terrorist war.”

THE CLASSIC civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize can’t be aired or sold because much of its archival footage is copyrighted.

TO PREVENT PIRACY of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, a Montreal cineplex monitored audiences with metal detectors and night-vision goggles and checked popcornfor video cameras.

U.S. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY is valued at $5.5 trillion, equal to 47% of our GDP and greater than the GDP of any other nation but China.

BY PASSING the memorial Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, Congress added 20 years to copyrights. “I Got You Babe” now won’t enter the public domain until 2061.

NINETY-ONE pending trademarks bear Donald Trump’s name, including “Donald J. Trump the Fragrance” and “Trump’s Golden Lager.” He failed to trademark the phrase “You're fired.”

NEARLY 20% of the 23,688 known human genes are patented in the United States. Private companies hold 63% of those patents.

HUEY NEWTON’S widow is trademarking the phrase “Burn, Baby, Burn” for use as a BBQ sauce slogan.

IN THE LATEST ROUND of a 13-year battle over the title “Surf City USA,” Huntington Beach, Calif., filed for a trademark last year. A state senator from Santa Cruz retorted, “You can’t trademark a state of mind” and proposed a Senate resolution declaring his city to be the real Surf City.

GEORGE FOREMAN has earned $113 million by lending his name to a grill.

LAST YEAR Mister Softee spent $170,000 to track down and sue 45 competitors for copying its blue-and-white trucks and playing its copyrighted jingle.

“SENSORY TRADEMARKS” include a duck quacking (AFLAC), a lion roaring (MGM), yodelling (Yahoo!), giggling (Pillsbury), and a “pre-programmed rotating sequence of a plurality of high intensity columns of light projected into the sky to locate a source at the base thereof” (Ballantyne of Omaha).

FOR INCLUDING a 60-second piece of silence on their album, the Planets were threatened with a lawsuit by the estate of composer John Cage, which said they’d ripped off his silent work 4’33”. The Planets countered that the estate failed to specify which 60 of the 273 seconds in Cage’s piece had been pilfered.

A FRENCH DIRECTOR had to pay $1,300 after a character in his film whistled the communist anthem, “The Internationale,” without permission.

AFTER INTEL was sued for libel for calling someone a “patent extortionist,” one of its lawyers coined the term “patent troll.”

THE WORLD WRESTLING Federation changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment after the World Wildlife Fund sued over the rights to “WWF.”

HOOTERS SUED a competitor for stealing its “trade dress,” i.e., the packaging of its waitresses.

THE PUBLISHER of Super Hero Happy Hour removed “Super” from the comic book title after Marvel and DC Comics stated they own the phrase “super heroes and variations thereof.”

42% OF ALL VIDEO files shared online are pornographic. No porn-sharing cases have yet been tried in the U.S.

LAST YEAR Disney and other media companies sued two small L.A. shops for selling $15 piñatas of Winnie the Pooh, The Incredibles, and Nemo.

THE ROCK AND ROLL Hall of Fame sued several journalists for naming their website “The Jewish Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.” They renamed it Jewsrock.org.

AFTER ROSA PARKS sued OutKast for using her name as a song title, the group and their label settled by paying for a Parks tribute CD and TV special.

PATENT LAWSUITS have more than doubled since 1992.

RENTAMARK.COM makes money by claiming ownership of 10,000 phrases, including “chutzpah,” “casual Fridays,” “.com,” “fraud investigation,” and “big breasts.”

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.’s estate charges academic authors $50 for each sentence of the “I Have a Dream” speech that they reprint.

THE VILLAGE PEOPLE refused to let their songs be used for a documentary called Gay Sex in the ’70s because they want to be thought of as “mainstream.”

-- Clara Jeffery (Ed.)

Bush-Hinkley connection!!

After 23 years as Emery County clerk, Bruce Funk will decide this morning whether he will resign because he cannot endorse an election on Utah's new voting machines.
"In no way could I feel comfortable with these machines," Funk said Monday. "I don't want to be part of something that put into question the results that come out of Emery County."

* * *

By the end of the Monday meeting, Diebold engineers convinced the county commissioners the discrepancies in the machines' memory are the result of testing and of additional printing fonts.
But Diebold told the commissioners that allowing unauthorized people access to the machines had violated their integrity.

The whole pathetic story is here.

Brand W:

RNC Memo Warns GOPers Not To Distance Themselves From Bush

Republican pollster Jan van Lohuizen, in a memo written for RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, warns that if members of Congress try to drive a wedge between themselves and Pres. Bush, it'd be akin to adding weight to an anchor. GOpers are "W Brand Republicans" whether they like it or not. And van Louhizen, who has polled (often secretly) for the Bush White House under the RNC aegis for years, is worried about low turnout.

Time Magazine first reported on the memo this weekend, but the full text is below.

---------------
Memorandum

To: Ken Mehlman
From: Jan van Lohuizen
Date: March 3, 2006
Re: Bush -- Congressional Republicans

Per our conversation, we took another look at the way voters, Republicans specifically, link President Bush and Republicans in the House and the Senate. There are several points worth making:

1. President Bush continues to have the strong loyal support of Republican voters. Despite slippage in approval ratings among all voters, the President's job approval among Republicans continues to be very high. Most members will be elected with between 80% and 100% of their support coming from Republicans. I don't see that Republicans driving a wedge between themselves and the President is a good election strategy.

2. My read of the current environment is that our problem will be turnout. '06 could become an election like '82 or '84. In '82 Republicans showed up at relatively normal turnout rates, while Democrats, because they were angry, showed up at abnormally high turnout rates. In '94, Republican turnout was elevated, while Democratic turnout was depressed. We have every reason to believe '06 could become the inverse of '82. We don't see signs of a depressed Republican turnout yet, but we have every reason to believe Democrats will turn out in high numbers. Anything we do to depress turnout, by not running as a unified party for instance, could very well lead to serious consequences in November.

3. The President is seen universally as the face of the Republican Party. We are now brand W. Republicans. The following chart shows the extremely close correlation between the President’s image and overall ratings of the party.

President Bush drives our image and will do so until we have real national front-runners for the '08 nomination. Attacking the President is counter productive for all Republicans, not just the candidates launching the attacks. If he drops, we all drop.

Our Leader explains it all for us:

I judge the President based upon his honoring of the institutions that make democracy sound in Venezuela. I think it's very important for leaders to honor the freedom to worship, the freedom of the press, contracts, legal -- to honor legal contracts, to allow people to express their opinion without fear.

From that email list:

Speech from Lawrence of Arabia (1925)
Does this ring a bell?

The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a
trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and
honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady with-
holding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated,
insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we
have been told, our administration more bloody and
inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our
imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any
ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster.

The sins of commission are those of the British civil
authorities in Mesopotamia (especially of three 'colonels')
who were given a free hand by London. They are controlled
from no Department of State, but from the empty space which
divides the Foreign Office from te India Office. They
availed themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time
to carry over their dangerous independence into times of
peace. They contest every suggestion of real self-government
sent them from home. A recent proclamation about autonomy
circulated with unction from Baghdad was drafted and
published out there in a hurry, to forestall a more liberal
statement in preparation in London, 'Self-determination
papers' favourable to England were extorted in Mesopotamia
in 1919 by official pressure, by aeroplane demonstrations,
by deportations to India.

The Cabinet cannot disclaim all responsibility. They receive
little more news than the public: they should have insisted
on more, and better. They have sent draft after draft of
reinforcements, without enquiry. When conditions became too
bad to endure longer, they decided to send out as High
commissioner the original author of the present system,
with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his heart and
policy have completely changed.*

Yet our published policy has not changed, and does not need
changing. It is that there has been a deplorable contrast
between our profession and our practice. We said we went to
Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver
the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government, and
to make available for the world its resources of corn and
oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly a thousand
million of money to these ends. This year we are spending
ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of money on the
same objects.

Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They
kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and
killed a yearly average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining
peace.

We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes, armoured cars,
gunboats, and armoured trains. We have killed about ten
thousand Arabs in this rising this summer. We cannot hope to
maintain such an average: it is a poor country, sparsely
peopled; but Abd el Hamid would applaud his masters, if he
saw us working. We are told the object of the rising was
political, we are not told what the local people want. It
may be what the Cabinet has promised them. A Minister in
the House of Lords said that we must have so many troops
because the local people will not enlist. On Friday the
Government announce the death of some local levies defending
their British officers, and say that the services of these
men have not yet been sufficiently recognized because they
are too few (adding the characteristic Baghdad touch that
they are men of bad character). There are seven thousand
of them, just half the old Turkish force of occupation.
Properly officered and distributed, they would relieve
half our army there. Cromer controlled Egypt's six million
people with five thousand British troops; Colonel Wilson
fails to control Mesopotamia's three million people with
ninety thousand troops.

We have not reached the limit of our military commitments.
Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a
memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it
was forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three
brigades from India.

If the North-West Frontier cannot be further denuded, where
is the balance to come from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate
troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate
and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly
every day in lives for the wilfully wrong policy of the
civil administration in Baghdad. General Dyer was relieved
of his command in India for a much smaller error, but the
responsibility in this case is not on the Army, which has
acted only at the request of the civil authorities. The War
Office has made every effort to reduce our forces, but the
decisions of the Cabinet have been against them.

The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that
town for political offences, which they call rebellion. The
Arabs are not at war with us. Are these illegal executions
to provoke the Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred
British prisoners they hold? And, if so, is it that their
punishment may be more severe, or is it to persuade our
other troops to fight to the last?

We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit
of the world. All experts say that the labour supply is the
ruling factor in its development. How far will the killing
of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer hinder
the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? How long will we
permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops,
and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf
of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its
administrators?

*Sir Percy Cox was to return as High Commissioner in
October, 1920 to form a provisional Government.

Something old and something new, both on the 3/27/2006 front page.

Old (albeit with a newish spin, IIRC (maybe I don't)): W, which is to say the administration, was absolutely determined to invade Iraq. (Correction: it is old, as in Downing Street Memo, and not so old, as explained by Salon.)

New: Another giant step forward in corporate welfare and the endless transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthiest stratum. The fascinating thing is how a party whose policies are nearly all so contrary to the well being of the majority of people can keep winning elections....

The good examples just keep flowing, these guys are such moral exemplars, each scummier than the next.

Here's the latest.

That's our purpose here....

From an email list I sub to (see http://www.gophercentral.com/), a ;itt;e ;ist of the pandering putzes that fill Big Media:

"The Final Word Is Hooray!"
Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits

3/15/06

Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel
host Brit Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the
media's supposedly pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

"The majority of the American media who were in a position
to comment upon the progress of the war in the early going,
and even after that, got it wrong," Hume complained in the
April 2003 speech (Richmond Times Dispatch, 4/25/04). "They
didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely
wrong."

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the
opposite sense. Days or weeks into the war, commentators
and reporters made premature declarations of victory,
offered predictions about lasting political effects and
called on the critics of the war to apologize. Three years
later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens
of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist
Cal Thomas declared (4/16/03): "All of the printed and
voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these
false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the
error of their previous ways and at least be offered an
opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will
return to us in another situation where their expertise
will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their
credibility will be lacking."

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments
from the early days of the Iraq War.


Declaring Victory

"Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?"
(Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)


"Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially
over, what begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S.
government over America's unrivaled power and how best to
use it."
(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)


"Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very
different from the one members left two weeks ago. The war
in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are
regaining attention."
(NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)


"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated
the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces
swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week
swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics'
complaints."
(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/13/03)


"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper
Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington."
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)


"We had controversial wars that divided the country. This
war united the country and brought the military back."
(Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)

"We're all neo-cons now."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting
together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there
and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier.
I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as
hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to
think that we had become inured to everything that we'd
seen of this war over the past three weeks; all this sort
of saturation. And finally, when we saw that it was such a
just true, genuine expression. It was reminiscent, I think,
of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of that pure
emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed,
the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breath-
taking."
(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox
News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a
Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed
to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation--Los Angeles
Times, 7/3/04)


Mission Accomplished?

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect.
Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The
president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the
Pacific."
(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission
Accomplished" speech)


"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a
guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's
physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or
even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern.
They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's
president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think
we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're
not like the Brits."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)


"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock
star, movie star, and one of the guys."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech,
5/1/03)


Neutralizing the Opposition

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day?
He won today. He did well today."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)


"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact
that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't
these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date
on some of these debate points?"
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)


"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential
hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"
(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)


"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was
in the broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is
that it's clear that nobody can do anything about it. There
isn't anybody who can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose--
cannot oppose him politically."
(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel,
5/2/03)


Nagging the "Naysayers"

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people
in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were
wrong?"
(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)


"I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR
or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong
their negative pronouncements were over the past four
weeks."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)


"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some
of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and
Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the
first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America,
guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an
apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now,
Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former
chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for
Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French
radio network that -- quote, 'The United States is going
to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated.'
Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail,
again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like
Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those
others, will step forward tonight and show the content of
their character by simply admitting what we know already:
that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were
misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe,
these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes.
But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists'
for nothing."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)


"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical
weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was
attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I
think, really means that the left is going to have to hang
its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)

"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American
left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein.
To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The
toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has
made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers
for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for
less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not
predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned
of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address
the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative
juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the
world right."
(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)


"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy
Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked
brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American
deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work
yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so
far.... The final word on this is, hooray."
(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

"Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success,
especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a
few Arab reporters."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)

"Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a
full-page ad out in the New York Times bashing George Bush.
Apparently he still hasn't figured out we won the war."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)


Cakewalk?

"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and
ruthless military intervention.... The president will
give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and
dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the
Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."
(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the
Observer, 3/30/03)


"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district
of San Diego that military action will not last more than
a week. Are you willing to take that wager?"
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03)


"It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military
machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no
question that it will."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)


"There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb
for a matter of weeks, try to soften them up as they did
in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain
unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like
that."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)


"He [Saddam Hussein] actually thought that he could stop
us and win the debate worldwide. But he didn't--he didn't
bargain on a two- or three week war. I actually thought it
would be less than two weeks."
(NBC reporter Fred Francis, Chris Matthews Show, 4/13/03)


Weapons of Mass Destruction

NPR's Mara Liasson: Where there was a debate about whether
or not Iraq had these weapons of mass destruction and
whether we can find it...

Brit Hume: No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that
he didn't have them beforehand. Nobody.
(Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003)


"Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary
of State Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi
dictator Saddam Hussein is in material breach of U.N.
resolutions that only the duped, the dumb and the desperate
could ignore it."
(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)


"Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab
intelligence officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of 'the
green mushroom' over Baghdad--the modern-day caliph bidding
a grotesque bio-chem farewell to the land of the living
alongside thousands of his subjects as well as his enemies.
Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and the
demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop
him before he can achieve notoriety for all time."
(Newsweek, 3/17/03)


"Chris, more than anything else, real vindication for the
administration. One, credible evidence of weapons of mass
destruction. Two, you know what? There were a lot of
terrorists here, really bad guys. I saw them."
(MSNBC reporter Bob Arnot, 4/9/03)


"Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where
are the supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes
to justify pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to
caches no inspectors could find.) What about remaining
danger from Baathist torturers and war criminals forming
pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance? (Their death
wish is our command.)"
(New York Times' William Safire, 4/10/03)

I fully respect that greed and aggression is the fuel, as it were, for initial econoomic growth. Without those traits, none of the brilliant ideas would result in good for the commonweal be it cool stuff or, well, employment for people.

That said, your average capitalist would say Paul Dana’s death is just the price of the engine of economic growth.

I beg to differ.

Tony George married into not inconsiderable economic wealth. Clearly, though, it wasn’t enough for Tony. He had to show that he had a bigger dick than any one amongst his in-laws, so to speak.

And his means for doing this involved destroying open-wheel auto racing in this country. Indeed, his aggression overwhelmed his greed tot he extent that such money as he made is greatly insignificant in relation to the economic losses.

As well as Paul Dana’s death.

And George’s hubris included putting his stepson into an IRL car probably before he was ready, in part because he just needed that badly to fill the IRL field.

So there was Ed Carpenter on what is the deadliest, nastiest major auto track in America having a minor but not really unexpected under the circumstances accident when, dead in on the track, figuratively speaking, when Dana hit Carpenter’s car.

And, yeah, now Dana is dead. Note, too, that Dana was little more experienced than Carpenter and, oh yeah, the Homestead track is a nightmer, specially for all those green drivers George and his IRL desperately need.

Me, I’m not so hardcore a capitalist as to find this wasted death and inury (it seems Carpenter survived relatively intact) at all justifiable.

Indeed, Dana’s death and pretty much the entire IRL is inexcusable.

One wishes Tony George put his obvious talents to something productive....

UPDATE: All this for a "struggling" series and a track audience of approximately 30,000.

http://www.makeherspenditall.com/.

Important story, so the whole column about it gets posted:

Sunshine Week, the AP's spotless mind, and the real threat to free speech

So far this week, the debut of the Washington Post's "Red America" has become one of those blogger-licensing issues -- i.e., our license to blog would be stripped if we didn't weigh in on the controversy by the end of business today. However, we've been sidetracked by a new story that points to the real problem with media bias.

First, and quickly, as for giving young home-schooled creationist Bush accolyte Ben Domenech a high-profile platform on Washingtonpost.com, we would paraphrase Chairman Mao (who we don't go carrying pictures of) and say, "Let a hundred Domenech's bloom" in the infinite playing field of cyberspace." Give young Ben all the space he needs to spew forth his views, because common sense will not merely defeat him in the arena of ideas, but it will rise up and crush him.

It would be one thing if the Washington Post walled off part of its print front page, above the fold, for Red America -- because that space is limited and thus very valuable. The Web is something else entirely. Our point here is that maybe we shouldn't spend some much time wailing about the addition of new voices to the great American political divide, even those on the side we disagree with. The real threat to our national conversation is shutting down and blocking certain viewpoints -- especially when their main offense seems to be criticizing the current government.

That's why we're not nearly as troubled by what's going on at the Washington Post as with what's taking place at the Associated Press:

The longtime chief correspondent for The Associated Press in Vermont has been forced out of his job, stunning the state's journalists and politicians.

Christopher Graff, 52, a writer who was in charge of The A.P.'s Vermont bureau in Montpelier, was told Monday he no longer had a job. The move came after he put a partisan column on the wire, and as the news agency is consolidating some of its bureaus across state lines.

When you look closer however, the issue of whether what he put on the wire was "a partisan column" becomes murkier:

Emerson Lynn, editor and publisher of The St. Albans Messenger, said one clue to Mr. Graff's departure might have been The A.P.'s having told him this month that it was inappropriate for him to have posted a column by Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, on the wire.

Mr. Lynn said that for the last two years, The A.P. had prepared a package of articles about Sunshine Week, in which media organizations advocate openness in government. Senator Leahy had written a column highly critical of the Bush administration on the matter for the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

The column said, for example, that "the foundations of our open government are under direct assault from the first White House in modern times that is openly hostile to the public's right to know."

Here's the thing: the Associated Press and the other media groups knew they were going out on a bit of an advocacy limb when they announced "Sunshine Week." Not so coincidentally, the effort was launched in December 2004, the month after George W. Bush was elected to another four years in office. Here's the AP's reasoning (from its own coverage, Dec. 14, 2004):

Tom Curley, president and CEO of the Associated Press, said that the national effort is needed because government secrecy seems to be growing at an "epidemic rate."

"From city hall to Congress, from police chiefs' offices to the attorney general's office, the trend towards secrecy is unmistakable," said Curley, a member of the Sunshine Week steering committee.

But elsewhere in the same article, it becomes patently clear that the reason for that epidemic was the ascendency of George W. Bush:

Members of the committee also cited an Oct. 12, 2001, letter from Attorney General John Ashcroft that was widely interpreted as reversing course on the release of information to the public, putting the onus on citizens to prove why they needed the information.

A Department of Justice official, who declined to be named, said that Ashcroft's memo did not put any new burden on citizens, but that it represented a change in the "emphasis and tone" of freedom of information policy. He would not elaborate further.

The bottom line is this: "Sunshine Week" never would have happened in the first place had there not been a Bush presidency. But then the AP seeks to retroactively censor, in a sense, a piece that dares to call out the main culprit. Maybe they should, you know, raise the blinds a little bit at the "Sunshine Week" headquarters.

It's one thing for a fearful Washington Post to promulgate a young and foolish new voice. It's something else entirely for a fearful Associated Press -- a virtual monopoly wire service -- to attempt to silence a legitimate, experienced voice with a message that Americans need to hear. There are many ways that the big media can do harm to our political discourse, but none is more severe and more troubling than censorship.

(Piece ran here without a copyright.)

And just to be repititve: Can't help wondering whether the realtively sudden sale of Knight-Ridder's newspaper group had anything to do with silencing the groups aggressive journos.

Just a reminder of what Our Leader thinks of us, us being everyone except greedy alphas, their whores, and Christo-fascist nutjobs.



Yes, yes, I'd bet the photos been, well, tweaked or enhanced, but I stand by the message it represents. And the gallery of like images starts here.

The Nazis didn't look too kindly on criticism of Hitler as they destroyed Germany I bet, huh?

Not.

In an apples and oranges way, maybe this is as bad or worse or not as the Dubai fandango.

But then, another 9/11 would only help... well, you know who.

Security is all about aggregating power for them....

Apropos the plagirizing asinine punk nutjob who spewed his radical crap and hate on behalf of washingtonpost.com before getting terminated after a couple of days:

Glenn Reynolds, who writes the blog Instapundit, said the bloggers were "motivated by a desire to get" Mr. Domenech.

Only these radical destroyers could come up with such utter garbage. On the other hand, maybe Reynolds has a point. Why anyone be punished for plagirizing? Besides that it shows a lazy intelect or lack of respect for intellectual and other property. I mean, God forbid, if I knew a wrier was a serial plagirist, maybe I'd be less inclined to respect his opinion.

But only a wingnut can come up with a hate-filled, dishonest spew like Reynolds.

Yeah, yeah, it's pretty much known that this administration has no respect for a system of law. But here's the latest example of how when Our Leader signs a bill into law, he makes it very clear he has no intention to abide with it.

And then there's these: Our Leader signs into law a law that wasn't passed by the House. And here that issue is discussed intelligently.

Infinite crap is here.....

I like Christo-fascists ever so slightly more than Islamo-fascists, if at all, but it does, well, make me appreciate our liberation of Afghanistan when I read of a success like this. Hint: if people don't understand and appreciate and actually desire democracy, it's a recipe for disaster. Hell, even we are having obvious problems....

Obvious but still cute enough to print and cut out and tape up somewhere....

Of course not. But still....

There's Our Leader sent out to tell us that there won't be a significant withdrawal feom Iraq before 2009.

But why? There's no civil war there, we're told, and a government's forming, we're told.

Or is it what W would have said if he was articulate and/or allowed to say so was that we're going to have major bases there and of course control the oil fields. (The best way to deal with the problem of unreliable Middle Eastern oil is not to reduce our dependency but to own the damn stuff.)

But what does it mean, getting insights from the Zipster?

If one was to fight a war to bring freedom and liberty and democracy to oppressed people, shouldn't one start with not a realtive backwater but the world's sole super-power?

Of course, it's wrong to expect any sort of real intelligence from Our Leader, I mean even avaerage intelligence or even the intelligence of a smart dog. (Other than his family scummy paramount greed.)

Still, even for W, this is really, well, pretty weird, to say the least. Heclearly is confused, clearly meaning to reference Islamo-fascist terrorists and his own neo-con-men:

"[I]magine an enemy that says: 'We will kill innocent people because we're trying to encourage people to be free.'"

(Quote found here.)

Nothing to add:

FBI Agent Slams Bosses at Moussaoui Trial

Mar 20, 9:02 PM (ET)

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - The FBI agent who arrested Zacarias Moussaoui in August 2001 testified Monday he spent almost four weeks trying to warn U.S. officials about the radical Islamic student pilot but "criminal negligence" by superiors in Washington thwarted a chance to stop the 9/11 attacks.

Rest of the story is here.

An astute reader of this blog might sense an antipathy on the part of the blogger towards Christianity and Christians.

And that would be correct to a limited extent.

Your blogger's antipathy does not extend to all Christians but to those essentially boast of being Christian and proselytize.

And by proselytizing, I mean seeking to convert what was this great democracy into a Christo-fascist theocracy.

What set this rant off is a recent experience at work involving a complaint lodged by a believer. This woman is in fact bitter, possibly hateful, immodest and generally not at all Christian as I understand the idea except, I suppose, her believe in Jesus enables her to feel convinced that she can freely abuse and mistreat others.

And pondering this woman (and the response I am now required to deal with at work), I realized every overt believer I know – the ones compelled to make issues of their beliefs instead of practicing tolerance (yes, yes, I know Jesus preached it but the religion requires intolerance in the first instance) is, well, a little nuts.

And then I realized that this extends to that significant, disproportionately powerful minority of Christians who empower the current anti-democratic administration that, in its overpowering lust for wealth and power is in fact Christian in its mouthing but in none of their acts. Flaccid and impotent as the party is, the Dems are far more Christian than the wingnuts. The Dems, in their limited way, walk the walk while the wingnuts only talk the talk. There is a limited exception, which is routing public funds to Christian causes but really that is just a form of corruption. And I believe that being corrupted by wealth, with very rare exceptions, is not Christian. (The great thing about Christianity in America is that there is always someone who would preach any point including that if you accept Jesus being intolerant or living your life based solely on greed and materialism is acceptable.)

Flash: blind belief is as brain damaging, when it comes to actual use of the brain and one's intelligence, as, say, two bottles of vodka or some really, really good weed.

So really, that's pretty much it: I hate having my life f^cked up by nutjobs. Let 'em keep their craziness dementia in their homes or among others of their like.

The Knight-Ridder sale:

As we know, its DC bureau has been fairly aggressive in, you know, reporting, a very, very rare exception among the Big Media. As I recollect, there wasn't any significant pressure or reason to sell.

So why the sale?

Could there have been political pressure? A win-win way to resolve the problem of agressive reporting: $$ from a sale and suck up to the administration. (IIRC, KR has broadcast outlets; maybe there's an FCC issue somewhere...?)

Or maybe it's my sense of humor that's funny, like month old balogna in the fridge.

Kent State Basketball Team Massacred By Ohio National Guard In Repeat Of Classic 1970 Matchup

March 16, 2006 | Issue 42•11

KENT, OH—History and tragedy repeated themselves on the Kent State campus Thursday as 12th-seeded MAC champion Kent State Golden Flashes were decimated in front of a chanting, screaming home crowd by the superior offensive firepower and tactical game plan of the fifth-seeded Ohio National Guard in the very first round of this year's NCAA tournament.


"It was an absolute bloodbath," said Kent State head coach Jim Christian, who said he was "still in shock" from the on-court massacre. "We certainly weren't ready for what happened out there… It seemed like one minute we were getting ready to square off, and the next they were just taking shot after shot. They kept shooting all day long, and we just couldn't defend against them out there."

"It was like they couldn't miss," said senior forward Kevin Warzynski. "They were taking shots from the lane, shooting from the perimeter, everywhere... We left it all on the floor, but they just killed us out there tonight."

"You never think something like this is going to happen," said Warzynski. "It was a disgrace. It's going to be a long time before we recover from this shameful performance."

Some observers have speculated that the National Guard squad began shooting aggressively in response to Kent State sniper Jay Youngblood, the student-athlete they believed to be the most dangerous on the court. Official stats reveal that the National Guard took an unusually high 67 shots in the first minute alone.

At press time, the National Guard staff was refusing to comment in depth on its part in what the press, players, and public alike are calling "an atrocity."

"My men were just doing what they were trained to do," said National Guard adjutant coach Bobby Canterbury. "You can't blame them. If the other guys get blown away, well, then we're doing our job."

Kent State players and fans alike began the night with an optimistic attitude, having clinched the MAC conference championship and its automatic tournament bid just the previous Saturday. In the days leading up to the contest, there was little mention of the possible historical impact of the first meeting between the two rivals in over 30 years.

"Yeah, I remember the loss we suffered to the Ohio National Guard in 1970—everyone does," said Kent State sports-information director Jeff Schaefer Thursday night, referring to the annihilation at the hands of the Guard that spawned the still-popular stadium anthem "Ohio." "That catastrophic defeat was more than an important moment in sports history—it was a seminal moment in American history. And now it's happened again."

"I was only a kid when that happened, but I still knew that performance was a national disgrace," said Kent State student and basketball fan Lori Klaus, who was seated close to the action in the student section and was wounded when an opposing shooting guard charged into the stands to fight for possession. "I was trying not to think about it when I came tonight. You think something like that can't happen anymore, but… I guess now I'm part of history, too."

"Why?" Klaus asked those around her. "Why did they do this?"

From The Onion, of course.

Of course; the name of these "concservatives'" game is milk the treasury, with otherwise unjustified and economically unwarranted tax cuts and corporate welfare, all at the expense of the middle class:

Major Changes Raise Concerns on Pension Bill

By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Published: March 19, 2006

With a strong directive from the Bush administration, Congress set out more than a year ago to fashion legislation that would protect America’s private pension system, tightening the rules to make sure companies set aside enough money to make good on their promises to employees.

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner has been a driving force behind changes to the pension bill.

Then the political horse-trading began, with lawmakers, companies and lobbyists, representing everything from big Wall Street firms to tiny rural electric cooperatives, weighing in on the particulars of the Bush administration’s blueprint.

In the end, lawmakers modified many of the proposed rules, allowing companies more time to cover pension shortfalls, to make more forgiving estimates about how much they will owe workers in the future, and even sometimes to assume that their workers will die younger than the rest of the population.

On top of those changes, companies also persuaded lawmakers to add dozens of specific measures, including a multibillion-dollar escape clause for the nation’s airlines and a special exemption for the makers of Smithfield Farms hams.

As a result, the bill now being completed in a House-Senate conference committee, rather than strengthening the pension system, would actually weaken it, according to a little-noticed analysis by the government’s pension agency.

The agency’s report projects that the House and Senate bills would lower corporate contributions to the already underfinanced pension system by $140 billion to $160 billion in the next three years.

More, if you need it, here.

See it here.

Through Christopher Durang:

"My fellow Americans. I am not an idiot. I am not incompetent. I am not stupid. I don't believe in polls, but if I did, apparently 48% of you on this Pew poll think I'm incompetent, an idiot or stupid. Harriet Miers calls the Pew poll the P-U poll, and I agree with her.

I have a greeting card here from Harriet, it has a little flower arrangement with sparkles on it, and inside the card she says that I was the best governor ever. And she has also said publicly that I am the smartest person she knows. And she knows a lot of people. The secret committee that chose to run me for president also thinks I am very smart.

Let me tell you some other things I'm not. I am not insulated. Isolated. I talk to lots of people, I hear lots of outside opinions. Karen Hughes tells me things, Condi Rice, she's very popular, she tells me things. Sometimes Dick and I speak; he speaks in such a low register that is hard for the human ear to hear, but I get the gist.

What else can I tell you? I am an optimistic. I look on the bright side.

The Iraq war is going well. Wars are messy. We didn't need more troops. We don't torture people. We have captured 1,377 terrorists. We're holding them incognito in Cuba. They can't see lawyers, and we may keep them there for the rest of their lives without trials. It's a new world since 9-11. Alberto says the new world is a lot like Kafka's The Trial. I've never read that, but it sounds good.

Here are some other things I am not. I am not a religious fanatic. I found Jesus when Laura said I had to stop hitting the bottle, and then I went into a room with a minister and wham! Jesus entered my soul.

This means I have been sober thanks to Jesus, and I haven't had to sit in a room with a lot of alkies talking about this 12 steps stuff where you have to apologize and make amends all the time. Oh, also, I am not a dry drunk. People in AA who are sober but still acting crazy and manipulative and grandiose are called "dry drunks." I, however, have never been in AA, so according to Alberto Gonzalez, I can never be called a "dry drunk."

Alberto Gonzalez has been doing a heck of a job as Attorney General, have you noticed? I did a heck of a job choosing him.

When he was the White House counsel, he's the one who redefined "torture" so that it's only torture if it causes organ failure or death. So that means you can go pretty far with people you've captured and not be guilty of torture.

I am opposed to torture. I signed the McCain anti-torture bill, though I also signed one of those nifty side statements Alberto and Harriet help me with, which says I don't necessarily have to follow this law if it conflicts with my role of Commander in Chief.

Speaking of following laws, did you see that insulting thing Senator Russ Feingold did? He says he wants to censure me because he says I am guilty of authorizing "illegal wiretapping program in direct violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act."

Boy, talk about partisan. Did he not LISTEN to Alberto during his visit to the Senate Judiciary Committee? That law does not apply to me for two reasons: one, my role as Chief Executive of the country makes that law null and void as it relates to me; and also the Congress voted to give me total power to use force against Iraq, and that includes anything else I do that I feel is related to that, and that includes wiretapping. You can't break the law if it doesn't apply to you.

Am I saying I am above the law? Yes, I am saying that. There are some laws I am willing to still follow. Traffic laws. I will still stop at red lights. Unless I am chasing a terrorist, in which case I will go through the light.

I am the Commander in Chief. We live in a post-9-11 world. Because of that, I am re-asserting my carefully reasoned doctrine of "pre-emptive war." That means we no longer wait to be attacked. We attack first.

We get all the finest intelligence, as we did in the run-up to the Iraq war. Sorry, as we thought we did, but Judith Miller fed us a lot of hooey. She kept telling Libby stuff and he believed her. No other countries may use the doctrine of pre-emption to attack us, however. This doctrine only applies to us because we are the strongest, and because we are good.

I know some of you were disappointed that there weren't weapons of mass destruction.

But we were always going over to Iraq for more reasons than just the weapons thing. Dick and Paul and Donald all have that neo-conservative theory that if we impose democracy on some of these Arab countries, then the entire area will get a whole lot more stable.

I know I didn't say that BEFORE the war, because frankly we didn't think you'd understand it. So instead we just stressed how Saddam was trying to get nuclear weapons, and that he was likely to use them against the United States in like five minutes. Condi was very worried about that mushroom soup thing.

A lot of the news media keep stressing the killing and kidnapping and blowing up of mosques. Where are the human interest stories of soldiers patting children on the head? Or painting schools. Or lending people flashlights when the electricity doesn't work. I mean, it all takes time.

And Iraq turns out to be harder than anyone expected. I mean, just as no one could have predicted the levees might break in New Orleans, so nobody could predict there would be all this sectarian fighting in Iraq between the Kurds, the Shiites, and the Sunni. Well maybe the state department prepared some papers about that, but Dick wouldn't let any of us read those things.

Plus Colin Powell was so sour all the time. "If you break it, you've bought it" he kept saying about invading Iraq. That's negative thinking. I like African-American people, I like Condi Rice, and that guy who got caught shoplifting. But I was very disappointed in Colin. He wasn't a team player. And he didn't listen to Dick and Donald enough. Dick and Donald refers to Dick Tracy and Donald Duck. I am the Sense of Humor President. As well as the War President.

In conclusion, I am not an idiot. I am not incompetent. I know some things in Iraq are going badly right this minute, but that doesn't mean in the next minute the Iraqi people won't suddenly calm down and get democractic.

I have been more honest today about some of the things that have been upsetting the American people. I understand their pain, I've read about people feeling pain, it's been explained to me.

But still I am an optimist. I am not part of the reality based community. I believe we never back down. I believe in pre-emptive attack. Empt first, figure out later.

I think I'm going to go back to my previous spreechwriter, I don't think it's a good idea I keep saying "I am not an idiot." A lot of people didn't even hear about that part of the P-U poll.

I'm going to go back to my standard repeating of phrases over and over. That has worked before. I'm competent. I'm competent. I'm competent. I'm competent. I'm competent, competent, competent. I'm competent. I. Am. Competent."

Part of being anti-democratic is of course being against a system of law. (Which why W will have to rank as one of the worst presidents ever if not the wordt: If a president works to destroy the American democracy, he has to rank prettylow.)

I digress; the example of the day:

Lawyers claim witness coaching in Moussaoui case

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for two airlines being sued by 9/11 victims prompted a federal attorney to coach witnesses in the Zacarias Moussaoui death penalty trial so the government's case against the al-Qaeda conspirator would not undercut their defense, victims' lawyers allege.
A United Airlines lawyer received a transcript of the first day of the Moussaoui trial from an American Airlines lawyer and forwarded it to Carla J. Martin, a Transportation Security Administration lawyer, the victims' lawyers, Robert Clifford and Gregory Joseph, claim.

The rest is here.

This stinks like a week old dead fish on hot asphalt in July:

Friday, March 17, 2006
The new Nixon Law is introduced -- that which the President does is legal
(updated below)

Michael DeWine yesterday introduced what he is calling The Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006 (.pdf), co-sponsored by those independent maverick Republicans Olympia Snowe, Chuck Hagel and Lindsay Graham. The purpose of the bill is to render legal the illegal warrantless eavesdropping program ordered by the President more than 4 years ago. This bill is based upon the Richard Nixon Theory of Executive Infallibility, famously expressed in Nixon's 1977 interview with David Frost:

FROST: So what in a sense, you're saying is that there are certain situations, and the Huston Plan or that part of it was one of them, where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.

NIXON: Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.

FROST: By definition.

NIXON: Exactly. Exactly. If the president, for example, approves something because of the national security, or in this case because of a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude, then the president's decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise they're in an impossible position.

With that Presidential Infallibility premise firmly embraced by the independent Republican mavericks, we are presented with the Terrorist Surveillance Act. This is what it does:

It expressly empowers the President, in Section 2(a), to "authorize a program of electronic surveillance without a court order for periods of up to 45 days.” The President can simply renew the program every 45 days by certifying that renewal of the program is appropriate (Section 4(b)(2)). Contrary to initial press reports and to this morning's article in The Washington Post, the newly created Intelligence Subcommittee (at least as I read the bill - see below) has no power to approve or reject any warrantless eavesdropping programs. Its only purpose is to be briefed periodically on the eavesdropping activities undertaken as part of the program.

In sum, the bill authorizes and makes legal precisely the illegal conduct in which the Administration has been continuously engaging since September or October of 2001. The Administration claims that it reviews its warrantless eavesdropping every 45 days, so that's precisely what the bill authorizes. Or, as Richard Nixon says: "when the president does it that means that it is not illegal."

Here are some additional observations about the bill:

(1) As permissive as it is, this bill still purports to impose minimal limits on the power of the President to eavesdrop, but the whole crux of the NSA scandal is that the President believes that Congress has no power to limit what he can do. Thus, what conceivable rationale is there for Congress to enact laws purporting to impose limits on what the President can do when the President has made clear he will break those laws if he decides he wants to? This bill merely amends FISA ( by significantly loosening its requirements), but the President still says he has the right to violate FISA, so what is the point of amending a law which the President will violate when he wants to?

This is a completely fruitless and absurd exercise to engage in without resolving the question of the President's claimed law-breaking powers. In reality, this is the only point worth making. Laws passed by Congress which are designed to place limits on the President's actions are worthless because the President has claimed the power to ignore those laws. And we know this both because he has said so and because he has been ignoring them. All other discussions about this bill or other bills are just academic as long as the President claims, as he does, the power to break the law.

(2) The bill allows warrantless eavesdropping programs where there is "probable cause" to believe that one of the individuals whose communications will be intercepted as part of the program is someone “working in support of a group or organization” deemed to be a terrorist group (Section 2(a)(2)). It does not require case-by-case probable cause, merely that there be probable cause that some (but not all) of the intercepted communications under the program involve individuals affiliated with (or "working in support of") terrorist groups. Thus, a program which intercepts the communications of totally innocent people with no connection to terrorism is perfectly fine as long as the program also intercepts communications of someone who does have such connections.

(3) The President is allowed to intercept the communications not only of individuals who are agents or affiliates of a terrorist group, but also anyone who is deemed by the Administration to be “working in support" of such an organization. The bill provides no definition of what one has to do in order to be deemed to be "working in support" of a terrorist organization. In order to rectify the obvious problem that the Administration's political opponents are routinely accused of "working in support" of terrorists -- and would therefore fall within the scope of whose communications can be intercepted -- the bill provides this impotent limitation under Section 2(b)(1):

Electronic surveillance carried out pursuant (to this law) . . . shall not be conducted solely on the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

Presumably, the idea behind this clause is that it prevents the Administration from eavesdropping on political opponents and domestic political groups solely by virtue of the views they express, because to be considered someone who is "working in support of" terrorists, one has to do something other than express opinions protected by the First Amendment. But this clause has so many holes as to be completely worthless.

Amazingly, the bill actually authorizes electronic surveillance based substantially on someone's political views (which would be deemed to be "in support of" terrorists), just as long as those views are not the sole basis for interceptions the person's communcations. Thus, if someone gives a speech which the Administration believes is "pro-terrorist," and then has a meeting that the Administration thinks is suspicious, the person's communications could be intercepted under the bill.

And whether even political opinions which are deemed to be "pro-terrorist" are protected by the First Amendment is something that could be disputed (not reasonably disputed, but disputed nonetheless). I have no doubt the Administration believes, and would simply decree, that "pro-terrorist" opinions can be the sole basis for eavesdropping because they are not "protected by the First Amendment."

Critically, this bill defines who the Administration can eavesdrop on without obtaining a warrant. That means that all of the determinations as to who qualifies to be eavesdropped on are no longer with a court, but with the Administration to make unilaterally. The bill allows eavesdropping on anyone deemed by the Administration to be "working in support of" terrorist groups. It expressly allows First Amendment activities to be taken into account and even be the substantial basis for such a determination. In essence, then, the bill thus vests in the Administration the unchecked power to eavesdrop on whomever it wants.

(4) As indicated, under this bill, the Administration does not need any approval from any court or committee to engage in warrantless eavesdropping. It need merely certify on its own that such eavesdropping meets the law's criteria, and then report to the subcommittee once every 6 months (or when the subcommittee requests a briefing) on what it is doing (Section 6(c)).

There is no mechanism for the Subcommittee to take any action if it believes that the eavesdropping power is being improperly or illegally exploited. Worse, the bill includes extremely onerous penalties for anyone who discloses any information "relating to" the eavesdropping program (Section 8).

While this draft does not include penalties for reporters, it would make it a criminal offense for a member of the Subcommittee to publicize illegal or abusive eavesdropping on the part of the Administration. Thus, while the Administration is required to brief the Subcommittee on its eavesdropping activities twice a year, the Subcommittee has no power to take any action to stop abusive eavesdropping and its members would even be subject to criminal penalties if they disclosed anything it learned -- including illegal eavesdropping on the part of the Administration.

(5) A few miscellaneous provisions worth noting:

the bill requires that the targeted intercepted communications must involve one person who is not within the United States (Section 2(a)(3)), but it expressly allows interception of purely domestic communications as part of any eavesdropping program as long as there is “not a substantial likelihood” that the intercepted communications are domestic;
Under Section 2(e), “the Attorney General may direct a specific provider of communication services or common carrier” to take any action necessary to effectuate the surveillance. Thus, telephone companies and any other communication providers would be required to obey orders from the Attorney General to take any steps the Government directs to ensure that it can intercept communications;
Under section 5(b), the Administration is required to obtain a FISA warrant for eavesdropping if it decides that it can get a FISA warrant. If it does not so decide, then it is free to eavesdrop without a warrant for as long as it wants, as long as it renews its own authority every 45 days -- just like it has been doing.

The Washington Post has an interesting analysis of the political conflicts still very much raging among Republicans over this bill specifically and, in general, how this scandal will be resolved. Arlen Specter has expressed unequivocal opposition to the bill and "particularly objects to letting the government 'do whatever the hell it wants' for 45 days without seeking judicial or congressional approval."

Unsurprisingly, Pat Roberts has the opposite concern: that the bill commits the Most Grievous Sin of purporting to place limits on the Power of the Commander-in-Chief, something which, to Roberts, is intolerable for our country. He said: "I am concerned that some of the procedural requirements included in the bill may limit the program's effectiveness."

And Jay Rockefeller took the principled, resolute stand for which he has become so widely admired. He said through a spokeswoman that it is "too soon to consider legislation until the oversight subcommittee can answer critical questions about the program."

One last point to note. The Washington Post story contains this summary of the bill, which seems to me, upon reading the bill only for the first time this morning, to be inaccurate:

The bill would allow the NSA to eavesdrop, without a warrant, for up to 45 days per case, at which point the Justice Department would have three options. It could drop the surveillance, seek a warrant from FISA's court, or convince a handful of House and Senate members that although there is insufficient evidence for a warrant, continued surveillance "is necessary to protect the United States," according to a summary the four sponsors provided yesterday.

As indicated, nothing in the bill (as far as I can tell) actually requires the Administration to "convince" the Subcommittee of anything. To the contrary, Section 4(b) expressly states:

(2) CONTINUATION - If the President determines under Paragraph (1) to continue the Terrorist Surveillance Program, the President, through the Attorney General, may continue to the program for an additional 45 days, subject to the requirements of section 2(a)."

Section 2(a) merely defines the scope of whose communications can be intercepted, which means that the bill plainly empowers the President to authorize renewal of the program unilaterally, without needing the approval of anyone. If someone thinks the Post's interpretation is right that the Administration has to "convince" the Subcommittee to continue eavesdropping after the initial 45 day period, I'd be very interested in hearing the basis for that.

This bill reflects quite vividly where we are as a country. The President got caught breaking the law. He claims he has the right to do so. And the Congress, in response, refuses to investigate what the President did, but instead, seeks to find a way to pass a new law which it hopes the President will decide to comply with.

UPDATE: Marty Lederman agrees with my reading that -- contrary to the inaccurate reporting by The Washington Post -- this bill would not require the Administration to "convince" the Subcommitee of anything in order to renew the warrantless eavesdropping after 45 days. All that is required is that the Administration submit to the Subcommittee a certification that renewal is warranted under the criteria set forth in the bill, but the Subcommittee is without any power of any kind to reject or prevent the Administration from engaging in whatever warrantless eavesdropping it wants. As Marty says:

The Administration would not be required to justify its program to the legislators, nor to "convince" them of anything. And the Subcommittees could not, of course, do anthing to stop the program, short of persuading Congress to enact a veto-proof amendment to this law.

It's amazing how frequently wrong the media is about about the most important parts of the stories they report on. Whether or not the Administration is required under this bill to obtain permission of the Congress to continue to engage in warrantless eavesdropping is pretty crucial to the story. There's just no excuse for the Post to tell its readers that this bill requires such approval when it just doesn't.
posted by Glenn Greenwald

From the New York Observer:

When the wingnuts aren't lying like roadkill they're just talking utter nonsense.

Take free elections -- really the only aspect of democracy the wingnuts need for a country to be lablelled free. They're obviously against a one party system (outside the modern USA of course) but don't want truly free elections in which, say, a leftist (Venezuela, Bolivia) or Islamo-fascists (Iran, Palestine) can be elected. The Journal (sub. reqd.) has the latest example of this contradictory, paralogical and, um, yes, hypocritical mindset at work.

From the old Times itself:

James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times have won the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting for their coverage of the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program.

Umm, this is the story the Times essentially sat on for a year. So let's see: Important enough to win a major prize, not important enough to run when it should have been run i.e before the 2004 election.

[T]he Poynter Institute's Aly Colon tells the Sun Herald that having government agents pose as reporters undermines the public's trust in journalism. "It creates, at the least, some confusion in the public's minds," Colon says. "The key to journalism is credibility. So what the public wants to be able to do is trust people and organizations who represent themselves as part of the journalistic community."

(As quoted in Salon's WarRoom.)

Well, one would almost think Big Media's Washington courtiers are either past that point or fully know what thay're doing and don't care, that thay are as corrupted and co-opted as the politico-whores they cover or whatever.

Simpson's a not-untalented half-wit; there's a streak of genuine intelligence as well as class in her. And here she is doing the right thing: saying No to W. Good for her!

Or maybe not. Dad covers her quite attractive ass and claims J actually likes W., just not attending a fundraiser to meet him. J herself is silent so really knows. Maybe Dad doesn't want J. to, you know, a one person Dixie Chicks....

Just a whole lot of proof how bogus the courtiers are.

From FAIR, the DC courtiers suck up to the White House at the start of the Iraq debacle

Media Advisory

"The Final Word Is Hooray!"
Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits

3/15/06

Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

"The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that, got it wrong," Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond Times Dispatch, 4/25/04). "They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely wrong."

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense. Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize. Three years later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas declared (4/16/03): "All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be lacking."

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments from the early days of the Iraq War.


Declaring Victory

"Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?"
(Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)


"Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over America's unrivaled power and how best to use it."
(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)


"Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention."
(NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)


"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03)


"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington."
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)


"We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united the country and brought the military back."
(Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)


"We're all neo-cons now."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)


"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)


"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we saw that it was such a just true, genuine expression. It was reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking."
(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation [stunt]--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)


Mission Accomplished?

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."
(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech)


"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)


"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)


Neutralizing the Opposition

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)


"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?"
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)


"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"
(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)


"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."
(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)


Nagging the "Naysayers"

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?"
(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)


"I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)


"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, "The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated." Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail, again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)


"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)


"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right."
(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)


"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."
(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)


"Shouldn't the [Canadian] prime minister and all of us who thought the war was hasty and dangerous and wrongheaded admit that we were wrong? I mean, with the pictures of those Iraqis dancing in the streets, hauling down statues of Saddam Hussein and gushing their thanks to the Americans, isn't it clear that President Bush and Britain's Tony Blair were right all along? If we believe it's a good thing that Hussein's regime has been dismantled, aren't we hypocritical not to acknowledge Bush's superior judgment?... Why can't those of us who thought the war was a bad idea (or, at any rate, a premature one) let it go now and just join in celebrating the victory wrought by our magnificent military forces?"
(Washington Post's William Raspberry, 4/14/03)


"Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success, especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab reporters."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)


"Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still hasn't figured out we won the war."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)


Cakewalk?

"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."
(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer,
3/30/03)


"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?"
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03)


"It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)


"There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like that."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)


"He [Saddam Hussein] actually thought that he could stop us and win the debate worldwide. But he didn't--he didn't bargain on a two- or three week war. I actually thought it would be less than two weeks."
(NBC reporter Fred Francis, Chris Matthews Show, 4/13/03)


Weapons of Mass Destruction

NPR's Mara Liasson: Where there was a debate about whether or not Iraq had these weapons of mass destruction and whether we can find it...

Brit Hume: No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that he didn't have them beforehand. Nobody.
(Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003)


"Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the dumb and the desperate could ignore it."
(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)


"Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab intelligence officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of "the green mushroom" over Baghdad--the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him before he can achieve notoriety for all time."
(Newsweek, 3/17/03)


"Chris, more than anything else, real vindication for the administration. One, credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Two, you know what? There were a lot of terrorists here, really bad guys. I saw them."
(MSNBC reporter Bob Arnot, 4/9/03)


"Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and war criminals forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance? (Their death wish is our command.)"
(New York Times' William Safire, 4/10/03)

Kevin Phillips speaks. He's the rarity: an analysis that transcends his politics. In other words, he has his beliefs but doesn't allow them to get in his way.

And he says we're doomed....

Now Sandy O'Connor thinks we're on the cusp of a dictatorship.

Always nice to hear from an enabler after the fact.

At least as much as we'd ever want if not more.

Speaking of which, we all know we really can't withdraw till we bring peace back to Iraq; the last two administrations broke it, as it were, now we're obligated to fix our mistake. (Told you I'm an Old Testament guy.)

From bartleby.com:

QUOTATION:
“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

ATTRIBUTION:
The response is attributed to BENJAMIN FRANKLIN—at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation—in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention.

What an a great, awesome question or three this raises. Are we keeping it? Can we? Do we have the will and the ability?

For that matter, is Franklim, in a sense, very, very wrong? Is the problem a bottom up one -- at Franklin intimated, are the masses, as it were, dropping the ball?

Or is it a failure at the top, of a leadership that is anti-Republic?

I'm an Old Testament guy: Hurt someone, you're responsible to make good, not the victim. (Of course, the O.T. also had mandatory nobelsse oblige and endorsed fiscal responsibility).

The wingnuts, of course, are New Testament "tough sh!t" on the victims guys.

And they are literally painfully dishonest; they rely on a major lie-generating industry.

And here's the latest example:

Here's the "study".

Here's an analysis why it's dead wrong.

And here (from the Journal, subscription required) is an update.

Being played by Big Media as a terrible insult to Bush and moderate terrorist-enabling Arabs but Forbes, of all news sources, gets it right. I mean, Dubai gets the ports and gets rid of the security albatross for however long (it's unknown). My God, what could be better? (Registration required.)