Saturday, March 31, 2007

31 Mar 2007 09:04 pm

Stats and Justice

Megan casts doubt on the inference from the overwhelmingly anti-Democratic prosecutions by the Bush Justice Department at the local level. But she doesn't clinch the argument that a 7 - 1 proportion is not statistically relevant. We need more data and better data. But there's an awful lot of smoke for no fire.

31 Mar 2007 06:43 pm

Face of the Day

Ross Minter of the UK in action against Freddie Curiel of the USA during the Contender Challenge Welterweight match between the UK and USA at the Metro Radio Arena on March 30, 2007 in Newcastle, England. (Photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images)

31 Mar 2007 05:34 pm

Dear Mr Clooney

You're real pretty; you're a serviceable movie actor; but please, please keep your politics to yourself.

31 Mar 2007 04:31 pm

Knitting a Dalek

It helps to be English, I guess.

31 Mar 2007 04:21 pm

Britons Shrug

But the Telegraph musters some outrage:

We could even, in extremis, impose the kind of armed siege, complete with no-fly-zone, that paralysed Saddam in the years between the two Iraq wars: we already maintain large coalition garrisons on both Iran's flanks. Limiting ourselves to trivial resolutions will be treated by the ayatollahs as a sign of weakness. If they hate us, let them also fear us.

Alas, they are merely humiliating Britain. And the EU will not back its own member up.

31 Mar 2007 04:08 pm

After Habeas Corpus

I never thought I'd read a post like this in America in my lifetime. Isn't this power of a sovereign to detain any citizen without charge at any time part of the reason this country was founded? And now it is simply assumed that this kind of monarchical power is fine. A country that grants its executive the power to do this is definitionally not a free country. It really is as simple as that.

31 Mar 2007 03:56 pm

Rudy and Kerik

This stuff is extremely damaging, it seems to me, to the Giuliani candidacy. The Christianist base may be able to swallow his social and cultural inclusiveness if he gives them the judges they want. But his key appeal is domestic security, the ability to manage a competent government that will protect us more effectively from terrorism. Knowing that someone had hazy mob connections, and still promoting him to police chief, and then proposing he become DHS head: this is seriously bad judgment, no? Cronyism is the enemy of effective governance, as we have discovered. If this becomes part of Giuliani's image, it's not good. Neither is the uxorial kerfuffle. I have to say I think stocks in McCain are currently over-sold.

31 Mar 2007 03:24 pm

The Other Surge

As some measure of calm arrives in Baghdad, last week was one of the worst ever for sectarian carnage in Iraq. Money quote:

The Interior Ministry gave its first news conference about the killing in Tal Afar, announcing that the total number of dead was 152 with another 347 wounded. It appeared that the 152 included both those killed in the initial truck bombing of a Shiite neighborhood and those killed in the subsequent reprisals.

Meanwhile, the Shiite militias appear to be flexing more muscles in Baghdad itself.

(Photo: An Iraqi family flees a mixed Sunni and Shiite Muslim neighborhood near the Baghdad Sunni strongold of Haifa street, 30 March 2007. Nearly 400 people have been killed in Iraq over the past three days, officials and medics said today, as insurgents and sectarian militias defied a massive US security crackdown billed as a last chance to restore order to Baghdad. By Patrick Baz/AFP/Getty.)

31 Mar 2007 02:04 pm

An American Conscience

More and more military prosecutors are refusing to prosecute "enemy combatants" in the terror war. Why? Not because some of these combatants are innocent. Many are not. But because many have been subjected to torture by the U.S.. From the WSJ today (subscription only, alas):

When the Pentagon needed someone to prosecute a Guantanamo Bay prisoner linked to 9/11, it turned to Lt. Col. V. Stuart Couch. A Marine Corps pilot and veteran prosecutor, Col. Couch brought a personal connection to the job: His old Marine buddy, Michael "Rocks" Horrocks, was co-pilot on United 175, the second plane to strike the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

The prisoner in question, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, had already been suspected of terrorist activity. After the attacks, he was fingered by a senior al Qaeda operative for helping assemble the so-called Hamburg cell, which included the hijacker who piloted United 175 into the South Tower. To Col. Couch, Mr. Slahi seemed a likely candidate for the death penalty.

"Of the cases I had seen, he was the one with the most blood on his hands," Col. Couch says.

But, nine months later, in what he calls the toughest decision of his military career, Col. Couch refused to proceed with the Slahi prosecution. The reason: He concluded that Mr. Slahi's incriminating statements - the core of the government's case - had been taken through torture, rendering them inadmissible under U.S. and international law.

The Slahi case marks a rare instance of a military prosecutor refusing to bring charges because he thought evidence was tainted by torture. For Col. Couch, it also represented a wrenching personal challenge. Laid out starkly before him was a collision between the government's objectives and his moral compass.

The critical paragraph in the story for me is the following:

In the following weeks, Mr. Slahi said, he was placed in isolation, subjected to extreme temperatures, beaten and sexually humiliated. The detention-board transcript states that at this point, "the recording equipment began to malfunction." It summarizes Mr. Slahi's missing testimony as discussing "how he was tortured while here at GTMO by several individuals."

Remember the missing critical Padilla DVD? Recall that David Hicks has been put under a gag-order against discussing the torture techniques used against him by the US? Evidence is "disappeared." Detainees are gagged. Verdicts are pronounced based on testimony procured through torture. Col Couch is not stupid. He must also know that using evidence procured by torture is a war-crime. Every military prosecutor tasked by Bush and Cheney to prosecute torture victims is being set up as a war criminal. Bush and Cheney, meanwhile, secured their own legal immunity in the Military Commissions Act last year.

Under this president and vice-president, we are beginning to live in a banana republic.

31 Mar 2007 10:37 am

InstaFoundit

Glenn Reynolds discovers something called the Geneva Conventions.

31 Mar 2007 10:14 am

Self-Esteem Hooey

Good to see claptrap debunked.

31 Mar 2007 09:19 am

Quote for the Day

"I am down to earth Law student; I look forward to help humanity against all form of discriminations. I am currently studying Law in Al Azhar University. I am looking forward to open up my own human rights activists Law firm, which will include other lawyers who share the same views. Our main goal is to defend the rights of Muslim and Arabic women against all form of discrimination and to stop violent crimes committed on a daily basis in these countries," - young Egyptian blogger, Abdelkareem Nabil Soliman, just sentenced to four years in jail for blogging.

31 Mar 2007 08:15 am

The View From Your Window

Medellin, Colombia, 9.30 am.

31 Mar 2007 07:13 am

Kael Well Met

A lovely memoir of meeting the legendary critic when she was retired and in her Massachusetts home. Money quote:

Her house is stone and shingle and very large, and I saw a deer duck into the trees at the corner of the yard as I came up the driveway. I knocked on the screen door and she looked out. She was sitting in a wooden chair. "My God, you're just a kid," she said.

She told me to open the door. I tried it. I told her it was locked. She told me the lock had been stiff for 20 years, and that I should just fiddle with it. She said she knew it was 20 years because she'd just finished paying off her mortgage.

I fiddled with the lock for a minute and got the door open. We shook hands and I said: "It's very nice to meet you. How are you?"

"Old," she said.

Friday, March 30, 2007

30 Mar 2007 09:35 pm

Liberal Embeds

The netroots want to go to Iraq. The more viewpoints there the better.

30 Mar 2007 09:03 pm

Democracy in Egypt

A picture tells a thousand words.

30 Mar 2007 08:01 pm

Mogadishu Mayhem

The place is so wracked with violence it's beginning to resemble Baghdad.

30 Mar 2007 07:09 pm

Building Your Own Fast Lane to Sanctity

Benedict, new, self-made rules, and a nun cured of Parkinsons: JPII is on his way to sainthood.

30 Mar 2007 06:59 pm

Good Drugs, Bad Drugs

How do we tell them apart? Why is ritalin legit but cocaine not? An exploration.

30 Mar 2007 05:54 pm

"We Do Not Torture"

"From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me. It happened during interviews. One time they tortured me one way, and another time they tortured me in a different way. I just said those things to make the people happy. They were very happy when I told them those things," - Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, speaking of his time at Gitmo.

The transcripts have been censored to remove any details of the actual torture methods alleged. And here is the official response:

CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield wouldn't respond to al-Nashiri's allegations, but said Friday that the agency's interrogation program is conducted lawfully - "with great care and close review, producing vital information that has helped disrupt plots and save lives."

Notice that he does not deny torture. In fact, his words could be construed as justifying it. We have gone from "we do not torture" to no comment. One would like to disbelieve everything Nashiri says. But on what rational basis can we now do so?

30 Mar 2007 05:33 pm

Jesus and the Pledge of Allegiance

A reader writes:

You ask:

Will Christianists ever stop violating his teachings?

Well, nothing's slowed 'em down yet. Here's my pet peeve: Christianists arguing about the inclusion of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. Jesus made it pretty plain that they are not to take an oath at all, much less one sworn in the name of God (which "under God" at least implies). In fact, in his discussion of the subject, Jesus counsels against taking an oath in the name of heaven, earth or Jerusalem, but doesn't even mention taking an oath directly in the name of God. I would guess that's for the simple reason that he couldn't even imagine such a thing.

I know all the hair-splitting arguments used to excuse Christians from this proscription on oath-taking, but Jesus' words seems pretty plain on this one:

"Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.' But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply 'Yes' or 'No'; anything more than this comes from evil."

Even if we make room for the necessary "civil" oaths used in courtrooms and other legal matters, it's plain Jesus was recommending that his followers dispense with any voluntary, self-initiated oath-taking. So why the constant agitation over the Pledge? Answer: It's not really Jesus that matters.

It isn't, is it?

30 Mar 2007 05:10 pm

Bears for Sanjaya!

The momentum builds.

30 Mar 2007 04:47 pm

Face of the Day

Sze Hang Yu of Hong Kong competes in the Women's 50m Butterfly Heat during the XII FINA World Championships at the Rod Laver Arena on March 30, 2007 in Melbourne, Australia. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)

30 Mar 2007 04:25 pm

Jailing the Sick

He's lived with HIV for twenty years and he faces a jail-term of six years for using medical marijuana to help him keep his meds down. In a state which has already legalized medical marijuana. I kid you not.

30 Mar 2007 04:10 pm

Another Stengel Stumble

Time magazine digs in. Who's Kyle Sampson? Has anyone here heard of Karl Rove?

30 Mar 2007 04:07 pm

Hildog For President

The conversation begins! And yes, I know they snuck a snuke in her snizz. She's still running.

30 Mar 2007 04:02 pm

Music vs Noise?

Alex Ross's guest-blogger, Justin Davidson, has some fun with Michael Tilson Thomas:

After establishing his street cred by remarking that "by Mozart's day, music was way more in your face than it had been before," MTT finally gets to the heart of his argument: that the densifying, intensifying and increasingly overwhelming sound of 19th and 20th century symphonic music arose from the need to compete with the rising din of urban life. That, I'll buy.

If you love classical music and you're not reading Alex Ross's blog, you now have no excuse.

30 Mar 2007 03:56 pm

Oh, Michelle

"It's like Pat Benatar wrote Braveheart."

30 Mar 2007 03:48 pm

Back to Sudan

Britain sends asylum-seekers back into hell.

30 Mar 2007 03:36 pm

Christianists vs Jesus

Will they never stop violating his teachings?

30 Mar 2007 03:27 pm

The HRC Politburo

They still refuse to be accountable in any serious way. Here's the editor of the Southern Voice, the major gay paper in Atlanta:

For our article interviewing [Human Rights Campaign president Joe] Solmonese, SoVo asked HRC a simple question about the HRC Atlanta Dinner: How much money did last year's event raise?

They refused to tell us numbers from the 2006 dinner, although we previously reported that the 2005 event grossed about $200,000.

There are three possible reasons why HRC doesn't want to tell Atlanta readers how much money we raised for the group at last year’s dinner: the event didn't raise enough money to make it worth the expense of putting it on, the event raised so much money that HRC fears we'll decide we should keep some of it here to devote to local causes, or they just don’t take our questions very seriously.

The usual secrecy and lack of accountability. A letter writer in the Washington Blade piles on today:

HRC remains an organization directed and led by a cabal of individuals who continue to use it, and the millions of dollars entrusted to it by its supporters, to promote themselves and their own agendas...

Perhaps it is time that HRC recognize that not everyone is fooled by its glossy, self-promotional branding efforts and that members of the gay community are beginning to seek some accountability.

Until they start answering questions posed by the media, stop giving them your money.

30 Mar 2007 03:08 pm

The Future of Social Norms

Paul Graham sparked a fascinating debate here on fashion and morals. What are we saying and doing today that one day will seem unfathomably bigoted and immoral? Hal Finney ran with the ball here. Ilya Somin thinks the death penalty will one day look like barbarism. Manifest Destiny takes a different approach and asks what immorality will one day look like. Money quote:

"My money's on voluntary limb amputation."

Tim Lee figures his libertarianism is biasing him. It's an interesting topic. My own candidates for what we find morally ok today that we won't in the future are: abortion-on-demand, factory farming, and discrimination against gays. But my biases may be showing too.

30 Mar 2007 02:35 pm

The Thugs In Tehran

Watching this video should remind us of the kind of people we're dealing with in Tehran. The British sailor is obviously under duress and forced to tell lies as a hostage. Displaying captive soldiers in this way is repulsive to all decent international norms and it has been approved by the central power-brokers in Tehran. This isn't a maneuver we can even try and blame on Ahmadinejad.

The salient question, however, is what this means. The hope is that it means that the gradual international coalition against Iran has had an impact. It may be a sign of desperation for the regime to try and use a bargaining chip in this way. The fear is that it reveals that the regime in Tehran cannot be in any way dealt with, and that a confrontation on a wider and larger scale is only a matter of time. Britain doesn't have the power. The U.S. does. But even then, military action to topple this regime, after the disaster in Iraq, is not a serious option. It would initiate something close to a world war with unforeseeable consequences. Probably the best response, then, is what Blair is doing: insisting on the truth, demanding unconditional return of the hostages, and using the incident to further isolate Iran at the UN. I'm afraid I see no other viable option.

30 Mar 2007 02:15 pm

"Law-Free America"

The truth hurts, and it hurts America most of all:

"We now fail to tell the full truth about our human rights conduct, or that of our allies in the War on Terror. Increasingly, we avoid application of universal standards: whether the rules against torture and cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions. But the United States cannot lead the world with moral authority unless we hold ourselves to the same high standards that we demand from others. The U.S. has put its own human rights practices center stage by promoting double standards for our allies, and arguing in favor of 'law-free zones' (like Guantanamo), 'law-free practices' (like extraordinary rendition), 'law-free persons' (who are dubbed 'enemy combatants'), and 'law-free' courts, (like the system of military commissions, which have failed to deliver credible justice and are currently being challenged in our courts for the recent stripping of the writ of habeas corpus). Through these misguided policies, the Administration has shifted the world’s focus from the grotesque human rights abuses of the terrorists to America’s own human rights misconduct, leaving other, equally pressing issues elsewhere ignored or unaddressed," - Harold Hongju Koh, Dean of Yale Law School, in testimony before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Mar. 29, 2007

30 Mar 2007 01:51 pm

Pardon Libby?

Jon Rauch has a far more deserving candidate for presidential mercy.

30 Mar 2007 01:26 pm

Jonah And Conservatism

He actually seems to see my point:

Where is it written that conservatives have to have new popular ideas? If we can't make our existing ideas popular, is it really so terrible that conservatism become unpopular? Or does conservatism have to become a de facto political party of its own, constantly churning out new ideas that will get swing voters to call themselves "conservatives" not by converting them to conservatism, but by converting conservatism into some rightwing progressive agenda? This seems like a brand of me-too conservatism. See? People who call themselves conservatives can really be progressives too! Indeed, ever since his national greatness days, I occasionally find in Brooks a desire to keep riding the label "conservative" while quietly switching horses to something very different.

I'll respond more fully to this debate after lunch.

30 Mar 2007 01:08 pm

Vending Machine Viagra

An easy way for doctors to make some extra cash.

30 Mar 2007 01:02 pm

Quote for the Day

"I've had people come visit me saying "Pastor, here's where you're wrong." I don't spend a lot of time trying to convince people who are resolutely skeptical. What I do is I try to tell people what I believe and why I believe it, and the people who are persuadable are usually persuaded. There have been a couple of families who have left the church, because they listen to Rush Limbaugh, or Senator Inhofe just going off on this, characterizing everybody who cares about the environment as pagans and kooks. But yet for every one of those there are at least 20 coming up and saying, "Thank you, finally." The younger generation always goes, "Well duh, what took you guys so long?" But yes, I am vilified and attacked by a few in the community, and that's the price of any kind of leadership," - Pastor Joel Hunter, of the Evangelical Climate Initiative.

30 Mar 2007 12:59 pm

"Coercive Interrogation"

America now has a different kind of military alum:

Coercive techniques, including the use of dogs, waterboarding and prolonged stress positions were employed on the detainees, he says. Prisoners held at Al Asad Airfield, about 110 miles northwest of Baghdad, were shackled and hung from an upright bed frame welded to the wall in a room in an airplane hanger, he told me in a phone interview.

When he was having problems getting information from a detainee, he recalls, other interrogators said, "Chain him up on the bed frame and then he'll talk to you." Lagouranis says he didn't participate directly in hangings from the frames.

The results of the hangings, shacklings and prolonged stress positions - sometimes for hours - were devastating. "You take a healthy guy and you turn him into a cripple, at least for a period of time," Lagouranis told me. "I don't care what Alberto Gonzales says. That's torture."

30 Mar 2007 11:14 am

In Front Of Our Noses

A reader writes:

In light of your Reason link, consider re-visiting George W. Bush's 2000 convention speech. You might recall the theme from the convention: "Prosperity with a Purpose." The theme and recurring phrase of the speech was "They have not led, we will." The Brooks-Kristol argument was made to the American public, and they bought it, certainly without really understanding what they were buying:

"For eight years, the Clinton/Gore administration has coasted through prosperity. And the path of least resistance is always downhill. But America's way is the rising road. This nation is daring and decent and ready for change.

Our current president embodied the potential of a generation. So many talents. So much charm. Such great skill. But, in the end, to what end?

So much promise, to no great purpose. Little more than a decade ago, the Cold War thawed and, with the leadership of Presidents Reagan and Bush, that wall came down. But instead of seizing this moment, the Clinton/Gore administration has squandered it. We have seen a steady erosion of American power and an unsteady exercise of American influence.

Our military is low on parts, pay and morale. If called on by the commander in chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report. 'Not ready for duty, sir.' This administration had its moment. They had their chance. They have not led. We will."

Of course, I thought it was boilerplate. Dumbass.

30 Mar 2007 10:31 am

Turkey and Iraq, Brother or Friend?

Richard Miniter reports on an under-reported relationship.

30 Mar 2007 10:12 am

Colbertology

Jim Fallows debriefs himself. Don't worry. It's not obscene.

30 Mar 2007 09:50 am

The View from Your Window

San Francisco, 5 pm.

30 Mar 2007 09:31 am

The Costanza Doctrine

Michael Fullilove has finally discovered the real secret behind the Bush administration's Iraq war strategy: an episode of Seinfeld.

30 Mar 2007 09:03 am

"Coercive Interrogation"

Much ink has been split over what torture means. It isn't the first time. The original White House memo outlining the boundaries drew the line at death or failure of a major bodily organ. Hey: it's compassionate conservatism. But the exquisite ways in which human beings have found to describe torture that isn't torture or to call it something else or to place limits on it go back a very long way:

I don't know how much of your latin remains from your schooldays, but I just reread Ad Extirpanda (To Be Exterminated), the papal bull in which Innocent IV, feeling the Inquisition was not efficient enough in digging out heresy, introduced the occasional use of torture in extreme circumstances. At first, it was truly used this way. Within a few decades however, it had become the norm as legal strategy gave way to blunt force in the name of moral authority.

I found the terms used to explain what kind of torture was to be permitted to bee strangely familiar (translation mine):

"Extraordinary use of the question shall be limited to that which does not involve the effusion of blood or permanent mutilation."

John Yoo, meet your mentor.

30 Mar 2007 07:50 am

An Anti-Gay Lynching?

I linked to stories last February about the beating of an elderly gay man in Detroit that allegedly led to his death. It was reported as a hate-crime. The story now turns out to be much cloudier and probably not a hate-crime at all. Here's the latest story with the coroner's report. After the Matthew Shepard case, which was a vicious crime also distorted in the media (and milked for money by HRC), I should have been more wary.

30 Mar 2007 07:44 am

Quote for the Day

"To hear some of my colleagues say that we should dispense with this frivolous debate because the president has threatened to veto, what a waste of our time -- well, if you logically follow that through, Mr. President, why do we need a Congress? . . . Mr. President, we tried a monarchy once. It's not suited to America," - Senator Chuck Hagel, Wednesday.

30 Mar 2007 06:34 am

Go Sanjaya!

My fiance will kill me, but I urge everyone to vote for Sanjaya in American Idol. It's very, very important to subvert this compulsive but far too self-important show. Help can be found here. if the whole blogosphere got behind him, he might even win. Which would be fantastic.

30 Mar 2007 12:06 am

And So It Begins

This is the first of what one imagines will be a series of stories about Rudy Giuliani's record in New York City. He knew about Bernard Kerik's connection to a company linked to organized crime before appointing him police commissioner. Money quote:

Rudolph W. Giuliani told a grand jury that his former chief investigator remembered having briefed him on some aspects of Bernard B. Kerik’s relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Mr. Kerik’s appointment as New York City police commissioner, according to court records.

Mr. Giuliani, testifying last year under oath before a Bronx grand jury investigating Mr. Kerik, said he had no memory of the briefing, but he did not dispute that it had taken place, according to a transcript of his testimony.

This was the man Rudy pushed to run DHS. We also learn today that Rudy wants his third wife in his cabinet meetings if he were president. Who elected her? In Rudy's world, he does all the electing.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

29 Mar 2007 11:50 pm

Mark Levin's Head Explodes

What a joy to watch.