How on earth did this Op Ed get published? That is what I want to know.
Here is Edward Luttwak, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member in good standing of the Washington foreign policy establishment, all dues paid up, (which probably answers my opening question), speculating in this morning’s New York Times about the security implications of an Obama presidency, for Obama himself and for the country, unembarrassed to tell us that Obama’s conversion to Christianity makes him ripe for punishment by beheading, no less, or at best, by stoning or by hanging. Read more
WASHINGTON—The FBI and multiple members of Congress said on Wednesday that Internet service providers must be legally required to keep records of their users’ activities for later review by police.
Their suggestions for mandatory data retention revive a push for potentially sweeping federal laws—which civil libertarians oppose—that flagged last year after the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the idea’s most prominent proponent.
FBI Director Robert Mueller told a House of Representatives committee that Internet service providers should be required to keep records of users’ activities for two years. Read more
Link A recently unclassified report from the Pentagon from 1998 has revealed an investigation into using laser beams for a few intriguing potential methods of non-lethal torture. Some of the applications the report investigated include putting voices in people’s heads, using lasers to trigger uncontrolled neuron firing, and slowly heating the human body to a point of feverish confusion - all from hundreds of meters away.
Wouldn’t just participating in such research constitute a war crime?
If you haven’t read these, and you like literature, fiction, and the creative use of languages, you’re missing out on treasure. From what I’m reading today, I offer this little gem.
…but what [the captured enemy soldier] had said set me thinking of the North, and I found I knew next to nothing about it.
When I had been a boy, scrubbing floors and running errands in the Citadel, the war itself had seemed almost infintely remote. I knew that most of the matrosses who manned the major batteries had taken part in it, but I knew it just as I knew that the sunlight that fell upon my hand had been to the sun. I would be a torturer, and as a torturer I would have no reason to enter the army and no reason to fear that I would be impressed into it. I never expected to see the war at the gates of [the City]…I never expected to leave the City, or even to leave [my own] quarter of the city called the Citadel.
The North…was then inconceivably remote, a place as distant as the most distant galaxy, since both were forever out of reach. Mentally, I confused it with the dying belt of tropical vegetation that lay between our own land and theirs, although I would have distinguished the two without difficulty if [my teaching Master] had asked me to in the classroom.
But of [the North] itself I had no idea. I did not know if it had great cities or none. I did not know if it was mountainous like the northern or eastern parts of our Commonwealth or as level as our pampas. I did have the impression (although I could not be sure it was correct) that is was a single land mass like our South; and most distinct of all, I had the impression of an innumerable people…an inexhaustible swarm that almost became a creature of itself, as a colony of ants does.
…to think of those millions and millions without speech, or confined to parroting proverbial phrases that must surely have long ago lost most of their meaning, was nearly more than the mind could bear. Speaking almost to myself, I said, “It must surely be a trick, or a lie, or a mistake. Such a nation could not exist.” Read more
I am not making this up, nor is it from the Onion. This is from today’s* Thursday’s Houston Chronicle. Thoughtful of them to run this just days before Christmas don’t ya think, when everybody is attending so closely to the news?
Texans seeking to escape the next hurricane or state emergency by evacuation bus will first be submitted to criminal background checks, the state’s emergency management director says.
Does this sound, um, what to pick first, a tad complicated logistically speaking? Read more
A provisional cheer at that, although I’m inclined to make that two provisional cheers.
What I’d like to suggest, no doubt to the consternation of most readers, is that Reid’s decision to pull the FISA bill Monday evening was pretty much what Reid had in mind the whole time.
What I’m sure of is that the many comments I’ve read that characterize what happened on the Senate floor on Monday as Reid having been forced to pull the bill by Chris Dodd’s threat of a filibuster simply don’t match what I saw, via C-Span’s live streaming.
Before I proceed, let me make clear that I wish to take nothing from Chris Dodd’s role here. He deserves all of the praise he’s getting and then some.
His speeches on the Senate floor were magisterial. I’ve been watching him for more years than most of you and I have never seen him so compelling. And yes, it counts that he left his campaign in Idaho to come back and lead the opposition to a version of the Senate bill that was inadequate to the task of restoring the good sense, the respect for civil liberties and constitutional government, that had fueled the passage of the first FISA legislation in the late 1970s.
As Dodd graciously acknowledges in the video Lambert has posted here, many Democrats contributed to the sense I had, watching the debate on Monday, that I was not looking at a dispirited, disunited, frightened caucus, without a clue about how to oppose the policy of obdurate obstructionism employed so successfully in the past six months by the Bush administration and its enablers in the Republican Senate caucus.
Democrats were on the attack, making compelling, easy-to-understand arguments that have wide-spread appeal among a majority of Americans, and they were ready and able to shoot down the lies and prevarications employed by key Republicans, like Orrin Hatch. Most important, the list of Democratic contributors to this success was long and varied, and included Harry Reid. Read more
Dodd gave a passionate analysis of the many strands of this new FISA legislation, meant, mainly on the Democratic side, to correct the excesses of last August’s Protect America Act, which more or less gutted the FISA court as a check on the power of the executive branch to secretly ignore the civil liberties of Americans not to be spied upon by their own government.
To talk process for a moment, the thrust of Dodd’s first speech was in support of the many and profound reasons why the Senate should not proceed on the matter at hand as long as the Intelligence Committee’s version is the basis of the debate and the subsequent voting on the entire issue. In other words, he was arguing against the imposition of cloture, so that the Senate might spend time debating the merits of substituting the Judiciary Bill as the basis for debate and amendment.
It didn’t look or sound to me like this was Dodd’s attempt to get a genuine filibuster going, and indeed, the vote was lopsided in favor of cloture, all Republicans voting yes, only ten Democrats voting no.
This is not the end of the debate by any means, though, and from what I’ve seen thus far, do not despair that passage of the Intelligence Committee’s version of this new FISA bill is a done deal, including the extending of amnesty to those Telecoms which choose to go along with the administration. Here’s why: Read more
Donnell Williams had just gotten out of the bath tub, wearing only a towel around his waist, when he turned the corner to see guns pointing right at him.
“I ain’t never been so scared,” says Williams.
Police forced entry into Williams home while responding to a shooting, but it turned out to be a false call. They had no idea at the time the call wasn’t real and that Williams is hearing impaired. Without his hearing aid he is basically deaf.
“I kept going to my ear yelling that I was scared. I can’t hear! I can’t hear!”
Officers were worried about their own safety because at the time it appeared Williams was refusing to obey their commands to show his hands. That’s when they shot him with a Taser.
Okay, so, I can understand what happened here. They thought they were dealing with a guy with a gun. Training, etc, etc. I’ve got one problem with this defense, though: Read more
Tasered in front of wife and baby? Check.
Tasered for a speeding ticket? Check.
No threat and no warning? Check.
Sarcastic approval from other cops on the scene? Check.
Police in the country are now allowed to torture speeders by the side of the highway in order to get them to comply. The only difference between this officer slugging the speeder in the stomach and putting 50,0000 volts of electricity in him is that the latter doesn’t leave any marks. The intent, the pain and the goose-stepping authoritarian message are exactly the same.
Word to the wise. Do not ever question the police, no matter whether they are violating your rights, ignoring the constitution or breaking the law. It is perfectly legal for them to torture you on the spot if you do.
I’m feeling so free I can hardly breathe. Read more
Police were called to the international arrival area of the airport at about 1:28 a.m. on Sunday after airport security officers were unable to calm the man down and his level of violence was escalating.
The man, a Caucasian in his late 30s to early 40s, was yelling in an eastern European accent, sweating profusely, throwing chairs and pounding on windows, according to police.
It’s quite clear that this was some sort of dispute that nobody was able to resolve because they had no idea what he was saying. Maybe they had his luggage? He did, in fact, throw a monitor on the ground, but he then sat quietly outside the gate in an office chair, apparently in protest. When the police arrived he threw his hands up and tried to walk away, but he was ordered to stop and he did.
When they tased Robert Dziekanski, he was surrounded by four officers, with his hands at his sides and his back to a wall.
Standing up for a rule of law has brought about confrontation with General Musharraf in Pakistan, but the outbreak of popular revolt against his dictatorship will not end. In Burma/Myanmar, the same kind of military autocracy has met with popular revolts as well.
Here in the U.S., the popular revolt is expressed in increasing revulsion for the dictatorial overthrow of laws written by congressional representatives of the people. The torture of its enemies is administrative misuse of power that is universally rejected by the American people. Read more
Yesterday afternoon the grandson came home from school and burst into tears, sobbing that he and his Mom had to work out a plan to deal with armed intruders or else they would be killed. Read more
I’m with Kevin Drum and Jim Henley in their befuddlement that this story, reported over the weekend, has kicked up so little dust.
Kevin brought it to my attention with a short post to that effect, one of the reasons he is invaluable. Others, like Jim, are beginning to pick up on it, and Mr. Henley supplies some fascinating background. With a story like this, the more the merrier; we need to get it noticed by the village, and the name, “Hagazy,” as well known as “Hamden.”
One reason it hasn’t broken big, a small blogger reported it, and yes, reported is the operative word, just like a real journalist. The “small” describes only the probable stats of the blog, “Psychsound,” not the blogger, Steve Bergstein, a lawyer with two blogs, both of them involved in this story. The other reason is that the village elders are quite uninterested in pursuing evidence that Bush & co is running one of the most corrupt and unlawful administrations in our history.
In fact, Bergstein, whose other blog, “Wait A Second,” tracks and analyzes the civil rights decisions that come out of the the Second Circuit Federal Appeals Court located in Manhattan, became involved in the story itself, by catching while it was happening, an act of censorship being practiced on the written decision itself, a redaction of a large portion in the name of protecting our national security.
Yeah, I suppose that could be said to compute, if you think that every dumb thing any part of your government does, like, for instance, how the FBI got a false confession from a visiting Egyptian, that he was part of the 9/11 conspiracy, who was ultimately proven to be innocent of owning the suspicious device found in the closet of his hotel room, needs to be shielded from scrutiny because otherwise the terrorists will win. Hint: They didn’t get the confession with a decoder ring, knowledge of which could allow Al Queda to profit from our technology. Read more
Just because killing Iraqi innocents got the mercs kicked out of that country, don’t think the psychopaths in charge of your money will let them look for work like the rest of the unemployed. We have a whole new program set up to take care of the former assassins.
Would you like a vacation in Mexico? Maybe sending your money instead will satisfy you, so speculates the cabal at the White House. Read more
Last night on PBS’ Frontline “The Dark Side”, the Halloween season was Ushered in with a special on Cheney that definitely Spooked anyone interested in maintaining constitutional government. In the course of the program, it bothered me that the inheritance Cheney is supposed to have received from his years seeing Nixon go down, then Ford, then Bush I - was reputed to be a conviction that the Presidency must be restored.
The concept of a presidency that makes it into monolithic power unchecked by other branches with equal validity is not of natural birth. This country benefitted from remarkably intellectual and disinterested forefathers whose concept of citizenship was the origin of a government ’of the people, by the people and for the people’, a phrase that is far from meaningless jargon. The basic construction makes the government responsible, and responsive, to its basic unit, the voter. Read more
A Louisville TV station has carried a statement by Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority leader, admitting he misled the public concerning whether or not his office helped right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin stalk, and sic a crowd on, 12-year-old Graeme Frost and his family. Keith Olbermann’s interview with the Frost parents follows the break, and Graeme’s mother reminds us all what’s really at stake here: Malkin et.al. want to take the focus off the issue: health care costs in this country are insane, bankrupting families, breaking businesses, and hurting our nation’s ability to compete for real jobs that make worthwhile products.
Read more
Did you think this was going to be a nostalgia trip? Well, if Cold War relationships are to your taste, it is. Sec’y of State Rice has just called for ’activists’ in Russia to start working against the Duma, in the interests of democracy. Can Cuba be next?
Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave the visiting delegation from the U.S. a really nasty surprise when he announced that he wasn’t letting us put weapons into Eastern Europe on his doorstep without a fight. Read more
I’ll grant that the guy’s somewhat obnoxious, but the police hassle him not only excessively but almost as soon as he starts a pointed question.
Update:
I should add that “obnoxiousness” would only have been justification for one of the event organizers to ask him to pick one question, get to the point, and let the guest speaker answer.
On what basis did the cops get in the business of hurrying up the guy’s answer almost from the get-go? Because the student was merely impassioned?
And on what basis did they drag him off? For verbosity?
Further, the AP’s characterization does not jibe with what the video shows:
A University of Florida student was Tasered and arrested after trying ang
