Crimes? We don't care bout no stinkin' crimes

What follows is mostly cut and pasted from the NY Times:

You have to ask yourself: why isn't this guy going to jail?

For Starters: What is the BBG?

The Broadcasting Board of Governors ("BBG") is an office of the State Department that oversees most government broadcasts to foreign countries. It is responsible for broadcasts that go out in 61 languages to more than 100 million listeners. The BBG oversees, among others, the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Martí, Radio Sawa and Al Hurra. The United States Secretary of State, among others, sits on the board. The BBG is Kenneth Y. Tomlinson has been chairman of the BBG since 2002. Mr. Tomlinson’s position at the broadcasting board makes him one of the administration’s top officials overseeing public diplomacy.

The Crime: Who did what to whom?

State Department investigators have found that Tomlinson had used his office to run a “horse racing operation” improperly put a friend on the payroll (who received nearly $250,000 over two and a half years, ending last year). . . repeatedly used government employees to perform personal errands and billed the government for more days of work than the rules permit (and that he may have double billed as many as 14 days).

Investigators who seized Mr. Tomlinson’s e-mail, telephone and office records found that he had improperly and extensively used his BBG office for nongovernmental work, including work for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the horse racing and breeding ventures. The material seized included racing forms and evidence that he used the office to buy and sell thoroughbreds.

So What is Being Done?

Corruption? In high places? A high office being used as a gambling parlor? That's criminal conduct usually isn't it? Mr. Tomlinson has been arrested and will pay for his crimes won't he?

Guess again.

The summary of the report, prepared by the State Department inspector general, said the United States attorney’s office had been given the report and decided not to conduct a criminal inquiry.

So Who is this guy?

So why is it this guy isn't being prosecuted? Could it be that he knows the "right" people? Could he be protected by some highly placed patron?

You bet.

Mr. Tomlinson, 62, is a former editor of Reader’s Digest who has close ties to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s political strategist and senior adviser. Mr. Rove and Mr. Tomlinson were on the board of the predecessor to the broadcasting board in the 90’s.

Well it could be worse. . . oh, it is. . .

In November 2005, Mr. Tomlinson was ousted from his position as head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting . His 2005 ouster from the CPB was prompted by an investigation by CPB's inspector general which found evidence that Mr. Tomlinson had violated rules as he sought more conservative programs and that he had improperly intervened to help the staff of the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal win a $4.1 million contract, one of the corporation’s largest programming contracts, to finance a weekly public television program.

Mr. Tomlinson was also rebuked for improperly hiring an acquaintance from a journalism center founded by the American Conservative Union. The corporation paid the person more than $20,000 to monitor public radio and television programs for bias, including “Now,” with Bill Moyers as host. I guess he thought that if he paid his friend at the BBG 12 times that amount, he might have a better chance of getting away with it.

But he's still not being prosecuted.

Can it get any worse?

Yes it can. Mr. Tomlinson has been renominated by the President to a new term as chairman of the BBG. That nomination is now pending before the Senate. A spokeswoman for the White House, Emily Lawrimore, said President Bush continued to support Mr. Tomlinson’s renomination.

Can anything be done?

Three Democratic lawmakers, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Representatives Howard L. Berman and Tom Lantos of California have written letters demanding Mr. Tomlinson's ouster.

I think we ought to be able to expect more from our public servants, particularly the highly placed ones, something more than that they are "not actually under indictment." This guy put cronies to work at two different highly placed policy positions, submitted false reports, used his office and staff for personal business, all in violation of the law. But is he being prosecuted? No, like the Wolfewitz triumvirate before him, Tomlinson is being rewarded for a job poorly done. Wolfy et al. received Medals of Honor, Tomlinson is avoiding prosecution and has been nominated to continue running the BBG.

If you are like me and you believe that criminals should be prosecuted instead of rewarded with high paying, important policy making offices, you should contact your senators and tell them you oppose the nomination of Mr. Tomlinson to the Board of Broadcasting Governors . . . and you might send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper,

or even link this blog to your friends!

Naguib Mahfuz - Nobel Prize Winner - Age 94

The world lost a true literary giant today. Naguib Mahfuz, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize for literature, died today at the age of 94.

Mahfuz may best be known for his writings about ordinary people - butchers, bakers, candlestick makers, etc - dealing with the modernization of Cairo in the 20th Century. For that reason he was sometimes referred to as the "Dickens of modern Cairo". But that did not prevent him from delving into topics such as life under the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (or Akhenaten), and a stunning retelling of tales from the Arabian Nights. Mr. Mahfouz "wrote 33 novels, 13 anthologies of short stories, several plays and 30 screenplays." The Swedish Academy of Letters referred to Mr. Mahfuz' works as “an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind.”

Mahfuz was an artist of language, and the page was his canvas. His writings sparkled off the page, every word perfectly chosen and carefully timed: each a bejeweled jigsaw piece, carefully interlocking with the puzzle pieces around it.

Mahfuz was the first arab to win the Nobel Prize and he is recognized for applying Arabic's poetic traditions to make the modern novel accessible in that language. Brad Kessler wrote in a 1990 article for The New York Times Magazine: “Mahfouz writes in the florid classical Arabic, which is roughly the equivalent of Shakespearean English.”

If you've never read anything by Mahfuz, I recommend "The Harafish." for its particular beauty and its well-limned characters, or his masterwork: The Cairo Trilogy — “Palace Walk,” “Palace of Desire” and “Sugar Street — the story of three generations of a middle-class Cairo family, from World War I through the 1952 coup that overthrew King Farouk.

Mahfuz was a supporter of peace in a secular world. His support for Egypt's peace treaty with Israel, and his secular humanist approach earned him the ire of Egyptian fundamentalist muslims. Fundamentalists were responsible for a 1994 attack that nearly ended his life.

An important voice for sanity in the Mideast has been lost.

The New York Times obituary is located at Naguib Mahfouz, First Writer in Arabic to Win Nobel Prize, Dies at 94

Truthiness - These are Mine Colbert - Eat Yer Heart Out

If you are reading this blog, then you are probably already aware that Steven Colbert has claimed to be the progenitor of the neo-logism "Truthiness".

Well, I am not going to be undone.

So here, in writing, I lay claim to three neologisms for which I insist upon receiving credit (unless someone can prove an earlier use).

Niecelet (noun), def.: the daughter of one's maternal or paternal first cousin. [ex. ["My niecelet has a puppy."]. Technically, the referenced relationship (between one person and his or her cousin's children) is described as "first cousin, once removed". However that usage is confusing to most people and of little use to anyone other than lawyers and geneologists. It is also a little too technical for a term of endearment. Hence "niecelet" represents a compromise, indicating there is a relationship, but it is not as closely filiated as an actual niece.

Nephlet (noun) - the masculine form of niecelet.

Kazuncle (noun) - technically, the relationship between "first cousins, once removed" is described the same way on both sides of the filiation table. In other word's my first cousin's children are my first cousins once removed, and I am also their first cousin once removed (and my spouse is a first-cousin-once-removed-in-law"). However, as I am my cousin's age, not the age of his children, I am typically addressed as "uncle" - it is a token of respect for my age, not a legal or accurate description of the relationship. Hence "Kazuncle" (despite its spelling, a combination of cousin & uncle) stands in to indicate that I'm really a cousin.

Take that Steven Colbert -
and Oxford Dictionary Editors everywhere - I am expecting to see these in the next edition, or YOU just might be "on notice."

Unimaginable

I am sitting here listening to Pres. Bush speaking in Biloxi, Mississippi on the anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina. And I am struck by his use of the word "unimaginable". He said the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina was "unimaginable."

I wish that was the only thing wrong with this administration - it's lack of imagination. When terrorists flew airplanes into the Twin Towers, George Bush told us that such a thing had been "unimaginable" before - notwithstanding any number of big screen and made for TV movies, series' episodes, and trash paperbacks to the contrary - let alone his own briefing books. The failure of the levees in New Orleans was unimaginable - though it had been front page news in Louisian for 20 years. The resistance to the US occupation of Iraq is "unimaginable" to the President, even today after it has steadily worsened for three years, despite the warnings from everyone from his Secretary of State, his generals, the advice of the UN and all of our European allies (save Britain), and newspaper editorials and the protests of good people like you and me all put him on advance notice.

No, I wish I could believe that this administration's biggest problem is merely a lack of imagination. It's real problem is an organizational mentality of denial, delay, condemn and besmirch. Find the low guy on the totem pole to fall on his own sword and then it's business as usual.

Now Bush is describing the meager efforts and modest success of relief efforts to date. To Bush, they are "remarable successes." To me they are an embarassment. A full year after Katrina the devastation is still palpably felt by tens of thousands of displaced persons (refugees). And Bush talks about clearing debris from the beaches, which he assures us look so much nicer now than last year,as though that were an accomplishment.

And here it is cleaning debris is just "the first step." "We will not rebuild until we can do it right." In other words, never.

America can do much better. The question should not be how soon will relief come, but how late. George Bush has so crippled this country that we can not even bankroll the recovery from this disaster. He has destroyed FEMA, which might have managed a relief effort, which is now hopelessly uncoordinated. And he has bankrupted our economy so we can not afford an immediate recovery. Bush talks about standing by "as long as it takes to get the job done" instead of "getting it done."

Well, here's one more thing that Bush can't imagine - The intensity of the swing against his party that will be registered at the polls in November.

When is a Child Not a Fetus? More on Bush's Failure to Care for the Born Once

While the Bush administration tries to stake out some moral high ground by prohibiting the use of stem cells for scientific research, the intellectual oddity is that the Administration has also argued, in at least two cases, that the living, breathing progeny of an in vitro fertilization are not children.

When Robert Netting was diagnosed with cancer, before undergoing chemotherapy, he made a sperm deposit at his local fertility clinic. The spermatozoa were frozen for future use.

One month after Mr. Netting passed away, his wife underwent in vitro fertilization using her eggs and his frozen sperm. Nine months later, ten months after Mr. Netting's death, Rhonda Gillett-Netting gave birth to twins.

Here's the interesting thing.

The United States Department of Justice, on behalf of the United States Social Security System, argued that because the twins had been born more than nine months after Mr. Netting's death, they were not "children" for the purpose of receiving his social security benefits. Gillett-Netting v Barnhart, 371 F.3d 593 (9th Cir. 2004)

In other words, the Bush administration cared more for the twins welfare when they were embryos, than it did after they were fully born, living, breathing human beings.

To say the two positions are morally unreconcilable is an understatement.

This is not the only time the U.S has taken this position. The Justice Department advanced a similar argument to reject a social security claim in 2001. Woodward v. Commissioner of Social Service, 760 N.E.2d 257 (S.Ct. Mass. 2002). The facts in this case are almost identical to those in Gillett. Here, the husband was diagnosed with leukemia and the wife was fertilized with his frozen sperm about 15 months after he passed away. The "couple's" twins were born two years after Mr. Woodward had passed away.

I have little doubt that there are similar cases working their way through the administrative tribunals and courts even as I write this. The issue affects more than cancer patients. Young soldiers, leaving for Iraq, often sign a will and freeze their sperm against the unfortunate event they do not return. If the Administration refuses to pay Social Security benefits, is it any more likely it will pay army benefits to those children of non-returning soldiers?

Far be it from me to expect consistency from the Bush Administration, but I would expect, at a minimum, that if a few mere cells are a child when they are still nothing more than a potential growing in someone's belly, those same cells ought to be treated the same or better once they are born.

While the Bush Administration Whistles

This from today's NY Times:

EL FASHER, Sudan, Aug. 27 — The Sudanese government has charged Paul Salopek, a foreign correspondent for The Chicago Tribune and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, with espionage and entering the country illegally. Mr. Salopek crossed the border from Chad into the troubled region of Darfur without a visa about three weeks ago.

Mr. Salopek, who was on leave from The Tribune and on assignment for National Geographic magazine, was captured Aug. 6 by a militant group allied with the government and handed over to the Sudanese Army, said one of his lawyers, Omar el Faroug Hassan.

He was held without outside contact until 10 days ago, when the United States Embassy in Khartoum was notified of his detention and he was allowed access to a lawyer.

He is the third Westerner detained and charged after crossing the border from Chad this month.

* * * *
Mr. Salopek was traveling in Chad to report for an article about the culture, history and politics of the Sahel region, a vast, arid stretch of earth that spans the continent from east to west.
His trial was to begin on Saturday, but the judge granted his lawyers’ request for a delay of two weeks to prepare his defense. Two Chadian men traveling with him, Suleiman Abakar Moussa, an interpreter, and Idriss Abdulraham Anu, a driver, face the same charges.

Journalist Faces Charges Over Entering Darfur Region, NY Times, August 28,2006.

Just think, if Bush had not started and bungled a pointless, endless war in Iraq, we might have stopped a genocide in Sudan, and reporters might now be free to travel in Darfur.

Might be a good time to stop by and make a donation to PEN

More Resources on Sudan

At this hour, the world is witnessing terrible suffering and horrible crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan, crimes my government has concluded are genocide.

U.S. President George W. Bush, before the General Assembly of the United Nations, (September 21, 2004)

Over 50,000 people were killed in Darfur, Western Sudan between February 2003 and September 2004. More than one million people have been driven from their homes and 200,000 have sought refuge in neighboring Chad, many of them beyond the reach of humanitarian agencies. The barbarity and suffering of this civil war continues to this day.

The international community needs to increase pressure on the Sudanese government to disarm the Janjawid militia immediately. There have been too many delays.

Where to Learn More

These are just a few examples of the many places to learn about Darfur over the Internet. To find many others do a Google search for “Darfur”, “Sudan” or “Human Rights”.

U.S. Dept. of State, Colin Powell on Darfur, August 5, 2004

U.S. Dept. of State, Colin Powell Reports Sudan Responsible for Genocide in Darfur, Sept. 9, 2004

Amnesty International

Resolution 1556 (2004), Adopted by the Security Council of the United Nations, at its 5015th meeting, on 30 July 2004 (African Union website)

WHO: Maps for Sudan Humanitarian Crisis

Dying In Darfur, By Samantha Power, The New Yorker, August 30, 2004

Human Rights Watch

U.N. Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to paragraphs 6 and 13 to 16 of Security Council resolution 1556 (August 30, 2004)

Take Action

Write to Your Local Newspaper: Or contact your local radio and TV stations, and ask them for more news on Darfur! The Integrated Regional Information Networks, has a CD-Rom available about Darfur: Peace under Fire: Sudan’s Darfur Crisis. This is for use in advocacy and has links and reports and articles. Contact irin@ocha.unon.org for a copy.

Write to the Members of the U.N. Security Council: Urge them to take action on Darfur to reverse ethnic cleansing and to open the region to humanitarian access. Ask the Security Council to do the following:

• Ask the African Union, under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, to increase the number of troops on the ground in Darfur and to expand its mandate to include protection of civilians;
• Fully support the African Union protective military and police mission;
• Impose an arms embargo against the Sudanese government, with a mechanism for monitoring and enforcement; and
• establish an international commission of inquiry to collect evidence of the atrocities committed in Darfur; such a commission was described in the report of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights of May 7, 2004.

The current members of the Security Council are: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Brazil, Chile, China, France, Germany, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Russian Federation, Spain, United Kingdom, United States.

Contact information for the U.N. Mission of these countries is available at: http://www.un.org/Overview/missions.htm.

Write to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan: Ask him to take the lead on advocacy for Darfur in the international forum, and to seek a broad international coalition of countries concerned about these massive human rights abuses and imminent famine. Ask him to visit Darfur and speak out regularly on the need to take international action to prevent a tragedy in Darfur. You may contact him at: inquiries@un.org

Write to the Sudanese Government: Ask the Sudanese government to do the following:

• Disarm and disband the government-sponsored and -supplied militia forces/janjaweed active in Darfur;
• Withdraw those militia forces/janjaweed from the parts of Darfur they have occupied as a military force from 2003 to the present;
• Investigate and prosecute those government forces and allied militias and government officials responsible for the Darfur campaign (2003-present);
• Provide full and expedited humanitarian access to the internally displaced (in displaced areas and on return to their home areas), and to those returning from Chad;
• Provide full and expedited access for the international human rights monitoring mission; and
• Comply immediately with all the terms of the ceasefire agreement of April 8, 2004.

Letters to the Sudanese government should be addressed to the following individuals:

President Omar El Bashir
Mr Ali Osman Mohamed Taha,
First Vice-President
People's Palace
PO Box 281
Khartoum, Sudan
Fax: 00-249-11-771025

[Salutation: Your Excellency]

Mr Ali Mohamed Osman Yassin
Minister of Justice and Attorney General Ministry of Justice
Khartoum, Sudan
Fax: 00-249-11-770883
[Salutation: Dear Minister]

Mr Mustafa Osman Ismail
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
PO Box 873
Khartoum, Sudan
Fax: 00-249-11-779383
[Salutation: Dear Minister]

Mr Alzawahi Ibrahim Malik
Minister of Information
Ministry of Information and Communications
PO Box 291
Khartoum, Sudan
Fax: 00-249-11-780146
[Salutation: Dear Minister]

Please send copies of your letters to:

His Excellency Khadir H. Ahmed
Embassy of the Republic of the Sudan
2210 Mass Ave N.W.
Washington D.C. 20008
Fax: 202-667-2406

Contact Your Elected Representatives: Write and call your representatives in Congress and the State Department, asking them to support U.S. and international efforts to reverse ethnic cleansing and prevent famine in Darfur. Ask President Bush, Congress, and the State Department to do the following

• Ask President Bush to speak out on Darfur; when he denounced the abuses on April 7, the government quickly entered into a ceasefire agreement.
• Support a Chapter VII resolution in the U.N. Security Council that will reverse ethnic cleansing, protect civilians, permit the voluntary return of refugees and displaced persons to their homes in safety and dignity, and insure full humanitarian access;
• Support the deployment of U.N. human rights monitoring team to Sudan;
• Demand accountability for human rights abuses and crimes against humanity in Sudan: ask the U.S. to collect evidence for future trials against individuals implicated in war crimes and human rights abuses.

You may find the contact information for your Representative or Senator at: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/.

You may also contact the State Department by writing to the acting head of African affairs at the State Department, Charles Snyder, at afpastaff@state.gov, or the U.S. mission to the United Nations at usa@un.int.

You may write to President George W. Bush at the White House, Washington, D.C. or email: president@whitehouse.gov

Donate to Humanitarian Agencies: A number of nongovernmental humanitarian agencies are providing help to Sudanese refugees in Chad and to Darfurians inside Sudan. Contact the following agencies for more information on their work in Chad and Darfur:

CARE
151 Ellis Street NE
Atlanta, GA 30303-2440
United States
Phone: 1-800-521-CARE ext. 999

Doctors Without Borders USA
P.O. Box 1856
Merrifield, VA 22116-8056
New York Office Phone: 1-888-392-0392

International Committee of the Red Cross
19 avenue de la Paix
1202 Geneva, Switzerland

International Rescue Committee
122 East 42nd Street
New York, NY 10168
United States
Phone: 212-551-3000

Save the Children-US
Attn: Donor Services
54 Wilton Road
Westport, CT 06880
Phone: 1-800-728-3843

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
c/o USA for UNHCR
1775 K Street, NW Suite 290
Washington, DC 20006
United States
Phone: 1-800-770-1100

UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund)
c/o U.S. Fund for UNICEF
333 East 38th Street
New York, NY 10016
United States

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Some portions of this post are copyright 2004, Human Rights Watch, 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor,New York, NY 10118-3299 USA, http://www.hrw.org/

What if 9/11 Happened Once a Month?

How would you feel? What would you do? What would you want the world to do?

That is what is happening in Darfur in Western Sudan

At this hour, the world is witnessing terrible suffering and horrible crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan, crimes my government has concluded are genocide.

From a speech by U.S. President George W. Bush, before the General Assembly of the United Nations, (September 21, 2004)

Between February 2003 and September 2004, more than 50,000 innocent civilians were arbitrarily and brutally slaughtered at the hands of the government supported Janjaweed militias. It has continued relentlessly and continues to this day.

The violence and atrocities committed against civilians, including killings, rape and the destruction of hundreds of villages, have been documented in gruesome detail. While the current conflict started with an armed rebellion against the Government of the Sudan in February 2003, most of the targeted violence resulted from a scorched-earth policy adopted by armed militias, and resulted in the forced displacement of more than 1.3 million people within Darfur and across the border to Chad

U.N. Security Counsel, S/2004/703, Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to paragraphs 6 and 13 to 16 of Security Council resolution 1556, at 13-14 (August 30, 2004). “Ethnic cleansing” of the Fur, Zaghawa, Masalit and other black African tribes continues even as you read this.

U.S. Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell has publicly testified that the situation in Darfur amounts to genocide. Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Washington, D.C., September 9, 2004, available at http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/36042.htm last viewed September 24, 2004

What Can You Do?
If everyone did a little, then a lot would be done. The people in Darfur need you to care. Learn about this tragedy. Write to President Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Kofi Annan and support their efforts. Write your congressional representatives and urge them to support the President’s efforts to halt the genocide. Write to the Sudanese government: protest its support for the Janjaweed and urge them to do more to alleviate this crisis.

Learn More
Sudan: The Passion of the Present. This web blog contains dozens, if not hundreds of links to reports by governments and NGO’s, news stories, human rights organizations, multimedia resources and much, much more.http://www.passionofthepresent.org/

Who wants to Burn the Flag? Republicans. That's who.

This little factoid comes from the First Amendment Center. When presented with a First Amendment challenge to flag desecration law, the majority of Supreme Court justices voting to find the law unconstitutional have been Republicans, not Democrats. This is how the figures break down:

Since 1907, the U.S. Supreme Court had decided seven different flag-desecration cases, writing opinions in six of them and sustaining the constitutional challenges in five of those six; and by a 4-4 vote in Radich v. New York (1971), the Court upheld the lower court’s denial of the First Amendment claim. In another case, the Supreme Court summarily affirmed a lower court decision that voided a New York law for vagueness and overbreadth.

Of the 54 votes cast in which the Supreme Court rendered opinions, 28 justices voted to sustain a constitutional rights claim while 26 voted to deny it. When the due-process challenges in [two] cases are excluded, a clear majority of the justices voted to sustain a First Amendment claim: 21 justices voting to sustain such a claim, with 15 voting to deny it. The Supreme Court has never rendered a judgment denying a First Amendment challenge to a flag-desecration law.

Interestingly, no chief justice of the United States has ever voted to sustain a constitutional challenge to a flag-desecration law: Melville Fuller, Earl Warren, Warren Burger and William Rehnquist all voted to deny either First Amendment or due-process claims.

VOTING RECORD OF REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRATIC NOMINEES

Historically and in more recent times, the majority of justices voting to sustain constitutional challenges to a flag-desecration law were nominated to the Supreme Court by Republican presidents.

The justices voting to deny the due-process challenge in the 1907 Halter case were: John M. Harlan I nominated by Republican President Hayes; William Day, Oliver Wendell Holmes and William Moody by Republican President Theodore Roosevelt; Edward White by Republican President Taft; Joseph McKenna by Republican President McKinley; and David Brewer and Chief Justice Melville Fuller nominated by Democratic President Cleveland. Justice Rufus Peckham, nominated by Cleveland, voted to sustain a due-process challenge to the flag-desecration law.

Likewise, in more modern times the majority of justices voting to sustain a First Amendment challenge to a flag-desecration law were nominated to the Supreme Court by Republican presidents: John M. Harlan II, Potter Stewart and William Brennan were nominated by Eisenhower; Harry Blackmun and Lewis Powell by Nixon; and Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy by Reagan. Those voting to sustain such a claim and nominated by Democratic presidents were William O. Douglas by Franklin D. Roosevelt; Thurgood Marshall by Johnson; and Byron White by Kennedy.

The Republican-nominated justices voting to deny a First Amendment claim were: Earl Warren, nominated by Eisenhower; Warren Burger and Blackmun by Nixon; and William Rehnquist by Nixon as an associate justice and by Reagan as chief justice; John Paul Stevens by Ford; and Sandra Day O’Connor by Reagan. The Democratic-nominated justices voting to deny a First Amendment claim were: Hugo Black by Franklin D. Roosevelt; Byron White by Kennedy; and Abe Fortas by Johnson.

JUSTICES WHO CHANGED THEIR VOTES
Justice White first voted to sustain a due-process challenge to a flag-desecration law in Smith v. Goguen but thereafter voted to deny a First Amendment claim in four other cases. By contrast, Justice Blackmun first voted to deny a due-process claim in Smith v. Goguen but then voted to sustain a First Amendment claim in three other cases. The Supreme Court’s conference notes in Street v. New York indicate that Justice Abe Fortas had originally voted to sustain the First Amendment challenge but thereafter changed his vote, noting that he was losing his “enthusiasm for symbolic speech.” (The Supreme Court in Conference: 1940-1985, Del Dickson editor (Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 349)

FLAG-DESECRATION CASES REMANDED
Following its 1974 decisions, the Supreme Court remanded two cases back to the states to be considered in light of Spence. Chief Justice Burger and Justices Rehnquist, Blackmun and White dissented from that remand order. The free-speech claims in those cases were sustained on remand in Review was subsequently denied [by the Supreme Court in 1975].

Ronald K.L. Collins, Supreme Court Justices’ Voting in Flag-Desecration Cases, included as section 2 in Robert Corn-Revere, Implementing a Flag-Desecration Amendment to the U.S. Constitution An end to the controversy …or a new beginning?, 6 First Reports, no. 1 at 51-53 (July 2005) (footnotes and some citations omitted).

What today's Internet Consumer Want's Most

According to the New York Times: "Spam messages promoting pornography are 280 times as effective in getting recipients to click on them as messages advertising pharmacy drugs, which are the next most effective type of spam." The click-through rate for pornography related spam is 5.6% compared to the 0.02% rate for pharmeceutical related spam. Coming in third on the list was spam offers for Rolex watches. Seems Somebody Is Clicking on That Spam, NY Times, July 3, 2006.

So What Does Porn Have to Do with Rape?

My old friend Glenn Reynolds recently caught this interesting item from the Washington Post:

The number of rapes per capita in the United States has plunged by more than 85 percent since the 1970s, and reported rape fell last year even while other violent offenses increased, according to federal crime data.

This seemingly stunning reduction in sexual violence has been so consistent over the past two decades that some experts say they have started to believe it is accurate, even if they cannot fully explain why it is occurring.

Hmm. What's different since 1970? Lots of things, of course, though bared midriffs and short-shorts are back. But probably the most relevant difference is porn. In 1970, some people argued that porn caused rape. Since 1970, though, porn has exploded. In 1970 you had to work pretty hard to find porn. Now you have to work nearly as hard to avoid it.

But rape has gone down 85%. So much for the notion that pornography causes rape — or, at least, if it did have much effect in that direction, it would be hard to explain how rape rates could have declined so dramatically while porn expanded so explosively.

So while I won't go so far as to argue that porn actually prevents rape, it seems clear that the claims of some people — including a commission headed by former Attorney General Ed Meese back in the 1980s — that pornography promotes rape are, at best, overstated. I suspect, though, that anti-pornography crusaders are unlikely to heed this lesson.

The referenced article, Statistics Show Drop In U.S. Rape Cases, Washington Post, June 19, 2006; Page A01, provided this graphic illustration:

While there are no concrete studies that I am aware of, the numbers seem to suggest (as does my friend Messr. Reynolds), that if, as stated by the Meese Commission among others, there is a direct correlation between the availability of porn and the level of sexual violence against women, that the increasing availabily of porn is the cause of a dramatic decrease in sexual violence. Perhaps, as some have argued, porn really does act as an outlet and release for those who might otherwise be prone to violence if they had no access to it.

Of course, it's a hypothesis in want of an empirical study, and who is going to fund such a study in today's repressive climate. Maybe the boys at Freakonomics might show an interest?

The Wages of Terror?

Here's a tasty little morsel from InformationLiberation: The News You Are Not Supposed to Know, as the article candidly admits, this might just be idle speculation - but - what if it were true? I certainly would not put this past some people in Washington:

Did Insiders Milk Terror Plot For Criminal Trading?
Indian newspaper highlights suspicious patterns, 9/11 and 7/7 were also preceded by insider trading
Paul Joseph Watson

Did criminal insider speculators with informants inside the British intelligence apparatus take advantage of their foreknowledge of the announcement of a foiled terror plot to place put options on airline stocks, reaping the benefits of their subsequent fall?

So says the India Daily, claiming strange patterns in airline stocks preceded the announcement - and that carefully placed money was waiting on the sidelines to jump in and buy the stocks as cheaper prices before they rose again in subsequent trading.

Airline stocks dropped as much as 28 per cent during morning trading following the announcement of the alleged liquid bomb plot.

Though the report can be quantified as nothing more than speculation at this point, it mirrors murmurs we've been receiving from stock brokers who also claim potential foul play.

If true it would also dovetail with similar activity prior to the 9/11 attacks and the 7/7 bombings in London.

9/11 was preceded by suspicious put options in large quantities placed on American and United Airlines which betrayed advance knowledge of the attack. The investigation as to who was responsible for authorizing the transactions led directly back to former CIA director Buzzy Krongard.

In the case of the London bombings, the pound fell 6 per cent against the dollar for no apparent reason in the 10 days before the attack.

"Currencies of established countries simply do not fall that fast based upon any kind of economic or financial analysis," said a 35 year veteran economist. "Somebody – somewhere – knew something. Or maybe I should say 'somebodies.'"

Since even the official investigation concluded that the alleged suicide bombers had no outside links and were 'lone wolf' operatives, though this is tempered by the fact that the ringleader Khan was an MI5 informant, then one can only assume that elements within the British government profited from their foreknowledge of the attack.

Indications are that the same criminals took advantage of the fact that the decision and timing to announce the alleged foiled plot to blow up transatlantic airliners was carefully chosen at least a week in advance according to published reports. This would have provided the insider traders with ample time to arrange the transactions.

It's got a tranny, but is it cross-dressing?

I just keep having more questions about the Hummer.

Why does anyone want to own an off-road vehicle that they are never going to drive off-road?

Why does anyone want to own a vehicle that was designed to keep soldiers safe in a battlefield - and doesn't.

But moreI have questions about their commercials. Their is just no cieling to the level of hyperbole to which Hummer will leap.

But I do like the latest.

On the one hand, there's the soccer mom - in a take on the old comic book back page sand kicking bully ads - waiting in line for her child to use the playground slide. Another soccer mom pushes her child to the front of the line. The 98 pound weakling Mom mincingly points out that her child was first and the sand-kicking bully mom hits her between the eyes with "yeah, well, we're next now."

But there is hope, oh yes. Soccer Mom doesn't send a dime to Charles Atlas. But she does see a "Hummer- Like Nothing Else" advertisement on a passing bus.

Next scene, Soccer Mom has bought herself a Hummer, to the tune "this house is a rockin" and to the catchy catch catchphrase "Hummer: Get Your Girl On" The only thing left to do is drive that sucker into the playground and show down Mom no. 2.

Okay, by itself, it's merely amusing. But then there's this one:

Good looking guy standing in line at the super-market check-out counter. She's ringing up his healthy purchase of veggies, tofu and other fruits of the earth. But wait - there is trouble in paradise. Our wholesome friend notices behind him, the next guy in line has bought half a steer, including a rack of ribs the size of a washer dryer/combo. Ohhhh the inferiority this inspires. Our young friend, torn between his lust for meat, his belief in eating healthy, and his envy of carnovores everywhere. Oh what could possibly resolve this emotional perfect storm? Well will wonders never cease, he buys a Hummer - estimated 20 mpg on the highway. The catchy tag-line? "Hummer: Restore the Balance"

Leaving aside such important questions as whether the purchase of a gas guzzling monster truck will somehow make a vegetarian feel better about not eating meat and just who the heck is Hummer's demographic. Here's what I really want to know:

Okay, I get it. Any guy's going to feel better after getting a Hummer. But how does a Hummer make a woman feel more like a "real woman"? For that matter, how can it make a woman feel more like a "real woman" at the same time make a man feel more like a "real man"?

If it has anything to do with the transmission do I need some special kind of tranny fluid?.

How does the Hummer know the difference? What if the Hummer makes a mistake? What if I buy a Hummer because I'm a male vegan, and it turns me into a self-empowered soccer mom?
What if I'm a stressed-out soccer-mom and it turns me into a rough-riding, beer guzzling, rifle-toting good'o boy?

I

What's to Understand?

Yesterday, United States District Court Judge Anna Digs Taylor held that the United States Constitution prohibits the Bush administration from spying on its citizens accept in accordance with the principles of law that have kept this Country strong for over 200 years.

American Civil Liberties Union v. National Security Administration, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57338 (E.D. Mich. August 17, 2006)

Commenting on that decision today, the President said:

“I would say that those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live,” Mr. Bush said in a question-answer session at Camp David, Md.

In response, I would say that those, such as President Bush, who do not herald this decision, do not understand the decision, and do not understand the Constitution and the importance of preserving its values.

The first half of the decision deals with procedural issues of standing and privilege which are of more interest to scholars than the general public. The second half of the decision, beginning at page 24, provides a useful history of electronic surveillance in the U.S. Courts:

Since the [Supreme] Court's 1967 decision of Katz v. United States, it has been understood that the search and seizure of private telephone conversations without physical trespass required prior judicial sanction, pursuant to the Fourth Amendment. Justice Stewart there wrote for the Court that searches conducted without prior approval by a judge or magistrate were per se unreasonable, under the Fourth Amendment.

Congress then, in 1968, enacted Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act governing all wire and electronic interceptions in the fight against certain listed major crimes. . . . The statute also stated content requirements for warrants and applications under oath therefor made, including time, name of the target, place to be searched and proposed duration of that search, and provided that upon showing of an emergency situation, a post-interception warrant could be obtained within forty-eight hours.

In 1972 the [Supreme] Court . . . held that, for lawful electronic surveillance even in domestic security matters, the Fourth Amendment requires a prior warrant.

In 1976 the Congressional "Church Committee" [the United States Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities] disclosed that every President since 1946 had engaged in warrantless wiretaps in the name of national security, and that there had been numerous political abuses, and in 1978 Congress enacted the FISA.

Title III . . . was later amended to state that "the FISA of 1978 shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance of foreign intelligence communications may be conducted."

The FISA . . . requires a prior warrant for any domestic international interception of [a United States Person's] communications. For various exigencies, exceptions are made. That is, the government is granted fifteen days from Congressional Declaration of War within which it may conduct intercepts before application for an order. It is also granted one year, on certification by the Attorney General, and seventy-two hours for other defined exigencies. ["case law has long permitted law enforcement action to proceed in cases in which the lives of officers or others are threatened in cases of "hot pursuit", border searches, school locker searches, or where emergency situations exist."]

Those delay provisions clearly reflect the Congressional effort to balance executive needs against the privacy rights of United States persons, as recommended by Justice Powell in the Keith case when he stated that:

Different standards may be compatible with the Fourth Amendment if they are reasonable both in relation to the legitimate need of Government for intelligence information and the protected rights of our citizens.

* * * *

A FISA judicial warrant, moreover, requires a finding of probable cause to believe that the target was either a foreign power or agent thereof, not that a crime had been or would be committed, as Title III's more stringent standard required. Finally, a special FISA court was required to be appointed, of federal judges designated by the Chief Justice. They were required to hear, ex parte, all applications and make all orders.

The FISA was essentially enacted to create a secure framework by which the Executive branch may conduct legitimate electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence while meeting our national commitment to the Fourth Amendment. It is fully described in United States v. Falvey, where the court held that FISA did not intrude upon the President's undisputed right to conduct foreign affairs, but protected citizens and resident aliens within this country.

The [FISA] Act was subsequently found to meet Fourth Amendment requirements constituting a reasonable balance between Governmental needs and the protected rights of our citizens.

ACLU v. NSC, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57338, at *45-52 (footnotes and citations omitted) (emphasis added).

As Judge Taylor noted, it was against this background that the Bush Administration instituted the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

In other words, the law was as clear as it could be, and that any sophistry and self-serving denial aside, the Bush administration knew that it was breaking the law when it decided to go ahead with this program.

And, just as an aside, it's no good for them to say that it wasn't our fault, the lawyers said we could. If I get a crooked lawyer to give me a legal opinion that said I can kill my wife. That is not going to be a defense if I go out and do it. It just might make my lawyer an accessory. Similarly, just because Arturo Gonzalez gives President the advice he wants to hear, does not mean that the President is not liable for breaking the law.

Judge Taylor next considers the history, meaning and importance of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment which provides:

The right the of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

U.S. CONST. Amend. IV.

Judge Taylor quotes a number of opinions of Supreme Court justices highlighting the Founding Fathers' reasons for including the Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights. From an historical perspective, Justice Douglas wrote:

For it was such excesses as the use of general warrants and the writs of assistance that led to the ratification of the Fourth Amendment. In Entick v. Carrington, decided in 1765, one finds a striking parallel to the executive warrants utilized here. The Secretary of State had issued general executive warrants to his messengers authorizing them to roam about and to seize libelous material and libellants of the sovereign. . . . Lord Camden wrote that if such sweeping tactics were validated, then the secret cabinets and bureaus of every subject in this kingdom will be thrown open to the search and inspection of a messenger, whenever the secretary of state shall think fit to charge, or even to suspect, a person to be the author, printer, or publisher of a seditious libel.' In a related and similar proceeding, Huckle v. Money, the same judge [held that] '(t)o enter a man's house by virtue of a nameless warrant, in order to procure evidence, is worse than the Spanish Inquisition . . .' [t]he tyrannical invasions described and assailed in Entick, Huckle, and Wilkes, practices which also were endured by the colonists, have been recognized as the primary abuses which ensured the Warrant Clause a prominent place in our Bill of Rights.

Justice Powell, also considered these cases:

Over two centuries ago, Lord Mansfield held that common-law principles prohibited warrants that ordered the arrest of unnamed individuals who the officer might conclude were guilty of seditious libel. 'It is not fit,' said Mansfield, 'that the receiving or judging of the information should be left to the discretion of the officer. The magistrate ought to judge; and should give certain directions to the officer.'

Lord Mansfield's formulation touches the very heart of the Fourth Amendment directive: that, where practical, a governmental search and seizure should represent both the efforts of the officer to gather evidence of wrongful acts and the judgment of the magistrate that the collected evidence is sufficient to justify invasion of a citizen's private premises or conversation. Inherent in the concept of a warrant is its issuance by a 'neutral and detached magistrate.' The further requirement of 'probable cause' instructs the magistrate that baseless searches shall not proceed.

Justice Powell has also written:

The Fourth Amendment does not contemplate the executive officers of Government as neutral and disinterested magistrates. Their duty and responsibility are to enforce the laws, to investigate, and to prosecute. But those charged with this investigative and prosecutorial duty should not be the sole judges of when to utilize constitutionally sensitive means in pursuing their tasks. The historical judgment, which the Fourth Amendment accepts, is that unreviewed executive discretion may yield too readily to pressures to obtain incriminating evidence and overlook potential invasions of privacy and protected speech.

And Justice Stewart has written, in terms little subject to interpretation:

'Over and again this Court has emphasized that the mandate of the (Fourth) Amendment requires adherence to judicial processes,' (citation omitted) and that searches conducted outside the judicial process, without prior approval by judge or magistrate, are per se unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment - subject only to a few specifically established and well-delineated exceptions.

After considering the historical meaning and purposes of the Fourth Amendment, Judge Taylor concluded:

The Fourth Amendment, accordingly, was adopted to assure that Executive abuses of the power to search would not continue in our new nation.

Accordingly, the Fourth Amendment, about which much has been written, in its few words requires reasonableness in all searches. It also requires prior warrants for any reasonable search, based upon prior-existing probable cause, as well as particularity as to persons, places, and things, and the interposition of a neutral magistrate between Executive branch enforcement officers and citizens.

In enacting FISA, Congress made numerous concessions to stated executive needs. They include delaying the applications for warrants until after surveillance has begun for several types of exigencies, reducing the probable cause requirement to a less stringent standard, provision of a single court of judicial experts, and extension of the duration of approved wiretaps from thirty days (under Title III) to a ninety day term.

All of the above Congressional concessions to Executive need and to the exigencies of our present situation as a people, however, have been futile. The wiretapping program here in litigation has undisputedly been continued for at least five years, it has undisputedly been implemented without regard to FISA and of course the more stringent standards of Title III, and obviously in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

The President of the United States is himself created by that same Constitution.

ACLU v. NSA, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57338, at *57-58.

Judge Taylor also considered the Constitutionality of the NSA eavesdropping program under the First Amendment and found it wanting there as well. The First Amendment provides:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

U.S. CONST. Amend. I.

As the Supreme Court has noted:

This Amendment, the very first which the American people required to be made to the new Constitution, was adopted, as was the Fourth, with Entick v. Carrington, and the actions of the star chamber in mind. . . . Historically the struggle for freedom of speech and press in England was bound up with the issue of the scope of the search and seizure. . . . This history was, of course, part of the intellectual matrix within which our own constitutional fabric was shaped. The Bill of Rights was fashioned against the background of knowledge that unrestricted power of search and seizure could also be an instrument for stifling liberty of expression.

This basic liberty right, and the need to balance it against executive claims of need were weighed by Congress and its determinations were included in FISA, which provides that:

no United States person may be considered . . . an agent of a foreign power solely upon the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

50 U.S.C. § 1805(a)(3)(A). As Supreme Court Justice Powell wrote:

National security cases, moreover, often reflect a convergence of First and Fourth Amendment values not present in cases of 'ordinary' crime. Though the investigative duty of the executive may be stronger in such cases, so also is there greater jeopardy to constitutionally protected speech. 'Historically the struggle for freedom of speech and press in England was bound up with the issue of the scope of the search and seizure power'. History abundantly documents the tendency of Government--however benevolent and benign its motives--to view with suspicion those who most fervently dispute its policies. Fourth Amendment protections become the more necessary when the targets of official surveillance may be those suspected of unorthodoxy in their political beliefs

Thus the Court held that the NSA eavesdropping program non only violated the terms of FISA, but that it also violated the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution.

One thing the foregoing exerpts from the opinion demonstrates. There is no evidence that Judge Taylor engaged in any "interpretation" of the Constitution. The terms of the First and Fourth Amendments are clear. The Supreme Court precedents are clear. The intentions of the Founding Fathers are clear. Judge Taylor did exactly what President Bush continually complains that liberal judges don't do: she applied the clear law without interpretation.

The President says:

“I would say that those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live.”

I say the President is looking for a Judge who will ignore the plain text of the Constitution and interpret in such a way as to permit him to break the law whenever he decides it is necessary, without the benefit of any oversight. Judge Taylor determined that under the Constitutional Separation of Powers doctrine, the President, pursuant to the Constitution and his oath of office, is no more permitted to break the law than any other U.S. Citizen.

The point of all this is that in 1776, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Lincoln, James Madison, and others, to quote President Lincoln "brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." One of their most basic complaints was the King's execution of warrantless searches and seizure. The power asserted here by President Bush, the power to be judge, jury, prosecutor and executioner all in one, has always been rejected as the most basic privilege of tyranny.

Every democracy that has given way to tyranny, has done so at the hands of popular leaders, who, when confronted with crises, were granted ever-expanding powers by their constituents. Each new assault we allow the President (or Mayor Blumberg) to make on our basic Constitutional liberties, makes the next one easier. Forgive me for relying on the domino theory here, but the historical evidence is replete that people are always safer when certain basic protections are considered absolute.

If George Bush, doesn't understand that much, he does not understand the Constitution. If he doesn't understand that much, how can he hope to spread democracy abroad? If he doesn't understand that much, he has learned nothing in his five years of fighting terrorism.

Israel and Hamas: Now More than Ever

A fascinating op ed piece from today's NY Times suggests that now might be a good time for Israel and Hamas to reach agreement on a two state solution to the palestinian problem. Suggesting further, that resolution is necessary to prevent further radicalization of the muslim world:

Is Hamas Ready to Deal?, Scott Atran, NY Times, August 17, 2006

WHATEVER the endgame between Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas, one thing is certain: Israel’s hopes of ensuring its security by walling itself off from resentful neighbors are dead. One lesson from Israel’s assault on Lebanon and its military operation in Gaza is that the missiles blow back.

We can hope that multinational cooperation will help to secure Israel’s border with Lebanon. But what about the Palestinian issue, which has been seemingly pushed to the back burner by the war in Lebanon?

A bold gesture now by Israel would surprise its adversaries, convey strength, and even catch domestic political opposition off guard. And as strange as it may seem, were the United States able to help Israel help Hamas, it might turn the rising tide of global Muslim resentment.

Recent discussions I’ve had with Hamas leaders and their supporters around the globe indicate that Israel might just find a reasonable and influential bargaining partner.

Hamas’s top elected official, Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, now accepts that to stop his people’s suffering, his government must forsake its all-or-nothing call for Israel’s destruction. “We have no problem with a sovereign Palestinian state over all our lands within the 1967 borders, living in calm,” Mr. Haniya told me in his Gaza City office in late June, shortly before an Israeli missile destroyed it. “But we need the West as a partner to help us through.”

Mr. Haniya’s government had just agreed to a historic compromise with Fatah and its leader, President Mahmoud Abbas, forming a national coalition that implicitly accepts the coexistence alongside Israel. But this breakthrough was quickly overshadowed by Israel’s offensive into Gaza in retaliation for the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, by Palestinian militants, including members of Hamas’s military wing.

Many Israelis consider the rescue of a soldier a “sacred value,” worth almost any cost, including military action leading to other Israeli soldiers dying. But the Israeli offensive also had a larger strategic goal: to destroy whatever potential the Hamas government had to prevent Israel from unilaterally redrawing its boundaries to include some West Bank settlements. Doing so was something that Israel had intended as soon as it could convince the United States that with Hamas having defeated Fatah at the polls, there was no legitimate Palestinian partner to negotiate with.

Khaled Meshal, the Damascus-based head of the Hamas politburo, refused to release Corporal Shalit unless Israel freed hundreds of prisoners. While it is true that Israel has shown willingness to release hundreds of Palestinian detainees in return for a single Israeli in the past, Mr. Meshal’s stand might have been part of a larger political game.

As a senior adviser to President Abbas told me of Mr. Meshal: “He has tried to undermine the Haniya government’s authority by presenting himself as Hamas’s true decision maker, and he will not be remembered as the person who legitimized Israel and sacrificed sacred land.”

Prime Minster Haniya and many of Hamas’s other Sunni leaders are known to be uncomfortable with the loose coalition that Mr. Meshal has been forging with Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. Hasan Yusuf, a Hamas official held in Israel’s Ketziot prison, doesn’t think President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran’s declaration that the main solution to the Middle East crisis is for the elimination of the “Zionist regime” is practical or wise. “The outcome in Lebanon doesn’t change our view,” Mr. Yusuf informed me last weekend. “We believe in two states living side by side.”

He also said that “all Hamas factions have agreed to a unilateral cease-fire, including halting Qassam rockets; the movement is ready to go farther if it receives any encouraging responses from Israel and the West.”

But even moderate Hamas figures feel that as long as Israel, the United States and Europe boycott the elected government in Gaza and the West Bank, there is little choice but to accept whatever help comes along.

This is doubly unfortunate. While Mr. Meshal says Islam allows only a long-term truce with Israel, Hamas officials closer to Prime Minister Haniya believe that a formal peace deal is possible, especially if negotiations can begin out of the spotlight and proceed by degrees.

“You can’t expect us to take off all of our clothes at once,” one Hamas leader told me, “or we’ll be naked in the cold, like Arafat in his last years.” This official said that if Hamas moved too fast, it would alienate its base, but if his government continued to be isolated, the base would radicalize. “Either way, you could wind up with a bunch of little Al Qaedas.”

Although Prime Minister Haniya has more popular support, Mr. Meshal controls the militias and the money. If financing — perhaps from moderate Arab states — could be channeled to Mr. Haniya’s government for social services like salaries, fuel, food, building repairs, garbage collection and so forth, then Mr. Meshal’s (mostly Iranian) bankroll would be less of a factor, and popular pressure could help rein in Hamas’s military wing.

Prime Minister Haniya’s position comes down to this: “We need you, as you need us.” For the United States and Europe, the stakes are also high. Mr. Haniya wants Americans and Europeans to recognize that the region has welcomed Hamas’s election to power as a genuine exercise in democracy.

If America were to engage his government, he believes, it would be the West’s best opportunity to reverse its steep decline in the esteem of Arabs and Muslims everywhere. “We need a dialogue of civilizations,” he said, “not a clash of civilizations.”

A survey by the Pew Center’s Global Attitudes Project released in June found that Muslim opinions about the West had worsened drastically over the past year.

This month President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, warned that continued Middle East hostilities involving Israel “will radicalize the Muslim world, even those of us who are moderate today. From there, it will be just one step away to that ultimate nightmare: a clash of civilizations.”

But Khurshid Ahmad, a senator in Pakistan and leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the world’s oldest and most important Islamist movements, recently told me that if Hamas accepted a two-state solution, “with both Palestine and Israel having full economic, political and military sovereignty over their pre-1967 territories, and with Palestinians allowed into Palestine and Jews into Israel, then I would recommend this solution to the entire Muslim community.”

Tangible results, like prisoner exchanges, are important. However, so are symbolic actions. Hamas officials have stressed the importance of Israel’s recognizing their suffering from the original loss of Palestinian land. And survey research of Palestinian refugees and Hamas by my colleagues and I, supported by the National Science Foundation, reliably finds that violent opposition to peace decreases if the adversary is seen to compromise its own moral position, even if the compromise has no material value.

“Israel freeing some of our prisoners will help us to stop others from attacking it,” said the Hamas government spokesman, Ghazi Hamad. “But Israel must apologize for our tragedy in 1948 before we can talk about negotiating over our right of return to historic Palestine.”

As the Pew survey made clear, the Israel-Palestinian issue has become the principal fault line in world conflict. There would be some sad satisfaction if the bloodshed in Gaza and at the Lebanon border served as a starting point for bringing the larger conflict to an end.

Scott Atran is a research scientist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, the University of Michigan and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

And Israel Too

This from a New York Times Editorial concerning Lebanon:

After a month of war, large swaths of the country are in ruins. Hundreds of thousands of people are without homes. Many Lebanese are furiously blaming the United States as well as Israel for their suffering. Whatever anger they may also harbor toward Hezbollah for provoking the war is being more than neutralized by the militia’s swift on-the-scene response and the large piles of cash it is handing out, courtesy of Iran.

Already Falling Behind, August 17, 2006.

The Times' point is that the U.S. and outside world is moving far too slowly to provide relief to the people of southern Lebanon. By the time that the U.S. and other national beaurocracies get around to providing relief aid, Hezbollah will have won the war of hearts and minds through its own relief efforts.

I would add to the NY Times concern only this. The Israeli government ought to also give serious consideration to providing relief aid for rebuilding the homes that were destroyed and the hundreds of thousands rendered homeless over the last 30 days. It would be a extraorinary challenge of good will, it would make good the Israeli promise that their intent was to drive out Hezbollah, not ordinary civilians - and it would put the onus on Hezbollah to assist reconstructing some of the civilian homes destroyed on the Israeli side of the border by Hezbollah rockets.

Oh sure, it's a nice fantasy, but, if it happened, wouldn't that be a good start?

Where Have You Gone Joseph Lieberman, Geez, We Loved You More than You Will Know, Whoa Whoa Whoa

Since Ned Lamont's defeat of Joseph Liberman, the media have been filled with people asking the silliest questions like "are the bloggers to blame" and "was this a one-issue referendum on Iraq."

The answer to both questions is a resounding "NO!. Don't be absurd."

Bloggers, like most orators, preach to the converted. How many people have their opinions radically altered by reading a blog? Not many I bet.

But lets assume that blogs really can be that influential. There were plenty of bloggers who supported Joe Liberman. There were blogs that supported neither.

By blaming bloggers, for Liberman's defeat, the Republicans and the media discount the idea that average people make informed, intelligent decisions. when they go into the voting booth.

Joe Liberman has angered democrats for a host of reasons and only one of them is the war in Iraq. Joe has leaned too far to the right on too many issues. His continuing support for the President has been irresponsible and indefensible in light of the President's attacks on civil liberties, appointment of extremist judges, wasteful taxing and borrowing policies etc. Joe worked hard to make deals with the devil and is now paying the price for ignoring core democratic values.

The case against Joe Liberman was made best in the New York Times endorcement of Ned Lamont.

And if there were any question regarding Joe's support of core democratic values, he has answered it by running a spoiler campaign. He has gone from failing to support the constituency that nominated him to the vice-presidency, to actively opposing it. A good Democrat would have had the grace to congratulate his party's nominee and worked to ensure his election.

This election was not about bloggers and it was not a referendum on Iraq. It was a referendum on Joe.

uh oh, no more liddle piddies. . .

The Bush administration has given various justifications for its misadventures in Iraq. Until now, all but one of them has proven untrue. The UN Inspection process was moving forward. Hussein was increasingly cooperative with the UN Inspectors (to the point of opening up his palaces for inspection). The UN inspection team found no evidence of WMD's. There was no Nigerian yellowcake. There was no link between Hussein and al Qaeda, or the 9/11 bombings or any known terrorist group. Three years into our occupation of Iraq, there is still no evidence of WMD's.

One by one each of these justifications was exposed, leaving the administration, finally, to argue that the reason for the war was to bring democracy to the Mideast. Oddly, after eliminating all of the other justifications as the straw men, red herrings and outright lies they were, I believe that this last justification was the real one all along (see the Ten Downing Street Memo); however, wars of adventure for the sole purpose of bringing about regime change violate international law (think of it like Star Trek's prime directive - non-interference with the internal affairs of another country).

And that's what makes this so sad:

some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive.

“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity.

“Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”

Unfortunately, this little tidbit appeared as the final three paragraphs of a longer article examining the statistics on the increasing violence in Iraq. See Bombs Aimed at G.I.'s in Iraq are Increasing, NY Times, August 16, 2006. This item should be front page news. If senior administration officials are concerned that Prime Minister Maliki's government may not survive, than they ought to be in Congress explaining what course we are on and what our contingency plans are.

Shortly before the war, Tom Friedman was speaking, I believe it was before the National Press Club, about the danger of igniting sectarian strife, between religious, tribal and ethnic groups in Iraq. He suggested that if we went to war we would learn whether Saddaam created Iraq, or whether Iraq created Saddaam. It is looking more and more like the latter.

And if the Bush Administration is considering whether to give up on the fledgling democracy who will save it?

And when George W. Bush announces that we are withdrawing our troops - after having killed 35,000 civilians, laying waste to whole cities, creating tens of thousands (or more) refugees, wasting hundreds of billions of US dollars that we didn't have to spend, and killing more than 2,500 of our own troops - not to mention the number of our own troops and of Iraqi civilians who have lost limbs, lives, organs, etc.

Will he still say it was worth it? Is he still going to blame the liberals? Will he, in even some deep tiny little crevice in his mind even once ask whether he is one of the worst mass murderers of the last 50 years.

Well, Duh. . . .

The New York Times reports:

The number of roadside bombs planted in Iraq rose in July to the highest monthly total of the war, offering more evidence that the anti-American insurgency has continued to strengthen despite the killing of the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Bombs Aimed at G.I.'s in Iraq are Increasing, August 16, 2006. The number of roadside bombs has nearly doubled from 1,454 in January to 2,625 in July.

“The insurgency has gotten worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels,” said a senior Defense Department official who agreed to discuss the issue only on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for attribution. “The insurgency has more public support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people active and in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time.”

This increased competence capability of the insurgency has resulted in devasting losses for the US:

While the number of Americans killed in action per month has declined slightly — to 38 killed in action in July, from 42 in January, in part reflecting improvements in armor and other defenses — the number of Americans wounded has soared, to 518 in July from 287 in January

Further, sectarian clashes "have killed an average of more than 100 Iraqi civilians per day over the past two months. "

In other words, the military situation in Iraq is worse than ever and is steadily growing worse

I guess this means that the June 7, 2006 killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi wasn't a turning point after all?

What a shock.

Meanwhile, the senior officials of the newly existential George Bush administration "reject the idea that Iraq is on the verge of civil war, and state with unwavering confidence that the broad American strategy in Iraq remains on course. "

The Iraq war is on course in about the same way as a barrel heading over Niagra Falls.

"On course" suggests that we are in the position that we projected that we would be in at this time. Either the administration is just plain lying about its projections (past and present) or it needs to stop somewhere and ask directions, because the current course of the Iraq war has very little to do with strewing flowers at the feet of our soldiers.

21 Billion Dollars Can't Be All Wrong

According to Congressman Bart Stupak (D. Mich.) online pornography is a $21 billion industry compared to music downloading which is a paltry $3 billion. Online Pornography and Child Exploitation hearing, June 27, 2006.

Congressman Stupak repeated himself several times: the online adult entertainment industry is seven times the size of online music industry. He appeared chagrinned by these numbers and asked several times whether there was some way to bring those numbers down.

Here's a better question: Why? Why should adult entertainment be blocked at all (leaving aside the issue of what children should or shouldn't be permitted to see).

Think about those numbers for a moment: seven times the size of the online music industry. SEVEN TIMES! I recall a news column some years ago that stated the adult entertainment industry is larger than major league football, baseball, basketball and hockey combined!

What these numbers suggest is that there is a vast silent majority that enjoys pornography.

The problem is that this majority's silence means that this Country's laws concerning pornography are driven almost entirely by the relatively miniscule numbers who are opposed to it in any form.

Congressman Stupak's questions underscore the reality that, as much as Congress might claim to be trying to protect children, the aim is not merely to eliminate kiddie porn and not merely to "protect" children from exploitation, stalkers, etc. - but is really to eliminate porn in its entirety. This is a radical, right-wing, evangelical goal that has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with controlling what we are allowed to see, think, hear and do.

The videotape, the DVD, the CD-ROM and the Internet have done much to mainstream the pornography industry. They have eliminated the filthy adult moviehouses of yore. More importantly, they have allowed tens, or hundreds of millions of people to (more or less) openly share their sexual interests and viewpoints with others and to learn that they are not alone and that they are not abnormal for wanting something other than "sex for procreation only" - for wanting to enjoy sexual activity.

This comfort level has spread to allow "mainstream" media to be more open and expressive as well. Television dramas and cable programming explore a wide range of sexual activities and proclivities from bondage and s&m to anal sex, gangabangs and "furries" (indeed, one of the most popular model SUV's sold today has a name synonomous with "felatio").

My point is: So what's wrong with porn? If the industry is growing and expanding it is because it is meeting a basic need . . . a need that seems to be held by more people than those who need major league sports. Okay, maybe children need to be protected from porn. But that should not be used as an excuse for limiting what adults can see.

And really, the point is, if you are part of that majority, it is time you stood up and said so. Donate to the Free Speech Coalition (or at least subscribe to their on-line newsletter, it's free). Drown out the tiny puritanical minority that controls this debate. You've said it to yourself before: "I'd rather my children see a film of two people having sex, than two people killing each other." Now stand up and do something to show you really mean it.

I don't want to sound paranoid, but . . .

The more I learn about the most recent terror plot, the more the government's response annoys me. Instead of protecting us, the Bush Administration manipulated the news - and hoodwink the news services - to the advantage of (i) hiding bad news, and (ii) increasing the government's incursions into our civil rights.

I am not saying that there was not a real terrorist plot afoot. I absolutely believe that there was a serious threat. I am glad these people were caught.

But here's the thing. The government has been aware of this plot since December - that's eight months.

The US and the British governments debated the timing of the arrests. Yes, there are tactical issues involved in deciding when an arrest should be made: have all the participants been identified? how advanced is the plot? has enough intelligence and evidence been gathered? etc. These are complex issues and I am certain they figured into the debate.

But after eight months of surveillance, the plotters still had not gotten passports and had not purchased tickets.

So I question the timing of the arrest - with the US position in Iraq becomes more unstable by the hour, the Israeli war with Hezbollah going poorly, the Iranians openly laughing at us, with the republican losses and Joe Liberman's loss in the recent primaries, and with the administration increasingly coming under attack for any number of improprieties - lo and behold after nine months these arrests could not have come at a timelier moment.

And to ensure that the message ("we have nothing to fear but the democrats") was made loud and clear the administration directed that every airline passenger must throw away all of their toothpaste, cologne, soft drinks, water, make-up, perfume, and etc. The resulting chaos was guaranteed by the way the directive was made. The resulting chaos guarantied that media attention would be diverted to the airports and away from the horrors of Iraq and Lebanon and NSA wiretapping and the democratic victories at the polls.

And why do I think that these suspicions are not entirely paranoid?

Because if liquids and gels were really dangerous, and the government has known this since December . . . why wasn't the regulation put in place sooner? This could have been approved by the appropriate agencies, circulated in the CFR, published for public comment and given final approval in the usual manner. Issues such as compensation would have been considered, and people would have had notice before arriving at the airport that there were new rules.

So all of the panic could have been easily avoided. Instead, it looks to me as though it was packaged, managed and largely created by the Administration. To say that it was openly exploited by the Administration is merely obvious (see Dick Cheney's comments on how lucky we are that a democrat is not in the White House - as if this plot was stopped by the Republican party's British wing and not Her Majesties' Finest).

Considering the cost to the public of this panic attack, the costs to the airlines, the costs to the duty free shops and airport vendors (interesting rule change today, people can buy at the duty free shops if the duty free shop attendant carries the purchase on board). I really wonder whether the risk was so substantial as to warrant the chaos (considering that the members of the conspiracy had not purchased plane tickets or obtained passports and were under arrest anyway).

I really wonder whether this new policy has stopped a single terror plot, or for that matter, even slowed one down. To quote one newsreporter "as soon as we build a better mousetrap, the terrorists build a better mouse."

Meanwhile, with all of this concern about toothpaste, the British today let a 12 year old boy board a plane without a ticket or passport.

I think they need to do a lot better job fixing the gaping holes in security, before they worry about the dimples.

Wagging the Dog Again?

The media is filled with almost nothing but bad news for the Bush administration these days. The war in Iraq is going worse than ever. The US is once again out on a limb, supporting a non-ceasefire strategy in Lebanon despite the fact that not a single other country supports this position. Hurricane season has started and the rebuilding promised for the victims of Katrina has hardly commenced. Republicans (like Delay and Ney) and fellow travellers (like Liberman) are dropping like flies. The poll numbers for the war are at their lowest point ever, gas prices are at their highest, and rising rapidly.

What is an administration to do?

If one thing has worked for this administration, it is spreading fear. Is it any wonder that a terrorist plot - which had been under surveilance for nine (count them, nine) months - was revealed yesterday as a serious threat.

I have little doubt that the plot was real, or that it would have been devastating if it had been carried out to the letter. However, the fact that the conspirators have been under surveilance for nine months suggests to me that we were never in as much danger as is being suggested today.

Well why give us a chance to think about it and ask some hard questions about timing? If you're going to wag the dog, you might as well give it a really good swing.

The master stroke here is the absolutely absurd decision to make every airline passenger throw out their shampoos, toothpaste, hair gel, deoderants, soft drinks, perfume, blush and other cosmetics . Creating sheer chaos in airline terminals around the world as most every traveller was required to unpack their bags, remove perfectly ordinary personal articles, and dispose of them.

This assured that the news stories would be about the chaos in the airports, the airplane delays, and other related "human interest" stories (which are entertaining), rather than hard questions about the seriousness of the plot, the reality of the continuation of the threat since the arrests, and the timing of the arrests and announcements.

And lo, it came to pass, that when the news editors looked at their copy, they saw photographs of long lines of discomfited passengers. And the editors said unto the layout department: run those pictures on Page 1 and use 48 point type for the humerous headline. And the layout department said to the printing department: "makest thou sure this picture covers every possible inch of Page 1" Wherefore it came to be that the Americanites knew more about the lines at the airport than the reasons therefore.

And the Americanites read these stories, and found them entertaining. And they said "these articles are more to our interest than hard hitting news features" and so they forgotteth that there was war in Lebanon, and made no mention that there was civil war in Iraq, and they ceased to think about the economy and upcoming elections. And Karl Rove smiled and thought that this was good. And Dick Cheney proclaimed this as proof that a vote for democratites, such as Ned Lamont, was a vote for terrorism.

I have to say, that I do not believe this little fiasco has made the flying public one iota safer. I think that it is just another case of the administration, together with the British government, saving a major arrest for a politically opportune moment, and than milking it for all of the scare potential possible.

Leaving aside the dog being wagged, this little exercise has cost travellers untold millions of dollars, and a further erosion in our civil liberties.

First, the cost to millions of airline passengers of throwing out tens of millions of dollars of perfectly usable personal items, has not been calculated, but is almost certainly substantially into the tens of millions, if not more. As reported today on CNN, one woman was required to throw away $80 worth of cosmetics. Another woman only $20. If one million passengers disposed of $20 each worth of toiletries, that's $20 million right there. But I'm guessing, I look forward to seeing this quantified by statisticians with expert degrees in such guesswork.

Here's the thing. The U.S. Constitution says that the government may not search persons or seize property without due process - the Supreme Court has consistently held that this mean, at a minimum, there must be some evidence to support a reasonable, individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. Yet not one of the travellers who have had their property "seized" (or forefeited), was under any individualized suspicion.

Instead, millions of innocent people have been branded "suspects" and penalized merely for the fact that they are airline passengers. The penalty these people have paid is the forefeiture of personal goods - toothpaste, cosmetics etc.

Worse, the "fine" or "penalty" assessed on the innocent in this case is entirely arbitrary. It varies from person to person and is based entirely on what each person happens to have available. It's a lot like the old gag about the tiny one sheriff town where the penalty for breaking the speed limit just happens to be the same amount as you have in your wallet.

The Constitution prohibits the government from imposing arbitrary penalties against criminals. Is it conceivable then that the Constitution allows the government to levy dissimilar punishments on individuals who are not even suspected of having committed a crime?

Further, the Constitution prohibits the government from taking an individual's property except (i) for the public benefit, and (ii) after payment of fair compensation. Even assuming the massive disposal effort going on now in our airports is for the public benefit, passengers ought to be entitled to reimbursement for what they were required to throw out. (The class-action suit is already being drafted by some lawyer, somewhere, I have little doubt). There is no evidence though that any records are being kept of what is being disposed of and by whom. Administering repayment under these conditions is going to be difficult, and, because the effort was ill conceived from the start, will likely be rife with fraud ("Really, I never go anywhere without a gallon of Chanel no. 5").

And, as usual, what really frightens me about all this is the sheep: the people who say "well if it makes me safer, than ok. It better be safe than protect our civil liberties" (tell that to Patick Henry). Nevermind asking if it really does make you safer.

What's more, If the government can, on a whim, tell you to throw out all of your cosmetics and toiletries, why can't they make you dispose of anything at all that you own? Where does it stop?
Can the government direct you to throw away a book because it may incite you to violence?

Does it stop at airplanes or is the next step prohibiting us from carrying these items on public trains, busses and subways (and if so, how do we get home from shopping?) (and if it is not necessary to protect us from these items on public trains etc., can it honestly be said that it is necessary to protect us from these items on airplanes?).

The real point here is rational risk assessment. What is the actual risk that a terrorist event will occur, what is the cost of prevention, do the proposed prevention measures actually diminish the risk, or are they just for show? and are there greater risks that are more deserving of attention.

In this instance, I believe the actual risk is almost nil - the terrorists have already been caught. The cost is enormous in terms of consumer dollars, wasted time, aggravation, unnecessary public fright, not to mention the loss of a few more civil liberties. It is unlikely in the extreme that the risk can be diminished, given that it is almost nil in the first place. This entire exercise is being done for show and will not in any way increase safety, and there are far greater risks out there more deserving of attention (for example, securing our nation's chemical plants against attack).

I am not saying there will not be terrorist attacks. I'm sure there will be, and some of them will be on airplanes. But then, more people will die in automobile accidents this month than will die in terror attacks all year. We don't stop driving cars any more than we stop flying. And we don't impose extreme, expensive and unconstitutional measures to achieve auto safety

It is an undisputed fact that there are fewer fatalities on highways where the speed limit is 55mph than on those where the speed limit is 65mph - yet, we oppose a national 55mph speed limit (which would also reduce our national fuel consumption). Noone says "I don't like driving at 55, but at least there will be fewer highway deaths".

The auto is just one example of Americans making risk/priority assessments. There are many that are similar.

When we give in to fear, when we stop rationally assessing risks and priorities, we give the terrorists what they want. The purpose of terrorism is to "out" the terrorized society - to expose its internal contradictions and its willingness to engage in barbaric totalitarian behaviors in the name of "society." When we ignore our civil liberties, when we respond with fear, and overreaction, we only prove that we are exactly what the terrorists say we are.