Lying Liar Lies Again

Is anyone really surprised at this?

Obama Seeks Stay on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Ruling

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Published: October 14, 2010

 

WASHINGTON — Saying it is preparing to appeal a ruling striking down the law that bans gay men and women from serving openly in the United States military, the Obama administration on Thursday asked the federal judge who issued the ruling for an emergency stay of her decision.

 

In a set of filings before Judge Virginia Phillips of California, Obama administration officials argued that she should suspend her decision earlier this week to issue an injunction preventing the military from expelling gay and lesbian service members under the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell law. Last month, Judge Phillips ruled that the law was unconstitutional. 

 

The filings included a 48-page declaration by Clifford L. Stanley, the under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness. He argued that immediately blocking that policy worldwide would create large logistical problems and would disrupt their own efforts to prepare the armed forces and work with Congress to repeal the policy in an orderly way.  

 

...

Obama blows in the wind. It's whoever got to him last... and it's always someone conservative, whether opposition party leader or civilian appointed official involved in the military, that gets to him last. Who the fuck is Clifford L. Stanley to be commenting on a judicially determined constitutional issue? Well, he's nobody, but he got to Obama. And Obama once again rendered himself a baldfaced liar by not following through on his promise to try to repeal DADT. The man is utterly untrustworthy.

I can only hope that the political future of America... and future history... give Obama exactly what he deserves.

---

UPDATE: I missed this one yesterday: Obama Administration Announces Appeal To Reverse Same Sex Marriage Victory [in Massachusetts]. Face it: Obama is turning out to be an open homophobe.

Lightning Strikes Liberty

Not exactly the Lightning you want to install on your computer. But the symbolism of Lady Liberty being struck by lightning is too appropriate for our times. Please view the original print. (Photo by Jay Fine.)

Dishonest Bastard Lifts Deepwater Drilling Moratorium Early, As Expected

This Sierra Club document just crossed my inbox and crossed me as well:

Obama to Lift Deepwater Drilling Moratorium
Sierra Club Calls for End to Oil Dependence

Washington, D.C. – Today [Oct. 12, 2010], the Obama administration announced plans to lift a ban on deepwater drilling that was put in place following the BP oil disaster in the Gulf in April. The moratorium was scheduled to end on November 30, 2010.

Statement of Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune
Offshore drilling is an inherently dangerous business. It’s a relief to see the administration announce new, long overdue safety regulations prior to lifting the drilling ban. But these regulations still don’t bring the risk to an acceptable level. The only way to make sure we don’t see another drilling disaster is to end our dependence on oil. Rather than putting coastal communities in the Gulf, the Atlantic, and Alaska at risk for more oil spills, we should be expanding wind, solar, and efficiency measures and creating a 21st century transportation system.

Our leaders should focus on investments that will create clean energy jobs in oil-producing regions like the Gulf Coast. 

...

Obama not only made very little if any effort toward establishing a permanent ban on offshore drilling... a business whose hazards are by now well-known to everyone, at least everyone on the Gulf Coast... but could not even keep the temporary ban in place as long as it was scheduled. The bastard was just messing his pants to fulfill whatever secret agreement he has with whichever of the major oil companies to continue business as usual even if it kills the entire U.S. coastline for the next hundred years. Something is wrong with this picture. And it is Obama in particular who is committing a significant portion of this particular wrong. Let's all give him holy hell about it (as if that's going to make any difference).

A Slogan From My Childhood

A BBC News video informs us about efforts to prevent the Dead Sea from drying up completely by 2050 as various consumers of water use more and more, lowering the level of the sea perilously close to empty. The article's headline is "Dead Sea to be topped up by Red Sea water":

Lying in Jordan's Rift Valley, it is the world's saltiest sea and authorities have come up with an ambitious plan to pump water - through a pipeline from the Red Sea - to top it up.

Oh well. I suppose the Sea is better Red than Dead...

What's Happening At The ACLU

I've been a member of the ACLU for over half my life. As there seems to be some confusion about the role of the ACLU in today's politics (the short version: there is none; it is not a political advocacy group), I thought I'd post a list of several actions and court cases that caught my attention:

• President Does Not Have Unreviewable Authority To Execute Americans Without Charge Or Trial, Say CCR and ACLU — As most of you know all too well, Obama has claimed an executive authority that even GeeDubya Bush didn't arrogate to himself: the power to target American citizens for assassination in circumstances far from actual war against the United States, and, just as importantly, without due process of any sort. Needless to say, the Constitution grants no such authority; Obama... who has actually designated individuals as targets... is behaving like a two-bit tinpot dictator in claiming this authority. Follow this legal struggle to reclaim constitutional rights at the ACLU site.

• ACLU Lawsuit Charges That Jail Policy Banning Books And Magazines Is Unconstitutional — But a jail in South Carolina has implemented exactly such a policy, banning all books (except for the Bible) and magazines... including books and periodicals about legal self-help... sent to prisoners. There's no First Amendment unless someone enforces it, and that's what the ACLU has as one of its primary missions.

• Surveillance Court Should Operate More Transparently And Release Key Legal Rulings, Says ACLU — I find myself humming the tune of an old song, "Once... I had a secret law..." Actually, the original word was not "law" but "love," but think about it: how can you obey a law if you're not permitted to know exactly what it is, in particular, how the courts (in this case, FISC) have interpreted it? This is about as far from American legal doctrine as it gets; let's hope the ACLU has some influence.

• ACLU And Brennan Center Reports Expose Resurgence Of Debtors' Prisons — It sounds like something out of 19^th-century literature, doesn't it? But debtors' prisons are active in a number of states, incarcerating people too poor to pay their fines. How self-defeating is that? But it's being done, and the ACLU is opposing it.

• ACLU Staff Sends Hopeful Video Message To Bullied LGBT Youth — After many reports of suicides by LGBT youth in response to bullying by classmates or coworkers, several organizations including the ACLU (where a number of top leaders and staffers are themselves gay, and know firsthand what an LGBT individual faces... see mandt's post for videos by other individuals and organizations) have embarked on an effort to reassure despondent young gay people that there is, indeed, hope, that life is worth living, that circumstances for gay people in America are improving (if altogether too slowly).

So you can see what the ACLU does for us: it protects the least among us from the most powerful; it does its best to see to it that we live by our own rules of tolerance, civil rights and civil liberties. That's why I am a member. When I joined over 30 years ago, there were not nearly as many organizations doing these essential tasks; now there are quite a few. I do hope you will choose one of them (possibly the ACLU) and give them your support. The Constitution is nothing without our active efforts to implement it properly.

Good News For Dems... Lieberman Losing His Political Assets In 2012

TPM's Eric Kleefeld points out that a PPP Poll shows Joe Lieberman faring very badly in his 2012 re-election bid. Kleefeld:

A new survey of Connecticut by Public Policy Polling (D) provides a fascinating look into the possible future of independent Sen. Joe Lieberman. To be exact, the former Democrat is incredibly unpopular with most voters -- and only marginally popular with Republicans -- and would have a hard time avoiding a landslide defeat should he run again in 2012.

...

Lieberman's political journey over the last four years has sure alienated a lot of folks. After he lost the 2006 Democratic primary, he was then re-elected as an independent with unofficial Republican support. He then campaigned aggressively for John McCain for president in 2008, and spoke at the Republican National Convention -- but after McCain lost, he settled back into place in the Democratic caucus. Then he helped to stop the public option during the health care debate, promising to support a Republican filibuster, but also voted for final passage of the eventual law sans public option.

Lieberman's approval rating stands at only 31%, with 57% disapproval -- even lower than the 36%-54% for Sen. Chris Dodd, who is retiring. Broken down by party, Lieberman's rating is 20%-69% among Democrats, 46%-41% among Republicans, and 31%-56% among independents.

...

"Broken down by party..." I don't think so. Lieberman is broken down by being one of the most facile liars and one of the most aggressive betrayers of his erstwhile political party to be found in the Senate or anywhere else. No one deserves to lose his seat more than he does, and I'll dance on his (figurative political) grave if indeed that happens.

Terrorist Trials That Guarantee A 'Guilty' Verdict

The Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, constructs elaborate courtroom procedures to permit... indeed, insist upon... such trials, with nothing resembling the due process guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. Glenn Greenwald discusses such deplorable practices in his post Opposition to the rule of law.

Fortunately, in the case of Ahmed Ghailani, whose trial Greenwald discusses, at least one judge still sees torture as tainting the process apart from the manner in which it affects the trial. Ghailani was (the government stipulates) abused in a CIA "black site" to obtain the name of a witness against him; the judge did not throw out the charges, but rather forbade the government from using information or testimony from that witness.

As America resorts to show trials, to torture to obtain testimony, to indefinite detention of alleged terrorists without trial, or after trial even if they have been acquitted, I begin to think of the great Langston Hughes, in particular, of his 1938 poem Let America be America Again, in which variations of one thought serve as a refrain: "(America never was America to me.)" As long as certain classes of people can be tried in Star Chamber courts, with tainted evidence, with no possibility of an acquittal no matter what the facts reveal, and with the possibility that a wayward Executive branch can simply detain someone for life without any kind of meaningful due process... as long as those things happen, America is not America to me.

Am I Being Served?

The local Democratic club continues to send me email. That's OK; I know those people, and I don't mind hearing what they're up to. Today I received a notice of a potluck supper before a meeting; here's what they asked people to bring:

	If your last name begins...	Then bring this....
	A - Da	Salad
	De - H	Meat or Vegetarian
	I - Me	Vegetable
	Mi - Se	Bread/Pasta
	Sh - Z	Dessert

As long as I'll be served before dessert...

Money Money Money Mo-ney... MOO-ney - UPDATED

Speaking of campaign contributions, Eugene Robinson tells us about The Cash Cow of Anonymity... mysterious funding organizations, nominally independent but in fact contributors to Republican campaigns by seven-to-one over Democrats... who don't even need to identify themselves, because they're nominally issue-specific contributors rather than backers of individual candidates. (Yeah, right.) Robinson points out Americans for Job Security and American Future Fund, each of which has spent around $7 million in "independent" campaign contributions, the vast majority of it to Republicans. Please read the article to see how your alleged democracy is being anonymously bought and sold out from under you.

---

UPDATE: via David Dayen of Firedoglake, we have Zach Carter of Campaign for America's Future, providing us a list of members of Congress who took campaign money from banksters, voted for the TARP bailout, and voted against the financial regulation bill, and how much each received, both in 2010 and over their entire careers. All data is from opensecrets.org . The list is an eyeful, but there are truly no surprises. Here's a hint: all the Senators were Republicans. A few Democrats in the House voted for/against. Something like this has probably happened a few times in history, but face it: Wall Street was able to take advantage of a blank check immediately, thanks overwhelmingly to congressional Republicans. Thanks a lot, Party of Responsibility!

How Badly Are The Democrats In Trouble?

Badly enough. Read Glenn Greenwald for details, including quotes from and links to many worthwhile articles. Greenwald's conclusion:

The claim that dissatisfaction among Democrats is confined to a "couple of blogs" might advance [American Prospect executive editor Mark] Schmitt's political objectives.  Given the human craving to make perceptions correspond with desires, it likely makes him feel good to believe that it's true.  But it's so plainly false that it's hard to believe that anyone could say it with a straight face, let alone believe that it will help anything -- their Party or themselves -- to claim it.  As a general proposition, papering over serious problems -- pretending they do not exist -- is never constructive, and that's certainly true when it comes to a Party's political failures.  Worst of all, making this claim obscures a very important truth that ought to be promoted and amplified, one which the establishment media ("move to the Right!") will do its best to deny after November:  Democrats do themselves no favors when they ignore the wishes, values and agenda of their "base":  i.e., those who are most responsible for their being in power.  Quite the opposite is true.

 Emphasis mine. I wish I had been given a good reason to vote for Democrats, but instead I've been given a sharp stick in the eye by the leaders of the party and by Obama himself. I will vote for some local and state Democrats in this election... but not out of party loyalty, because any loyalty I felt has been deliberately destroyed by the Obama crew. Maybe it's time for a separate progressive/liberal party.

Voter Registration Deadline Oct. 4

A reminder from State Rep. Scott Hochberg: If you are a Texan, you must register to vote by Oct. 4. This is also the deadline for updating your registration if you've moved, changed your name, etc. Quoting Rep. Hochberg:

To register, or to update your registration, you can fill out and download a registration form online. Once you have filled it out you must print it and mail it. Or you may submit it at the county building downtown at 1001 Preston, or at any county tax office, like the one on Chimney Rock and Gulfton. You cannot submit it online, as it needs your actual signature.

I realize that for many Democrats and progressive former Democrats, voting in this election may prove a distasteful act. Please do it anyway. It can't hurt, it may help, and if you neglect to vote often enough, someone may revoke your right to do so... don't think for a moment that there aren't people who would try.

Lily...

... is OK. She is reportedly awake and attempting to explore, as lively as one can hope for anyone right out of surgery. As anticipated, she will stay one night at the vet and come home tomorrow. Thanks to all of you who sent good wishes.

Reason #15,151 Why I Am No Longer A Democrat

This time, it's Sen. Mary Landrieu (D?-La):

Louisiana's Democratic senator has put a hold on the nomination of Jacob Lew to be the new director of the President's Office of Management and Budget, even though Lew sailed through committee on a 22-1 vote, is supremely qualified for the post (he held it under Bill Clinton), and we're in the midst of ongoing economic and fiscal crises. To her (sorta) credit, Mary Landrieu has been very upfront about why she's holding him up: The oil state senator wants the Obama Administration to end the moratorium on deepwater drilling. Period.

And so this time around it's environmental blackmail: "allow more Deepwater Horizon disasters, or I won't let you..." ...nominate an OMB director? As I said before: the Senate rules need to be changed, now, while Dems have the power to change them. But I'm not holding my breath.

One Nation Under Surveillance, Part 10934

Via Seth Schoen of CommonDreams, we find a NYT article by Charlie Savage:

U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet


By CHARLIE SAVAGE
Published: September 27, 2010

WASHINGTON — Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.

Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order.

The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.

The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally. 

...

Oh, yeah; that's gonna work. Deep in the second page of the article we find this little jewel, which I believe reflects reality:

Even with such a law, some gaps could remain. It is not clear how it could compel compliance by overseas services that do no domestic business, or from a “freeware” application developed by volunteers. 

Foreign businesses with no US interests probably operate under foreign law. And as for the rest... never, ever underestimate the ability of developers of freeware.

This law will be circumvented by criminals and terrorists before the digital ink is dry on the legal web sites. But the NSA or FBI or whatever 3-letter agency will have a peek at your letters to your paramour, or track your political activity as if it were subversive. And let's face it: that's the real reason They are pushing for this law.

Hotel As Magnifying Glass, Guests As Ants

Jonathan Turley warns us: If you stay at The Vdara in Las Vegas, you'd better not lounge around the pool:

Death Ray: Hotel Design Blamed For Burning Guests in Pool

This could make for an interesting torts lawsuit. A new hotel, The Vdara, is a modern glass structure with a curved design. The striking architectural design has one other novel feature: a “death ray” that cooks people in the pool.

Guests have been complaining that the curvature of the building produces a “death ray” that literally melts plastic and causes severe burns in the pool area. ...

A reporter from the Las Vegas Review-Journal found that the design produced a fry zone of roughly 10-feet by 15-feet that increased the temperature by 20 degrees during certain periods. ...

So guests engaging in, say, high-level business negotiations can go straight from the pressure cooker of modern business to the solar oven of current hotel design. I suppose the best any of us can hope for in these troubled times is not to get burned.

Worth Reading

Robert Reich tells us that The Super Rich Get Richer, Everyone Else Gets Poorer, and the Democrats Punt. No kidding.

FDL's Phoenix Woman insists that it is futile to use "game theory" or "change theory" in politics, that when individual Dems do so, they inevitably lose elections. I have two objections to this thesis: one, what she describes is not game theory; two, the main way Dems are assuring a loss in this election is by alienating their base, deliberately, unabashedly and with no apology.

Paul Krugman tells us this isn't structural unemployment, it's unemployment deliberately allowed to fester for the financial advantage of business owners:

So what you need to know is that there is no evidence whatsoever to back these claims. We aren’t suffering from a shortage of needed skills; we’re suffering from a lack of policy resolve. As I said, structural unemployment isn’t a real problem, it’s an excuse — a reason not to act on America’s problems at a time when action is desperately needed.

(There's also a repeated slide-over box advertising a Douthat column; I didn't have the stomach to read it.) (Quote added after initial posting.)

A private company, L.S.S.I., is taking over public libraries. Some people are as unhappy about that as I am; there is no way a for-profit business can provide diversity of resources, imperviousness to book-burners, and resistance to the notion of cutting costs... hence cutting services and book purchases... for the sake of profit. A private corporation has one and only one obligation, and that's to its stockholders, not to the public. A library has one and only one obligation, and that is to the general public. But I'll bet good money it will be proposed in Houston sooner or later. When someone does propose it, I plan to be present at the City Council meeting, ready to use my well-practiced librarian's SHHHHHH!

Little Lily Little No More

Lily has a major appointment with the vet this Tuesday morning. And not a moment too soon: right on schedule, yesterday and today she began caterwauling. The pic on the left shows Lily the day she came to live with us. See upstream for what she looks like now. How quickly they grow up!

UPDATE: this morning (Tuesday), Lily escaped from Stella and was out of sight for just long enough to have eaten or drunk something. So her surgery is postponed until tomorrow.

Pentagon Buys Out, Destroys Book, Alleging Security Violations

CNN:

Washington (CNN) -- The Department of Defense recently purchased and destroyed thousands of copies of an Army Reserve officer's memoir in an effort to safeguard state secrets, a spokeswoman said Saturday.

"DoD decided to purchase copies of the first printing because they contained information which could cause damage to national security," Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. April Cunningham said.

In a statement to CNN, Cunningham said defense officials observed the September 20 destruction of about 9,500 copies of Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer's new memoir "Operation Dark Heart."

Shaffer says he was notified Friday about the Pentagon's purchase.

"The whole premise smacks of retaliation," Shaffer told CNN on Saturday. "Someone buying 10,000 books to suppress a story in this digital age is ludicrous."

...

I wonder who the document embarrassed, and why it was allowed to go so far before being stopped... if "stopped" is the right word for such an almost certainly ineffective procedure. Shaffer is right about the digital age:

At least one seller on the online auction site eBay claiming to have a first-edition printing is selling it for an asking price of nearly $2,000.  ...

Here's a sample of the redacted book:

One of the book's first lines reads, "Here I was in Afghanistan (redaction) My job: to run the Defense Intelligence Agency's operations out of (redaction) the hub for U.S. operations in country."

In chapter 15, titled "Tipping Point," 21 lines within the first two pages are blacked out.

But it's all OK, because DoD is reimbursing the publisher. Right.

Aside: back in 2003, I wrote a rather decent piece of doggerel titled "(Redacted)" ...

USAF Major Challenges Her DADT Discharge, Wins, Is Reinstated

Read about it at TPM. The basis for her reinstatement? Violation of her substantive due process rights under the Fifth Amendment. The key paragraphs, from Rachel Slajda at TPM:

...


"The application of 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' to Major Margaret Witt does not significantly further the government's interest in promoting military readiness, unit morale and cohesion," he wrote in his ruling. "Her discharge from the Air Force Reserves violated her substantive due process rights under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. She should be restored to her position as a Flight Nurse with the 446th AES as soon as is practicable, subject to meeting applicable regulations touching upon qualifications necessary for continued service."

He also said that her discharge hurt her unit.

"The evidence before the Court is that Major Margaret Witt was an exemplary officer. She was an effective leader, a caring mentor, a skilled clinician, and an integral member of an effective team. Her loss within the squadron resulted in a diminution of the unit's ability to carry out its mission," Leighton wrote. "Good flight nurses are hard to find."

...

Congratulations to Major Witt; may she be the first of many. Yes, there are additional legal hurdles to be cleared, and no, the judge did not rule on all such cases, just this one... but it's a start.

Lily Stands Up For What's Right

... or maybe just for a squirrel in the back yard:

She has grown a bit, hasn't she!

Sharron Angle Mocks Mandated Insurance Coverage Of Autism

Please view this Democratic campaign video of GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle:

How could anyone who has ever encountered a victim of autism even consider voting for such a wretch? Does she think the families of GOPers are never themselves afflicted with it?

Of course no insurance company should sell policies that explicitly omit coverage of diseases that are expensive to treat; the possibility of those diseases is exactly what sells insurance in the first place. Oh, wait...

Under the new health care reform law, we will all be required... that's required, not encouraged... to purchase private medical insurance. Why should the insurance industry not be forced, in turn, to cover every legitimate illness? and why should Sharron Angle not be made to hide her face in shame for advocating mistreating autism victims in yet another way?

(H/T John Aravosis of AMERICAblog.)

Dysfunctional Senate Blocks Repeal Of Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell

Read about it here. Or, if you're female, perhaps here, as lesbians have been affected more than gay men.

Face it: the rules of the Senate need to change. One party... the GOP... has decided that its political advantage lies with breaking the government, thwarting majority rule and filibustering every bill. And it's gone on long enough that Democrats will do it too when they regain minority power. (Ahem.)

Between 13,000 and 14,000 service members have been discharged under DADT. Horror stories of people discharged after being outed by third parties with a grudge... or worse yet, by commanding officers searching through the private papers of service members contrary to the "don't ask" part of the law. Thats 13 or 14 thousand lives ruined.

And all the bullshit about "unit cohesion" is belied by the fact that in almost all Western democracies, gay and lesbian soldiers are a non-issue.

But simply put, if we are going to restore anything even resembling democracy, Senate rules must change. Not even allowing Senate debate on the issue is downright criminal, as surely as searching a soldier's personal papers.

Early Voting Info, A Bit Early

The County Clerk and the Voter Registrar of Harris County are both Republicans, so they make their web sites as difficult as possible to use. Voting just isn't their "thang," I suppose... Republicans usually do better with lower turnout, and may go to some lengths to bring about such a low turnout. Such information as is available is on a separate web site,

http://www.harrisvotes.org/ (note the .org ... it's NOT a government site), 

and early voting locations are... get this... in a .pdf file,

http://www.harrisvotes.org/docs/EV/earlyvotinglocations_schedule_ENG.pdf

for which you must have a PDF reader. Are public library computers supplied with such? I don't know. Anyway, there are about three dozen locations in Harris County, and any Harris County voter may vote early at any of them. You may register to vote for about another month. At the polls, either bring your voter certificate or know your precinct number and bring some sort of ID, say, a valid Texas driver's license or a utility bill with your home address on it. DO NOT LET THEM TELL YOU THAT YOU MUST HAVE YOUR VOTER CERTIFICATE WITH YOU TO VOTE! Remember what I said about voting not being their "thang"?

Here are the available early voting times at any location:

• October 18th - October 22nd: 8:00 a.m. - 4:30 p.m.
• October 23rd:7:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
• October 24th: 1:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
• October 25th - October 29th: 7:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Election Day is Tuesday, November 2, and POLLING PLACE LOCATIONS HAVE NOT BEEN POSTED YET (confirmed at Scott Hochberg's web site, always a valuable resource of voting info). It's late September, and voting locations for Election Day have not been posted yet. Gee, who could be responsible for that? perhaps someone who doesn't want you to vote? In any case, be prepared for some confusion, and don't just go to the last place you voted in Harris County... you might find a hot-dog stand or some such. I'll post a link to Election Day polling locations as soon as I have one. Me? I intend to attempt to vote early. It's not always easy for a cripple, but as they keep telling us, one must sacrifice...

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Appendix: a non-.pdf list of Harris County voter locations, extracted from the .pdf at Harris Votes (and it was a painful extraction):

Inside Loop 610

1. Main Office:    
Harris County Administration Bldg.
1001 Preston, 1st Floor, 77002
   
2. Moody Park:    
Moody Park Community Center
3725 Fulton, 77009
   
3. Kashmere:    
Kashmere Multi-Service Center
4802 Lockwood Dr., 77026
   
4. Downtown-East:   
Ripley House
4410 Navigation Blvd., 77011
   
5. Southeast Houston:
H.C.C.S. Southeast College, Learning Hub
6815 Rustic, 77087
   
6. Palm Center:    
Justice of the Peace/Constable Entry
5300 Griggs Road, 77021
   
7. Astrodome Area:    
Fiesta Mart, Inc.
8130 Kirby Drive, 77054
   
8. Neartown:    
Metropolitan Mutli-Service Center
1475 W. Gray, 77019   

Outside Loop 610

9. Northeast Houston:
Northeast Multi-Service Center
9720 Spaulding, 77016
   
10. Galena Park:    
Galena Park Branch Library
1500 Keene Street, Galena Park, 77547
   
11. Hobby Area:   
I.B.E.W. Hall #66
4345 Allen Genoa Road, Pasadena, 77504
   
12. Sunnyside:         
Sunnyside Multi-Purpose Center
4605 Wilmington, 77051
   
13. S. Houston Area:
Townwood Park
3403 Simsbrook, 77045
       
14. SW. Houston:    
Bayland Park Community Center
6400 Bissonnet (near Hillcroft), 77074
   
15. Near West Side:
Tracy Gee Community Center
3599 Westcenter Drive, 77042
(One block East of Sam Houston Tollway)
   
16. Spring Branch:
Trini Mendenhall Sosa Comm. Center
1414 Wirt Road, 77055
   
17. Acres Homes:    
Acres Homes Multi-Service Center
6719 W. Montgomery Road, 77091
   
18. North:    
Hardy Senior Center
11901 West Hardy Road, 77076
   
Outside Beltway 8

19. Humble:    
Octavia Fields Branch Library
1503 South Houston Ave., Humble, 77338
   
20. * Kingwood:   
Kingwood Branch Library
4400 Bens View Lane, Kingwood, 77345
   
21. Wallisville Road:   
North Channel Branch Library
15741 Wallisville Road, 77049
   
22. Baytown:        
Baytown Community Center
2407 Market Street, Baytown, 77520
   
23. Pasadena:        
Harris County Courthouse Annex #25
7330 Spencer Highway, Pasadena, 77505
   
24. Clear Lake:    
Freeman Branch Library
16616 Diana Lane, 77062
   
25. Alief:    
Henington-Alief Regional Library
7979 South Kirkwood, 77072
   
26. West Houston:   
Lac Hong Square
6628 Wilcrest Dr., 77072
   
27. Far W. Houston:
Nottingham Park
926 Country Place Dr., 77079
   
28. Far West/Katy:    
Franz Road Storefront
19818 Franz Road, Katy, 77449
   
29. Bear Creek:    
Bear Creek Park Community Center
3055 Bear Creek Dr. at Patterson Rd., 77084
   
30. Jersey Village:    
City of Jersey Village-City Hall
16327 Lakeview Drive, Jersey Village, 77040
   
31. Tomball:    
Tomball Public Works Building
501 B James St., Tomball, 77375
   
32. Cypress Creek:    
Champion Forest Baptist Church
Multi-Purpose Building   
4840 Strack Road, 77069
   
33. Far North:        
Ponderosa Fire Station No. 1
17061 Rolling Creek Drive, 77090
   
34. Cypress:       
Cypress Top Park
26026 Hempstead Highway, Cypress, 77429
           
35. George Bush Park:
Glen Cheek Education Building
16002 Westheimer Parkway, 77082
           
36. Lone Star College:
University Park - Visitors Center
20515 State Hwy 249, 77070
           
37. Crosby:         
Crosby ISD Administration Building
706 Runneburg Road, Crosby, 77532
   
* Indicates Change in Location

Go vote... remember, it's a citizen's obligation, however distasteful it may be in a given year.

Once Again, Robert Reich Gets It Right, This Time On Taxes

Reich:

Who deserves a tax cut more: the top 2 percent -- whose wages and benefits are higher than ever, and among whose ranks are the CEOs and Wall Street mavens whose antics have sliced jobs and wages and nearly destroyed the American economy -- or the rest of us?

Not a bad issue for Democrats to run on this fall, or in 2012.

Republicans are hell bent on demanding an extension of the Bush tax cut for their patrons at the top, or else they'll pull the plug on tax cuts for the middle class. This is a gift for the Democrats.

...

Reich goes on to point out two things: first, why this is sound economics... the wealthy, unlike ordinary middle- and lower-class folk and others who depend on a job for a living, don't tend to spend the money they obtain from tax cuts, and hence do not contribute to the much-needed stimulus... and second, why Democrats must do this right now, not after Election Day. That should be obvious: it'll never happen after elections. But so many Dems are claiming extenuating circumstances in their own re-election races in conservative districts that they could well vote with the GOP to sustain the Bush tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy.

As to the voting public, according to a Pew survey, their former belief that they're going to be rich someday is changing (.pdf) ...

The survey also finds that the recession has led to a new frugality in Americans‘ spending and borrowing habits; a diminished set of expectations about their retirements and their children‘s future; and a concern that it will take several years, at a minimum, for their family finances and house values to recover.

... but possibly there's still a vestige of that "things are gonna get better" mentality, that sense that their wealth will increase with time despite the economic downturn:

Not all survey findings are bleak. More than six-in-ten (62%) Americans believe that their personal finances will improve in the coming year, and a small but growing minority (15%) now says the national economy is in good shape.

So Americans continue to vote for pols who promise them pie in the sky in the sweet bye 'n' bye... who in turn support retaining tax cuts for the wealthy. If only voters were more pessimistic...

'Lost To The Normal Labor Market'

David Dayen of FDL points us to a paper by Arjun Jayadev and Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute (.pdf), who conclude:

• Although the unemployment number remains high it
isn’t a full picture of the terrible situation in the labor
market. The population that is out of the labor force and
no longer trying to find a job is steadily increasing, and
the normal mechanisms for those people to reenter
employment have collapsed.

• Starting at the beginning of 2009 it is now more likely
that someone who is unemployed will drop out of the
labor force than find a job. This is a new problem for
our economy, as this hasn’t happened as far back as data
can be found (1967). These workers need targeted
intervention before they become completely lost to the
normal labor market. 

• Underemployment, or those employed working part-
time for economic reasons, has increase greatly, often
more than doubling. This is across all analyzed sectors
and occupations and is negatively correlated with
capacity underutilization. The underemployed have the
skills to work the jobs they have and their incentives
aren’t distorted by unemployment insurance - they point
to a story of a lack of aggregate demand.

Been there; experienced that...

A crafter of code whose skills are out of date (1½ years in my case, unless you count some of my recent efforts to acquire new skills) might as well not even look for a job.  If you are close to retirement age (in my case, I'm in that neverland between the earliest allowed retirement age at which one can collect Social Security and the age at which I would have liked to retire if my health had held out and if employment had continued to be available) and/or have health problems, employers have even less interest in you. In other words, when it comes to finding work, some of us can just forget it.

And then we have some economic think-tanks saying the recession is over,  speaking technically, ignoring the fact that the recovery is nearly jobless.

I am anything but excited about applying to retire, and especially unexcited about applying for disability when my disability would not necessarily degrade the quality of my work, if I could drive enough to get to a contract and take three or four unpaid breaks of, say, 30 minutes each during the day. But no rational executive in America would employ such a person, given the current state of unemployment and underemployment.

And no one in Congress or the Obama administration seems to give a good damn.

I hope each and every one of them breaks a leg, or depends on a spouse who suddenly has a stroke, or some such. I would not hope anything so mean-spirited for them if any of them cared in the least what happens to ordinary folks in dire circumstances... but I'm not holding my breath awaiting their epiphany.

The Pro-Rape Party

Rachel Maddow points out that five (5) Republican Senate candidates are not only anti-choice... no surprise there... but have explicitly and publicly removed the classic qualifying clause that abortion is allowed in cases of rape or incest:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

(NOTE: The session on reproductive rights starts around 4 or 5 minutes into the clip, notwithstanding MSNBC's bookmark almost 6 minutes in.)

The five Republican candidates (no, I won't give them links) are

• Ken Buck (R-Colorado)
• Sharron Angle (R-Nevada)
• Rand Paul (R-Kentucky)
• Joe Miller (R-Alaska)
• Christine O'Donnell (R-Delaware)

and Maddow presents a video clip of each candidate stating his or her opposition to abortion even in cases of rape or incest.

I've predicted this for a long time in personal conversations with friends: the Republican Party has gone far beyond being conservative, now taking into its fold large numbers of radicals and running some of them for office. Should we be scared? We'll have to see how this election goes.

A candidate who wants to force a rape victim to bear the child of her rapist is nothing less than cruel, and a party that fields such candidates is downright evil.

Greenwald Comments On Obama's Criticism Of Liberals

Here.

One sample, a quote from Obama at a DNC $30,000-a-plate fundraiser:

Democrats, just congenitally, tend to get -- to see the glass as half empty. (Laughter.) If we get an historic health care bill passed -- oh, well, the public option wasn't there.  If you get the financial reform bill passed -- then, well, I don't know about this particular derivatives rule, I'm not sure that I'm satisfied with that. And gosh, we haven't yet brought about world peace and -- (laughter.) I thought that was going to happen quicker. (Laughter.) You know who you are. (Laughter.) We have had the most productive, progressive legislative session in at least a generation.

Aren't you grateful that the current president is not a Republican? Oh, wait...

Linux Support Not Without Shortcomings

Living in the Linux/UNIX world has its challenges...

• Yesterday I happened to notice a warning on a page at the Ubuntu Linux web site about Adobe Flash Player. The version that has been in the field for a long time turned out to have a security flaw, and everyone was urged to replace the player on their system right away. For Stella, on Windows Vista, that was two replacements, one for IE and one for Firefox. For me, on Lucid Lynx (yes, that is the project name for Ubuntu Linux 10.04), it was just one replacement, but as with so many things in Linux, the instructions resulted in a long session at a Terminal (Windows users: think "command prompt").
  
  There was just one problem: the instructions were wrong. In Firefox 3.6, the Adobe Flash plugin has its own folder, /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin. If you put it in the default plugins folder, it doesn't work. It's a good thing I like to explore and tinker with things; I can't imagine that a typical Firefox user would have found this.
  
  
• Today I accepted an Ubuntu update, including a replacement kernel and some other stuff. After applying the update, there was no sound. Indeed, there was no sound card visible through utilities. For me, no sound = no fun. :-(
  
  A few days ago, I manually replaced the sound driver with the latest ALSA version, 1.0.23 ... I don't remember why I decided to do this, but it was good experience in learning to build a driver, and it worked pretty much as advertised. But today's update from Ubuntu forcibly replaced my newer-version sound card driver with the older version 1.0.21, which is part of the current release for Lucid Lynx. When the driver is version-incompatible with all the other sound software, there's no sound. No sound = no fun. :-(
  
  On the community support site for Ubuntu was a sound troubleshooting page. It was formidable, several dozen steps long. Fortunately, one of the diagnostics it ran (again in a long Terminal session) showed me the out-of-sync driver version number. I repeated the build process for the driver, and sound reappeared. Sound = fun! :-)
  
  

Some people suggest, and I sympathize with them, that Windows and Mac systems should be replaced in public schools, libraries, etc. with Linux, because Linux is free of cost, has comparable features, and is high-quality, generally reliable software. But if a user community decides to do that, they'd better have a Linux wizard on-staff or at least readily available. The online help available, both from Linux vendors and from the technical community, is very good, but there are occasionally things that go wrong that no one but an experienced person can solve.

Constitution Day

Until I installed the Lightning calendar extension in Mozilla Thunderbird (the lack of such was always Thunderbird's major shortcoming compared to Outlook), I didn't even know there was such thing as Constitution Day. And when I first saw the term, I mistook it for Constipation Day, a day for congressional Republicans who can't ever pass anything.

Exactly one month is a long time for me to be away from the blog, but I haven't seen much in that month to encourage me about the state of our nation and the propensity of our elected officials to engage in righteous behavior rather than simply paying back their sponsors... never ordinary citizens... with legislation made-to-order for the wealthy and the powerful. We're still on the highway to hell.

As for the Constitution, whose day is today, I understand most universities will soon be teaching it in an Ancient History course...

Civil liberties appear to be ancient history in the Obama administration as surely as they were under the rule of Bush. In case you missed anything, here is a summary of Executive branch illegal detentions in the war on Terra, and here is a search form of votes by Congress on major civil liberties, civil rights and human rights bills. It doesn't look good.

You'd think I'd resume blogging on a Friday with a picture of a cat. Well, maybe I will later this evening, or maybe not. Suffice it to say that Lily is now almost as big as Esther, and is not one smidgen less aggressive as a tween than she was as a little kitten. Wear gloves if you plan to handle her!

Back To Basics

That's where I'm headed...

 

... because if there's any point to blogging, I'm certainly not seeing it today.

Mixing

 

We all do it...

Why I Am No Longer A Democrat, Part 10,003

 

Harry Reid's manifest religious bigotry. Reid is letting his Mormon constituency (or perhaps his own religion) influence him to the detriment of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, in the matter of the "mosque" (it's not really; it's a community center) "at Ground Zero" (it's not really; some say it would not even be visible from there).

Enough is enough. The Constitution supersedes the whims of religious bigots.

My suggestion: primary the bastard, if there's still time. We couldn't do worse; we might do better.

DeLay To Skate Free

 

TPM:

DeLay Will Not Face Federal Charges

Ryan J. Reilly | August 16, 2010, 10:11AM

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will not face federal charges related to his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Politico reported.

The Justice Department notified DeLay's lead attorney, McGuireWoods Chairman Richard Cullen, about the decision last week, the lawyer said.

"The federal investigation of Tom DeLay is over and there will be no charges," Cullen told Politico. "This is the so-called Abramoff investigation run by the Public Integrity section of DOJ. There have been a series of convictions and guilty pleas since 2005."

... [Cullen glorifies DeLay's cooperation and response to DoJ - ed.]

Reached by TPMMuckraker, Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney declined to comment.

...

One commenter on TPM's post lambasted implants... Bush DoJ appointees masquerading as career employees... for this outrageous miscarriage of justice. There may well be more than a few of those, but let's face it: it's Obama's DoJ now, and if this happened, it's because he wanted it to happen. What kind of deal has Obama cut with the GOP this time?

If you lived in Texas at the time of DeLay's malfeasance, you would know why I am horrified. DeLay basically eliminated any shred of representation in elected federal officials from Texas: gerrymandering of a sort not seen since the Nineteenth Century squashed an emerging Democratic majority flat into the ground. The variety of illegal means he used to accomplish this was breathtaking. And now he's going to get away scot-free.

How would you feel if this had been done to your vote? Obama groupies, how do you justify this one? Yeah, right, sure: as a "professional leftist," I just hate Obama and should STFU. May the good Dog DAMN anybody who says that (*cough* Gibbs *cough*) or that I am a "fucking retard" (*cough* Emanuel *cough*).

Friday The Thirteenth, Part 19027

 

Stella is off work today, so this morning we are killing bugs and then dragging me in to the doc for another session of boot abuse. I regret I do not have any cat pics; please view the one of Lily last Tuesday.

Celebrate! Celebrate!

 

Judge Walker has lifted the stay of his ruling that California's Prop. h8 is unconstitutional. In California at least, gay couples can marry. Not surprisingly, "Couples have been lining up in San Francisco and West Hollywood." For what it's worth, friends, you have my blessings and heartiest good wishes.

---

UPDATE: the stay is lifted as of the 18th. It ain't over 'til it's over...

Lily Awakens After Dreaming In Color

 

How could she not, after sleeping on those pillows...

Relativity, Uh, Relativism, Uh, Whatever

 

Ignorance is ugly. Perhaps you thought you had seen all the ignorance the Schlafly family had to offer in the past decade. If so, you neglected to consider that Phyllis has a son, Andy, who competes on par with her in the ignorance department. Megan Carpenter of TPM (who cannot spell "theorem" and apparently doesn't distinguish "theorem" from "theory"):

Conservapedia: E=mc² Is A Liberal Conspiracy

Megan Carpentier | August 9, 2010, 5:01PM

To many conservatives, almost everything is a secret liberal plot: from fluoride in the water to medicare reimbursements for end-of-life planning with your doctor to efforts to teach evolution in schools. But Conservapedia founder and Eagle Forum University instructor Andy Schlafly -- Phyllis Schlafly's son -- has found one more liberal plot: the theory of relativity.

If you're behind on your physics, the Theory of Relativity was Albert Einstein's formulation in the early 20th century that gave rise to the famous theorum that E=mc², otherwise stated as energy is equal to mass times the square of the speed of light. Why does Andy Schlafly hate the theory of relativity? We're pretty sure it's because he's decided it doesn't square with the Bible.

In the entry, "Counterexamples to Relativity," the authors (including Schlafly) write:

The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.^[1]

To what does that reference lead? Why, a note by Schlafly:

...

With some Amazon gift certificates I received for my birthday, I just purchased Steven Weinberg's Cosmology, a comprehensive text on the subject, containing no illustrations and few diagrams, but bristling with partial differential equations. Is Schlafly saying I wasted my money? Maybe so... maybe all I really needed was a copy of his family Bible, annotated by his own self. What a concept! How does the saying go... beware the (wo)man who has read only one book.

Rachel Maddow On City Budget Cuts

 

This is enough to make you throw up, preferably on a GOP Congress member. Don't watch it while you're eating lunch...

My only question: why did they choose a still in which Rachel looks as if she's about to sneeze?

The Hassles Never Cease

 

Stella went to bed early, so I decided to try a night-time blogging session on my own computer. I switched the wires around... not easy, because I have to balance while I reach the cables and plugs behind my table... opened the DSL-type connection (yes, in Ubuntu Linux, one of the types of connection you can create is explicitly called "DSL" and is designed specifically for a direct DSL connection to a provider). I started the connection, which was originally created by the AT&T guy as a sort of apology for my broken LAN, and... it took me straight to an AT&T error page for a bad password. That in turn took me to the page that told me I can't use a non-IE, non-Safari browser. Grrrrr...

I looked at the connection config and recognized that the password stored in the config was wrong. (Yes, if you're an administrator, you can set up to see such things in Linux.) So I glanced around for the tiny piece of paper on which my friend George had written the password to which my account was forcibly (and needlessly, as it turned out) changed during the exasperating phone session with AT&T, and... it wasn't there. I'm neither crazy nor stupid; I remembered just where I'd left it.

Eventually I gave up and woke Stella, and told her I couldn't find the most important piece of paper in the house. She knew immediately what I meant. "Oh... I put it in the drawer." Which drawer? "The one on the left." I began to realize the gal was really still asleep. Eventually the paper was located and the password corrected.

Here's my question: Why did the AT&T tech who was here today change the password after he had successfully established a connection? I suppose I should be asking the late Enron: "WHY? Why? why? why? why?..."

It is still the case that only one of us can have a connection at a time. This is no problem with AT&T, whose lawyers doubtless have told them that since I don't have qualifying hardware and/or software, they are not obligated to get me connected. Again... GRRRRRR!

I Am Furious - Yellow (Doggerelist)

 

The AT&T service tech today was excellent. He arrived, explored the problem despite all obstacles, eventually managed to locate the problem as a lack of DHCP service on my local network (something that usually comes from the router on this system) and a failure to login on the AT&T network (newer modems do this; mine is too old, but the router will do it if properly set up), created a new DSL connection under Linux (not even part of his skill set until today), connected successfully to AT&T... and hit a brick wall attempting to enter a required profile for me on the SBC site. The "error"? SBC insists that your browser must be either IE 6.0+ or Safari (some version). It doesn't matter if your browser has identical functionality; SBC scans the modem ID string and is strict about your using one of those two browsers to set up its service.

SBC is in effect telling me that my Ubuntu Linux system, which worked for four months without incident of any sort, may not be used on their system in an ordinary manner. I guess I have cooties, or at least Linux does.

The very clever tech created a new standalone DSL connection on my computer which can be connected to AT&T via an explicit login to their network. Separately, we arranged a functionally identical connection from Stella's Windows Vista computer. She needs it worse than I do, so our default will be to connect hers and  leave mine lonely.

So I am blogging from Stella's machine. I have until she gets home (and takes me to the boot doctor) to finish all my web work.

I told the poor gentleman that I would give him rave reviews on the survey for his work, but that I did not consider the problem fixed. A week ago, I had a working net connection. Today, I have nothing... because of an AT&T policy against the arguably second most popular browser in the nation.

As noted... I am furious.

Trouble In Bayou City

 

As you can probably gather from my cell phone posts, my internet connection from home is dead as... whatever... a doornail, a dodo, an AT&T internet connection. After endless struggles with the equipment and then with AT&T telephone support, I am scheduled for onsite repair on... get this... Monday morning. Meanwhile, I am posting this from the public library at the corner. That sort of thing was easy back when my feet worked properly. But don't get me started; I might tell you about the first of the AT&T support persons I was subjected to...

My new boot actually does help. I can't walk any faster, but I can walk more easily. Never mind the top of the boot resembles a black china pie-plate, in size and appearance. Wish me luck; the boot seems really to help.

Today is my birthday. Dog has blessed me with a sharp stick in the eye the companionship of good friends on the birthday, someone to help me both with the technology problems and with retaining my patience at the exasperation I feel, and of course I am blessed with Stella, who took me and our friends George and Barbara (you've seen them on the threads here) out to eat at Star Pizza, and then bookshopping at Barnes & Noble. (I got only one book, Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, in part because I've accumulated so many unread books recently.

Stella and the kitties bid you hello. Sorry I don't have pictures this week; if I had them, I wouldn't be able to post them. Apologies for my nonparticipation in political blogging; I don't have time enough before the library closes to do my usual surfing.

If you reply to this post, please understand that it may be Monday before I see the reply. Thanks for your patience.

ATT repair crew to come Mon 8-12 to fix DSL. May be silent til then.
-SB

--
==================================================================
This mobile text message is brought to you by AT&T

Net conn still dead.
Prob is local.
Maybe days b4 it works.
Sorry.-SB

--
==================================================================
This mobile text message is brought to you by AT&T

Hard net conn fail, no DNS after 3 full shutdowns-restarts. Back when I'm able.-SB

--
==================================================================
This mobile text message is brought to you by AT&T

California Prop. H8 Overturned By Federal Court

 

bmaz of Firedoglake has the details. Yes, of course, the bigots are already filing appeals. But still... this is excellent news, even if it comes far too late.

Surprise! You're A Porn Star... In The Airport

 

Boing-boing, via BadTux:

US agencies have long defended the use of body scanning devices at airports with the promise that all images will be discarded as soon as security staff have viewed them. Last summer, the TSA claimed "scanned images cannot be stored or recorded." Declan McCullagh at CNET:

Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.

This follows an earlier disclosure (PDF) by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for "testing, training, and evaluation purposes." The agency says, however, that those capabilities are not normally activated when the devices are installed at airports.

 I'll agree with one thing in that last para: most people are "not normally activated" by pictures of weary travelers and their children. Face it: taking those pics is evil; saving those pics is sick. Throw the bastards in their own jail.

---

And the Blogger post editor keeps getting worse...
... and worse...
... and worse...

Obama Administration: Expand FBI National Security Letters

 

Adam Serwer of prospect.org:

Administration Wants To Expand Reach Of National Security Letters.

Civil libertarians have been trying to add more restrictions to the FBI's National Security Letters since their use exploded after the attacks of September 11th. NSLs, which allow the government to obtain private records from commercial and financial institutions without a warrant as long as they deem them "relevant" to an investigation -- with a gag order that stops companies from mentioning they've received them for good measure. Internal Justice Department reports have found NSLs are subject to widespread abuse. Last year, Sen. Russ Feingold along with some Democrats in the House tried to rein in NSLs by requiring that the FBI show the information is somehow relevant to terrorism or espionage, but they were stymied by members of their own party.
Today, The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration wants Congress to expand the type of data that can be gained through the use of National Security Letters:

The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication.

...

Brush up on your encryption skills, if you think it will help. I don't. Soon enough, if not already, Bush's Obama's FBI will know anything it wants... with no restrictions and no warrants... about anything you put on the Internet. I, for one, plan on leaving the Internet. I'll find other things to do, things no more liked by the FBI, but perhaps a bit less visible. I've just about had it.

Mr. Clean Is Watching YOU

 

Jonathan Turley has details. No shit: boxes of Mr. Clean now contain GPS tracking devices, allegedly to follow prizewinners in some contest they sponsor. How likely is that? Turley:

The company says that the minute you take one of the boxes from the shelf, surveillance teams will begin tracking you. The head of the promotion promises that “they may get to your house as soon as you do.” That is comforting.

Indeed it is. You don't even have to wait for consequences: they follow you home.

For the information of Unilever's prize trackers: if you track one of your packages to my home, you'll find me waiting for you. Armed. Ready to award you a little prize of your very own. I have zero tolerance for premeditated invasion of my privacy.