The First Amendment rides again

Court applies reporter's privilege to Web site operator

The state's shield law and the First Amendment apply to journalists for an online magazine, a appellate court ruled in reversing a trial court decision not to apply the reporter's shield law to a Web site.
[...]
"The shield law is intended to protect the gathering and dissemination of news," Presiding Justice Conrad L. Rushing wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel for the California Court of Appeal in San Jose. "We can think of no workable test or principle that would distinguish 'legitimate' from 'illegitimate' news."
[...]
In reversing the trial court decision, the appellate court found that California' shield law applied even though the journalists repeatedly linked back to their source material -- the supposedly confidential Apple materials.

"Courts ought not to cling too fiercely to traditional preconceptions, especially when they operate to discourage the seemingly salutary practice of providing readers with source materials rather than subjecting them to the editors' own 'spin' on a story," Rushing wrote.
[...]
The court also ruled that Apple could not subpoena the journalists' e-mail servers in order to retrieve their confidential source information.
[...]

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POP!

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To paraphrase Lincoln ...

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A quickie...

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Movie Review

GAO Report Faults Voluntary Programs To Cut Air Pollution
European Mosquito Calamity Hits South Moravia
Jet streams off track, may affect weather patterns
Deserts Expanding With Jet Stream Shift

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In Memoriam

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Saturday Sailboat Blogging

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There is truly some real crap on the web.

HIV origin 'found in wild chimps'

HIV Origin Found: Negro Sex With Chimps Cause Jump to Humans

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Like "one hand clapping"...

Excerpt: Bush's body language suggests this wasn't an open and honest acquiescence to a straight forward question, but a rehearsed and choreographed ploy to boost his pathetic approval ratings.

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What is wrong with this country?

Excerpt: A US lawmaker admitted to being the source of the mistaken report of gunfire that sparked the mayhem amid worries that an armed intruder was on the loose in Congress, leading authorities to shut down parts of the legislative office complex for hours.

Republican Representative Jim Saxton (news, bio, voting record), speaking to Fox television, said he was in an elevator at the garage level of the Rayburn House Office building, when he heard what he thought was gunfire.

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A suspicion is confirmed.

Excerpt:For the third year in a row the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney has refused to disclose data on its classification and declassification activity, in an apparent violation of an executive order issued by President Bush.

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Nano Nano

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Submitted without comment ... because why reinvent the wheel?

Top 10 Signs of the Impending U.S. Police State

George Bush said that the terrorists hate the West because of its freedoms. Makes sense that he's taking those freedoms away in order to stop the flow of hate ...! Once you're all living in a police state then the terrorists will have nothing to hate you for!

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My Favorite Quote

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So how bad do the neocons want a war with Iran?

Against this tide, neo-conservatives, whose influence in the administration runs chiefly through Cheney's office, have been fighting back, warning that direct talks with Tehran would be a trap from which Washington would find it difficult to extricate itself and declaring that recent ethnic unrest inside Iran showed that its population was ready to rise up against the regime.

"The question before the world now is: Can Iran be coerced by any means short of force (to halt its nuclear programme)," wrote David Frum of the American Enterprise Institute. "There's only one way to find out -- and it is not by talking."

Iran Proposal to U.S. Offered Peace with Israel

Iran offered in 2003 to accept peace with Israel and to cut off material assistance to Palestinian armed groups and pressure them to halt terrorist attacks within Israel's 1967 borders, according to the secret Iranian proposal to the United States.

The two-page proposal for a broad Iran-U.S. agreement covering all the issues separating the two countries, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, was conveyed to the United States in late April or early May 2003.
[...]
The two-page document contradicts the official line of the George W. Bush administration that Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel and the sponsorship of terrorism in the region.

U-turn by White House As it Blocks Direct Talks with Iran

The White House yesterday ruled out previously authorised direct talks between Tehran and the US ambassador in Baghdad, which were to have focused on the situation in Iraq. The move marks a hardening of the Bush administration's position, despite pressure from the international community to enter into direct dialogue with Iran.

A White House official said that although the US envoy had originally been granted a mandate for talks with Iran, "we have decided not to pursue it."

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Did anybody else watch CBS Evening News last night?

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A quick perusal of this site

Global Voices Online is a non-profit global citizens’ media project, sponsored by and launched from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School.

How Global Voices Works:

A growing number of bloggers around the world are emerging as “bridge bloggers:� people who are talking about their country or region to a global audience. Global Voices is your guide to the most interesting conversations, information, and ideas appearing around the world on various forms of participatory media such as blogs, podcasts, photo sharing sites, and videoblogs.

Our global team of regional blogger-editors is working to find, aggregate and track these conversations. Each day they link to 5-10 of the most interesting blog posts from their regions in the “daily roundups� section. A larger group of contributing bloggers is posting

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Why isn't the good news from Iraq being reported on?

VOA's Baghdad Bureau Still Closed After Six Months

The Voice of America's bureau in Baghdad has been closed for the past six months, ever since the government-funded agency withdrew its only reporter in Iraq after she was fired upon in an ambush and her security guard was later killed.

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Hero of the week

Elections chief urges citizens to demand vote accountability

[...]
First, they forced counties to adopt electronic voting machines that can be tampered with, then, last year, they made it illegal to use paper ballots to recount close races, Sancho told 100 people gathered at Daytona Beach Community College.
[...]
"Everything you do today is verified," Sancho said, whether it's a store receipt or a high school diploma. So why should voting be any different, Sancho asked.

Sancho caused a brouhaha earlier this year when he asked computer experts to hack into touch-screen machines to test their vulnerability. One hacker discovered he could change vote tallies without detection by manipulating the memory cards.

The tests irked officials at Diebold Election Systems, which manufactures the touch-screens. To retaliate, Diebold and other vendors refused to sell machines to Leon County, but later relented.

In December, Volusia County Council members voted 4-3 to reject Diebold in the hope of eventually buying from AutoMARK, a vendor whose machines offered a paper trail. But the state never certified AutoMARK. [ED: gee, I wonder why that was?]
[...]
Equally troubling is a state law passed in 2005 that makes it unlawful to use paper ballots in official recounts, Sancho said. Electronic votes must stand on their own.

Clint Curtis, a computer programmer, said lawmakers asked him to develop software that could divert a vote from the item a person chose to another on the page. The idea was to boost voting security, Curtis said, although now he's not so sure.

He designed the program so the erroneous vote would show up everywhere in the electronic system. An independent paper trail is the only way to beat it, Curtis said.
[...]
(Sancho said) "The truth is messy," he said. "The truth makes you uncomfortable."

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I'm used to the Washington Post publishing fluff ...

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EEEdiots.

Excerpt: Republican incumbents are far more likely than their colleagues in Congress to receive oil company money, RAW STORY has found.

Excerpt: Republicans have responded to widespread reports of Rick Santorum's (R-PA) lobbyist contributions by pointing out that 8 of the 11 U.S. Senators to benefit the most from lobby gifts are, in fact, Democrats, RAW STORY has learned.

Excerpt: President George W. Bush has bestowed on his intelligence czar, John Negroponte, broad authority, in the name of national security, to excuse publicly traded companies from their usual accounting and securities-disclosure obligations. Notice of the development came in a brief entry in the Federal Register, dated May 5, 2006, that was opaque to the untrained eye.

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Sometimes

Excerpt: In the latest White House personnel changes, the editor of a conservative magazine will replace Claude Allen, the domestic policy adviser who left in February amid a shoplifting investigation.
The White House announced the appointment Wednesday of Karl Zinsmeister, who has been editor-in-chief of The American Enterprise magazine for 12 years.

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Think it can't happen here?

Excerpt: The mayor of the southern fourth district, Adrian Inimaroiu, said residents would be cut off and all businesses in the area would be closed during the quarantine period of up to three weeks.

Excerpt: Executive Order: Amendment to E.O. 13295 Relating to Certain Influenza Viruses and Quarantinable Communicable Diseases

Excerpt: "We have seen clusters in the past and we have seen what was almost certainly (maybe) limited human to human transmission in some cases," he said. "But this is significant because it's the mother of all clusters. It's seven people, six of whom have died and possibly an eighth as well who died before samples could be taken so this is the mother of all clusters."

Cordingley says the WHO is particularly concerned because scientists cannot find a link to sick birds in these latest deaths.

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Here's a thought...

Excerpt:The Republican Speaker of the House has lashed out the Justice Department--and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales--over the raid of a Democratic Congressman's Office, RAW STORY has learned

Excerpt: The recent Saturday raid by 19 armed FBI agents on the House of Representatives office of Rep. William Jefferson was not a warning to the current 109th Congress but a threatening broadside against the 110th Congress, which looks to have at least one house controlled by the Democrats. The unitary fascist Bush White House is sending a message to a future Democratic Congress -- "engage in investigations, hearings, subpoenas of Bush administration current and ex-officials, and impeachment notions, and this type of ransacking of congressional offices will be the rule and not the exception." That is why pathetic GOP leaders like Dennis Hastert, Bill Frist, and Trent Lott are so upset. Like the weak and cowering German conservative parliamentarians, including the Catholic Center Party, German People's Party, National People's Party, and Bavarian People's Party members, who, after the Nazi victory in the 1932 elections, voted in 1933 for the Enabling Act (Germany's version of our Patriot Act) and themselves out of a job, the Republican leadership complaints about Bush are too little and too late. Now, they will also feel the brunt of Bush's judges who will rule that FBI invasions and ransacking of congressional offices do not violate any separation of powers clause in the Constitution. Soon, the names Hastert, Frist, and Lott will be as forgotten as those German conservatives who voted for the Enabling Act and handed power to a fascist regime.

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This is what I'm talkin' about.

Excerpt: A stone's throw down the sidewalk, Abad Nieves watches the scene unfold. Nieves is a detective with the Intelligence Division of the New York Police Department (NYPD). Casually clad in slacks and a black leather jacket, he monitors the response of people loitering in the area. Is anyone making notes or videotaping? Does anyone seem especially startled by the out-of-the-blue appearance of a heavily armed NYPD squad?

On this day, Nieves doesn't see anything overly suspicious, but he is pleased that the deployment created a strong impression. Known as a Hercules team, it makes multiple appearances around the city each day. The locations are chosen either in response to specific intelligence or simply to provide a show of force at high-profile sites.

"The response we usually get is, 'Holy s---!'" Nieves says. "That's the reaction we want. We are in the business of scaring people--we just want to scare the right people."

Add to that "and train the rest of them to accept us as authority figures."

My suggestion? Keep some rotten tomatoes on hand. When you see these guys, pelt them.

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Why no Rove indictment?

Excerpt: The Wayne Madsen Report and the Chris Matthews Show have both floated the theory that Fitzgerald had secured indictments against Rove, but Gonzales --via McNulty-- came in at the last second and used his power as Fitzgerald's superior to kill the indictments.

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Polishing a turd.

Excerpt: The leadership style is hierarchical, with the top guy able to make any decision he pleases basically without any approval from any quarter. It is the style of a dictator. It is 100 percent subversive of our Constitutional framework.

Excerpt: As America struggled for its survival on the eve of FDR's presidency, Roosevelt felt that all options were on the table. One heretofore undisclosed possibility that Alter unearthed from the archives was to form a private army over which he could exert what amounted to dictatorial powers.

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Must-read, must-read of the week.

Excerpt: AT&T claims information in the file is proprietary and that it would suffer severe harm if it were released.

Based on what we've seen, Wired News disagrees. In addition, we believe the public's right to know the full facts in this case outweighs AT&T's claims to secrecy.

Here's a tasty morsel

In 2003 AT&T built "secret rooms" hidden deep in the bowels of its central offices in various cities, housing computer gear for a government spy operation which taps into the company's popular WorldNet service and the entire internet. These installations enable the government to look at every individual message on the internet and analyze exactly what people are doing. Documents showing the hardwire installation in San Francisco suggest that there are similar locations being installed in numerous other cities.

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It only gets more chilling

Excerpt:Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday he believes journalists can be prosecuted for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to national security.

Excerpt: The federal government appears to have the authority to prosecute journalists or newspapers for publishing classified information, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Sunday.

Excerpt: A central issue of Bush's plan is that the troops would be under federal authority. One of the exceptions built into the Posse Comitatus Act is that troops may be deployed to support law enforcement agencies, but with the exception of insurrections and riots, nuclear attack or interdiction of drug smuggling (when working directly with law enforcement agencies), they must be under the authority of a state governor.

Excerpt: Iran is just a few months from acquiring the technological know-how that will allow it to build a nuclear bomb, [insert bull-shit cough here.] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted as saying Sunday in the transcript of an interview he gave to CNN.

Excerpt: In order to sell more weapons, the United States needs to create phantom enemies for countries targeted as markets. This is definitely the case in regard to the tiny Arab states on the southern shores of the Persian Gulf.

Excerpt: The Supreme Court reaffirmed Monday that police can enter homes in emergencies without knocking or announcing their presence.

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Propaganda of the Weekend

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This probably explains a lot ...

Cell Phone Symphony

The Moebius

Best Buy

And many more!

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Just Farking Around ...

Mega-developers and the city's mayor are shooting down a proposed affordable housing law, calling it unfair, communistic and doomed to failure. People could afford a place to live, the mayor said, if they were willing to work harder.

Mayor Jim Naugle, a conservative and brash politician serving his final term, said people mistakenly think they're entitled to an affordable single-family house on a 40-hour work routine. They need to work more hours, and even then settle for a condo or townhouse, Naugle said.

"I'm supposed to subsidize some schlock sitting on the sofa and drinking a beer, who won't work more than 40 hours a week?'' he asked. "I deny that there is a problem. You can buy condos all day for $160,000.''

APPALACHIA, Va. May 19, 2006 (AP)— The town council voted to seek removal of the mayor, who is charged with rigging his election two years ago, including a scheme to buy votes with beer and cigarettes.

Mayor Ben Cooper, 63, was not present for Thursday's vote because he is under house arrest.

A new banned substance is making its way around Chandler Basha High School — ketchup. Bottles of the condiment have been smuggled into the cafeteria and promptly confiscated when students whipped them out for their burgers and fries.

"Denial is strong in Internet addicts who claim they cannot be addicted to a machine," Wieland notes.

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Summer Camp at Gitmo

Inside Guantanamo Bay

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba -- On Sunday, the Tribune editorial page asked readers: What should the U.S. do with the Guantanamo Bay detention camp? Harry B. Harris Jr., the commander of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, offered this essay in response.

I lead the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen and civilians responsible for the safe and humane care and custody of the unlawful enemy combatants* held here at Guantanamo--a responsibility we take very seriously.

[...]
The Tribune's characterization of Guantanamo as a "detention camp" is precisely correct. Despite our persistent efforts to correct the record, many mainstream outlets--print, voice and electronic--persist in referring to this facility as a "prison camp." This is not mere parsing of words or semantic folderol. Prisons are about punishment and rehabilitation; Guantanamo is about neither.

What we are about is the detention of unlawful enemy combatants--dangerous men associated with Al Qaeda or the Taliban captured on the battlefield waging war on America and our allies, running from that battlefield, or otherwise closely associated with Al Qaeda and the Taliban--and, as you correctly pointed out, preventing them from returning to the fight. We hold men who proudly admit membership at the leadership level in Al Qaeda and the Taliban, many with direct personal contact and knowledge of the Sept. 11, 2001, attackers. We are keeping terrorist recruiters, facilitators, explosives trainers, bombers and bombmakers, Osama bin Laden bodyguards and financiers from continuing their jihad against America.

_ Hafizullah Shah, from the village of Galdon in Afghanistan, was being held based on classified evidence he was not allowed to see. The farmer said he was walking to a bazaar when he was arrested. The United States said Shah was wearing an olive green jacket and was seen by soldiers with a group caching weapons. "I was just walking in the street and I was captured," Shah said. "The next thing I found out is that I am sitting here" in Guantanamo Bay.

_ Abdur Sayed Rahman, of Pakistan, identified himself as a poor chicken farmer. The United States alleged he was in the Taliban, either as a military judge or deputy foreign minister. It emerged during the hearing that the deputy minister is Abdur Zahid Rahman, a near homonym of the detainee. Police searched Abdur Sayed Rahman's home in Pakistan in the fall of 2001 and arrested him. "An American told me I was wrongfully taken and that in a couple of days I'd be freed," Rahman said. "I never saw that American again and I'm still here."

_ Zakirjan Asam traveled from Tajikistan to Afghanistan in the spring of 2001. He was accused of being a member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which allegedly has ties to the Taliban. Asam said he came to Afghanistan as a refugee and was turned over to U.S. forces because he could not afford to pay a bribe.

_ Salih Uyar, 24 at the time of his tribunal hearing, traveled to Afghanistan from Turkey in 2000. He was accused of living with a known al-Qaida member for two months just before raids began in Kabul, Afghanistan, and of associating with Turkish radical religious groups. At the time of his capture, he had a Casio watch - a model that authorities say was used in bombings. "If it's a crime to carry this watch, your own military personnel also carry this watch, too," Uyar told the military tribunal. "Does that mean that they're just terrorists as well?" Uyar also went to Syria but said his purpose was to study Arabic.

Virtual tour

I do reject out of hand, however, the Tribune's notion that we are somehow delinquent in our moral responsibility to transform the camp and that the camp is "unsatisfactory." This is simply not true. Your editorial is either misleading or ill-informed. Conditions have improved dramatically for detainees since they first arrived in 2002. More important, we aggressively look for ways to build on the "safe and humane care and custody" mission with which I opened this dialogue.
[...]

Hearings may consider torture
The specter of military torture entered pretrial debate over how to proceed in the trial of a Yemeni captive.

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- A U.S. Army colonel presiding over four war-crimes cases here acknowledged on Wednesday that upcoming trials may have to weigh whether torture was used to gather testimony against alleged al Qaeda conspirators.
[...]
Air Force Maj. Jane Boomer, said after the hearing that Military Commissions rules that protect information for national security reasons do not specifically ban evidence gained through torture.

''Hypothetically, is it possible? Do the rules allow for it?,'' she said. ``Yes.''
[...]
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued, then repealed, interrogation regulations that some senior Pentagon insiders saw as abusive. FBI agents, in internal e-mails, described detainees shackled to the floor, naked, left to urinate on themselves and blasted with icy temperatures and mind-numbing music -- in order to break their will during interrogations.

Detainees have sent and received more than 44,000 pieces of mail since February 2002[...]

Doctors in the house

We provide outstanding medical care to every detainee, the same quality as what our service members receive. We are improving the health and extending the life span of the detainee population in our charge.
[...]

Army Doctors Implicated in Abuse
Medical Workers Helped Tailor Interrogations of Detainees, Article Says

U.S. Army doctors violated the Geneva Conventions by helping intelligence officers carry out abusive interrogations at military detention centers, perhaps participating in torture, according to an article in today's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
[...]
It says that medical workers gave interrogators access to patient medical files, and that psychiatrists and other physicians collaborated with interrogators and guards who, in turn, deprived detainees of sleep, restricted them to diets of bread and water and exposed them to extreme heat and cold.

Force-Feeding an End to Guantanamo Dissent
Pentagon ruling on hunger strikers raises concerns
Report for UN calls the practice akin to `torture'

[...]
The policy to tube-feed detainees appears to contradict what's set out in Article 5 of the 1975 World Medical Association Tokyo Declaration to which the United Sates is bound through its membership with the American Medical Association.

It states: "Where a prisoner refuses nourishment and is considered by the doctor as capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment concerning the consequences of such a voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially."

Former commander of the base Maj.-Gen. Jay Hood told a group of civilian doctors, psychologists and ethicists who visited the camp's medical facility in October 2005 that doctors had been "screened, before coming to Guantanamo, "to ensure they do not have ethical objections to assisted feeding," according to an account of that visit in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Passing inspections

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which enjoys full diplomatic status, has unfettered access to the detainees. Their reports are useful, meaningful and confidential.[...]

Red Cross: Guantanamo Tactics 'Tantamount to Torture'

WASHINGTON - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has accused the U.S. military of using tactics "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
[...]
In Geneva, the ICRC said it would neither confirm nor deny the New York Times report -- in which allegations of treatment tantamount to torture go further than what the neutral intermediary has publicly stated before about inmates held at Guantanamo.

But, in a statement, the Geneva-based ICRC said it remained concerned that "significant problems regarding conditions and treatment at Guantanamo Bay have not yet been adequately addressed," and it was pursuing talks with U.S. authorities.
[...]
The Times said the U.S. government and military officials received the ICRC report in July and rejected its findings.
[...]
The Times said the Red Cross investigators had found a system devised to break the will of prisoners through "humiliating acts, solitary confinement, temperature extremes, use of forced positions."

"The construction of such a system, whose stated purpose is the production of intelligence, cannot be considered other than an intentional system of cruel, unusual and degrading treatment and a form of torture," the Times quoted the report as saying.

The Red Cross said yesterday that the U.S. may have committed war crimes at Guantanamo Bay if reports of detainees being tortured at the military base are true. This according to a report in the Guardian of London. The comment by the Red Cross comes a day after three former detainees from Britain revealed they were the victims of systemic abuse at the hands of their US captors both in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay.

Danger within

The U.S. government remains committed to not detaining any person any longer than is absolutely required.[...]

15 Muslims, Cleared of Terrorism Charges, Remain at Guantanamo With Nowhere to Go

In late 2003, the Pentagon quietly decided that 15 Chinese Muslims detained at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be released. Five were people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, some of them picked up by Pakistani bounty hunters for U.S. payoffs. The other 10 were deemed low-risk detainees whose enemy was China's communist government -- not the United States, according to senior U.S. officials.

More than 20 months later, the 15 still languish at Guantanamo Bay, imprisoned and sometimes shackled, with most of their families unaware whether they are even alive.
[...]
All 15 Uighurs have actually been cleared for release from Guantanamo Bay twice, once after a Pentagon review in late 2003 and again last March, U.S. officials said. Seven other Uighurs were ruled to be enemy combatants and will continue to be detained.

Even after the second decision, however, the government did not notify the 15 men for several months that they had been cleared. "They clearly were keeping secret that these men were acquitted. They were found not to be al Qaeda and not to be Taliban," Willett said. "But the government still refused to provide a transcript of the tribunal that acquitted them to the detainees, their new lawyers or a U.S. court."

The U.S. military says 759 detainees have been held at Guantanamo Bay since the detention center began taking prisoners in the U.S. war on terror in January 2002. About 275 have been released or transferred.

The U.S. has filed charges against 10 detainees.

Six hurt in violent clashes as Guantánamo Bay uprising is put down by US guards
[...]
According to Guantánamo Bay naval base commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris, the unrest began when guards were set upon as they came to the aid of a detainee pretending to hang himself in Camp 4

Earlier on Thursday, two other prisoners made suicide attempts by swallowing prescription medicine they had been hoarding. Military officers yesterday described them as stable but unconscious.
[...]
There have been 41 suicide attempts at the facility since it was opened in January 2002 to house prisoners seized on the battlefields of Afghanistan, and suspected members of al-Qaida.

In 2003, according to the US military, 23 detainees carried out a coordinated attempt to kill themselves during a week-long protest. The attempts were classified as "self-injurious behaviour" rather than suicide attempts.

One prisoner, Bahraini Juma'a al-Dossari, has made 12 suicide attempts in four years - including one last October during a visit by his attorney, Joshua Colangelo-Bryan. "I saw a pool of blood on the floor in front of me, and then I looked up and saw him hanging from the inside of the steel mesh wall of the cell. He had a large gash in his arm, and he was unconscious," Mr Colangelo-Bryan told the Guardian.

James Yee, a former US army chaplain at Guantánamo, said the number of suicide attempts had become much worse. "When I was down there it was happening pretty often," he told CNN.

Last August, more than 120 prisoners went on hunger strike to protest at their indefinite imprisonment and beatings by the Immediate Response Force squads which are used to put down such protests.

The Convention Against Torture prohibits its signatories from using cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners, and obliges them to ensure that any detainee is given certain minimum legal rights. President Ronald Reagan signed the treaty, President George H.W. Bush formally sent it to the Senate for approval, and the Senate ratified it in 1994.
Congress also passed legislation turning the treaty's provisions into domestic law, which President Bill Clinton signed. But after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush's legal team told him that he had the power to bypass domestic and international restrictions on the treatment of prisoners, such as the antitorture treaty or the Geneva Conventions.
Last year Congress passed a law making clear that no US official can use any form of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment against detainees, anywhere in the world. But when Bush signed the new torture ban, he issued a ''signing statement" reasserting his claim that he has the power, as commander-in-chief, to authorize interrogators to bypass the restrictions.

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Saturday Sailboat Blogging

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Not Exactly Worth a Thousand Words ...

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I'm a hypocrite ...

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Filed under: Don't the have anything better to do?

President George W. Bush has long opposed making English the country's national language, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Friday,
[...]
"The president has never supported making English the national language" Gonzales said

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Friday that President Bush supports both measures.

Whether or Not English Is America's National Language Dominates Senate Debate

"What the president has said all along is that he wants to make sure that people who become American citizens have a command of the English language," Snow said.

"I aim to be a competitive nation."
"If the Iranians were to have a nuclear weapon they could proliferate."
"And so I'm for medical liability at the federal level."
"I hope you go you know I hope you go back to the ranch and the farm is what I'm about to say."
"The best place for the facts to be done is by somebody who's spending time investigating it."

Senate Votes Hike in Indecency Fines
With no dissent, the Senate late Thursday approved a bill to raise indecency fines 10-fold to $325,000 per violation for television and radio broadcast stations that air profane or indecent material between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., prime family viewing hours.
[...]
The legislation was inspired by the 2004 Superbowl halftime show, during which singer Janet Jackson briefly exposed one breast in what she later called a "wardrobe malfunction."

Ban on Gay Marriage Advances in Senate

A Senate panel advanced a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage Thursday as the committee chairman shouted "good riddance" to a Democrat who walked out of the tense session.

"If you want to leave, good riddance," Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) told Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), who refused to participate because, he said, the meeting was not sufficiently open to the public.

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Winning their hearts and minds

Lawmaker: Marines killed Iraqis 'in cold blood'
Navy conducting war crimes probe into November violence in Haditha

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children.

One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. "The Americans came into the room where my father was praying," she said, "and shot him."

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.

Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right.

A videotape taken by an Iraqi showed the aftermath of the alleged attack: a blood-smeared bedroom floor and bits of what appear to be human flesh and bullet holes on the walls.

The video, obtained by Time magazine, was broadcast a day after town residents told The Associated Press that American troops entered homes on Nov. 19 and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine.

On Nov. 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that on the previous day a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gunbattle, U.S. and Iraqi troops killed eight insurgents, he said.

U.S. military officials later confirmed that the version of events was wrong.

Murtha, a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, said at a news conference Wednesday that sources within the military have told him that an internal investigation will show that "there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Military officials say Marine Corp photos taken immediately after the incident show many of the victims were shot at close range, in the head and chest, execution-style. One photo shows a mother and young child bent over on the floor as if in prayer, shot dead, said the officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity because the investigation hasn't been completed.
[...]
The Marine Corps issued a statement in response to Murtha's remarks:

"There is an ongoing investigation; therefore, any comment at this time would be inappropriate and could undermine the investigatory and possible legal process. As soon as the facts are known and decisions on future actions are made, we will make that information available to the public to the fullest extent allowable."

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Addendum to 'Why Do It Legally'

Officials familiar with Thin Thread say some within NSA were stunned by the legal flip-flop. ThinThread "was designed very carefully from a legal point of view, so that even in non-wartime, you could have done it legitimately," the official said.

In a speech in January, Hayden said the warrantless surveillance program was not only limited to al-Qaida communications, but carefully implemented with an eye toward preserving the Constitution and rights of Americans.

"As the director, I was the one responsible to ensure that this program was limited in its scope and disciplined in its application," he said.

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Why do it legally

Excerpt: The National Security Agency developed a pilot program in the late 1990s that would have enabled it to gather and analyze massive amounts of communications data without running afoul of privacy laws. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, it shelved the project -- not because it failed to work -- but because of bureaucratic infighting and a sudden White House expansion of the agency's surveillance powers, according to several intelligence officials.

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And for the contract to build a fence along our borders...

Excerpt: Through its Secure Border Initiative, the Bush administration intends to not simply buy high-tech equipment to help it patrol the borders -- a tactic it has also already tried, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, with limited success. It is also asking the contractors to devise and build a whole new border strategy.

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Question....

Excerpt:In 2001, an anonymous White House source leaked top-secret NSA intelligence to reporter Judith Miller that Al Qaida was planning a major attack on the United States. But the story never made it into the paper.

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This COULD be innocent. Then again...

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Under the radar

Britain sees no evidence US behind Somalia violence

A British government minister said on Wednesday he had seen no evidence to substantiate accusations Washington was funding Mogadishu warlords in a battle with Islamic militia.
[...]
Commenting on accusations from the Islamic militia that Washington is backing the warlords, charges given credence by many analysts, Benn said: "I am aware that people have made those comments ... I haven't seen any evidence myself." [ED: can you say 'carefully parsed non-denial denial?']
[...]
The United States has not confirmed or denied the claims, but said it would support groups in Somalia fighting terrorism.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said earlier in Washington "there is concern about the presence of foreign terrorists, particularly al Qaeda, within Somalia right now".

"In an environment of instability, as we've seen in the past, al Qaeda may take root

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack sidestepped questions over whether the United States was funding warlords but said Washington was working with "responsible members of the Somali political spectrum" whom he declined to name.

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With much fanfare,

Excerpt: It strikes me that something flew into the Pentagon. I don't know what to say though because it also appears nearly as certain from all of the comparisons that the size, bright color and reflection of the object in the videos does not match what you would expect from a 757-200. I am NOT endorsing a missile or anything else! I am just looking at the physical evidence without a conclusion.
It does seem that they do not want us to have any clear picture of what it was exactly.....for now. I think the warnings people have made about a possible booby trap are valid. Don't bite on all of this and go on a tangent. They could pull something solid (or apparently solid) out of the bag and ridicule us later. We should focus on the irrefutable evidence like the demolition of WTC7, the free-fall speed of the towers, Norad, PNAC etc., in other words, things that are WELL documented. The Pentagon situation is always going to be a sticky mess. I think they have made themselves look bad enough without any more help from us.

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Personally

Excerpt: Consumers Energy turned off the power to a Flint woman after she paid all but one penny of her bill, which was $1,662.08. The company told Jacqueline Williams the power would not be turned on until it received the penny.

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Well THAT was creepy!

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Here we go again

Excerpt: The bodies of two women, both apparently killed by alligators, were found Sunday less than a week after a similar death in a state that had seen just 17 confirmed fatal attacks by the animals in the previous 58 years.

Excerpt: But if you want to learn about alligators eating women, please do turn on CNN. Oh yeah, Bush's "big" immigration speech is another top story on CNN. Yes, much bigger story than finding out the president is spying on America's journalists.

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Rove Watch

Excerpt: The administration could provide a tasty bit of disinformation to Leopold’s sources and the attention of the reporter along with a fair amount of the progressive press would be turned to a story that would turn out to be false. This story and the rapid discovery that it was a hoax would overshadow the embarrassing filing by Prosecutor Fitzgerald. Indeed, it would overshadow the entire CIA Leak-Gate investigation or at least the reporting thereof for some time.

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Breaking News- Bushco spying on reporters' phone calls

Federal Source to ABC News: We Know Who You're Calling

May 15, 2006 10:33 AM
Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:

A senior federal law enforcement official tells us the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

We do not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.
[...]
Our reports on the CIA's secret prisons in Romania and Poland were known to have upset CIA officials.

People questioned by the FBI about leaks of intelligence information say the CIA was also disturbed by ABC News reports that revealed the use of CIA predator missiles inside Pakistan.

Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers.
[...]
A pattern of phone calls from a reporter, however, could provide valuable clues for leak investigators.

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FIRE THEM ALL!

• We need to have term limits. No congressman should have more than two terms and no senator more than one. That will get rid of the career politicians and it will make sure that people who manipulate the system can't do too much harm.
• We should make sure that no family member of a senator or president still living can become a senator or president, respectively. (I'm tired of the reign of the Borgias, aren't you?)
  
• We should also make all elections publicly funded so that there are more people eligible to run.
• We should institute instant runoff voting so that third parties become viable. And finally,
• We should get rid of the electoral college. It's ridiculous.

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It doesn't matter who votes, it matters who counts the votes ... or ... Diebold is Stalin' on their security risks

New Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systems

With primary election dates fast approaching in many states, officials in Pennsylvania and California issued urgent directives in recent days about a potential security risk in their Diebold Election Systems touch-screen voting machines, while other states with similar equipment hurried to assess the seriousness of the problem.

"It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system," said Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is an examiner of electronic voting systems for Pennsylvania, where the primary is to take place on Tuesday.
[...]
Officials from Diebold and from elections' offices in numerous states minimized the significance of the risk and emphasized that there were no signs that any touch-screen machines had been tampered with.
[...]
David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold Election Systems, said the potential risk existed because the company's technicians had intentionally built the machines in such a way that election officials would be able to update their systems in years ahead.

"For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software," he said. "I don't believe these evil elections people exist."

Aviel Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, did the first in-depth analysis of the security flaws in the source code for Diebold touch-screen machines in 2003. After studying the latest problem, he said: "I almost had a heart attack. The implications of this are pretty astounding."

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Saturday Sailboat Blogging

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Can you hear me now?

Excerpt: One government lawyer who has participated in negotiations with telecommunications providers said the Bush administration has argued that a company can turn over its entire database of customer records -- and even the stored content of calls and e-mails -- because customers "have consented to that" when they establish accounts. The fine print of many telephone and Internet service contracts includes catchall provisions, the lawyer said, authorizing the company to disclose such records to protect public safety or national security, or in compliance with a lawful government request.

Excerpt: This theme emerges again and again. We continuously hear that the Bush administration has legal authority to do anything the President orders. Claims that he is acting illegally are just frivolous and the by-product of Bush hatred. And yet, as I detailed here, each and every time the administration has the opportunity to obtain an adjudication of the legality of its conduct from a federal court (which, unbeknownst to the administration, is the branch of our government which has the authority and responsibility to interpret and apply the law), it does everything possible to avoid that adjudication.

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Sherman, set the wayback machine

April 12, 2000 -- In a rare public appearance, two men who head the top U.S. intelligence agencies sought to convince lawmakers on Capitol Hill that ordinary Americans are never the targets of high-tech government surveillance.

The director of the National Security Agency, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, and his boss, CIA Director George Tenet, testified Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee.

They sought to dispute newspaper reports suggesting the United States and its allies were using a surveillance system to eavesdrop on private conversations of Americans and Europeans.
[...]
On Wednesday, the NSA director dismissed any suggestions that his agency violates privacy laws.

"We are not out there as a vacuum cleaner," Hayden said. "We don't have that capability and we don't want that capability."
[...]
"We protect the rights of Americans and their privacy," Tenet insisted. "We do not violate them and we never will."

The agencies are barred from doing so by a 1978 law that was passed after the NSA was forced to admit in the 1970s that its massive eavesdropping equipment had been used against anti-Vietnam War activists [...]
That led to the law banning any spying on Americans anywhere. The law protects resident aliens, too, said Hayden, no matter who they are or what they are suspected of doing." Hayden testified.
[...]
"There is a rich body of oversight that ensures that we stay within the law," he said.
[...]
"It's not what we're about. It's not what we've done. We simply do not do that." he added.

The unusual hearing was scheduled by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss, a Florida Republican, who said he was satisfied that the intelligence agencies were fulfilling their role of guarding national security interests without violating the rights of citizens.

"I think our safeguards are in place and are working," Goss said.

Bush Says U.S. Spying Is Not Widespread

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans

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Get your war on

Excerpt: According to military and intelligence sources, an air strike on Iran could be doable in June of this year, with military assets in key positions ready to go and a possible plan already on the table.

Excerpt:Tuesday, the Enterprise Carrier Strike Group heads out to support the War on Terrorism. About 7,500 sailors are on board the Enterprise, the guided-missile cruiser Leyte Gulf, the guided-missile destroyer McFaul,and the guided-missile frigate Nicholas.

Excerpt: “The Iranians are clearly very concerned over the mobilization of their own Kurdish minority,� said Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at Queen Mary College, University of London.

And Tehran may also be flexing its muscles to remind the United States that it shares a long border with Iraq, and could cause serious problems there for the United States.

Excerpt: After the Tehran administration conducted operations against the terror network Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) by crossing the Iraqi border, the US Army in Iraq is claimed to have increased the military build up of US troops on the Iranian border.

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The mettle of freedom ...

Hoekstra, Bush critic to speak

Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and carrying a medallion he earned for his 27 years as a Central Intelligence Agency analyst, Ray McGovern arrived at U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra's Washington office.

He left the medallion and a letter saying he no longer wished to be associated with the agency that reportedly has tortured prisoners of war.

"That you, as Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, show more deference to the White House than dedication to your oversight responsibilities under the Constitution is another profound disappointment," he wrote in the March letter. "How can you and your counterpart, Sen. Pat Roberts (chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee), turn a blind eye to torture -- letting some people get away, literally, with murder -- and square that with your conscience?"

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File these under "Things that aren't news"

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Must-read of the morning.

Excerpt: You might know that I am a teacher. My students ask me how can these actions be reconciled with the values outlined at the beginning of this letter and duty to the tradition of Jesus Christ (Peace Be Upon Him), the Messenger of peace and forgiveness?

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