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October 28, 2003
Another miscellaneous batchI don't have enough time to comment on or rate these, but here are a few things I've read recently: CBS News | Will DirecTV Sue You Next? WorldNetDaily: The return of Capt. Queeg More join Question 1 opposition High court urged to stop Guantanamo detentions Chavez accuses CIA as bombings rock Venezuela 'New Mexican Mafia' inmates deface U.S. flag Schools use monkeys to combat paralysis Former Venezuelan president speaks in Memorial Union Arizona Daily Wildcat - Protest erupts over Mt. Graham - Tuesday October 14, 2003 Marijuana smoking damages spermBBC NEWS | Health | Marijuana smoking damages sperm Men who smoke marijuana frequently damage their fertility in several different ways, research suggests. Scientists at Buffalo University found regular smokers had significantly less seminal fluid, and a lower sperm count. Their sperm were also more likely to swim too fast too early, leading to burn-out before they reach the egg. Lead researcher Dr Lani Burkman said: "The bottom line is, the active ingredients in marijuana are doing something to sperm." Alabama LP Release: Libertarians call for Fuller’s resignationPRESS RELEASE Libertarian Party of Alabama • 2330 Highland Ave • Birmingham, AL 35205 Stephen P. Gordon -or- Jonny Letson -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Libertarians call for Fuller’s resignation Huntsville - October 26, 2003 - North Alabama libertarians are calling for either answers from, or the removal of, Bill Fuller as the Commissioner of State Department of Human Resources (DHR). Huntsville District Chair of the Libertarian Party of Alabama (LPA) Jonny Letson states, "Bill Fuller, in showing no expression of urgency or major concern in an undelayed reuniting of Marta Alonzo and her infant son, causes me, and I am sure, many other parents, to feel he is lacking in his abilities to act as commissioner over a children's welfare service." The DHR has become involved in the case of Marta Alonzo, a working Guatemalan mother and her infant son, Javier. For months, Marta, probably aged around seventeen, and Javier, who just turned one, have been placed in separate foster homes. There have been no allegations of child abuse made in this case. Until yesterday, there had be no mention of neglect. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Additional information: http://al.lp.org/alonzo.htm Most recent updates: News: http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/106707334833691.xml Editorial: http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/opinion/editorials/031026a.shtml From the platform of the Libertarian Party: We believe that families and households are private institutions, which should be free from government intrusion and interference. Children [in this case, Marta Alonzo] always should have the right to establish their maturity by assuming administration and protection of their own rights, ending dependency upon their parents or other guardians, and assuming all responsibilities of adulthood. We call for repeal of all "children's codes" or statutes which abridge due process protections for young people. Selzer to Libertarians: Support Your CandidatesReceived via e-mail... SUPPORT YOUR CANDIDATES |
Celebrities to try their hand at Israeli-Arab diplomacy
I'm sure the popular thing will be to denigrate this effort, but I think, why not applaud it, and wish them the best? The intro of this article, for example, all-but sneers at the celebrities for trying to sit at the big diplomats' table. But note what the article also concedes, twice in the first two paragraphs: the big diplomats have failed. So I'd say they hardly have more stature in terms of this conflict than Hollywood celebrities, or even you or I.
After Tony and Kofi fail, Brad and Jennifer try Mid-East diplomacy
By Inigo Gilmore in Jerusalem
(Filed: 26/10/2003)
Bill Clinton failed, Tony Blair drew a blank and Kofi Annan made little progress. But now a team of Hollywood film stars is about to visit the Middle East on a private peace mission, in the belief that their charms will work magic on the Israeli-Arab conflict.
Brad Pitt, his wife, Jennifer Aniston, and Danny DeVito are among the stars who aim to succeed where world statesmen have stumbled.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .5
Learning Percentage: 70%
October 26, 2003
Gary Coleman to be political analyst on comedy radio network
Gary Coleman to be political analyst on comedy radio network
Posted on Mon, Oct. 13, 2003
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - Former childhood actor Gary Coleman didn't win California's recall election, but he'll still get a political platform on the new Hollywood-based All Comedy Radio network.
Coleman, 35, has been tapped to become the network's political analyst and said his experience as a candidate will come in handy in this new assignment.
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 90%
U.S. Soldier Killed in Attack on Baghdad Hotel where Wolfowitz was staying
U.S. Soldier Killed in Attack on Baghdad Hotel
By REUTERS
BAGHDAD, Oct. 26 -- Guerrillas blasted rockets at Baghdad's most heavily fortified hotel where U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying on Sunday, killing an American soldier and wounding 15 people, U.S. officials said.
Wolfowitz, who escaped unhurt, vowed that the United States would not be cowed into abandoning Iraq.
But the bold attack on the hotel with the tightest security in Baghdad, if not the Middle East, undermined Washington's claim that it is steadily defeating the guerrillas who have killed 109 U.S. soldiers since President George W. Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1.
October 23, 2003
Georgia runs from the MATRIX
By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Posted: 22/10/2003 at 19:45 GMT
The state of Georgia has pulled out of the U.S. Department of Justice sponsored MATRIX information collection program, leaving data only on its felons and sexual offenders behind in the Orwellian database.
Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue has cited both privacy concerns and costs as the two key reasons the state will no longer participate in the MATRIX (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange) pilot project. ...
Read It Rating: 4.5
Left/Right Rating: L4
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 55%
October 20, 2003
Miscellaneous batch
Here are a bunch of things I've read that I'm lumping together and not rating in order to save time.
FOXNews.com - Top Stories - Group Calls for De-Legalization of Marriage
USATODAY.com - Black leaders outraged at 'Ghettopoly' game at Urban Outfitters
JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION, MR. LIMBAUGH
CEI.ORG: Competitive Enterprise Institute: Global Warming Shakeup in Moscow
October 18, 2003
The story behind "Eight Men Out"
An Account of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox Scandal and 1921 Trial
(From University of Missouri-Kansas City Professor Doug Linder's Famous Trials page. The account is just one item in a very thorough overview of the whole incident, with lots of background info, images, etc.)
Watching the movie Eight Men Out made me curious to find out the full story of the 1919 "Black Sox" World series scandal. The movie moves along pretty quickly, and there are a lot of people involved in the story, so it can be pretty confusing. I recommend keeping its IMDB movie page handy, and reading this account -- that should help you piece it all together. From the way it's told on that page, it sounds like the movie was extremely faithful to the real story, and included almost all the key elements. It adds up to a semi-confusing movie if you don't know the backstory, but I think director/screenwriter John Sayles made the right choice in including all that detail. If it can draw in a relatively baseball-neutral person like me, it must be pretty decent. Of course, the cast of many familiar faces helps.
(As a side note, Professor Linder's Famous Trials page, which I discovered as part of this search, looks to be pretty excellent. It appears to have accounts of some depth of 35 different trials of import throughout history -- from socrates to O.J. Simpson. Not likely you'll see those two together in many other places. ;-))
October 16, 2003
LP: America owes Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude
LP Press Release:
America owes talk host Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude, Libertarians say
October 16, 2003
WASHINGTON, DC -- The entire nation owes radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude, Libertarians say, because his ordeal has exposed every drug warrior in America as a rank hypocrite.
"One thing we don't hear from American politicians very often is silence," said Joe Seehusen, Libertarian Party executive director. "By refusing to criticize Rush Limbaugh, every drug warrior has just been exposed as a shameless, despicable hypocrite.
"And that's good news, because the next time they do speak up, there'll be no reason for anyone to listen."
The revelation that Limbaugh had become addicted to painkillers -- drugs he is accused of procuring illegally from his Palm Beach housekeeper -- has caused a media sensation ever since the megastar's shocking, on-air confession last week.
As the Limbaugh saga continues, here's an important question for Americans to ask, Libertarians say: Why are all the drug warriors suddenly so silent?
"Republican and Democratic politicians have written laws that have condemned more than 400,000 Americans to prison for committing the same 'crime' as Rush Limbaugh," Seehusen pointed out. "If this pill-popping pontificator deserves a get-out-of-jail-free card, these drug warriors had better explain why."
Given their longstanding support for the Drug War, it's fair to ask:
Why haven't President George Bush or his tough-on-crime attorney general, John Ashcroft, uttered a word criticizing Limbaugh's law-breaking?
Why aren't drug czar John P. Walters or his predecessor, Barry McCaffrey, lambasting Limbaugh as a menace to society and a threat to "our children?"
Why aren't federal DEA agents storming Limbaugh's $30 million Florida mansion in a frantic search for criminal evidence?
Why haven't federal, state, and local police agencies seized the celebrity's homes and luxury cars under asset-forfeiture laws?
Finally, why aren't bloviating blabbermouths like William Bennett publicly explaining how America would be better off if Limbaugh were prosecuted, locked in a steel cage and forced to abandon his wife, his friends, and his career?
The answer is obvious, Seehusen said: "America's drug warriors are shameless hypocrites who believe in one standard of justice for ordinary Americans and another for themselves, their families and their political allies.
"That alone should completely discredit them."
But there's an even more disturbing possibility, Seehusen said: that the people who are prosecuting the Drug War don't even believe in its central premise -- which is that public safety requires that drug users be jailed.
"The Bushes and Ashcrofts and McCaffreys of the world may believe, correctly, that individuals fighting a drug addiction deserve medical, not criminal treatment," he said. "That would explain why they're not demanding that Limbaugh be jailed.
"But if that's the case, these politicians have spent decades tearing apart American families for their own political gain. And that's an unforgivable crime."
October 14, 2003
Abandoning Blogs- Blogger Demographics and Activity Trends
From BlogSearchEngine.com:
Abandoning Blogs- Blogger Demographics and Activity Trends
For the BloggerCon 2003 conference at the Berkman Center of Harvard Law School, Perseus Development Corp. randomly surveyed 3,634 blogs (frequent publications of personal thoughts and Web links, also known as Web logs) on eight leading blog-hosting services to develop a model of blog populations. Based on this research, Perseus estimates that 4.12 million blogs have been created on these services: Blog-City, BlogSpot, Diaryland, LiveJournal, Pitas, TypePad, Weblogger and Xanga.
Based on the rapid growth rate demonstrated by the leading services, Perseus expects the number of hosted blogs created to exceed five million by the end of 2003 and to exceed ten million by the end of 2004.
Abandoned Blogs
The most dramatic finding from the survey was that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned. ...
October 11, 2003
Unrest in Shiite district over attacks
CNN.com - Unrest in Shiite district over attacks - Oct. 10, 2003
Crowd chants 'No, no America'
Friday, October 10, 2003 Posted: 3:56 PM EDT (1956 GMT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Anti-U.S. feeling swirled among worshippers and demonstrators Friday in the sprawling Shiite slum where two U.S. soldiers were gunned down and eight Iraqi police officers were killed in a suicide attack a day earlier.
Such violence has so far been rare in the neighborhood, Sadr City, which was a base of anti-Saddam Hussein sentiment.
But the depressed district now may become a center of resistance to the U.S. occupation, and a powerful imam with a huge power base there, Muqtada al-Sadr, has taken an anti-American stand.
...
As many as 6,000 worshippers gathered in front of the Sadr City municipal offices near the ambush site for Friday prayers and a sermon was delivered by an al-Sadr aide, Sheikh Abdel-Hadi al-Daraji.
"America claims to be the founder of freedom and democracy. That is wrong. Instead, it is nothing but a terrorist organization that leads the world through its terrorism and its reckless arrogance," the cleric said.
"It is forbidden for the American forces to enter Sadr City, especially for the next few days because the sons of Sadr City reject their presence."
The crowds chanted "No, No America!" ...
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .1
Learning Percentage: 65%
What do they mean by "Talking Points"?
If you've ever wondered what the news pundits mean when they accuse one party or another (or one side or another) of handing out "talking points" that everybody on that side takes its cues from...well, here's an excellent example. In this case it happens to be from the Democrat side of things, but they aren't unique in that practice.
Also, for what it's worth, hardcore talking points come out more often than once a month, or however long Democracy Corps waits between issuing these memos. Real, full-bore talking points come out as often as there's something new to be talking about. Talking points also come in many shapes and sizes. I get an e-mail every couplefew days from each of the Bipartisan parties with some form of topical critique of the other side, or promotion of their own -- sort of a soft, massified form of talking points.
Democracy Corps "Core Message"
Here's an archived copy of the one I just read, dated September 26th, 2003.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: L4
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 10%
Mexico politicians fear Schwarzenegger is bad news for migrants
Mexico fears Schwarzenegger is bad news for migrants
by Lisa J. Adams
Associated Press
Oct. 9, 2003 07:45 AM
MEXICO CITY - Mexican federal lawmakers are bemoaning Hollywood action star Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as California governor and issued a stern call to the novice politician to respect the rights of Mexican migrants in North America's largest state.
"This is something about which Mexican migrants should be very concerned," said Rep. Carlos Jimenez, secretary of the foreign relations committee in Mexico's lower house of Congress.
"For the Mexican community in California, which forms such an important part of the state, it could represent a sorry defeat," he said Wednesday. "The very discriminatory message that he has delivered at certain times against Mexican migrants is not something that encourages us. It's totally the opposite."
...
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 35%
October 10, 2003
Fake cops stopping, terrifying motorists
Fake cops stopping, terrifying motorists
Shots fired, but no one hurt in incidents around Tucson
By L. Anne Newell
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Men impersonating law enforcement officers have pulled over at least three people since mid-September, shooting at one driver and forcing another to run into the desert at gunpoint, officials said Wednesday.
No one was injured in the incidents, and authorities believe all three were committed by the same two men, using fake police lights to pull drivers to the side of the road. Officials put out information on the incidents to warn the public.
"Obviously, they're still out there," said Marana police Sgt. Tim Brunenkant, whose agency recorded one of the incidents. "We don't know what their motive is, if it's drug-related or if it's something just to strike fear in people."
...
Here's a less in-depth story about the same set of incidents.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -2.5
Learning Percentage: 75%
Student Suspended For Having Emergency Roadside Kit
Student Suspended For Having Emergency Roadside Kit
Kit Mom Gave Teen Contained Utility Knife
CORONA, Calif. -- Lori Bollong says she wants to warn other parents about the contents of emergency roadside kits after her son was suspended from school because of it.
Lori Bollong bought the kit for her 17-year-old son who drives 20 miles to an after-school job. But inside the new, unopened kit was a utility knife.
"According to them it's a weapon... no tolerance for weapons," said Lori Bollong.
Drug-sniffing dogs at Santiago High School detected Bollong's asthma inhalers inside his truck parked at school. That's when security opened a bag behind the passenger's seat and found the utility knife....
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 70%
October 09, 2003
Decision on touch-screen voting suit may take weeks
It seems pretty obvious that there should be a paper backup in the touch-screen voting process. The voting process is not the place to cut corners or take chances. Or at least it shouldn't be.
Decision on voting suit may take weeks
Woman wants touch-screen system replaced with one providing audit trail
By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
October 9th, 2003
A federal appeals court Wednesday heard arguments from a Palm Desert woman challenging touch-screen voting, but it could be weeks before a decision is rendered.
A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Pasadena agreed to hear arguments in Susan Marie Weber's 2001 lawsuit against then-California Secretary of State Bill Jones and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend over the touch screens.
...
"Are (touch-screens) more accurate? That’s the crux of the defense’s case, but there’s no audit trail," Weber said. "You wouldn’t accept an ATM that wouldn’t give you a receipt. We want a document to verify (the vote)."
It will likely be weeks before the court’s decision, but Weber has not ruled out an appeal to a larger, en banc panel of the court if the three-member panel affirms the 2002 ruling to toss the lawsuit.
...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.3
Learning Percentage: 15%
Touch-screen lawsuit continues
By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
October 8th, 2003
Susan Marie Weber will face a federal appeals panel today in Pasadena.
It's the latest chapter in the Palm Desert woman's three-year battle challenging the constitutionality of paperless touch-screen voting systems.
Weber filed suit against then-Secretary of State Bill Jones and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend in 2001 to have the system -- used in Riverside and three other California counties -- replaced or supplanted by another system.
A federal judge in 2002 dismissed the suit.
District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson agreed with election officials Jones and Townsend that the machines met the State of California’s certification process for voting machines.
Secretary of State and Riverside County elections officials have since said the electronic voting machines are accurate and reliable, have safeguards programmed into them and meet the requirements of federal and state commissions.
But the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel agreed to hear oral arguments today in the suit.
...
Whatever happens today in Pasadena, Susan Marie Weber should be seen as a pioneer, Alexander said
"The right to have a paper ballot is the voting rights struggle of our time," Alexander said.
"If she wins, it could fundamentally shake up the foundation of electronic voting. If she loses, the courts can be sure that more (challenges) will follow."
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 25%
Driving dangerously with the Patriot Act
Driving dangerously with the Patriot Act
By Pat M. Holt
WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft is running a dead heat with A. Mitchell Palmer, attorney general in the Wilson administration, for the distinction of being the worst in that job in the history of the United States.
One of the duties of the attorney general as head of the Justice Department is to protect the Constitution. Both Mr. Ashcroft and Palmer found that the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, got in their way more than it protected anything. It has gotten in Ashcroft's way in his pursuit of terrorists after Sept. 11, especially those who dress differently and practice a different religion. Palmer's crusade was the pursuit of communists, in the aftermath of World War I. He especially went after people with what to him were funny names from Eastern Europe. He tended to equate liberals with communists.
Ashcroft's vehicle is the USA Patriot Act, which Congress, abdicating its own duties of vigilance, passed with a whoop and a holler in the days after Sept. 11. Even the name of this odious legislation is offensive. It implies that the purpose of the act is to promote patriotism and that those not cooperating with it are somehow less patriotic.
...
Pat M. Holt is former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L1.1
Freedom Rating: 1.1
Learning Percentage: 1%
Philly Mayor Tries to Regroup Campaign
Philly Mayor Tries to Regroup Campaign
Oct 9, 11:19 PM EDT
By DAVID B. CARUSO
Associated Press Writer
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Mayor John F. Street tried to get his re-election campaign back on track Thursday after FBI bugging devices were discovered in his office, insisting that he has done nothing wrong and that prosecutors have assured him he is not the target of an investigation.
He and other politicians called on the FBI to say who is being investigated - something the bureau refused to do for the third straight day.
"I just can't entertain a never-ending series of questions about this," Street said, urging the FBI to "lift the clouds" over City Hall.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 10%
Philadelphia Mayor Finds Office Bugged
Philadelphia Mayor Finds Office Bugged
Device Linked to FBI Probe of Corruption
By Robert Strauss and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 9, 2003; Page A01
PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 8 -- A federal corruption investigation was inadvertently exposed here this week when a secret listening device was discovered in the City Hall office of Mayor John F. Street.
The bug was uncovered Tuesday during an electronic sweep of Street's office by the city police department, a sweep officials said was performed routinely every few months.
Its discovery set off a political firestorm when local FBI officials announced that the bug was not part of any electoral espionage -- Street (D) is locked in an acrimonious campaign with Republican Sam Katz -- but would not say how they knew that.
"The FBI doesn't confirm or deny investigations," said special agent Linda Vizi, the FBI spokeswoman in Philadelphia. "We were contacted by police that they found the device and responded. We will confirm, however, that we have ruled out the possibility of it being connected to the election campaign."
...
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .4
Learning Percentage: 80%
Dowd: Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 9, 2003
Excerpt:
The administration that never let you see it sweat is sweating, as two of its control freaks openly tug over control. The president's foreign policy duenna and his grumpy grampy over at the Pentagon are suddenly mud wrestling.
Women who are discouraged at the ascension of Conan the Barbarian in Cal-ee-fornia can take heart. In this delicious gender-bender, Condoleezza Rice triumphs as the macho infighter, driving Rummy into a diva-like meltdown.
The trigger was Monday's coverage of the Iraq Stabilization Group (a.k.a. Fat Chance Group); the group is a desperate bid to get a grip on Baghdad before the campaign starts by transferring power for postwar Iraq from the Pentagon to the national security adviser's office inside the White House.
Condi used a trick she learned from Rummy: pre-emption. She outflanked the famous Washington infighter by talking about the new alignment to The New York Times before he had a chance to object.
It was the first time the chesty defense czar — who had tried to freeze out the softies at State, which the Pentagon sneeringly refers to as "the Department of Nice" — had been downgraded by the president and outmaneuvered by a colleague.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: L3.5
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 25%
California dreamin' wakes the rest of us up to reality
California dreamin' wakes the rest of us up to reality
Commentary by Bill O'Reilly
August 27, 2003
Excerpt:
The polls show that even many poor people aren't buying the class warfare stuff anymore. We are all in this together. When the power went off, everybody got hosed. And when al Qaeda strikes, it doesn't matter what your tax bracket is.
As with most things in life, we have now been warned. The collapse of California's political system, the blackout, and Sept. 11, 2001, have all been signals sent. We Americans better wise up and start electing people who have a sense of urgency about protecting us and solving problems. For Americans, remaining in the dark is simply not an option anymore.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: R3
Freedom Rating: .03
Learning Percentage: 3%
Bush aides admit Iraq missteps
Bush aides admit Iraq missteps
Say estimates on oil revenue, damage off
By Wayne Washington, Globe Staff, 9/9/2003
WASHINGTON -- One day after President Bush gave the nation a cautious view of rebuilding efforts in Iraq, senior administration officials for the first time acknowledged that they vastly underestimated the damage to the country's infrastructure and greatly overestimated the amount of oil revenue that could be used to help rebuild the war-torn country.
Yesterday's sobering assessments came as members of Congress are contemplating Bush's request for $87 billion to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan -- and call into question earlier pronouncements by administration officials about the size and cost of the job.
The disclosures, coming on the heels of Bush's prime-time address, mark the administration's strongest acknowledgment to date that it failed to fully comprehend the complexities of rebuilding Iraq.
...
Read It Rating: 3.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -3
Learning Percentage: 10%
A Wider War -- Unless The Democrats Speak Out
A Wider War -- Unless The Democrats Speak Out
By Paul Craig Roberts
September 08, 2003
I blame the Democrats for the "war on terror." I know the neoconservatives planned the conquest of the Middle East long before the events of September 11 gave them an excuse. Internet pundits are familiar with the blueprint for American Empire put together by the neocon think tank, Project for the New American Century. Indeed, everyone in the world seems to know about it except the American public.
Still, the Democrats are to blame. It was the Democrats' war on Bush that created the "war on terror."
...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: .1
Learning Percentage: 8%
Posse Comitatus Gets New Attention
1878 Military Law Gets New Attention
by T.A. Badger, Associated Press, 24 November 2001
SAN ANTONIO -- America's military is largely prohibited from acting as a domestic police force, but with the increased fears of terrorism, some experts say it's time to rethink those restrictions.
"Our way of life has forever changed," wrote Sen. John Warner, R-Va., in a letter last month to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Should this law now be changed to enable our active-duty military to more fully join other domestic assets in this war against terrorism?"
The law, known as the Posse Comitatus Act, was championed by Southern lawmakers in 1878 who were angry about the widespread use of the Army in post-Civil War law enforcement.
It currently bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The Coast Guard and National Guard troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the act.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, testifying in October before the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed that it might be desirable to give federal troops more of a role in domestic policing to prevent terrorism.
...
Thanks to Post911TimeLine for this link.
And here's a link to an article about the same issue when it popped up over 6 months later, with the formation of the Department of Homeland Security.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -3
Learning Percentage: 20%
We report, you get it wrong
I recommend checking out the actual questionnaire as background material for this article. The report itself is right here. I didn't read that.
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The more commercial television news you watch, the more wrong you are likely to be about key elements of the Iraq War and its aftermath, according to a major new study released in Washington on Thursday.
And the more you watch the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News channel, in particular, the more likely it is that your perceptions about the war are wrong, adds the report by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
....
Thanks to Post911TimeLine for the link.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating:0
Learning Percentage: 35%
New Hampshire free-staters prepare for newcomers
New Hampshire free-staters prepare for newcomers
By Kate McCann, Associated Press Writer, 10/4/2003
CONCORD, N.H. -- New Hampshire members of the Free State Project were still celebrating when their phones started ringing and the e-mails started coming.
Most had worked for months to promote New Hampshire over nine rivals as a prospective home for 20,000 project members from around the country. But Wednesday's victory announcement caught many unprepared.
...
"It's just going nuts," said Babiarz, a database consultant from Grafton. "New Hampshire businesses are calling me asking how they can help facilitate the move. People are asking where's the best place to live."
Babiarz said he even got an e-mail from a moving company trying to drum up business.
Granite Staters among the 5,400 free staters nationwide will meet Sunday in Bow to plan and assign tasks such as directing newcomers to real estate offices, schools and business opportunities.
...
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 30%
We're Number One ... But Is That Good?
We're Number One ... But Is That Good?
by Jacob G. Hornberger, October 3, 2003
Did you know that the United States has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, that the U.S. inmate population has quadrupled since 1980 to two million people, that $46 billion a year is spent on U.S. prisons, that more than half of the incarcerations are for nonviolent offenses, and that blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans are over-represented throughout the U.S. prison system? That's right -- believe it or not, our nation has a higher incarceration rate than North Korea, China, Cuba, Pakistan, Burma, or Iran.
At the rate that U.S. officials are rounding up people in Iraq, however, it's entirely possible that Iraq could overtake the United States and vault into first place, especially given that U.S. occupational officials are exercising unfettered and omnipotent power to incarcerate anyone they want -- without charges, arrest warrants, indictments, convictions, or any judicial supervision whatsoever. And the number of inmates in Iraq is almost certain to grow, given that no one except family members, who are powerless to do anything about it, seems to care.
...
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 20%
A Culture Based on Murder
This essay is excellent.
by Sean Haugh
On September 3rd, Paul Hill was executed by the taxpayers of Florida for the murder of abortionist John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett, and the wounding of June Barrett.
The murder of Paul Hill adds a new level to the anti-death penalty slogan, "why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" His sad case, and the reaction to it all across the country, paints a portrait of a society lost in amoral murderous solipsism. Or, in simpler terms, we see killing someone as the easiest solution to just about any problem.
At every level of this warped tale, you find someone who is utterly convinced that their brand of murder is completely justified, and so hypocritical that they feel justified in killing anyone who opposes them.
...
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 10%
Mexican Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- At least 360 snipers under government command fired into a crowd of protesters, touching off a massacre 35 years ago that scarred a generation of Mexicans, according to once-secret government files obtained by The Associated Press.
Government officials at the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on October 2, 1968 -- 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by Mexico -- by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38 to several hundred.
As Mexicans hold an annual march Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, there is growing evidence backing up claims by student protesters that government operatives initiated the massacre.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 85%
Local Peace Group Infiltrated By Government Agent
Local Peace Group Infiltrated By Government Agent
By Mike Rhodes
October 4, 2003
Peace Fresno was infiltrated by an agent working for the Fresno Sheriff's Department. Aaron Kilner, known by Peace Fresno activists as Aaron Stokes, attended several Peace Fresno meetings. Peace Fresno activist Nicholas DeGraff remembers him taking voluminous notes and several members say they saw him at peace vilgils held at Shaw and Blackstone. He was also on the bus local anti-globalization activists took to attend the WTO ministerial-level conference on Agricultural Science and Technology demonstration in Sacramento in June 2003.
Aaron Kilner died in a motorcycle accident on August 30, 2003. In his obituary in The Fresno Bee he was identified as a member of the Fresno County Sheriff's department. The obituary went on to say that he was "assigned to the anti-terrorist team." Local activists believe that this "anti-terrorist team" is, in fact, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) that has recently been formed in this area.. When members of Peace Fresno saw the picture and read of Kilner's association with law enforcement they began piecing the story together.
The infiltration by law enforcement of progressive community groups in Fresno and throughout the country has long been used to disrupt legitimate political work. This disruption occurs by sowing seeds of mistrust among members, agents often promote discord within the group, and sometimes encourage illegal or violent actions. Agent provocateurs have been know to instigate violence at demonstrations, giving the police an excuse to attack protestors.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 45%
Capital Punishment and Texas
Capital Punishment and Texas
by Kathryn A. Graham
Interestingly enough, I had never been opposed to capital punishment, or at least, not in theory. Yes, I'm a Libertarian, and most Libertarians I have met are opposed to such taking of life, but I'd always reasoned that the person being executed had most definitely initiated the force by committing a capital crime in the first place. In addition, I felt (and, in some ways, still do feel) that keeping a person in a cage for life was cruel and unusual punishment far beyond execution.
Boy, have I ever received an education! Yep, that's right. This very stubborn and opinionated gal has had her mind changed 180 degrees, and in record time.
You see, I live in Texas.
...
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 45%
Sheriff Hege locked and loaded on the radio
This article was brought up by someone who posted a comment on my first Sheriff Hege-related post.
Sheriff Hege locked and loaded on the radio
BY JENNIFER RIDDLE
SALISBURY POST
June 27, 1999
Sheriff Gerald Hege is invading the air waves. This time it's FM and modern rock.
In true Hege fashion, the infamous Davidson County "bad" boy ripped onto WKZL 107.5 as the Friday morning show guest host.
He wore his uniform, a Team 101 hat and was "locked and loaded" with a gun on his hip and a microphone in his hand.
"Bad to the Bone" blasted in the background as the sheriff informed listeners, "Hege's in the house."
The Greensboro-based radio station usually plays the top-ranking Murphy in the Morning show from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. but Jack Murphy, the show's host, was on vacation.
"I didn't have any idea that Murphy was going to get Sheriff Hege to host the show until I heard him talking about it on the radio," said Jeff McHugh, program director. "Considering who Hege is, it should make for an interesting show."
...
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
Posted by Lance Brown at 01:42 AM
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Gary Coleman to be political analyst on comedy radio network
Gary Coleman to be political analyst on comedy radio network
Posted on Mon, Oct. 13, 2003
Associated Press
LOS ANGELES - Former childhood actor Gary Coleman didn't win California's recall election, but he'll still get a political platform on the new Hollywood-based All Comedy Radio network.
Coleman, 35, has been tapped to become the network's political analyst and said his experience as a candidate will come in handy in this new assignment.
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 90%
U.S. Soldier Killed in Attack on Baghdad Hotel where Wolfowitz was staying
U.S. Soldier Killed in Attack on Baghdad Hotel
By REUTERS
BAGHDAD, Oct. 26 -- Guerrillas blasted rockets at Baghdad's most heavily fortified hotel where U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying on Sunday, killing an American soldier and wounding 15 people, U.S. officials said.
Wolfowitz, who escaped unhurt, vowed that the United States would not be cowed into abandoning Iraq.
But the bold attack on the hotel with the tightest security in Baghdad, if not the Middle East, undermined Washington's claim that it is steadily defeating the guerrillas who have killed 109 U.S. soldiers since President George W. Bush declared major combat in Iraq over on May 1.
Georgia runs from the MATRIX
By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Posted: 22/10/2003 at 19:45 GMT
The state of Georgia has pulled out of the U.S. Department of Justice sponsored MATRIX information collection program, leaving data only on its felons and sexual offenders behind in the Orwellian database.
Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue has cited both privacy concerns and costs as the two key reasons the state will no longer participate in the MATRIX (Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange) pilot project. ...
Read It Rating: 4.5
Left/Right Rating: L4
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 55%
October 20, 2003
Miscellaneous batch
Here are a bunch of things I've read that I'm lumping together and not rating in order to save time.
FOXNews.com - Top Stories - Group Calls for De-Legalization of Marriage
USATODAY.com - Black leaders outraged at 'Ghettopoly' game at Urban Outfitters
JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION, MR. LIMBAUGH
CEI.ORG: Competitive Enterprise Institute: Global Warming Shakeup in Moscow
October 18, 2003
The story behind "Eight Men Out"
An Account of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox Scandal and 1921 Trial
(From University of Missouri-Kansas City Professor Doug Linder's Famous Trials page. The account is just one item in a very thorough overview of the whole incident, with lots of background info, images, etc.)
Watching the movie Eight Men Out made me curious to find out the full story of the 1919 "Black Sox" World series scandal. The movie moves along pretty quickly, and there are a lot of people involved in the story, so it can be pretty confusing. I recommend keeping its IMDB movie page handy, and reading this account -- that should help you piece it all together. From the way it's told on that page, it sounds like the movie was extremely faithful to the real story, and included almost all the key elements. It adds up to a semi-confusing movie if you don't know the backstory, but I think director/screenwriter John Sayles made the right choice in including all that detail. If it can draw in a relatively baseball-neutral person like me, it must be pretty decent. Of course, the cast of many familiar faces helps.
(As a side note, Professor Linder's Famous Trials page, which I discovered as part of this search, looks to be pretty excellent. It appears to have accounts of some depth of 35 different trials of import throughout history -- from socrates to O.J. Simpson. Not likely you'll see those two together in many other places. ;-))
October 16, 2003
LP: America owes Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude
LP Press Release:
America owes talk host Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude, Libertarians say
October 16, 2003
WASHINGTON, DC -- The entire nation owes radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude, Libertarians say, because his ordeal has exposed every drug warrior in America as a rank hypocrite.
"One thing we don't hear from American politicians very often is silence," said Joe Seehusen, Libertarian Party executive director. "By refusing to criticize Rush Limbaugh, every drug warrior has just been exposed as a shameless, despicable hypocrite.
"And that's good news, because the next time they do speak up, there'll be no reason for anyone to listen."
The revelation that Limbaugh had become addicted to painkillers -- drugs he is accused of procuring illegally from his Palm Beach housekeeper -- has caused a media sensation ever since the megastar's shocking, on-air confession last week.
As the Limbaugh saga continues, here's an important question for Americans to ask, Libertarians say: Why are all the drug warriors suddenly so silent?
"Republican and Democratic politicians have written laws that have condemned more than 400,000 Americans to prison for committing the same 'crime' as Rush Limbaugh," Seehusen pointed out. "If this pill-popping pontificator deserves a get-out-of-jail-free card, these drug warriors had better explain why."
Given their longstanding support for the Drug War, it's fair to ask:
Why haven't President George Bush or his tough-on-crime attorney general, John Ashcroft, uttered a word criticizing Limbaugh's law-breaking?
Why aren't drug czar John P. Walters or his predecessor, Barry McCaffrey, lambasting Limbaugh as a menace to society and a threat to "our children?"
Why aren't federal DEA agents storming Limbaugh's $30 million Florida mansion in a frantic search for criminal evidence?
Why haven't federal, state, and local police agencies seized the celebrity's homes and luxury cars under asset-forfeiture laws?
Finally, why aren't bloviating blabbermouths like William Bennett publicly explaining how America would be better off if Limbaugh were prosecuted, locked in a steel cage and forced to abandon his wife, his friends, and his career?
The answer is obvious, Seehusen said: "America's drug warriors are shameless hypocrites who believe in one standard of justice for ordinary Americans and another for themselves, their families and their political allies.
"That alone should completely discredit them."
But there's an even more disturbing possibility, Seehusen said: that the people who are prosecuting the Drug War don't even believe in its central premise -- which is that public safety requires that drug users be jailed.
"The Bushes and Ashcrofts and McCaffreys of the world may believe, correctly, that individuals fighting a drug addiction deserve medical, not criminal treatment," he said. "That would explain why they're not demanding that Limbaugh be jailed.
"But if that's the case, these politicians have spent decades tearing apart American families for their own political gain. And that's an unforgivable crime."
October 14, 2003
Abandoning Blogs- Blogger Demographics and Activity Trends
From BlogSearchEngine.com:
Abandoning Blogs- Blogger Demographics and Activity Trends
For the BloggerCon 2003 conference at the Berkman Center of Harvard Law School, Perseus Development Corp. randomly surveyed 3,634 blogs (frequent publications of personal thoughts and Web links, also known as Web logs) on eight leading blog-hosting services to develop a model of blog populations. Based on this research, Perseus estimates that 4.12 million blogs have been created on these services: Blog-City, BlogSpot, Diaryland, LiveJournal, Pitas, TypePad, Weblogger and Xanga.
Based on the rapid growth rate demonstrated by the leading services, Perseus expects the number of hosted blogs created to exceed five million by the end of 2003 and to exceed ten million by the end of 2004.
Abandoned Blogs
The most dramatic finding from the survey was that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned. ...
October 11, 2003
Unrest in Shiite district over attacks
CNN.com - Unrest in Shiite district over attacks - Oct. 10, 2003
Crowd chants 'No, no America'
Friday, October 10, 2003 Posted: 3:56 PM EDT (1956 GMT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Anti-U.S. feeling swirled among worshippers and demonstrators Friday in the sprawling Shiite slum where two U.S. soldiers were gunned down and eight Iraqi police officers were killed in a suicide attack a day earlier.
Such violence has so far been rare in the neighborhood, Sadr City, which was a base of anti-Saddam Hussein sentiment.
But the depressed district now may become a center of resistance to the U.S. occupation, and a powerful imam with a huge power base there, Muqtada al-Sadr, has taken an anti-American stand.
...
As many as 6,000 worshippers gathered in front of the Sadr City municipal offices near the ambush site for Friday prayers and a sermon was delivered by an al-Sadr aide, Sheikh Abdel-Hadi al-Daraji.
"America claims to be the founder of freedom and democracy. That is wrong. Instead, it is nothing but a terrorist organization that leads the world through its terrorism and its reckless arrogance," the cleric said.
"It is forbidden for the American forces to enter Sadr City, especially for the next few days because the sons of Sadr City reject their presence."
The crowds chanted "No, No America!" ...
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .1
Learning Percentage: 65%
What do they mean by "Talking Points"?
If you've ever wondered what the news pundits mean when they accuse one party or another (or one side or another) of handing out "talking points" that everybody on that side takes its cues from...well, here's an excellent example. In this case it happens to be from the Democrat side of things, but they aren't unique in that practice.
Also, for what it's worth, hardcore talking points come out more often than once a month, or however long Democracy Corps waits between issuing these memos. Real, full-bore talking points come out as often as there's something new to be talking about. Talking points also come in many shapes and sizes. I get an e-mail every couplefew days from each of the Bipartisan parties with some form of topical critique of the other side, or promotion of their own -- sort of a soft, massified form of talking points.
Democracy Corps "Core Message"
Here's an archived copy of the one I just read, dated September 26th, 2003.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: L4
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 10%
Mexico politicians fear Schwarzenegger is bad news for migrants
Mexico fears Schwarzenegger is bad news for migrants
by Lisa J. Adams
Associated Press
Oct. 9, 2003 07:45 AM
MEXICO CITY - Mexican federal lawmakers are bemoaning Hollywood action star Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as California governor and issued a stern call to the novice politician to respect the rights of Mexican migrants in North America's largest state.
"This is something about which Mexican migrants should be very concerned," said Rep. Carlos Jimenez, secretary of the foreign relations committee in Mexico's lower house of Congress.
"For the Mexican community in California, which forms such an important part of the state, it could represent a sorry defeat," he said Wednesday. "The very discriminatory message that he has delivered at certain times against Mexican migrants is not something that encourages us. It's totally the opposite."
...
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 35%
October 10, 2003
Fake cops stopping, terrifying motorists
Fake cops stopping, terrifying motorists
Shots fired, but no one hurt in incidents around Tucson
By L. Anne Newell
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Men impersonating law enforcement officers have pulled over at least three people since mid-September, shooting at one driver and forcing another to run into the desert at gunpoint, officials said Wednesday.
No one was injured in the incidents, and authorities believe all three were committed by the same two men, using fake police lights to pull drivers to the side of the road. Officials put out information on the incidents to warn the public.
"Obviously, they're still out there," said Marana police Sgt. Tim Brunenkant, whose agency recorded one of the incidents. "We don't know what their motive is, if it's drug-related or if it's something just to strike fear in people."
...
Here's a less in-depth story about the same set of incidents.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -2.5
Learning Percentage: 75%
Student Suspended For Having Emergency Roadside Kit
Student Suspended For Having Emergency Roadside Kit
Kit Mom Gave Teen Contained Utility Knife
CORONA, Calif. -- Lori Bollong says she wants to warn other parents about the contents of emergency roadside kits after her son was suspended from school because of it.
Lori Bollong bought the kit for her 17-year-old son who drives 20 miles to an after-school job. But inside the new, unopened kit was a utility knife.
"According to them it's a weapon... no tolerance for weapons," said Lori Bollong.
Drug-sniffing dogs at Santiago High School detected Bollong's asthma inhalers inside his truck parked at school. That's when security opened a bag behind the passenger's seat and found the utility knife....
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 70%
October 09, 2003
Decision on touch-screen voting suit may take weeks
It seems pretty obvious that there should be a paper backup in the touch-screen voting process. The voting process is not the place to cut corners or take chances. Or at least it shouldn't be.
Decision on voting suit may take weeks
Woman wants touch-screen system replaced with one providing audit trail
By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
October 9th, 2003
A federal appeals court Wednesday heard arguments from a Palm Desert woman challenging touch-screen voting, but it could be weeks before a decision is rendered.
A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Pasadena agreed to hear arguments in Susan Marie Weber's 2001 lawsuit against then-California Secretary of State Bill Jones and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend over the touch screens.
...
"Are (touch-screens) more accurate? That’s the crux of the defense’s case, but there’s no audit trail," Weber said. "You wouldn’t accept an ATM that wouldn’t give you a receipt. We want a document to verify (the vote)."
It will likely be weeks before the court’s decision, but Weber has not ruled out an appeal to a larger, en banc panel of the court if the three-member panel affirms the 2002 ruling to toss the lawsuit.
...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.3
Learning Percentage: 15%
Touch-screen lawsuit continues
By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
October 8th, 2003
Susan Marie Weber will face a federal appeals panel today in Pasadena.
It's the latest chapter in the Palm Desert woman's three-year battle challenging the constitutionality of paperless touch-screen voting systems.
Weber filed suit against then-Secretary of State Bill Jones and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend in 2001 to have the system -- used in Riverside and three other California counties -- replaced or supplanted by another system.
A federal judge in 2002 dismissed the suit.
District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson agreed with election officials Jones and Townsend that the machines met the State of California’s certification process for voting machines.
Secretary of State and Riverside County elections officials have since said the electronic voting machines are accurate and reliable, have safeguards programmed into them and meet the requirements of federal and state commissions.
But the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel agreed to hear oral arguments today in the suit.
...
Whatever happens today in Pasadena, Susan Marie Weber should be seen as a pioneer, Alexander said
"The right to have a paper ballot is the voting rights struggle of our time," Alexander said.
"If she wins, it could fundamentally shake up the foundation of electronic voting. If she loses, the courts can be sure that more (challenges) will follow."
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 25%
Driving dangerously with the Patriot Act
Driving dangerously with the Patriot Act
By Pat M. Holt
WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft is running a dead heat with A. Mitchell Palmer, attorney general in the Wilson administration, for the distinction of being the worst in that job in the history of the United States.
One of the duties of the attorney general as head of the Justice Department is to protect the Constitution. Both Mr. Ashcroft and Palmer found that the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, got in their way more than it protected anything. It has gotten in Ashcroft's way in his pursuit of terrorists after Sept. 11, especially those who dress differently and practice a different religion. Palmer's crusade was the pursuit of communists, in the aftermath of World War I. He especially went after people with what to him were funny names from Eastern Europe. He tended to equate liberals with communists.
Ashcroft's vehicle is the USA Patriot Act, which Congress, abdicating its own duties of vigilance, passed with a whoop and a holler in the days after Sept. 11. Even the name of this odious legislation is offensive. It implies that the purpose of the act is to promote patriotism and that those not cooperating with it are somehow less patriotic.
...
Pat M. Holt is former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L1.1
Freedom Rating: 1.1
Learning Percentage: 1%
Philly Mayor Tries to Regroup Campaign
Philly Mayor Tries to Regroup Campaign
Oct 9, 11:19 PM EDT
By DAVID B. CARUSO
Associated Press Writer
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Mayor John F. Street tried to get his re-election campaign back on track Thursday after FBI bugging devices were discovered in his office, insisting that he has done nothing wrong and that prosecutors have assured him he is not the target of an investigation.
He and other politicians called on the FBI to say who is being investigated - something the bureau refused to do for the third straight day.
"I just can't entertain a never-ending series of questions about this," Street said, urging the FBI to "lift the clouds" over City Hall.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 10%
Philadelphia Mayor Finds Office Bugged
Philadelphia Mayor Finds Office Bugged
Device Linked to FBI Probe of Corruption
By Robert Strauss and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 9, 2003; Page A01
PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 8 -- A federal corruption investigation was inadvertently exposed here this week when a secret listening device was discovered in the City Hall office of Mayor John F. Street.
The bug was uncovered Tuesday during an electronic sweep of Street's office by the city police department, a sweep officials said was performed routinely every few months.
Its discovery set off a political firestorm when local FBI officials announced that the bug was not part of any electoral espionage -- Street (D) is locked in an acrimonious campaign with Republican Sam Katz -- but would not say how they knew that.
"The FBI doesn't confirm or deny investigations," said special agent Linda Vizi, the FBI spokeswoman in Philadelphia. "We were contacted by police that they found the device and responded. We will confirm, however, that we have ruled out the possibility of it being connected to the election campaign."
...
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .4
Learning Percentage: 80%
Dowd: Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 9, 2003
Excerpt:
The administration that never let you see it sweat is sweating, as two of its control freaks openly tug over control. The president's foreign policy duenna and his grumpy grampy over at the Pentagon are suddenly mud wrestling.
Women who are discouraged at the ascension of Conan the Barbarian in Cal-ee-fornia can take heart. In this delicious gender-bender, Condoleezza Rice triumphs as the macho infighter, driving Rummy into a diva-like meltdown.
The trigger was Monday's coverage of the Iraq Stabilization Group (a.k.a. Fat Chance Group); the group is a desperate bid to get a grip on Baghdad before the campaign starts by transferring power for postwar Iraq from the Pentagon to the national security adviser's office inside the White House.
Condi used a trick she learned from Rummy: pre-emption. She outflanked the famous Washington infighter by talking about the new alignment to The New York Times before he had a chance to object.
It was the first time the chesty defense czar — who had tried to freeze out the softies at State, which the Pentagon sneeringly refers to as "the Department of Nice" — had been downgraded by the president and outmaneuvered by a colleague.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: L3.5
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 25%
California dreamin' wakes the rest of us up to reality
California dreamin' wakes the rest of us up to reality
Commentary by Bill O'Reilly
August 27, 2003
Excerpt:
The polls show that even many poor people aren't buying the class warfare stuff anymore. We are all in this together. When the power went off, everybody got hosed. And when al Qaeda strikes, it doesn't matter what your tax bracket is.
As with most things in life, we have now been warned. The collapse of California's political system, the blackout, and Sept. 11, 2001, have all been signals sent. We Americans better wise up and start electing people who have a sense of urgency about protecting us and solving problems. For Americans, remaining in the dark is simply not an option anymore.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: R3
Freedom Rating: .03
Learning Percentage: 3%
Bush aides admit Iraq missteps
Bush aides admit Iraq missteps
Say estimates on oil revenue, damage off
By Wayne Washington, Globe Staff, 9/9/2003
WASHINGTON -- One day after President Bush gave the nation a cautious view of rebuilding efforts in Iraq, senior administration officials for the first time acknowledged that they vastly underestimated the damage to the country's infrastructure and greatly overestimated the amount of oil revenue that could be used to help rebuild the war-torn country.
Yesterday's sobering assessments came as members of Congress are contemplating Bush's request for $87 billion to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan -- and call into question earlier pronouncements by administration officials about the size and cost of the job.
The disclosures, coming on the heels of Bush's prime-time address, mark the administration's strongest acknowledgment to date that it failed to fully comprehend the complexities of rebuilding Iraq.
...
Read It Rating: 3.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -3
Learning Percentage: 10%
A Wider War -- Unless The Democrats Speak Out
A Wider War -- Unless The Democrats Speak Out
By Paul Craig Roberts
September 08, 2003
I blame the Democrats for the "war on terror." I know the neoconservatives planned the conquest of the Middle East long before the events of September 11 gave them an excuse. Internet pundits are familiar with the blueprint for American Empire put together by the neocon think tank, Project for the New American Century. Indeed, everyone in the world seems to know about it except the American public.
Still, the Democrats are to blame. It was the Democrats' war on Bush that created the "war on terror."
...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: .1
Learning Percentage: 8%
Posse Comitatus Gets New Attention
1878 Military Law Gets New Attention
by T.A. Badger, Associated Press, 24 November 2001
SAN ANTONIO -- America's military is largely prohibited from acting as a domestic police force, but with the increased fears of terrorism, some experts say it's time to rethink those restrictions.
"Our way of life has forever changed," wrote Sen. John Warner, R-Va., in a letter last month to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Should this law now be changed to enable our active-duty military to more fully join other domestic assets in this war against terrorism?"
The law, known as the Posse Comitatus Act, was championed by Southern lawmakers in 1878 who were angry about the widespread use of the Army in post-Civil War law enforcement.
It currently bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The Coast Guard and National Guard troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the act.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, testifying in October before the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed that it might be desirable to give federal troops more of a role in domestic policing to prevent terrorism.
...
Thanks to Post911TimeLine for this link.
And here's a link to an article about the same issue when it popped up over 6 months later, with the formation of the Department of Homeland Security.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -3
Learning Percentage: 20%
We report, you get it wrong
I recommend checking out the actual questionnaire as background material for this article. The report itself is right here. I didn't read that.
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The more commercial television news you watch, the more wrong you are likely to be about key elements of the Iraq War and its aftermath, according to a major new study released in Washington on Thursday.
And the more you watch the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News channel, in particular, the more likely it is that your perceptions about the war are wrong, adds the report by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
....
Thanks to Post911TimeLine for the link.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating:0
Learning Percentage: 35%
New Hampshire free-staters prepare for newcomers
New Hampshire free-staters prepare for newcomers
By Kate McCann, Associated Press Writer, 10/4/2003
CONCORD, N.H. -- New Hampshire members of the Free State Project were still celebrating when their phones started ringing and the e-mails started coming.
Most had worked for months to promote New Hampshire over nine rivals as a prospective home for 20,000 project members from around the country. But Wednesday's victory announcement caught many unprepared.
...
"It's just going nuts," said Babiarz, a database consultant from Grafton. "New Hampshire businesses are calling me asking how they can help facilitate the move. People are asking where's the best place to live."
Babiarz said he even got an e-mail from a moving company trying to drum up business.
Granite Staters among the 5,400 free staters nationwide will meet Sunday in Bow to plan and assign tasks such as directing newcomers to real estate offices, schools and business opportunities.
...
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 30%
We're Number One ... But Is That Good?
We're Number One ... But Is That Good?
by Jacob G. Hornberger, October 3, 2003
Did you know that the United States has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, that the U.S. inmate population has quadrupled since 1980 to two million people, that $46 billion a year is spent on U.S. prisons, that more than half of the incarcerations are for nonviolent offenses, and that blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans are over-represented throughout the U.S. prison system? That's right -- believe it or not, our nation has a higher incarceration rate than North Korea, China, Cuba, Pakistan, Burma, or Iran.
At the rate that U.S. officials are rounding up people in Iraq, however, it's entirely possible that Iraq could overtake the United States and vault into first place, especially given that U.S. occupational officials are exercising unfettered and omnipotent power to incarcerate anyone they want -- without charges, arrest warrants, indictments, convictions, or any judicial supervision whatsoever. And the number of inmates in Iraq is almost certain to grow, given that no one except family members, who are powerless to do anything about it, seems to care.
...
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 20%
A Culture Based on Murder
This essay is excellent.
by Sean Haugh
On September 3rd, Paul Hill was executed by the taxpayers of Florida for the murder of abortionist John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett, and the wounding of June Barrett.
The murder of Paul Hill adds a new level to the anti-death penalty slogan, "why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" His sad case, and the reaction to it all across the country, paints a portrait of a society lost in amoral murderous solipsism. Or, in simpler terms, we see killing someone as the easiest solution to just about any problem.
At every level of this warped tale, you find someone who is utterly convinced that their brand of murder is completely justified, and so hypocritical that they feel justified in killing anyone who opposes them.
...
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 10%
Mexican Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- At least 360 snipers under government command fired into a crowd of protesters, touching off a massacre 35 years ago that scarred a generation of Mexicans, according to once-secret government files obtained by The Associated Press.
Government officials at the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on October 2, 1968 -- 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by Mexico -- by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38 to several hundred.
As Mexicans hold an annual march Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, there is growing evidence backing up claims by student protesters that government operatives initiated the massacre.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 85%
Local Peace Group Infiltrated By Government Agent
Local Peace Group Infiltrated By Government Agent
By Mike Rhodes
October 4, 2003
Peace Fresno was infiltrated by an agent working for the Fresno Sheriff's Department. Aaron Kilner, known by Peace Fresno activists as Aaron Stokes, attended several Peace Fresno meetings. Peace Fresno activist Nicholas DeGraff remembers him taking voluminous notes and several members say they saw him at peace vilgils held at Shaw and Blackstone. He was also on the bus local anti-globalization activists took to attend the WTO ministerial-level conference on Agricultural Science and Technology demonstration in Sacramento in June 2003.
Aaron Kilner died in a motorcycle accident on August 30, 2003. In his obituary in The Fresno Bee he was identified as a member of the Fresno County Sheriff's department. The obituary went on to say that he was "assigned to the anti-terrorist team." Local activists believe that this "anti-terrorist team" is, in fact, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) that has recently been formed in this area.. When members of Peace Fresno saw the picture and read of Kilner's association with law enforcement they began piecing the story together.
The infiltration by law enforcement of progressive community groups in Fresno and throughout the country has long been used to disrupt legitimate political work. This disruption occurs by sowing seeds of mistrust among members, agents often promote discord within the group, and sometimes encourage illegal or violent actions. Agent provocateurs have been know to instigate violence at demonstrations, giving the police an excuse to attack protestors.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 45%
Capital Punishment and Texas
Capital Punishment and Texas
by Kathryn A. Graham
Interestingly enough, I had never been opposed to capital punishment, or at least, not in theory. Yes, I'm a Libertarian, and most Libertarians I have met are opposed to such taking of life, but I'd always reasoned that the person being executed had most definitely initiated the force by committing a capital crime in the first place. In addition, I felt (and, in some ways, still do feel) that keeping a person in a cage for life was cruel and unusual punishment far beyond execution.
Boy, have I ever received an education! Yep, that's right. This very stubborn and opinionated gal has had her mind changed 180 degrees, and in record time.
You see, I live in Texas.
...
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 45%
Sheriff Hege locked and loaded on the radio
This article was brought up by someone who posted a comment on my first Sheriff Hege-related post.
Sheriff Hege locked and loaded on the radio
BY JENNIFER RIDDLE
SALISBURY POST
June 27, 1999
Sheriff Gerald Hege is invading the air waves. This time it's FM and modern rock.
In true Hege fashion, the infamous Davidson County "bad" boy ripped onto WKZL 107.5 as the Friday morning show guest host.
He wore his uniform, a Team 101 hat and was "locked and loaded" with a gun on his hip and a microphone in his hand.
"Bad to the Bone" blasted in the background as the sheriff informed listeners, "Hege's in the house."
The Greensboro-based radio station usually plays the top-ranking Murphy in the Morning show from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. but Jack Murphy, the show's host, was on vacation.
"I didn't have any idea that Murphy was going to get Sheriff Hege to host the show until I heard him talking about it on the radio," said Jeff McHugh, program director. "Considering who Hege is, it should make for an interesting show."
...
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
Posted by Lance Brown at 01:42 AM
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Miscellaneous batch
Here are a bunch of things I've read that I'm lumping together and not rating in order to save time.
FOXNews.com - Top Stories - Group Calls for De-Legalization of Marriage
USATODAY.com - Black leaders outraged at 'Ghettopoly' game at Urban Outfitters
JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION, MR. LIMBAUGH
CEI.ORG: Competitive Enterprise Institute: Global Warming Shakeup in Moscow
The story behind "Eight Men Out"
An Account of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox Scandal and 1921 Trial
(From University of Missouri-Kansas City Professor Doug Linder's Famous Trials page. The account is just one item in a very thorough overview of the whole incident, with lots of background info, images, etc.)
Watching the movie Eight Men Out made me curious to find out the full story of the 1919 "Black Sox" World series scandal. The movie moves along pretty quickly, and there are a lot of people involved in the story, so it can be pretty confusing. I recommend keeping its IMDB movie page handy, and reading this account -- that should help you piece it all together. From the way it's told on that page, it sounds like the movie was extremely faithful to the real story, and included almost all the key elements. It adds up to a semi-confusing movie if you don't know the backstory, but I think director/screenwriter John Sayles made the right choice in including all that detail. If it can draw in a relatively baseball-neutral person like me, it must be pretty decent. Of course, the cast of many familiar faces helps.
(As a side note, Professor Linder's Famous Trials page, which I discovered as part of this search, looks to be pretty excellent. It appears to have accounts of some depth of 35 different trials of import throughout history -- from socrates to O.J. Simpson. Not likely you'll see those two together in many other places. ;-))
October 16, 2003
LP: America owes Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude
LP Press Release:
America owes talk host Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude, Libertarians say
October 16, 2003
WASHINGTON, DC -- The entire nation owes radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude, Libertarians say, because his ordeal has exposed every drug warrior in America as a rank hypocrite.
"One thing we don't hear from American politicians very often is silence," said Joe Seehusen, Libertarian Party executive director. "By refusing to criticize Rush Limbaugh, every drug warrior has just been exposed as a shameless, despicable hypocrite.
"And that's good news, because the next time they do speak up, there'll be no reason for anyone to listen."
The revelation that Limbaugh had become addicted to painkillers -- drugs he is accused of procuring illegally from his Palm Beach housekeeper -- has caused a media sensation ever since the megastar's shocking, on-air confession last week.
As the Limbaugh saga continues, here's an important question for Americans to ask, Libertarians say: Why are all the drug warriors suddenly so silent?
"Republican and Democratic politicians have written laws that have condemned more than 400,000 Americans to prison for committing the same 'crime' as Rush Limbaugh," Seehusen pointed out. "If this pill-popping pontificator deserves a get-out-of-jail-free card, these drug warriors had better explain why."
Given their longstanding support for the Drug War, it's fair to ask:
Why haven't President George Bush or his tough-on-crime attorney general, John Ashcroft, uttered a word criticizing Limbaugh's law-breaking?
Why aren't drug czar John P. Walters or his predecessor, Barry McCaffrey, lambasting Limbaugh as a menace to society and a threat to "our children?"
Why aren't federal DEA agents storming Limbaugh's $30 million Florida mansion in a frantic search for criminal evidence?
Why haven't federal, state, and local police agencies seized the celebrity's homes and luxury cars under asset-forfeiture laws?
Finally, why aren't bloviating blabbermouths like William Bennett publicly explaining how America would be better off if Limbaugh were prosecuted, locked in a steel cage and forced to abandon his wife, his friends, and his career?
The answer is obvious, Seehusen said: "America's drug warriors are shameless hypocrites who believe in one standard of justice for ordinary Americans and another for themselves, their families and their political allies.
"That alone should completely discredit them."
But there's an even more disturbing possibility, Seehusen said: that the people who are prosecuting the Drug War don't even believe in its central premise -- which is that public safety requires that drug users be jailed.
"The Bushes and Ashcrofts and McCaffreys of the world may believe, correctly, that individuals fighting a drug addiction deserve medical, not criminal treatment," he said. "That would explain why they're not demanding that Limbaugh be jailed.
"But if that's the case, these politicians have spent decades tearing apart American families for their own political gain. And that's an unforgivable crime."
October 14, 2003
Abandoning Blogs- Blogger Demographics and Activity Trends
From BlogSearchEngine.com:
Abandoning Blogs- Blogger Demographics and Activity Trends
For the BloggerCon 2003 conference at the Berkman Center of Harvard Law School, Perseus Development Corp. randomly surveyed 3,634 blogs (frequent publications of personal thoughts and Web links, also known as Web logs) on eight leading blog-hosting services to develop a model of blog populations. Based on this research, Perseus estimates that 4.12 million blogs have been created on these services: Blog-City, BlogSpot, Diaryland, LiveJournal, Pitas, TypePad, Weblogger and Xanga.
Based on the rapid growth rate demonstrated by the leading services, Perseus expects the number of hosted blogs created to exceed five million by the end of 2003 and to exceed ten million by the end of 2004.
Abandoned Blogs
The most dramatic finding from the survey was that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned. ...
October 11, 2003
Unrest in Shiite district over attacks
CNN.com - Unrest in Shiite district over attacks - Oct. 10, 2003
Crowd chants 'No, no America'
Friday, October 10, 2003 Posted: 3:56 PM EDT (1956 GMT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Anti-U.S. feeling swirled among worshippers and demonstrators Friday in the sprawling Shiite slum where two U.S. soldiers were gunned down and eight Iraqi police officers were killed in a suicide attack a day earlier.
Such violence has so far been rare in the neighborhood, Sadr City, which was a base of anti-Saddam Hussein sentiment.
But the depressed district now may become a center of resistance to the U.S. occupation, and a powerful imam with a huge power base there, Muqtada al-Sadr, has taken an anti-American stand.
...
As many as 6,000 worshippers gathered in front of the Sadr City municipal offices near the ambush site for Friday prayers and a sermon was delivered by an al-Sadr aide, Sheikh Abdel-Hadi al-Daraji.
"America claims to be the founder of freedom and democracy. That is wrong. Instead, it is nothing but a terrorist organization that leads the world through its terrorism and its reckless arrogance," the cleric said.
"It is forbidden for the American forces to enter Sadr City, especially for the next few days because the sons of Sadr City reject their presence."
The crowds chanted "No, No America!" ...
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .1
Learning Percentage: 65%
What do they mean by "Talking Points"?
If you've ever wondered what the news pundits mean when they accuse one party or another (or one side or another) of handing out "talking points" that everybody on that side takes its cues from...well, here's an excellent example. In this case it happens to be from the Democrat side of things, but they aren't unique in that practice.
Also, for what it's worth, hardcore talking points come out more often than once a month, or however long Democracy Corps waits between issuing these memos. Real, full-bore talking points come out as often as there's something new to be talking about. Talking points also come in many shapes and sizes. I get an e-mail every couplefew days from each of the Bipartisan parties with some form of topical critique of the other side, or promotion of their own -- sort of a soft, massified form of talking points.
Democracy Corps "Core Message"
Here's an archived copy of the one I just read, dated September 26th, 2003.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: L4
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 10%
Mexico politicians fear Schwarzenegger is bad news for migrants
Mexico fears Schwarzenegger is bad news for migrants
by Lisa J. Adams
Associated Press
Oct. 9, 2003 07:45 AM
MEXICO CITY - Mexican federal lawmakers are bemoaning Hollywood action star Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as California governor and issued a stern call to the novice politician to respect the rights of Mexican migrants in North America's largest state.
"This is something about which Mexican migrants should be very concerned," said Rep. Carlos Jimenez, secretary of the foreign relations committee in Mexico's lower house of Congress.
"For the Mexican community in California, which forms such an important part of the state, it could represent a sorry defeat," he said Wednesday. "The very discriminatory message that he has delivered at certain times against Mexican migrants is not something that encourages us. It's totally the opposite."
...
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 35%
October 10, 2003
Fake cops stopping, terrifying motorists
Fake cops stopping, terrifying motorists
Shots fired, but no one hurt in incidents around Tucson
By L. Anne Newell
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Men impersonating law enforcement officers have pulled over at least three people since mid-September, shooting at one driver and forcing another to run into the desert at gunpoint, officials said Wednesday.
No one was injured in the incidents, and authorities believe all three were committed by the same two men, using fake police lights to pull drivers to the side of the road. Officials put out information on the incidents to warn the public.
"Obviously, they're still out there," said Marana police Sgt. Tim Brunenkant, whose agency recorded one of the incidents. "We don't know what their motive is, if it's drug-related or if it's something just to strike fear in people."
...
Here's a less in-depth story about the same set of incidents.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -2.5
Learning Percentage: 75%
Student Suspended For Having Emergency Roadside Kit
Student Suspended For Having Emergency Roadside Kit
Kit Mom Gave Teen Contained Utility Knife
CORONA, Calif. -- Lori Bollong says she wants to warn other parents about the contents of emergency roadside kits after her son was suspended from school because of it.
Lori Bollong bought the kit for her 17-year-old son who drives 20 miles to an after-school job. But inside the new, unopened kit was a utility knife.
"According to them it's a weapon... no tolerance for weapons," said Lori Bollong.
Drug-sniffing dogs at Santiago High School detected Bollong's asthma inhalers inside his truck parked at school. That's when security opened a bag behind the passenger's seat and found the utility knife....
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 70%
October 09, 2003
Decision on touch-screen voting suit may take weeks
It seems pretty obvious that there should be a paper backup in the touch-screen voting process. The voting process is not the place to cut corners or take chances. Or at least it shouldn't be.
Decision on voting suit may take weeks
Woman wants touch-screen system replaced with one providing audit trail
By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
October 9th, 2003
A federal appeals court Wednesday heard arguments from a Palm Desert woman challenging touch-screen voting, but it could be weeks before a decision is rendered.
A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Pasadena agreed to hear arguments in Susan Marie Weber's 2001 lawsuit against then-California Secretary of State Bill Jones and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend over the touch screens.
...
"Are (touch-screens) more accurate? That’s the crux of the defense’s case, but there’s no audit trail," Weber said. "You wouldn’t accept an ATM that wouldn’t give you a receipt. We want a document to verify (the vote)."
It will likely be weeks before the court’s decision, but Weber has not ruled out an appeal to a larger, en banc panel of the court if the three-member panel affirms the 2002 ruling to toss the lawsuit.
...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.3
Learning Percentage: 15%
Touch-screen lawsuit continues
By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
October 8th, 2003
Susan Marie Weber will face a federal appeals panel today in Pasadena.
It's the latest chapter in the Palm Desert woman's three-year battle challenging the constitutionality of paperless touch-screen voting systems.
Weber filed suit against then-Secretary of State Bill Jones and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend in 2001 to have the system -- used in Riverside and three other California counties -- replaced or supplanted by another system.
A federal judge in 2002 dismissed the suit.
District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson agreed with election officials Jones and Townsend that the machines met the State of California’s certification process for voting machines.
Secretary of State and Riverside County elections officials have since said the electronic voting machines are accurate and reliable, have safeguards programmed into them and meet the requirements of federal and state commissions.
But the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel agreed to hear oral arguments today in the suit.
...
Whatever happens today in Pasadena, Susan Marie Weber should be seen as a pioneer, Alexander said
"The right to have a paper ballot is the voting rights struggle of our time," Alexander said.
"If she wins, it could fundamentally shake up the foundation of electronic voting. If she loses, the courts can be sure that more (challenges) will follow."
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 25%
Driving dangerously with the Patriot Act
Driving dangerously with the Patriot Act
By Pat M. Holt
WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft is running a dead heat with A. Mitchell Palmer, attorney general in the Wilson administration, for the distinction of being the worst in that job in the history of the United States.
One of the duties of the attorney general as head of the Justice Department is to protect the Constitution. Both Mr. Ashcroft and Palmer found that the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, got in their way more than it protected anything. It has gotten in Ashcroft's way in his pursuit of terrorists after Sept. 11, especially those who dress differently and practice a different religion. Palmer's crusade was the pursuit of communists, in the aftermath of World War I. He especially went after people with what to him were funny names from Eastern Europe. He tended to equate liberals with communists.
Ashcroft's vehicle is the USA Patriot Act, which Congress, abdicating its own duties of vigilance, passed with a whoop and a holler in the days after Sept. 11. Even the name of this odious legislation is offensive. It implies that the purpose of the act is to promote patriotism and that those not cooperating with it are somehow less patriotic.
...
Pat M. Holt is former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L1.1
Freedom Rating: 1.1
Learning Percentage: 1%
Philly Mayor Tries to Regroup Campaign
Philly Mayor Tries to Regroup Campaign
Oct 9, 11:19 PM EDT
By DAVID B. CARUSO
Associated Press Writer
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Mayor John F. Street tried to get his re-election campaign back on track Thursday after FBI bugging devices were discovered in his office, insisting that he has done nothing wrong and that prosecutors have assured him he is not the target of an investigation.
He and other politicians called on the FBI to say who is being investigated - something the bureau refused to do for the third straight day.
"I just can't entertain a never-ending series of questions about this," Street said, urging the FBI to "lift the clouds" over City Hall.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 10%
Philadelphia Mayor Finds Office Bugged
Philadelphia Mayor Finds Office Bugged
Device Linked to FBI Probe of Corruption
By Robert Strauss and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 9, 2003; Page A01
PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 8 -- A federal corruption investigation was inadvertently exposed here this week when a secret listening device was discovered in the City Hall office of Mayor John F. Street.
The bug was uncovered Tuesday during an electronic sweep of Street's office by the city police department, a sweep officials said was performed routinely every few months.
Its discovery set off a political firestorm when local FBI officials announced that the bug was not part of any electoral espionage -- Street (D) is locked in an acrimonious campaign with Republican Sam Katz -- but would not say how they knew that.
"The FBI doesn't confirm or deny investigations," said special agent Linda Vizi, the FBI spokeswoman in Philadelphia. "We were contacted by police that they found the device and responded. We will confirm, however, that we have ruled out the possibility of it being connected to the election campaign."
...
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .4
Learning Percentage: 80%
Dowd: Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 9, 2003
Excerpt:
The administration that never let you see it sweat is sweating, as two of its control freaks openly tug over control. The president's foreign policy duenna and his grumpy grampy over at the Pentagon are suddenly mud wrestling.
Women who are discouraged at the ascension of Conan the Barbarian in Cal-ee-fornia can take heart. In this delicious gender-bender, Condoleezza Rice triumphs as the macho infighter, driving Rummy into a diva-like meltdown.
The trigger was Monday's coverage of the Iraq Stabilization Group (a.k.a. Fat Chance Group); the group is a desperate bid to get a grip on Baghdad before the campaign starts by transferring power for postwar Iraq from the Pentagon to the national security adviser's office inside the White House.
Condi used a trick she learned from Rummy: pre-emption. She outflanked the famous Washington infighter by talking about the new alignment to The New York Times before he had a chance to object.
It was the first time the chesty defense czar — who had tried to freeze out the softies at State, which the Pentagon sneeringly refers to as "the Department of Nice" — had been downgraded by the president and outmaneuvered by a colleague.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: L3.5
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 25%
California dreamin' wakes the rest of us up to reality
California dreamin' wakes the rest of us up to reality
Commentary by Bill O'Reilly
August 27, 2003
Excerpt:
The polls show that even many poor people aren't buying the class warfare stuff anymore. We are all in this together. When the power went off, everybody got hosed. And when al Qaeda strikes, it doesn't matter what your tax bracket is.
As with most things in life, we have now been warned. The collapse of California's political system, the blackout, and Sept. 11, 2001, have all been signals sent. We Americans better wise up and start electing people who have a sense of urgency about protecting us and solving problems. For Americans, remaining in the dark is simply not an option anymore.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: R3
Freedom Rating: .03
Learning Percentage: 3%
Bush aides admit Iraq missteps
Bush aides admit Iraq missteps
Say estimates on oil revenue, damage off
By Wayne Washington, Globe Staff, 9/9/2003
WASHINGTON -- One day after President Bush gave the nation a cautious view of rebuilding efforts in Iraq, senior administration officials for the first time acknowledged that they vastly underestimated the damage to the country's infrastructure and greatly overestimated the amount of oil revenue that could be used to help rebuild the war-torn country.
Yesterday's sobering assessments came as members of Congress are contemplating Bush's request for $87 billion to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan -- and call into question earlier pronouncements by administration officials about the size and cost of the job.
The disclosures, coming on the heels of Bush's prime-time address, mark the administration's strongest acknowledgment to date that it failed to fully comprehend the complexities of rebuilding Iraq.
...
Read It Rating: 3.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -3
Learning Percentage: 10%
A Wider War -- Unless The Democrats Speak Out
A Wider War -- Unless The Democrats Speak Out
By Paul Craig Roberts
September 08, 2003
I blame the Democrats for the "war on terror." I know the neoconservatives planned the conquest of the Middle East long before the events of September 11 gave them an excuse. Internet pundits are familiar with the blueprint for American Empire put together by the neocon think tank, Project for the New American Century. Indeed, everyone in the world seems to know about it except the American public.
Still, the Democrats are to blame. It was the Democrats' war on Bush that created the "war on terror."
...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: .1
Learning Percentage: 8%
Posse Comitatus Gets New Attention
1878 Military Law Gets New Attention
by T.A. Badger, Associated Press, 24 November 2001
SAN ANTONIO -- America's military is largely prohibited from acting as a domestic police force, but with the increased fears of terrorism, some experts say it's time to rethink those restrictions.
"Our way of life has forever changed," wrote Sen. John Warner, R-Va., in a letter last month to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Should this law now be changed to enable our active-duty military to more fully join other domestic assets in this war against terrorism?"
The law, known as the Posse Comitatus Act, was championed by Southern lawmakers in 1878 who were angry about the widespread use of the Army in post-Civil War law enforcement.
It currently bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The Coast Guard and National Guard troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the act.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, testifying in October before the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed that it might be desirable to give federal troops more of a role in domestic policing to prevent terrorism.
...
Thanks to Post911TimeLine for this link.
And here's a link to an article about the same issue when it popped up over 6 months later, with the formation of the Department of Homeland Security.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -3
Learning Percentage: 20%
We report, you get it wrong
I recommend checking out the actual questionnaire as background material for this article. The report itself is right here. I didn't read that.
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The more commercial television news you watch, the more wrong you are likely to be about key elements of the Iraq War and its aftermath, according to a major new study released in Washington on Thursday.
And the more you watch the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News channel, in particular, the more likely it is that your perceptions about the war are wrong, adds the report by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
....
Thanks to Post911TimeLine for the link.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating:0
Learning Percentage: 35%
New Hampshire free-staters prepare for newcomers
New Hampshire free-staters prepare for newcomers
By Kate McCann, Associated Press Writer, 10/4/2003
CONCORD, N.H. -- New Hampshire members of the Free State Project were still celebrating when their phones started ringing and the e-mails started coming.
Most had worked for months to promote New Hampshire over nine rivals as a prospective home for 20,000 project members from around the country. But Wednesday's victory announcement caught many unprepared.
...
"It's just going nuts," said Babiarz, a database consultant from Grafton. "New Hampshire businesses are calling me asking how they can help facilitate the move. People are asking where's the best place to live."
Babiarz said he even got an e-mail from a moving company trying to drum up business.
Granite Staters among the 5,400 free staters nationwide will meet Sunday in Bow to plan and assign tasks such as directing newcomers to real estate offices, schools and business opportunities.
...
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 30%
We're Number One ... But Is That Good?
We're Number One ... But Is That Good?
by Jacob G. Hornberger, October 3, 2003
Did you know that the United States has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, that the U.S. inmate population has quadrupled since 1980 to two million people, that $46 billion a year is spent on U.S. prisons, that more than half of the incarcerations are for nonviolent offenses, and that blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans are over-represented throughout the U.S. prison system? That's right -- believe it or not, our nation has a higher incarceration rate than North Korea, China, Cuba, Pakistan, Burma, or Iran.
At the rate that U.S. officials are rounding up people in Iraq, however, it's entirely possible that Iraq could overtake the United States and vault into first place, especially given that U.S. occupational officials are exercising unfettered and omnipotent power to incarcerate anyone they want -- without charges, arrest warrants, indictments, convictions, or any judicial supervision whatsoever. And the number of inmates in Iraq is almost certain to grow, given that no one except family members, who are powerless to do anything about it, seems to care.
...
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 20%
A Culture Based on Murder
This essay is excellent.
by Sean Haugh
On September 3rd, Paul Hill was executed by the taxpayers of Florida for the murder of abortionist John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett, and the wounding of June Barrett.
The murder of Paul Hill adds a new level to the anti-death penalty slogan, "why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" His sad case, and the reaction to it all across the country, paints a portrait of a society lost in amoral murderous solipsism. Or, in simpler terms, we see killing someone as the easiest solution to just about any problem.
At every level of this warped tale, you find someone who is utterly convinced that their brand of murder is completely justified, and so hypocritical that they feel justified in killing anyone who opposes them.
...
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 10%
Mexican Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- At least 360 snipers under government command fired into a crowd of protesters, touching off a massacre 35 years ago that scarred a generation of Mexicans, according to once-secret government files obtained by The Associated Press.
Government officials at the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on October 2, 1968 -- 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by Mexico -- by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38 to several hundred.
As Mexicans hold an annual march Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, there is growing evidence backing up claims by student protesters that government operatives initiated the massacre.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 85%
Local Peace Group Infiltrated By Government Agent
Local Peace Group Infiltrated By Government Agent
By Mike Rhodes
October 4, 2003
Peace Fresno was infiltrated by an agent working for the Fresno Sheriff's Department. Aaron Kilner, known by Peace Fresno activists as Aaron Stokes, attended several Peace Fresno meetings. Peace Fresno activist Nicholas DeGraff remembers him taking voluminous notes and several members say they saw him at peace vilgils held at Shaw and Blackstone. He was also on the bus local anti-globalization activists took to attend the WTO ministerial-level conference on Agricultural Science and Technology demonstration in Sacramento in June 2003.
Aaron Kilner died in a motorcycle accident on August 30, 2003. In his obituary in The Fresno Bee he was identified as a member of the Fresno County Sheriff's department. The obituary went on to say that he was "assigned to the anti-terrorist team." Local activists believe that this "anti-terrorist team" is, in fact, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) that has recently been formed in this area.. When members of Peace Fresno saw the picture and read of Kilner's association with law enforcement they began piecing the story together.
The infiltration by law enforcement of progressive community groups in Fresno and throughout the country has long been used to disrupt legitimate political work. This disruption occurs by sowing seeds of mistrust among members, agents often promote discord within the group, and sometimes encourage illegal or violent actions. Agent provocateurs have been know to instigate violence at demonstrations, giving the police an excuse to attack protestors.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 45%
Capital Punishment and Texas
Capital Punishment and Texas
by Kathryn A. Graham
Interestingly enough, I had never been opposed to capital punishment, or at least, not in theory. Yes, I'm a Libertarian, and most Libertarians I have met are opposed to such taking of life, but I'd always reasoned that the person being executed had most definitely initiated the force by committing a capital crime in the first place. In addition, I felt (and, in some ways, still do feel) that keeping a person in a cage for life was cruel and unusual punishment far beyond execution.
Boy, have I ever received an education! Yep, that's right. This very stubborn and opinionated gal has had her mind changed 180 degrees, and in record time.
You see, I live in Texas.
...
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 45%
Sheriff Hege locked and loaded on the radio
This article was brought up by someone who posted a comment on my first Sheriff Hege-related post.
Sheriff Hege locked and loaded on the radio
BY JENNIFER RIDDLE
SALISBURY POST
June 27, 1999
Sheriff Gerald Hege is invading the air waves. This time it's FM and modern rock.
In true Hege fashion, the infamous Davidson County "bad" boy ripped onto WKZL 107.5 as the Friday morning show guest host.
He wore his uniform, a Team 101 hat and was "locked and loaded" with a gun on his hip and a microphone in his hand.
"Bad to the Bone" blasted in the background as the sheriff informed listeners, "Hege's in the house."
The Greensboro-based radio station usually plays the top-ranking Murphy in the Morning show from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. but Jack Murphy, the show's host, was on vacation.
"I didn't have any idea that Murphy was going to get Sheriff Hege to host the show until I heard him talking about it on the radio," said Jeff McHugh, program director. "Considering who Hege is, it should make for an interesting show."
...
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
Posted by Lance Brown at 01:42 AM
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LP: America owes Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude
LP Press Release:
America owes talk host Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude, Libertarians say
October 16, 2003
WASHINGTON, DC -- The entire nation owes radio broadcaster Rush Limbaugh a debt of gratitude, Libertarians say, because his ordeal has exposed every drug warrior in America as a rank hypocrite.
"One thing we don't hear from American politicians very often is silence," said Joe Seehusen, Libertarian Party executive director. "By refusing to criticize Rush Limbaugh, every drug warrior has just been exposed as a shameless, despicable hypocrite.
"And that's good news, because the next time they do speak up, there'll be no reason for anyone to listen."
The revelation that Limbaugh had become addicted to painkillers -- drugs he is accused of procuring illegally from his Palm Beach housekeeper -- has caused a media sensation ever since the megastar's shocking, on-air confession last week.
As the Limbaugh saga continues, here's an important question for Americans to ask, Libertarians say: Why are all the drug warriors suddenly so silent?
"Republican and Democratic politicians have written laws that have condemned more than 400,000 Americans to prison for committing the same 'crime' as Rush Limbaugh," Seehusen pointed out. "If this pill-popping pontificator deserves a get-out-of-jail-free card, these drug warriors had better explain why."
Given their longstanding support for the Drug War, it's fair to ask:
Why haven't President George Bush or his tough-on-crime attorney general, John Ashcroft, uttered a word criticizing Limbaugh's law-breaking?
Why aren't drug czar John P. Walters or his predecessor, Barry McCaffrey, lambasting Limbaugh as a menace to society and a threat to "our children?"
Why aren't federal DEA agents storming Limbaugh's $30 million Florida mansion in a frantic search for criminal evidence?
Why haven't federal, state, and local police agencies seized the celebrity's homes and luxury cars under asset-forfeiture laws?
Finally, why aren't bloviating blabbermouths like William Bennett publicly explaining how America would be better off if Limbaugh were prosecuted, locked in a steel cage and forced to abandon his wife, his friends, and his career?
The answer is obvious, Seehusen said: "America's drug warriors are shameless hypocrites who believe in one standard of justice for ordinary Americans and another for themselves, their families and their political allies.
"That alone should completely discredit them."
But there's an even more disturbing possibility, Seehusen said: that the people who are prosecuting the Drug War don't even believe in its central premise -- which is that public safety requires that drug users be jailed.
"The Bushes and Ashcrofts and McCaffreys of the world may believe, correctly, that individuals fighting a drug addiction deserve medical, not criminal treatment," he said. "That would explain why they're not demanding that Limbaugh be jailed.
"But if that's the case, these politicians have spent decades tearing apart American families for their own political gain. And that's an unforgivable crime."
Abandoning Blogs- Blogger Demographics and Activity Trends
From BlogSearchEngine.com:
Abandoning Blogs- Blogger Demographics and Activity Trends
For the BloggerCon 2003 conference at the Berkman Center of Harvard Law School, Perseus Development Corp. randomly surveyed 3,634 blogs (frequent publications of personal thoughts and Web links, also known as Web logs) on eight leading blog-hosting services to develop a model of blog populations. Based on this research, Perseus estimates that 4.12 million blogs have been created on these services: Blog-City, BlogSpot, Diaryland, LiveJournal, Pitas, TypePad, Weblogger and Xanga.
Based on the rapid growth rate demonstrated by the leading services, Perseus expects the number of hosted blogs created to exceed five million by the end of 2003 and to exceed ten million by the end of 2004.
Abandoned Blogs
The most dramatic finding from the survey was that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned. ...
October 11, 2003
Unrest in Shiite district over attacks
CNN.com - Unrest in Shiite district over attacks - Oct. 10, 2003
Crowd chants 'No, no America'
Friday, October 10, 2003 Posted: 3:56 PM EDT (1956 GMT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Anti-U.S. feeling swirled among worshippers and demonstrators Friday in the sprawling Shiite slum where two U.S. soldiers were gunned down and eight Iraqi police officers were killed in a suicide attack a day earlier.
Such violence has so far been rare in the neighborhood, Sadr City, which was a base of anti-Saddam Hussein sentiment.
But the depressed district now may become a center of resistance to the U.S. occupation, and a powerful imam with a huge power base there, Muqtada al-Sadr, has taken an anti-American stand.
...
As many as 6,000 worshippers gathered in front of the Sadr City municipal offices near the ambush site for Friday prayers and a sermon was delivered by an al-Sadr aide, Sheikh Abdel-Hadi al-Daraji.
"America claims to be the founder of freedom and democracy. That is wrong. Instead, it is nothing but a terrorist organization that leads the world through its terrorism and its reckless arrogance," the cleric said.
"It is forbidden for the American forces to enter Sadr City, especially for the next few days because the sons of Sadr City reject their presence."
The crowds chanted "No, No America!" ...
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .1
Learning Percentage: 65%
What do they mean by "Talking Points"?
If you've ever wondered what the news pundits mean when they accuse one party or another (or one side or another) of handing out "talking points" that everybody on that side takes its cues from...well, here's an excellent example. In this case it happens to be from the Democrat side of things, but they aren't unique in that practice.
Also, for what it's worth, hardcore talking points come out more often than once a month, or however long Democracy Corps waits between issuing these memos. Real, full-bore talking points come out as often as there's something new to be talking about. Talking points also come in many shapes and sizes. I get an e-mail every couplefew days from each of the Bipartisan parties with some form of topical critique of the other side, or promotion of their own -- sort of a soft, massified form of talking points.
Democracy Corps "Core Message"
Here's an archived copy of the one I just read, dated September 26th, 2003.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: L4
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 10%
Mexico politicians fear Schwarzenegger is bad news for migrants
Mexico fears Schwarzenegger is bad news for migrants
by Lisa J. Adams
Associated Press
Oct. 9, 2003 07:45 AM
MEXICO CITY - Mexican federal lawmakers are bemoaning Hollywood action star Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as California governor and issued a stern call to the novice politician to respect the rights of Mexican migrants in North America's largest state.
"This is something about which Mexican migrants should be very concerned," said Rep. Carlos Jimenez, secretary of the foreign relations committee in Mexico's lower house of Congress.
"For the Mexican community in California, which forms such an important part of the state, it could represent a sorry defeat," he said Wednesday. "The very discriminatory message that he has delivered at certain times against Mexican migrants is not something that encourages us. It's totally the opposite."
...
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 35%
October 10, 2003
Fake cops stopping, terrifying motorists
Fake cops stopping, terrifying motorists
Shots fired, but no one hurt in incidents around Tucson
By L. Anne Newell
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Men impersonating law enforcement officers have pulled over at least three people since mid-September, shooting at one driver and forcing another to run into the desert at gunpoint, officials said Wednesday.
No one was injured in the incidents, and authorities believe all three were committed by the same two men, using fake police lights to pull drivers to the side of the road. Officials put out information on the incidents to warn the public.
"Obviously, they're still out there," said Marana police Sgt. Tim Brunenkant, whose agency recorded one of the incidents. "We don't know what their motive is, if it's drug-related or if it's something just to strike fear in people."
...
Here's a less in-depth story about the same set of incidents.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -2.5
Learning Percentage: 75%
Student Suspended For Having Emergency Roadside Kit
Student Suspended For Having Emergency Roadside Kit
Kit Mom Gave Teen Contained Utility Knife
CORONA, Calif. -- Lori Bollong says she wants to warn other parents about the contents of emergency roadside kits after her son was suspended from school because of it.
Lori Bollong bought the kit for her 17-year-old son who drives 20 miles to an after-school job. But inside the new, unopened kit was a utility knife.
"According to them it's a weapon... no tolerance for weapons," said Lori Bollong.
Drug-sniffing dogs at Santiago High School detected Bollong's asthma inhalers inside his truck parked at school. That's when security opened a bag behind the passenger's seat and found the utility knife....
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 70%
October 09, 2003
Decision on touch-screen voting suit may take weeks
It seems pretty obvious that there should be a paper backup in the touch-screen voting process. The voting process is not the place to cut corners or take chances. Or at least it shouldn't be.
Decision on voting suit may take weeks
Woman wants touch-screen system replaced with one providing audit trail
By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
October 9th, 2003
A federal appeals court Wednesday heard arguments from a Palm Desert woman challenging touch-screen voting, but it could be weeks before a decision is rendered.
A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Pasadena agreed to hear arguments in Susan Marie Weber's 2001 lawsuit against then-California Secretary of State Bill Jones and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend over the touch screens.
...
"Are (touch-screens) more accurate? That’s the crux of the defense’s case, but there’s no audit trail," Weber said. "You wouldn’t accept an ATM that wouldn’t give you a receipt. We want a document to verify (the vote)."
It will likely be weeks before the court’s decision, but Weber has not ruled out an appeal to a larger, en banc panel of the court if the three-member panel affirms the 2002 ruling to toss the lawsuit.
...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.3
Learning Percentage: 15%
Touch-screen lawsuit continues
By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
October 8th, 2003
Susan Marie Weber will face a federal appeals panel today in Pasadena.
It's the latest chapter in the Palm Desert woman's three-year battle challenging the constitutionality of paperless touch-screen voting systems.
Weber filed suit against then-Secretary of State Bill Jones and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend in 2001 to have the system -- used in Riverside and three other California counties -- replaced or supplanted by another system.
A federal judge in 2002 dismissed the suit.
District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson agreed with election officials Jones and Townsend that the machines met the State of California’s certification process for voting machines.
Secretary of State and Riverside County elections officials have since said the electronic voting machines are accurate and reliable, have safeguards programmed into them and meet the requirements of federal and state commissions.
But the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel agreed to hear oral arguments today in the suit.
...
Whatever happens today in Pasadena, Susan Marie Weber should be seen as a pioneer, Alexander said
"The right to have a paper ballot is the voting rights struggle of our time," Alexander said.
"If she wins, it could fundamentally shake up the foundation of electronic voting. If she loses, the courts can be sure that more (challenges) will follow."
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 25%
Driving dangerously with the Patriot Act
Driving dangerously with the Patriot Act
By Pat M. Holt
WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft is running a dead heat with A. Mitchell Palmer, attorney general in the Wilson administration, for the distinction of being the worst in that job in the history of the United States.
One of the duties of the attorney general as head of the Justice Department is to protect the Constitution. Both Mr. Ashcroft and Palmer found that the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, got in their way more than it protected anything. It has gotten in Ashcroft's way in his pursuit of terrorists after Sept. 11, especially those who dress differently and practice a different religion. Palmer's crusade was the pursuit of communists, in the aftermath of World War I. He especially went after people with what to him were funny names from Eastern Europe. He tended to equate liberals with communists.
Ashcroft's vehicle is the USA Patriot Act, which Congress, abdicating its own duties of vigilance, passed with a whoop and a holler in the days after Sept. 11. Even the name of this odious legislation is offensive. It implies that the purpose of the act is to promote patriotism and that those not cooperating with it are somehow less patriotic.
...
Pat M. Holt is former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L1.1
Freedom Rating: 1.1
Learning Percentage: 1%
Philly Mayor Tries to Regroup Campaign
Philly Mayor Tries to Regroup Campaign
Oct 9, 11:19 PM EDT
By DAVID B. CARUSO
Associated Press Writer
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Mayor John F. Street tried to get his re-election campaign back on track Thursday after FBI bugging devices were discovered in his office, insisting that he has done nothing wrong and that prosecutors have assured him he is not the target of an investigation.
He and other politicians called on the FBI to say who is being investigated - something the bureau refused to do for the third straight day.
"I just can't entertain a never-ending series of questions about this," Street said, urging the FBI to "lift the clouds" over City Hall.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 10%
Philadelphia Mayor Finds Office Bugged
Philadelphia Mayor Finds Office Bugged
Device Linked to FBI Probe of Corruption
By Robert Strauss and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 9, 2003; Page A01
PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 8 -- A federal corruption investigation was inadvertently exposed here this week when a secret listening device was discovered in the City Hall office of Mayor John F. Street.
The bug was uncovered Tuesday during an electronic sweep of Street's office by the city police department, a sweep officials said was performed routinely every few months.
Its discovery set off a political firestorm when local FBI officials announced that the bug was not part of any electoral espionage -- Street (D) is locked in an acrimonious campaign with Republican Sam Katz -- but would not say how they knew that.
"The FBI doesn't confirm or deny investigations," said special agent Linda Vizi, the FBI spokeswoman in Philadelphia. "We were contacted by police that they found the device and responded. We will confirm, however, that we have ruled out the possibility of it being connected to the election campaign."
...
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .4
Learning Percentage: 80%
Dowd: Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 9, 2003
Excerpt:
The administration that never let you see it sweat is sweating, as two of its control freaks openly tug over control. The president's foreign policy duenna and his grumpy grampy over at the Pentagon are suddenly mud wrestling.
Women who are discouraged at the ascension of Conan the Barbarian in Cal-ee-fornia can take heart. In this delicious gender-bender, Condoleezza Rice triumphs as the macho infighter, driving Rummy into a diva-like meltdown.
The trigger was Monday's coverage of the Iraq Stabilization Group (a.k.a. Fat Chance Group); the group is a desperate bid to get a grip on Baghdad before the campaign starts by transferring power for postwar Iraq from the Pentagon to the national security adviser's office inside the White House.
Condi used a trick she learned from Rummy: pre-emption. She outflanked the famous Washington infighter by talking about the new alignment to The New York Times before he had a chance to object.
It was the first time the chesty defense czar — who had tried to freeze out the softies at State, which the Pentagon sneeringly refers to as "the Department of Nice" — had been downgraded by the president and outmaneuvered by a colleague.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: L3.5
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 25%
California dreamin' wakes the rest of us up to reality
California dreamin' wakes the rest of us up to reality
Commentary by Bill O'Reilly
August 27, 2003
Excerpt:
The polls show that even many poor people aren't buying the class warfare stuff anymore. We are all in this together. When the power went off, everybody got hosed. And when al Qaeda strikes, it doesn't matter what your tax bracket is.
As with most things in life, we have now been warned. The collapse of California's political system, the blackout, and Sept. 11, 2001, have all been signals sent. We Americans better wise up and start electing people who have a sense of urgency about protecting us and solving problems. For Americans, remaining in the dark is simply not an option anymore.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: R3
Freedom Rating: .03
Learning Percentage: 3%
Bush aides admit Iraq missteps
Bush aides admit Iraq missteps
Say estimates on oil revenue, damage off
By Wayne Washington, Globe Staff, 9/9/2003
WASHINGTON -- One day after President Bush gave the nation a cautious view of rebuilding efforts in Iraq, senior administration officials for the first time acknowledged that they vastly underestimated the damage to the country's infrastructure and greatly overestimated the amount of oil revenue that could be used to help rebuild the war-torn country.
Yesterday's sobering assessments came as members of Congress are contemplating Bush's request for $87 billion to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan -- and call into question earlier pronouncements by administration officials about the size and cost of the job.
The disclosures, coming on the heels of Bush's prime-time address, mark the administration's strongest acknowledgment to date that it failed to fully comprehend the complexities of rebuilding Iraq.
...
Read It Rating: 3.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -3
Learning Percentage: 10%
A Wider War -- Unless The Democrats Speak Out
A Wider War -- Unless The Democrats Speak Out
By Paul Craig Roberts
September 08, 2003
I blame the Democrats for the "war on terror." I know the neoconservatives planned the conquest of the Middle East long before the events of September 11 gave them an excuse. Internet pundits are familiar with the blueprint for American Empire put together by the neocon think tank, Project for the New American Century. Indeed, everyone in the world seems to know about it except the American public.
Still, the Democrats are to blame. It was the Democrats' war on Bush that created the "war on terror."
...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: .1
Learning Percentage: 8%
Posse Comitatus Gets New Attention
1878 Military Law Gets New Attention
by T.A. Badger, Associated Press, 24 November 2001
SAN ANTONIO -- America's military is largely prohibited from acting as a domestic police force, but with the increased fears of terrorism, some experts say it's time to rethink those restrictions.
"Our way of life has forever changed," wrote Sen. John Warner, R-Va., in a letter last month to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Should this law now be changed to enable our active-duty military to more fully join other domestic assets in this war against terrorism?"
The law, known as the Posse Comitatus Act, was championed by Southern lawmakers in 1878 who were angry about the widespread use of the Army in post-Civil War law enforcement.
It currently bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The Coast Guard and National Guard troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the act.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, testifying in October before the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed that it might be desirable to give federal troops more of a role in domestic policing to prevent terrorism.
...
Thanks to Post911TimeLine for this link.
And here's a link to an article about the same issue when it popped up over 6 months later, with the formation of the Department of Homeland Security.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -3
Learning Percentage: 20%
We report, you get it wrong
I recommend checking out the actual questionnaire as background material for this article. The report itself is right here. I didn't read that.
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The more commercial television news you watch, the more wrong you are likely to be about key elements of the Iraq War and its aftermath, according to a major new study released in Washington on Thursday.
And the more you watch the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News channel, in particular, the more likely it is that your perceptions about the war are wrong, adds the report by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
....
Thanks to Post911TimeLine for the link.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating:0
Learning Percentage: 35%
New Hampshire free-staters prepare for newcomers
New Hampshire free-staters prepare for newcomers
By Kate McCann, Associated Press Writer, 10/4/2003
CONCORD, N.H. -- New Hampshire members of the Free State Project were still celebrating when their phones started ringing and the e-mails started coming.
Most had worked for months to promote New Hampshire over nine rivals as a prospective home for 20,000 project members from around the country. But Wednesday's victory announcement caught many unprepared.
...
"It's just going nuts," said Babiarz, a database consultant from Grafton. "New Hampshire businesses are calling me asking how they can help facilitate the move. People are asking where's the best place to live."
Babiarz said he even got an e-mail from a moving company trying to drum up business.
Granite Staters among the 5,400 free staters nationwide will meet Sunday in Bow to plan and assign tasks such as directing newcomers to real estate offices, schools and business opportunities.
...
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 30%
We're Number One ... But Is That Good?
We're Number One ... But Is That Good?
by Jacob G. Hornberger, October 3, 2003
Did you know that the United States has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, that the U.S. inmate population has quadrupled since 1980 to two million people, that $46 billion a year is spent on U.S. prisons, that more than half of the incarcerations are for nonviolent offenses, and that blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans are over-represented throughout the U.S. prison system? That's right -- believe it or not, our nation has a higher incarceration rate than North Korea, China, Cuba, Pakistan, Burma, or Iran.
At the rate that U.S. officials are rounding up people in Iraq, however, it's entirely possible that Iraq could overtake the United States and vault into first place, especially given that U.S. occupational officials are exercising unfettered and omnipotent power to incarcerate anyone they want -- without charges, arrest warrants, indictments, convictions, or any judicial supervision whatsoever. And the number of inmates in Iraq is almost certain to grow, given that no one except family members, who are powerless to do anything about it, seems to care.
...
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 20%
A Culture Based on Murder
This essay is excellent.
by Sean Haugh
On September 3rd, Paul Hill was executed by the taxpayers of Florida for the murder of abortionist John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett, and the wounding of June Barrett.
The murder of Paul Hill adds a new level to the anti-death penalty slogan, "why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" His sad case, and the reaction to it all across the country, paints a portrait of a society lost in amoral murderous solipsism. Or, in simpler terms, we see killing someone as the easiest solution to just about any problem.
At every level of this warped tale, you find someone who is utterly convinced that their brand of murder is completely justified, and so hypocritical that they feel justified in killing anyone who opposes them.
...
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 10%
Mexican Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- At least 360 snipers under government command fired into a crowd of protesters, touching off a massacre 35 years ago that scarred a generation of Mexicans, according to once-secret government files obtained by The Associated Press.
Government officials at the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on October 2, 1968 -- 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by Mexico -- by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38 to several hundred.
As Mexicans hold an annual march Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, there is growing evidence backing up claims by student protesters that government operatives initiated the massacre.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 85%
Local Peace Group Infiltrated By Government Agent
Local Peace Group Infiltrated By Government Agent
By Mike Rhodes
October 4, 2003
Peace Fresno was infiltrated by an agent working for the Fresno Sheriff's Department. Aaron Kilner, known by Peace Fresno activists as Aaron Stokes, attended several Peace Fresno meetings. Peace Fresno activist Nicholas DeGraff remembers him taking voluminous notes and several members say they saw him at peace vilgils held at Shaw and Blackstone. He was also on the bus local anti-globalization activists took to attend the WTO ministerial-level conference on Agricultural Science and Technology demonstration in Sacramento in June 2003.
Aaron Kilner died in a motorcycle accident on August 30, 2003. In his obituary in The Fresno Bee he was identified as a member of the Fresno County Sheriff's department. The obituary went on to say that he was "assigned to the anti-terrorist team." Local activists believe that this "anti-terrorist team" is, in fact, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) that has recently been formed in this area.. When members of Peace Fresno saw the picture and read of Kilner's association with law enforcement they began piecing the story together.
The infiltration by law enforcement of progressive community groups in Fresno and throughout the country has long been used to disrupt legitimate political work. This disruption occurs by sowing seeds of mistrust among members, agents often promote discord within the group, and sometimes encourage illegal or violent actions. Agent provocateurs have been know to instigate violence at demonstrations, giving the police an excuse to attack protestors.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 45%
Capital Punishment and Texas
Capital Punishment and Texas
by Kathryn A. Graham
Interestingly enough, I had never been opposed to capital punishment, or at least, not in theory. Yes, I'm a Libertarian, and most Libertarians I have met are opposed to such taking of life, but I'd always reasoned that the person being executed had most definitely initiated the force by committing a capital crime in the first place. In addition, I felt (and, in some ways, still do feel) that keeping a person in a cage for life was cruel and unusual punishment far beyond execution.
Boy, have I ever received an education! Yep, that's right. This very stubborn and opinionated gal has had her mind changed 180 degrees, and in record time.
You see, I live in Texas.
...
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 45%
Sheriff Hege locked and loaded on the radio
This article was brought up by someone who posted a comment on my first Sheriff Hege-related post.
Sheriff Hege locked and loaded on the radio
BY JENNIFER RIDDLE
SALISBURY POST
June 27, 1999
Sheriff Gerald Hege is invading the air waves. This time it's FM and modern rock.
In true Hege fashion, the infamous Davidson County "bad" boy ripped onto WKZL 107.5 as the Friday morning show guest host.
He wore his uniform, a Team 101 hat and was "locked and loaded" with a gun on his hip and a microphone in his hand.
"Bad to the Bone" blasted in the background as the sheriff informed listeners, "Hege's in the house."
The Greensboro-based radio station usually plays the top-ranking Murphy in the Morning show from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. but Jack Murphy, the show's host, was on vacation.
"I didn't have any idea that Murphy was going to get Sheriff Hege to host the show until I heard him talking about it on the radio," said Jeff McHugh, program director. "Considering who Hege is, it should make for an interesting show."
...
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
Posted by Lance Brown at 01:42 AM
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Unrest in Shiite district over attacks
CNN.com - Unrest in Shiite district over attacks - Oct. 10, 2003
Crowd chants 'No, no America'
Friday, October 10, 2003 Posted: 3:56 PM EDT (1956 GMT)
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Anti-U.S. feeling swirled among worshippers and demonstrators Friday in the sprawling Shiite slum where two U.S. soldiers were gunned down and eight Iraqi police officers were killed in a suicide attack a day earlier.
Such violence has so far been rare in the neighborhood, Sadr City, which was a base of anti-Saddam Hussein sentiment.
But the depressed district now may become a center of resistance to the U.S. occupation, and a powerful imam with a huge power base there, Muqtada al-Sadr, has taken an anti-American stand.
...
As many as 6,000 worshippers gathered in front of the Sadr City municipal offices near the ambush site for Friday prayers and a sermon was delivered by an al-Sadr aide, Sheikh Abdel-Hadi al-Daraji.
"America claims to be the founder of freedom and democracy. That is wrong. Instead, it is nothing but a terrorist organization that leads the world through its terrorism and its reckless arrogance," the cleric said.
"It is forbidden for the American forces to enter Sadr City, especially for the next few days because the sons of Sadr City reject their presence."
The crowds chanted "No, No America!" ...
Read It Rating: 9
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .1
Learning Percentage: 65%
What do they mean by "Talking Points"?
If you've ever wondered what the news pundits mean when they accuse one party or another (or one side or another) of handing out "talking points" that everybody on that side takes its cues from...well, here's an excellent example. In this case it happens to be from the Democrat side of things, but they aren't unique in that practice.
Also, for what it's worth, hardcore talking points come out more often than once a month, or however long Democracy Corps waits between issuing these memos. Real, full-bore talking points come out as often as there's something new to be talking about. Talking points also come in many shapes and sizes. I get an e-mail every couplefew days from each of the Bipartisan parties with some form of topical critique of the other side, or promotion of their own -- sort of a soft, massified form of talking points.
Democracy Corps "Core Message"
Here's an archived copy of the one I just read, dated September 26th, 2003.
Read It Rating: 6
Left/Right Rating: L4
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 10%
Mexico politicians fear Schwarzenegger is bad news for migrants
Mexico fears Schwarzenegger is bad news for migrants
by Lisa J. Adams
Associated Press
Oct. 9, 2003 07:45 AM
MEXICO CITY - Mexican federal lawmakers are bemoaning Hollywood action star Arnold Schwarzenegger's election as California governor and issued a stern call to the novice politician to respect the rights of Mexican migrants in North America's largest state.
"This is something about which Mexican migrants should be very concerned," said Rep. Carlos Jimenez, secretary of the foreign relations committee in Mexico's lower house of Congress.
"For the Mexican community in California, which forms such an important part of the state, it could represent a sorry defeat," he said Wednesday. "The very discriminatory message that he has delivered at certain times against Mexican migrants is not something that encourages us. It's totally the opposite."
...
Read It Rating: 3
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 35%
Fake cops stopping, terrifying motorists
Fake cops stopping, terrifying motorists
Shots fired, but no one hurt in incidents around Tucson
By L. Anne Newell
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Men impersonating law enforcement officers have pulled over at least three people since mid-September, shooting at one driver and forcing another to run into the desert at gunpoint, officials said Wednesday.
No one was injured in the incidents, and authorities believe all three were committed by the same two men, using fake police lights to pull drivers to the side of the road. Officials put out information on the incidents to warn the public.
"Obviously, they're still out there," said Marana police Sgt. Tim Brunenkant, whose agency recorded one of the incidents. "We don't know what their motive is, if it's drug-related or if it's something just to strike fear in people."
...
Here's a less in-depth story about the same set of incidents.
Read It Rating: 8.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -2.5
Learning Percentage: 75%
Student Suspended For Having Emergency Roadside Kit
Student Suspended For Having Emergency Roadside Kit
Kit Mom Gave Teen Contained Utility Knife
CORONA, Calif. -- Lori Bollong says she wants to warn other parents about the contents of emergency roadside kits after her son was suspended from school because of it.
Lori Bollong bought the kit for her 17-year-old son who drives 20 miles to an after-school job. But inside the new, unopened kit was a utility knife.
"According to them it's a weapon... no tolerance for weapons," said Lori Bollong.
Drug-sniffing dogs at Santiago High School detected Bollong's asthma inhalers inside his truck parked at school. That's when security opened a bag behind the passenger's seat and found the utility knife....
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 70%
October 09, 2003
Decision on touch-screen voting suit may take weeks
It seems pretty obvious that there should be a paper backup in the touch-screen voting process. The voting process is not the place to cut corners or take chances. Or at least it shouldn't be.
Decision on voting suit may take weeks
Woman wants touch-screen system replaced with one providing audit trail
By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
October 9th, 2003
A federal appeals court Wednesday heard arguments from a Palm Desert woman challenging touch-screen voting, but it could be weeks before a decision is rendered.
A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Pasadena agreed to hear arguments in Susan Marie Weber's 2001 lawsuit against then-California Secretary of State Bill Jones and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend over the touch screens.
...
"Are (touch-screens) more accurate? That’s the crux of the defense’s case, but there’s no audit trail," Weber said. "You wouldn’t accept an ATM that wouldn’t give you a receipt. We want a document to verify (the vote)."
It will likely be weeks before the court’s decision, but Weber has not ruled out an appeal to a larger, en banc panel of the court if the three-member panel affirms the 2002 ruling to toss the lawsuit.
...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.3
Learning Percentage: 15%
Touch-screen lawsuit continues
By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
October 8th, 2003
Susan Marie Weber will face a federal appeals panel today in Pasadena.
It's the latest chapter in the Palm Desert woman's three-year battle challenging the constitutionality of paperless touch-screen voting systems.
Weber filed suit against then-Secretary of State Bill Jones and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend in 2001 to have the system -- used in Riverside and three other California counties -- replaced or supplanted by another system.
A federal judge in 2002 dismissed the suit.
District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson agreed with election officials Jones and Townsend that the machines met the State of California’s certification process for voting machines.
Secretary of State and Riverside County elections officials have since said the electronic voting machines are accurate and reliable, have safeguards programmed into them and meet the requirements of federal and state commissions.
But the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel agreed to hear oral arguments today in the suit.
...
Whatever happens today in Pasadena, Susan Marie Weber should be seen as a pioneer, Alexander said
"The right to have a paper ballot is the voting rights struggle of our time," Alexander said.
"If she wins, it could fundamentally shake up the foundation of electronic voting. If she loses, the courts can be sure that more (challenges) will follow."
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 25%
Driving dangerously with the Patriot Act
Driving dangerously with the Patriot Act
By Pat M. Holt
WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft is running a dead heat with A. Mitchell Palmer, attorney general in the Wilson administration, for the distinction of being the worst in that job in the history of the United States.
One of the duties of the attorney general as head of the Justice Department is to protect the Constitution. Both Mr. Ashcroft and Palmer found that the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, got in their way more than it protected anything. It has gotten in Ashcroft's way in his pursuit of terrorists after Sept. 11, especially those who dress differently and practice a different religion. Palmer's crusade was the pursuit of communists, in the aftermath of World War I. He especially went after people with what to him were funny names from Eastern Europe. He tended to equate liberals with communists.
Ashcroft's vehicle is the USA Patriot Act, which Congress, abdicating its own duties of vigilance, passed with a whoop and a holler in the days after Sept. 11. Even the name of this odious legislation is offensive. It implies that the purpose of the act is to promote patriotism and that those not cooperating with it are somehow less patriotic.
...
Pat M. Holt is former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L1.1
Freedom Rating: 1.1
Learning Percentage: 1%
Philly Mayor Tries to Regroup Campaign
Philly Mayor Tries to Regroup Campaign
Oct 9, 11:19 PM EDT
By DAVID B. CARUSO
Associated Press Writer
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Mayor John F. Street tried to get his re-election campaign back on track Thursday after FBI bugging devices were discovered in his office, insisting that he has done nothing wrong and that prosecutors have assured him he is not the target of an investigation.
He and other politicians called on the FBI to say who is being investigated - something the bureau refused to do for the third straight day.
"I just can't entertain a never-ending series of questions about this," Street said, urging the FBI to "lift the clouds" over City Hall.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 10%
Philadelphia Mayor Finds Office Bugged
Philadelphia Mayor Finds Office Bugged
Device Linked to FBI Probe of Corruption
By Robert Strauss and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 9, 2003; Page A01
PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 8 -- A federal corruption investigation was inadvertently exposed here this week when a secret listening device was discovered in the City Hall office of Mayor John F. Street.
The bug was uncovered Tuesday during an electronic sweep of Street's office by the city police department, a sweep officials said was performed routinely every few months.
Its discovery set off a political firestorm when local FBI officials announced that the bug was not part of any electoral espionage -- Street (D) is locked in an acrimonious campaign with Republican Sam Katz -- but would not say how they knew that.
"The FBI doesn't confirm or deny investigations," said special agent Linda Vizi, the FBI spokeswoman in Philadelphia. "We were contacted by police that they found the device and responded. We will confirm, however, that we have ruled out the possibility of it being connected to the election campaign."
...
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .4
Learning Percentage: 80%
Dowd: Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 9, 2003
Excerpt:
The administration that never let you see it sweat is sweating, as two of its control freaks openly tug over control. The president's foreign policy duenna and his grumpy grampy over at the Pentagon are suddenly mud wrestling.
Women who are discouraged at the ascension of Conan the Barbarian in Cal-ee-fornia can take heart. In this delicious gender-bender, Condoleezza Rice triumphs as the macho infighter, driving Rummy into a diva-like meltdown.
The trigger was Monday's coverage of the Iraq Stabilization Group (a.k.a. Fat Chance Group); the group is a desperate bid to get a grip on Baghdad before the campaign starts by transferring power for postwar Iraq from the Pentagon to the national security adviser's office inside the White House.
Condi used a trick she learned from Rummy: pre-emption. She outflanked the famous Washington infighter by talking about the new alignment to The New York Times before he had a chance to object.
It was the first time the chesty defense czar — who had tried to freeze out the softies at State, which the Pentagon sneeringly refers to as "the Department of Nice" — had been downgraded by the president and outmaneuvered by a colleague.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: L3.5
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 25%
California dreamin' wakes the rest of us up to reality
California dreamin' wakes the rest of us up to reality
Commentary by Bill O'Reilly
August 27, 2003
Excerpt:
The polls show that even many poor people aren't buying the class warfare stuff anymore. We are all in this together. When the power went off, everybody got hosed. And when al Qaeda strikes, it doesn't matter what your tax bracket is.
As with most things in life, we have now been warned. The collapse of California's political system, the blackout, and Sept. 11, 2001, have all been signals sent. We Americans better wise up and start electing people who have a sense of urgency about protecting us and solving problems. For Americans, remaining in the dark is simply not an option anymore.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: R3
Freedom Rating: .03
Learning Percentage: 3%
Bush aides admit Iraq missteps
Bush aides admit Iraq missteps
Say estimates on oil revenue, damage off
By Wayne Washington, Globe Staff, 9/9/2003
WASHINGTON -- One day after President Bush gave the nation a cautious view of rebuilding efforts in Iraq, senior administration officials for the first time acknowledged that they vastly underestimated the damage to the country's infrastructure and greatly overestimated the amount of oil revenue that could be used to help rebuild the war-torn country.
Yesterday's sobering assessments came as members of Congress are contemplating Bush's request for $87 billion to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan -- and call into question earlier pronouncements by administration officials about the size and cost of the job.
The disclosures, coming on the heels of Bush's prime-time address, mark the administration's strongest acknowledgment to date that it failed to fully comprehend the complexities of rebuilding Iraq.
...
Read It Rating: 3.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -3
Learning Percentage: 10%
A Wider War -- Unless The Democrats Speak Out
A Wider War -- Unless The Democrats Speak Out
By Paul Craig Roberts
September 08, 2003
I blame the Democrats for the "war on terror." I know the neoconservatives planned the conquest of the Middle East long before the events of September 11 gave them an excuse. Internet pundits are familiar with the blueprint for American Empire put together by the neocon think tank, Project for the New American Century. Indeed, everyone in the world seems to know about it except the American public.
Still, the Democrats are to blame. It was the Democrats' war on Bush that created the "war on terror."
...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: .1
Learning Percentage: 8%
Posse Comitatus Gets New Attention
1878 Military Law Gets New Attention
by T.A. Badger, Associated Press, 24 November 2001
SAN ANTONIO -- America's military is largely prohibited from acting as a domestic police force, but with the increased fears of terrorism, some experts say it's time to rethink those restrictions.
"Our way of life has forever changed," wrote Sen. John Warner, R-Va., in a letter last month to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Should this law now be changed to enable our active-duty military to more fully join other domestic assets in this war against terrorism?"
The law, known as the Posse Comitatus Act, was championed by Southern lawmakers in 1878 who were angry about the widespread use of the Army in post-Civil War law enforcement.
It currently bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The Coast Guard and National Guard troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the act.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, testifying in October before the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed that it might be desirable to give federal troops more of a role in domestic policing to prevent terrorism.
...
Thanks to Post911TimeLine for this link.
And here's a link to an article about the same issue when it popped up over 6 months later, with the formation of the Department of Homeland Security.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -3
Learning Percentage: 20%
We report, you get it wrong
I recommend checking out the actual questionnaire as background material for this article. The report itself is right here. I didn't read that.
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The more commercial television news you watch, the more wrong you are likely to be about key elements of the Iraq War and its aftermath, according to a major new study released in Washington on Thursday.
And the more you watch the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News channel, in particular, the more likely it is that your perceptions about the war are wrong, adds the report by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
....
Thanks to Post911TimeLine for the link.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating:0
Learning Percentage: 35%
New Hampshire free-staters prepare for newcomers
New Hampshire free-staters prepare for newcomers
By Kate McCann, Associated Press Writer, 10/4/2003
CONCORD, N.H. -- New Hampshire members of the Free State Project were still celebrating when their phones started ringing and the e-mails started coming.
Most had worked for months to promote New Hampshire over nine rivals as a prospective home for 20,000 project members from around the country. But Wednesday's victory announcement caught many unprepared.
...
"It's just going nuts," said Babiarz, a database consultant from Grafton. "New Hampshire businesses are calling me asking how they can help facilitate the move. People are asking where's the best place to live."
Babiarz said he even got an e-mail from a moving company trying to drum up business.
Granite Staters among the 5,400 free staters nationwide will meet Sunday in Bow to plan and assign tasks such as directing newcomers to real estate offices, schools and business opportunities.
...
Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 30%
We're Number One ... But Is That Good?
We're Number One ... But Is That Good?
by Jacob G. Hornberger, October 3, 2003
Did you know that the United States has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, that the U.S. inmate population has quadrupled since 1980 to two million people, that $46 billion a year is spent on U.S. prisons, that more than half of the incarcerations are for nonviolent offenses, and that blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans are over-represented throughout the U.S. prison system? That's right -- believe it or not, our nation has a higher incarceration rate than North Korea, China, Cuba, Pakistan, Burma, or Iran.
At the rate that U.S. officials are rounding up people in Iraq, however, it's entirely possible that Iraq could overtake the United States and vault into first place, especially given that U.S. occupational officials are exercising unfettered and omnipotent power to incarcerate anyone they want -- without charges, arrest warrants, indictments, convictions, or any judicial supervision whatsoever. And the number of inmates in Iraq is almost certain to grow, given that no one except family members, who are powerless to do anything about it, seems to care.
...
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 20%
A Culture Based on Murder
This essay is excellent.
by Sean Haugh
On September 3rd, Paul Hill was executed by the taxpayers of Florida for the murder of abortionist John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett, and the wounding of June Barrett.
The murder of Paul Hill adds a new level to the anti-death penalty slogan, "why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" His sad case, and the reaction to it all across the country, paints a portrait of a society lost in amoral murderous solipsism. Or, in simpler terms, we see killing someone as the easiest solution to just about any problem.
At every level of this warped tale, you find someone who is utterly convinced that their brand of murder is completely justified, and so hypocritical that they feel justified in killing anyone who opposes them.
...
Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 10%
Mexican Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- At least 360 snipers under government command fired into a crowd of protesters, touching off a massacre 35 years ago that scarred a generation of Mexicans, according to once-secret government files obtained by The Associated Press.
Government officials at the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on October 2, 1968 -- 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by Mexico -- by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38 to several hundred.
As Mexicans hold an annual march Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, there is growing evidence backing up claims by student protesters that government operatives initiated the massacre.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 85%
Local Peace Group Infiltrated By Government Agent
Local Peace Group Infiltrated By Government Agent
By Mike Rhodes
October 4, 2003
Peace Fresno was infiltrated by an agent working for the Fresno Sheriff's Department. Aaron Kilner, known by Peace Fresno activists as Aaron Stokes, attended several Peace Fresno meetings. Peace Fresno activist Nicholas DeGraff remembers him taking voluminous notes and several members say they saw him at peace vilgils held at Shaw and Blackstone. He was also on the bus local anti-globalization activists took to attend the WTO ministerial-level conference on Agricultural Science and Technology demonstration in Sacramento in June 2003.
Aaron Kilner died in a motorcycle accident on August 30, 2003. In his obituary in The Fresno Bee he was identified as a member of the Fresno County Sheriff's department. The obituary went on to say that he was "assigned to the anti-terrorist team." Local activists believe that this "anti-terrorist team" is, in fact, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) that has recently been formed in this area.. When members of Peace Fresno saw the picture and read of Kilner's association with law enforcement they began piecing the story together.
The infiltration by law enforcement of progressive community groups in Fresno and throughout the country has long been used to disrupt legitimate political work. This disruption occurs by sowing seeds of mistrust among members, agents often promote discord within the group, and sometimes encourage illegal or violent actions. Agent provocateurs have been know to instigate violence at demonstrations, giving the police an excuse to attack protestors.
...
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 45%
Capital Punishment and Texas
Capital Punishment and Texas
by Kathryn A. Graham
Interestingly enough, I had never been opposed to capital punishment, or at least, not in theory. Yes, I'm a Libertarian, and most Libertarians I have met are opposed to such taking of life, but I'd always reasoned that the person being executed had most definitely initiated the force by committing a capital crime in the first place. In addition, I felt (and, in some ways, still do feel) that keeping a person in a cage for life was cruel and unusual punishment far beyond execution.
Boy, have I ever received an education! Yep, that's right. This very stubborn and opinionated gal has had her mind changed 180 degrees, and in record time.
You see, I live in Texas.
...
Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 45%
Sheriff Hege locked and loaded on the radio
This article was brought up by someone who posted a comment on my first Sheriff Hege-related post.
Sheriff Hege locked and loaded on the radio
BY JENNIFER RIDDLE
SALISBURY POST
June 27, 1999
Sheriff Gerald Hege is invading the air waves. This time it's FM and modern rock.
In true Hege fashion, the infamous Davidson County "bad" boy ripped onto WKZL 107.5 as the Friday morning show guest host.
He wore his uniform, a Team 101 hat and was "locked and loaded" with a gun on his hip and a microphone in his hand.
"Bad to the Bone" blasted in the background as the sheriff informed listeners, "Hege's in the house."
The Greensboro-based radio station usually plays the top-ranking Murphy in the Morning show from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. but Jack Murphy, the show's host, was on vacation.
"I didn't have any idea that Murphy was going to get Sheriff Hege to host the show until I heard him talking about it on the radio," said Jeff McHugh, program director. "Considering who Hege is, it should make for an interesting show."
...
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%
Posted by Lance Brown at 01:42 AM
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Decision on touch-screen voting suit may take weeks
It seems pretty obvious that there should be a paper backup in the touch-screen voting process. The voting process is not the place to cut corners or take chances. Or at least it shouldn't be.
Decision on voting suit may take weeks
Woman wants touch-screen system replaced with one providing audit trail
By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
October 9th, 2003
A federal appeals court Wednesday heard arguments from a Palm Desert woman challenging touch-screen voting, but it could be weeks before a decision is rendered.
A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Pasadena agreed to hear arguments in Susan Marie Weber's 2001 lawsuit against then-California Secretary of State Bill Jones and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend over the touch screens.
...
"Are (touch-screens) more accurate? That’s the crux of the defense’s case, but there’s no audit trail," Weber said. "You wouldn’t accept an ATM that wouldn’t give you a receipt. We want a document to verify (the vote)."
It will likely be weeks before the court’s decision, but Weber has not ruled out an appeal to a larger, en banc panel of the court if the three-member panel affirms the 2002 ruling to toss the lawsuit.
...
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1.3
Learning Percentage: 15%
Touch-screen lawsuit continues
By Darrell Smith
The Desert Sun
October 8th, 2003
Susan Marie Weber will face a federal appeals panel today in Pasadena.
It's the latest chapter in the Palm Desert woman's three-year battle challenging the constitutionality of paperless touch-screen voting systems.
Weber filed suit against then-Secretary of State Bill Jones and Riverside County Registrar of Voters Mischelle Townsend in 2001 to have the system -- used in Riverside and three other California counties -- replaced or supplanted by another system.
A federal judge in 2002 dismissed the suit.
District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson agreed with election officials Jones and Townsend that the machines met the State of California’s certification process for voting machines.
Secretary of State and Riverside County elections officials have since said the electronic voting machines are accurate and reliable, have safeguards programmed into them and meet the requirements of federal and state commissions.
But the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel agreed to hear oral arguments today in the suit.
...
Whatever happens today in Pasadena, Susan Marie Weber should be seen as a pioneer, Alexander said
"The right to have a paper ballot is the voting rights struggle of our time," Alexander said.
"If she wins, it could fundamentally shake up the foundation of electronic voting. If she loses, the courts can be sure that more (challenges) will follow."
Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 25%
Driving dangerously with the Patriot Act
Driving dangerously with the Patriot Act
By Pat M. Holt
WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft is running a dead heat with A. Mitchell Palmer, attorney general in the Wilson administration, for the distinction of being the worst in that job in the history of the United States.
One of the duties of the attorney general as head of the Justice Department is to protect the Constitution. Both Mr. Ashcroft and Palmer found that the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, got in their way more than it protected anything. It has gotten in Ashcroft's way in his pursuit of terrorists after Sept. 11, especially those who dress differently and practice a different religion. Palmer's crusade was the pursuit of communists, in the aftermath of World War I. He especially went after people with what to him were funny names from Eastern Europe. He tended to equate liberals with communists.
Ashcroft's vehicle is the USA Patriot Act, which Congress, abdicating its own duties of vigilance, passed with a whoop and a holler in the days after Sept. 11. Even the name of this odious legislation is offensive. It implies that the purpose of the act is to promote patriotism and that those not cooperating with it are somehow less patriotic.
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Pat M. Holt is former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L1.1
Freedom Rating: 1.1
Learning Percentage: 1%
Philly Mayor Tries to Regroup Campaign
Philly Mayor Tries to Regroup Campaign
Oct 9, 11:19 PM EDT
By DAVID B. CARUSO
Associated Press Writer
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Mayor John F. Street tried to get his re-election campaign back on track Thursday after FBI bugging devices were discovered in his office, insisting that he has done nothing wrong and that prosecutors have assured him he is not the target of an investigation.
He and other politicians called on the FBI to say who is being investigated - something the bureau refused to do for the third straight day.
"I just can't entertain a never-ending series of questions about this," Street said, urging the FBI to "lift the clouds" over City Hall.
Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 10%
Philadelphia Mayor Finds Office Bugged
Philadelphia Mayor Finds Office Bugged
Device Linked to FBI Probe of Corruption
By Robert Strauss and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 9, 2003; Page A01
PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 8 -- A federal corruption investigation was inadvertently exposed here this week when a secret listening device was discovered in the City Hall office of Mayor John F. Street.
The bug was uncovered Tuesday during an electronic sweep of Street's office by the city police department, a sweep officials said was performed routinely every few months.
Its discovery set off a political firestorm when local FBI officials announced that the bug was not part of any electoral espionage -- Street (D) is locked in an acrimonious campaign with Republican Sam Katz -- but would not say how they knew that.
"The FBI doesn't confirm or deny investigations," said special agent Linda Vizi, the FBI spokeswoman in Philadelphia. "We were contacted by police that they found the device and responded. We will confirm, however, that we have ruled out the possibility of it being connected to the election campaign."
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Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: .4
Learning Percentage: 80%
Dowd: Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
Is Condi Gaslighting Rummy?
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 9, 2003
Excerpt:
The administration that never let you see it sweat is sweating, as two of its control freaks openly tug over control. The president's foreign policy duenna and his grumpy grampy over at the Pentagon are suddenly mud wrestling.
Women who are discouraged at the ascension of Conan the Barbarian in Cal-ee-fornia can take heart. In this delicious gender-bender, Condoleezza Rice triumphs as the macho infighter, driving Rummy into a diva-like meltdown.
The trigger was Monday's coverage of the Iraq Stabilization Group (a.k.a. Fat Chance Group); the group is a desperate bid to get a grip on Baghdad before the campaign starts by transferring power for postwar Iraq from the Pentagon to the national security adviser's office inside the White House.
Condi used a trick she learned from Rummy: pre-emption. She outflanked the famous Washington infighter by talking about the new alignment to The New York Times before he had a chance to object.
It was the first time the chesty defense czar — who had tried to freeze out the softies at State, which the Pentagon sneeringly refers to as "the Department of Nice" — had been downgraded by the president and outmaneuvered by a colleague.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: L3.5
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 25%
California dreamin' wakes the rest of us up to reality
California dreamin' wakes the rest of us up to reality
Commentary by Bill O'Reilly
August 27, 2003
Excerpt:
The polls show that even many poor people aren't buying the class warfare stuff anymore. We are all in this together. When the power went off, everybody got hosed. And when al Qaeda strikes, it doesn't matter what your tax bracket is.
As with most things in life, we have now been warned. The collapse of California's political system, the blackout, and Sept. 11, 2001, have all been signals sent. We Americans better wise up and start electing people who have a sense of urgency about protecting us and solving problems. For Americans, remaining in the dark is simply not an option anymore.
Read It Rating: 4
Left/Right Rating: R3
Freedom Rating: .03
Learning Percentage: 3%
Bush aides admit Iraq missteps
Bush aides admit Iraq missteps
Say estimates on oil revenue, damage off
By Wayne Washington, Globe Staff, 9/9/2003
WASHINGTON -- One day after President Bush gave the nation a cautious view of rebuilding efforts in Iraq, senior administration officials for the first time acknowledged that they vastly underestimated the damage to the country's infrastructure and greatly overestimated the amount of oil revenue that could be used to help rebuild the war-torn country.
Yesterday's sobering assessments came as members of Congress are contemplating Bush's request for $87 billion to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan -- and call into question earlier pronouncements by administration officials about the size and cost of the job.
The disclosures, coming on the heels of Bush's prime-time address, mark the administration's strongest acknowledgment to date that it failed to fully comprehend the complexities of rebuilding Iraq.
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Read It Rating: 3.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -3
Learning Percentage: 10%
A Wider War -- Unless The Democrats Speak Out
A Wider War -- Unless The Democrats Speak Out
By Paul Craig Roberts
September 08, 2003
I blame the Democrats for the "war on terror." I know the neoconservatives planned the conquest of the Middle East long before the events of September 11 gave them an excuse. Internet pundits are familiar with the blueprint for American Empire put together by the neocon think tank, Project for the New American Century. Indeed, everyone in the world seems to know about it except the American public.
Still, the Democrats are to blame. It was the Democrats' war on Bush that created the "war on terror."
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Read It Rating: 7
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: .1
Learning Percentage: 8%
Posse Comitatus Gets New Attention
1878 Military Law Gets New Attention
by T.A. Badger, Associated Press, 24 November 2001
SAN ANTONIO -- America's military is largely prohibited from acting as a domestic police force, but with the increased fears of terrorism, some experts say it's time to rethink those restrictions.
"Our way of life has forever changed," wrote Sen. John Warner, R-Va., in a letter last month to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "Should this law now be changed to enable our active-duty military to more fully join other domestic assets in this war against terrorism?"
The law, known as the Posse Comitatus Act, was championed by Southern lawmakers in 1878 who were angry about the widespread use of the Army in post-Civil War law enforcement.
It currently bans the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines from participating in arrests, searches, seizure of evidence and other police-type activity on U.S. soil. The Coast Guard and National Guard troops under the control of state governors are excluded from the act.
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, testifying in October before the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed that it might be desirable to give federal troops more of a role in domestic policing to prevent terrorism.
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Thanks to Post911TimeLine for this link.
And here's a link to an article about the same issue when it popped up over 6 months later, with the formation of the Department of Homeland Security.
Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: -3
Learning Percentage: 20%
We report, you get it wrong
I recommend checking out the actual questionnaire as background material for this article. The report itself is right here. I didn't read that.
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - The more commercial television news you watch, the more wrong you are likely to be about key elements of the Iraq War and its aftermath, according to a major new study released in Washington on Thursday.
And the more you watch the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News channel, in particular, the more likely it is that your perceptions about the war are wrong, adds the report by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).
....
Thanks to Post911TimeLine for the link.
Read It Rating: 6.5
Left/Right Rating: L1
Freedom Rating:0
Learning Percentage: 35%
New Hampshire free-staters prepare for newcomers
New Hampshire free-staters prepare for newcomers
By Kate McCann, Associated Press Writer, 10/4/2003
CONCORD, N.H. -- New Hampshire members of the Free State Project were still celebrating when their phones started ringing and the e-mails started coming.
Most had worked for months to promote New Hampshire over nine rivals as a prospective home for 20,000 project members from around the country. But Wednesday's victory announcement caught many unprepared.
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"It's just going nuts," said Babiarz, a database consultant from Grafton. "New Hampshire businesses are calling me asking how they can help facilitate the move. People are asking where's the best place to live."
Babiarz said he even got an e-mail from a moving company trying to drum up business.
Granite Staters among the 5,400 free staters nationwide will meet Sunday in Bow to plan and assign tasks such as directing newcomers to real estate offices, schools and business opportunities.
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Read It Rating: 5.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 30%
We're Number One ... But Is That Good?
We're Number One ... But Is That Good?
by Jacob G. Hornberger, October 3, 2003
Did you know that the United States has the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world, that the U.S. inmate population has quadrupled since 1980 to two million people, that $46 billion a year is spent on U.S. prisons, that more than half of the incarcerations are for nonviolent offenses, and that blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans are over-represented throughout the U.S. prison system? That's right -- believe it or not, our nation has a higher incarceration rate than North Korea, China, Cuba, Pakistan, Burma, or Iran.
At the rate that U.S. officials are rounding up people in Iraq, however, it's entirely possible that Iraq could overtake the United States and vault into first place, especially given that U.S. occupational officials are exercising unfettered and omnipotent power to incarcerate anyone they want -- without charges, arrest warrants, indictments, convictions, or any judicial supervision whatsoever. And the number of inmates in Iraq is almost certain to grow, given that no one except family members, who are powerless to do anything about it, seems to care.
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Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 20%
A Culture Based on Murder
This essay is excellent.
by Sean Haugh
On September 3rd, Paul Hill was executed by the taxpayers of Florida for the murder of abortionist John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett, and the wounding of June Barrett.
The murder of Paul Hill adds a new level to the anti-death penalty slogan, "why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" His sad case, and the reaction to it all across the country, paints a portrait of a society lost in amoral murderous solipsism. Or, in simpler terms, we see killing someone as the easiest solution to just about any problem.
At every level of this warped tale, you find someone who is utterly convinced that their brand of murder is completely justified, and so hypocritical that they feel justified in killing anyone who opposes them.
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Read It Rating: 9.5
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 2
Learning Percentage: 10%
Mexican Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Government snipers started 1968 massacre, documents say
Wednesday, October 1, 2003
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- At least 360 snipers under government command fired into a crowd of protesters, touching off a massacre 35 years ago that scarred a generation of Mexicans, according to once-secret government files obtained by The Associated Press.
Government officials at the time said armed dissidents provoked the deadly confrontation on October 2, 1968 -- 10 days before the start of the Olympics hosted by Mexico -- by firing on police during a protest against Mexico's lack of democracy. Estimates on the number of people killed range from 38 to several hundred.
As Mexicans hold an annual march Thursday to mark the anniversary of the attack, there is growing evidence backing up claims by student protesters that government operatives initiated the massacre.
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Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 85%
Local Peace Group Infiltrated By Government Agent
Local Peace Group Infiltrated By Government Agent
By Mike Rhodes
October 4, 2003
Peace Fresno was infiltrated by an agent working for the Fresno Sheriff's Department. Aaron Kilner, known by Peace Fresno activists as Aaron Stokes, attended several Peace Fresno meetings. Peace Fresno activist Nicholas DeGraff remembers him taking voluminous notes and several members say they saw him at peace vilgils held at Shaw and Blackstone. He was also on the bus local anti-globalization activists took to attend the WTO ministerial-level conference on Agricultural Science and Technology demonstration in Sacramento in June 2003.
Aaron Kilner died in a motorcycle accident on August 30, 2003. In his obituary in The Fresno Bee he was identified as a member of the Fresno County Sheriff's department. The obituary went on to say that he was "assigned to the anti-terrorist team." Local activists believe that this "anti-terrorist team" is, in fact, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) that has recently been formed in this area.. When members of Peace Fresno saw the picture and read of Kilner's association with law enforcement they began piecing the story together.
The infiltration by law enforcement of progressive community groups in Fresno and throughout the country has long been used to disrupt legitimate political work. This disruption occurs by sowing seeds of mistrust among members, agents often promote discord within the group, and sometimes encourage illegal or violent actions. Agent provocateurs have been know to instigate violence at demonstrations, giving the police an excuse to attack protestors.
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Read It Rating: 7.5
Left/Right Rating: L2
Freedom Rating: -2
Learning Percentage: 45%
Capital Punishment and Texas
Capital Punishment and Texas
by Kathryn A. Graham
Interestingly enough, I had never been opposed to capital punishment, or at least, not in theory. Yes, I'm a Libertarian, and most Libertarians I have met are opposed to such taking of life, but I'd always reasoned that the person being executed had most definitely initiated the force by committing a capital crime in the first place. In addition, I felt (and, in some ways, still do feel) that keeping a person in a cage for life was cruel and unusual punishment far beyond execution.
Boy, have I ever received an education! Yep, that's right. This very stubborn and opinionated gal has had her mind changed 180 degrees, and in record time.
You see, I live in Texas.
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Read It Rating: 8
Left/Right Rating: R1
Freedom Rating: 1
Learning Percentage: 45%
Sheriff Hege locked and loaded on the radio
This article was brought up by someone who posted a comment on my first Sheriff Hege-related post.
Sheriff Hege locked and loaded on the radio
BY JENNIFER RIDDLE
SALISBURY POST
June 27, 1999
Sheriff Gerald Hege is invading the air waves. This time it's FM and modern rock.
In true Hege fashion, the infamous Davidson County "bad" boy ripped onto WKZL 107.5 as the Friday morning show guest host.
He wore his uniform, a Team 101 hat and was "locked and loaded" with a gun on his hip and a microphone in his hand.
"Bad to the Bone" blasted in the background as the sheriff informed listeners, "Hege's in the house."
The Greensboro-based radio station usually plays the top-ranking Murphy in the Morning show from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. but Jack Murphy, the show's host, was on vacation.
"I didn't have any idea that Murphy was going to get Sheriff Hege to host the show until I heard him talking about it on the radio," said Jeff McHugh, program director. "Considering who Hege is, it should make for an interesting show."
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Read It Rating: 2
Left/Right Rating: 0
Freedom Rating: 0
Learning Percentage: 20%