More than one percent of the adult population in prison. More per capita than any other nation on the planet, and more by raw numbers as well. This is the leader of the free world*?
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This is one of the most insane local government ideas I’ve ever seen: San Francisco’s Planning Commissioners are considering ordering North Beach pizzerias to close at 02:00—to combat drunkenness.
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Apparently anything less that total compliance warrants being electrocuted. I don’t think this one, involving a motorist protesting at being given a speeding ticket, is as egregious as either the UCLA or University of Florida incidents. But it’s still wrong.
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By which I do not mean magickal thinking… I mean thinking that tremendous change can be effected through events, speech or revelations that are talismanic in nature. The idea that if the correct words could just be spoken, or if the truth revealed, that “the people” would rise up/awaken/revolt/vote differently/stop watching television/reject their role as imperialist enablers/cast off their self-accepted shackles/achieve enlightenment/achieve whatever your particular goal for them is. A certain brand of tax evader in the US falls into this category.
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A colleague of mine who until recently was part owner of an apartment building received today a copy of a magazine aimed at apartment owners, and I thought that the cover was a work of art.
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In the latest demonstration of what they’re really about, the Democratic Party didn’t even try to stop the confirmation of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General. Despite holding a majority in the Senate, the Democrats caved in two ways. (Three if you count the Judiciary Committee vote.) First, seven Democrats crossed the line to support Mukasey. Second, and far more important, the Democrats didn’t filibuster. The Republicans in the Senate have spent the whole damn year filibustering everything, essentially imposing a 60-vote requirement to pass bills—but the Democrats let this one go by with a simple majority. In essence, they mostly want to be seen to be against the nomination without being willing to stop it even though they have the power to do so.

In an amazing display of political cowardice, the four Democratic Senators running for the Presidency didn’t even show up for the vote: Biden, Clinton, Dodd, and Obama. Mukasey was a nominee so compromised that he refused to say whether or not waterboarding (which the US has in the past prosecuted soldiers of other nations for using) was a crime, and in that context Mukasey also claimed that the President might somehow have powers that go beyond the law. But the presidential hopefuls didn’t want to get involved either way. I wasn’t likely to vote for them before, but now I don’t see any way whatsoever that any of those four could get my vote, even if it means voting for some obscure third-party candidate.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved Michael Mukasey’s nomination for Attorney General today. Mukasey is clearly another Bush stooge (otherwise he wouldn’t be their nominee) and hardly the person to roll back the assaults on civil liberties perpetrated by his predecessors. Not that Dianne Feinstein and Charles Schumer, the two Democrats on the committee to vote for approval, really care about that. The AP report I link to contains this beautiful paragraph:

The 11-8 vote came only after two key Democrats accepted his assurance to enforce any law Congress might enact against waterboarding.
—“Mukasey nomination sent to full Senate”, Laurie Kellman, Associated Press, 6 November 2007

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Arguments about checks on power often elicit the claim that the checks are unnecessary because whoever is in power is clearly trustworthy and would never exercise the power without some compelling reason. This naturally makes almost no sense, because if they have a compelling reason, the people in charge of the checks will recognize this and go along with it. The claim is then made that those in charge of the checks will “play politics” and/or “move too slowly”—establishing a conflict between a leader who needs to act quickly and decisively in a crisis and some faceless committee of bureaucrats who don’t care about resolving the crisis.
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After reading Bruce Schneier’s post on overblown security responses, I was quite amazed. Some of the incidents he lists are truly ridiculous. However, I think that he’s missing the point if he believes that these results, which cost staggering amounts in terms of time and money for the security forces and the various people caught up in the overreactions, are bugs in the security processes that the authorities have set up. These results are either intentional, or are viewed as beneficial once they are recognized.
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I wanted to write a satirical version of this report, but the report itself, and the direct quotes in it, read like satire to me already.
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Americans reading this blog may or may not be aware that many companies they do business with, especially credit card companies, have binding mandatory arbitration clauses in their contracts. This means that in disputes, the consumer cannot take legal action through the courts and must instead go through an arbitrator—one selected by the company.
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Recently a Marietta, Georgia school has come under fire for allowing a student to publish, in the school newspaper, an opinion piece comparing homosexuality to Down’s Syndrome. School officials are standing by the decision despite the furor (and some national media attention) the piece has caused.
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This story about two Saudi Arabians “indecency monitors” getting pepper sprayed by a young girl they reprimand strikes me as too hilarious not to share.
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The commander of CENTCOM, Admiral William Fallon, claimed in an interview that he doesn’t believe that the current situation will lead to war with Iran. I really hope he’s right, and also hope that it might be a good sign that such a high-ranking military officer is coming out publicly against a US attack Iran.
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Apparently the NSA is going to assume the role of monitoring the communications infrastructure of the US… no, technically they’re not supposed to be doing that already, and this new move is aimed at “protection” rather than “surveillance”—but it’s hardly a welcome step.
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The story about a University of Florida student being tasered by campus police at a John Kerry speech is all over the net at this point. It’s fairly grotesque, although I think the UCLA campus library incident from last year was even worse. As then, however, one of the most disturbing things about it are the commenters who emerge to justify the violence perpetrated by the authorities.
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So a Swedish newspaper has gotten involved in a controversy over depictions of Muhammad, culminating in heated diplomatic exchanges, threats of boycotts, and bounties on the heads of the cartoonist and the editor. This is somewhat reminiscent of the Danish Jyllands-Posten uproar from late 2005, which led to death threats and fatal riots.
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This is all anecdotal, and hence statistically useless, but I’ve noticed far more bad driving correlated with cellphone use recently. Some of it was in Dublin, where I think cellphone use is still higher per capita, but I’ve seen a lot of it around San Francisco also. I think every case of notably bad driving that I’ve encountered in the last month turned out to involve a driver using a cellphone.
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This is almost too nuts to be true, but: Larry Craig is reconsidering his resignation. Earlier he stated that he’d resign at the end of September, but has changed his mind. This seems to be a pattern for Craig, who pled guilty to “disorderly conduct” for his interaction with a police officer in a Minneapolis-St. Paul airport toilet—and then later said that he regretted the guilty plea, having made it merely in the hope that the whole affair would then go away quietly (which it almost did).
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As you might have heard by now, Atlanta Falcons Quarterback and NFL superstar Michael Vick entered a guilty plea in the federal dogfighting/gambling/racketeering case against him. American public opinion, it’s safe to say, is against him. He was involved in activities that involve brutal cruelty to animals, including electrocuting to death dogs that don’t perform well enough, starving dogs to make them more aggressive in the fights, and variuos other forms of abuse.
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I have to admit that I’m quite surprised. I thought he’d stay until Bush left office, that there wasn’t any way he’d leave earlier without being impeached (which wasn’t likely to happen). But that’s it, he resigns apparently on his own terms, his final day 17 September.
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I came across a story the other day about a store refusing to allow a customer to leave when the customer declined to allow them to check his receipt. The reactions to this story have been interesting, with many people making the claim that the customer was at fault by being unreasonable.
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On Monday I referred to the Democrats who voted for the FISA cave-in last Friday as “[s]pineless, stupid, or fully invested in the machinations of the elite class against the rest of the United States”. While not wishing to rule out spinelessness or stupidity, I suspect that the last option is the most realistic. Dianne Feinstein, for example, has been quite successful in Washington, and doesn’t appear to be a pushover that anyone can manipulate. So why would she vote for that change to FISA?
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