Politics

This is absolutely wonderful to hear — Alaska has become the second state, after Hawaii, to pass a resolution “expressing concern over the federal USA Patriot Act.”

“When we stand on this floor and we salute that flag, the final words that we use are ‘One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” said Sen. Robin Taylor, R-Wrangell. “I take it deadly serious when we start removing groups of people from ‘justice for all.'”

Many congratulations to Alaska, and to every legislator who sponsored and supported this resolution.

(via Kirsten)

Postscript: Think there’s any significance to the fact that the only two states to take such a step so far are the two that aren’t part of the “Lower 48”, but instead are seperated by many miles of land or sea? Just a thought….

Back in January, I (and many other people) were appalled at the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the Sonny Bono Act, extending copyrights and essentially preventing anything from entering the public domain.

This morning, Kirsten pointed out that Prof. Larry Lessig (who had been arguing against the Sonny Bono Law) is still working on finding a solution that will both allow Disney (one of the primary lobbyists for the copyright extention) to keep control over Mickey Mouse, and would allow the majority of works to enter the public domain after a limited time period.

Here’s his proposal:

The idea is a simple one: Fifty years after a work has been published, the copyright owner must pay a \$1 maintanence fee. If the copyright owner pays the fee, then the copyright continues. If the owner fails to pay the fee, the work passes into the public domain. Based on historical precedent, we expect 98% of copyrighted works would pass into the public domain after just 50 years. They could keep Mickey for as long as Congress lets them. But we would get a public domain.

At the moment, the proposal is ready to go, but Mr. Lessig is in need of a congressperson willing to present the bill. In that vein, he is asking everyone with an interest in this case to write their Representative and Senators to ask for their help.

Jason Buberel has posted a sample letter that can be used, and Prof. Lessig is keeping track of the work at The Eric Eldred Act.

Hopefully, with a little work, we can see our way to a compromise that satisfies the media conglomerates, and yet still allows more and more work to find its way into the public domain for all of us to have access to.

Ever tried to visualize the number one trillion? It’s not easy to do — the number is so big, it’s really difficult to wrap your head around.

1,000,000,000,000

That’s a lot of zeroes. Thankfully, we’ve got places like the MegaPenny project to help us out — it turns out that one trillion pennies would form a cube 273 feet to a side. That’s roughly half the height of the Washington Monument. The cube would weigh approximately 3,125,000 pounds.

Now, just to boggle your mind a bit further: multiply that cube by 100 times, and you’d have the number of pennies that the Department of Defense can’t account for.

The Department of Defense, already infamous for spending \$640 for a toilet seat, once again finds itself under intense scrutiny, only this time because it couldn’t account for more than a trillion dollars in financial transactions, not to mention dozens of tanks, missiles and planes.

[…]

Though Defense has long been notorious for waste, recent government reports suggest the Pentagon’s money management woes have reached astronomical proportions. A study by the Defense Department’s inspector general found that the Pentagon couldn’t properly account for more than a trillion dollars in monies spent. A GAO report found Defense inventory systems so lax that the U.S. Army lost track of 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units.

And before the Iraq war, when military leaders were scrambling to find enough chemical and biological warfare suits to protect U.S. troops, the department was caught selling these suits as surplus on the Internet “for pennies on the dollar,” a GAO official said.

As Prairie so eloquently put earlier (and therefore contributed the title for this post) — that’s a big-ass cube.

(via MeFi)

Can’t say I’m dissapointed to read this…

“I informed President Bush last week that after 21 years of doing nothing but government and politics…that I have decided that my time has come to leave the White House. And I will leave later this summer, most likely in July,” Fleischer said.

…I just wish the article wasn’t so frustratingly brief. What prompted this?

(via Atrios)

[Update:]{.underline}

There are a few more details in this CNN article, including this somewhat bizarre little piece of information:

He notified Bush of his decision Friday. The president ended the conversation “by kissing me on the head,” the spokesman said.

So…was this kiss a benediction of some sort? Does Bush now think he’s the Pope? Or maybe just Godfather Coreleone? (Snarky, non-PC possibility — which head? Could we have a scandal to put Clinton/Lewinsky to shame?) It just seems odd to me, behaviour more fitting of a religious figure than a political appointee. But then, given Bush’s conservative religious leanings, maybe it’s not that much of a surprise.

I haven’t read this yet (it’s pushing 2am, and bed is sounding better and better all the time), but the ACLU has released a report on the suppression of dissent in the US since Sept. 11^th^, 2001.

The 18-page report finds that dissent since 9/11 has taken three principal forms: mass protests and rallies, messages on signs or clothing, and other acts of defiance by communities and individuals. These have ranged from silent vigils in parks to the passage of resolutions in more than 100 communities across the country protesting federal measures that violate civil liberties.

Police have beaten and maced protestors in Missouri, charged on horseback into crowds of demonstrators in New York, fired on demonstrators in California, and helped FBI agents to spy on professors and students at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, the ACLU report said.

Attorney General Ashcroft’s Justice Department has further asserted the right to seize protesters’ assets and deport immigrants under anti-terrorism statutes rushed through Congress after the attacks, and debated whether to revoke U.S. citizenship in some cases.

The press release and the full report are both available online.

(via Brooke Biggs)

There’s a good interview with Howard Dean over at LiberalOasis. Dean continues to talk a very good line — I only hope that if elected, he follows through. So far, I’ve yet to see anything to convince me he wouldn’t, but it’s quite hard to tell at this point.

While I quite honestly didn’t realize that this was much of an issue right now, I liked his response to a question about the legalization of medical marijuana:

LO: In Vermont, you opposed a bill that would have given terminally ill patients access to medicinal marijuana.

What was your rationale? As President, would you direct the FDA to objectively address this issue?

HD: My opposition to medical marijuana is based on science, not based on ideology.

More specifically, I don’t think we should single out a particular drug for approval through political means when we approve other drugs through scientific means.

When I’m President, I will require the FDA to evaluate marijuana with a double blind study with the same kinds of scientific protocols that every other drug goes through.

I’m certainly willing to abide by what the FDA says.

(via Kevin Drum)

This week’s Stranger has a good article on Howard Dean. I haven’t been following things as closely lately (I got a bit OD’d on political stuff for a bit), but he’s still the front runner for me for 2004.

The rescue of Jessica Lynch is making the rounds again, only this time with more details — according to one of the doctors at the hospital, the troops entering the hospital were firing blanks.

The doctors told us that the day before the special forces swooped on the hospital the Iraqi military had fled. Hassam Hamoud, a waiter at a local restaurant, said he saw the American advance party land in the town. He said the team’s Arabic interpreter asked him where the hospital was. “He asked: ‘Are there any Fedayeen over there?’ and I said, ‘No’.” All the same, the next day “America’s finest warriors” descended on the building.

“We heard the noise of helicopters,” says Dr Anmar Uday. He says that they must have known there would be no resistance. \”We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital.

“It was like a Hollywood film. They cried, ‘Go, go, go’, with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show – an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors.” All the time with the camera rolling.

Admittedly, this is one man’s unconfirmed word — but given that real bullets would leave holes that blanks wouldn’t, the claim could be disproved easily enough that I’m not sure he’d make it up. We’ll probably never know for sure, though.

(via Tom Tomorrow)