Politics

Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.

Ari Fleischer resigns

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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.

ACLU report on post 9/11 suppression of dissent

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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)

Howard Dean interview

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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)

Firing blanks?

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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)

NORAD? Um, nope!

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There’s a very interesting site that I found via Atrios that, among other things, has a very comprehensive look at the events of Sept. 11^th^ in this timeline. They seem to have done a good job of piecing together the various news reports about the events of that day, comparing them and questioning the many inconsistencies that exist.

NORAD? I don't think so...

From there, I started browsing through the rest of the source site, the Center for Cooperative Research. Looking at another page on the site, a more straightforward timeline of Sept. 11^th^, imagine my surprise when I saw a picture captioned ‘NORAD’s war room in Cheyenne, Wyoming,’ that, rather than being a picture of the Norad control room, is actually a screen shot from the 1983 adventure/suspense film Wargames!

As important as I think it is that we continue to investigate the events of Sept. 11^th^, and the events surrounding it, when a site does something like this — no matter how good their overall intentions may be — it only serves to damage their credibility. The webmaster of the Center for Cooperative Research should either replace that photo with a real photo of NORAD (if such a photo exists in the private sector), or simply remove the Wargames photo. Leaving it there can only damage how seriously people take their site, no matter how much effort they’ve put into their research.

NORAD? Probably.

Update: I e-mailed my concerns about the picture to the webmaster, and they’ve replaced the former photo with one from Discover magazine. While I’ve never been in NORAD, and therefore can’t assert to the photo’s accuracy firsthand, it does look far more likely to be the real thing (more realistic graphics on the monitors, more realistic computer terminals, less flashy overall — and I don’t recognize it from a movie!).

Sumo wrestlers and rattlesnakes

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The sheer ponderousness of the panel’s opinion — the mountain of verbiage it must deploy to explain away these fourteen short words of constitutional text — refutes its thesis far more convincingly than anything I might say. The panel’s labored effort to smother the Second Amendment by sheer body weight has all the grace of a sumo wrestler trying to kill a rattlesnake by sitting on it — and is just as likely to succeed.

— Justice Alex Kozinski, in his dissenting opinion to Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals case Silvera v. Lockyer (PDF)

(via Cory Doctorow, via trubble)

Peace is our profession

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Operation Strangelove: On May 14^th^, host a screening (even if it’s just for yourself!) of Dr Strangelove (or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)!

Be part of a national anti-war action on May 14. Screen “Dr. Strangelove,” and raise money for groups still working hard for peace, justice and relief in Iraq.

Pre-emptive strikes. Cowboy diplomacy. Men conspiring in the War Room, bent on world domination. Weapons of mass destruction. And most terrifying of all, an invasion begun for one overwhelming reason: precious fluids.

Forty years after its filming, the dark and explosively funny “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” seems like a satirical time bomb planted by Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern, set to detonate on Bush’s doctrine of unilateral warfare, anytime, anywhere.

As the war on Iraq winds down (at least on TV), as the perils (and profits) of occupation loom, and as the Bushies plot the next pre-emptive strike, Operation Strangelove aims to show the warmongers in their true light.

On May 14, put on a screening of “Dr. Strangelove” — in your living room, at the local theater, on campus, on your laptop, anywhere you can — and say no to unilateral invasions, to endangering our troops for the sake of oil, to flouting international law and the world community in the name of empire. Follow the film with discussions, forums, debates. Keep talking. Keep acting. Let’s give new meaning to the old Strategic Air Command motto, “Peace Is Our Profession.”

(via Kalilily)

Electoral Map

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One of the things that really bugs me about our current governmental system is the Electoral College. When I was growing up, democracy (and, thus, the U.S. Government) was always explained to me as one vote per citizen, majority rule. This makes sense to me.

What I’ve never understood is the Electoral College (and, therefore, I may have the following summary somewhat incorrect — please correct me if so). Rather than tallying the votes cast by the American public in a presidential election, the EC votes are used to elect the President. The number of possible EC votes is finite, determined by assigning a certain number of EC votes to each state, based roughly on its population. Furthermore, when it comes to actually casting the votes, each state puts all of its votes behind one candidate, depending on what the majority of voters in that state voted for.

For instance, Alaska has a population of roughly 500,000, and gets three electoral votes. If just over half of Alaska’s voting population votes Republican, then as far as the Electoral College is concerned, all of Alaska votes Republican, as all three EC ballots are cast for the Republican candidate.

US map weighted by electoral votes

To the right you can see a map of the United States, with each state distorted as to how many EC votes it gets. (The graphic was taken from an excellent interactive electoral map that allows you to click on each state, seeing how many EC votes it gets and switching them from Democrat to Republican to play with election possibilities.)

I have never understood why the Electoral College system was considered a good idea when it was implemented, nor why it continues to be used. The Bush/Gore upset of 2000, when Gore won the popular vote but Bush took the Electoral College (and therefore the presidency), just made it more clear to me that this is a highly imperfect system for a “democracy” to use as its voting system. My grumbling isn’t going to get the system changed, but I’d sure like to see it changed — preferably to the very simple, easy to figure out, doesn’t cause problems, one voice equals one vote.