Bush: More evil than previously thought

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Check out this Executive Order, and note how the words “5th Amendment” and “due process” do not occur despite the fact that the order purports to give the Secretary of the Treasury authority to freeze the assets of anyone who “undermines” efforts in Iraq. This determination may be made secretly, and need not happen before the freeze. (Really. See Section 6.)

N.B. that “undermines” is not defined.

More coverage at The Guardian; that it’s nowhere in the American press is, of course, due to our “liberal” media.

Dear Jackoff Legislators Promulgating the Meth Menace Idea: Fuck off

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From MeFi, find this charming bit of news:

Detective Brian Lewis returns to his desk after lunch, scanning e-mails he missed.

One catches his eye: It says a suspected member of a methamphetamine ring bought a box of Sudafed at

Minutes later, Lewis is in his truck, circling the parking lot, searching for the woman.

Frankly, as one MeFi poster put it, we consider the lack of Sudafed worse than the presence of meth. There will always be drugs. Period. Back before Dennis Miller became a douchebag neocon, he noted well that if all drugs vanished tomorrow, people would spin in circles in their front yard trying to see God. There’s a drug problem IN PRISONS, for the love of Mike (hi, Mike), so what makes anyone with half a brain think that annoying millions of allergy sufferers is going to have any meaningful impact on the ability of the motivated to create meth? Even the clerks know it’s bullshit: we’ve had them suggest that Mrs Heathen buy one of our boxes when we’ve been over the daily limit.

Now, in addition to the bullshit at the pharmacy, we find that cops — and cops NEVER misuse their power — are apparently able to track individual purchases, literally inspecting our sundries before we’ve even left the fucking parking lot. That’s unacceptable.

At least we know who the bad guys are:

CVS, the nation’s largest pharmacy chain, is participating in the voluntary Kentucky program and plans to install MethCheck in most of its 6,200 stores across the country by the fall.

We plan to do as much shopping as possible in venues that do not “voluntarily” comply with state efforts to track the legal purchases of private citizens. You should, too.

Dept. of mildly disturbing developments

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There’s a small story on the net this week about the FBI cracking a bomb-threat hoaxer over the Internet. The kid made false threats about bombs in his high school and got caught, and is now serving 90 days in juvie.

None of that is disturbing. Stupid kid, stupid idea, but mild sentence because, well, he’s a kid. In this climate, he’s lucky he didn’t get sent to Gitmo, given that the Executive has made clear it believes it can do anything it wants to anybody it wants, but that’s not what this post was about.

The kid was taken up in what’s been called the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, which basically means online anonymity makes people act like assholes sometimes. He’d managed to get access to a compromised computer in Italy, which is where he was sending his threat mails from. This implies he was using a botnet, or at least had access to one. Again, not surprising. However, here’s where the story gets weird, and raises some legitimate questions.

The FBI sought and got permission to install, via messaging, a virus on the kid’s computer to aid their sleuthing. It was this virus that allowed them to find the kid. The questions this raises are interesting:

  • How’d they get their virus on his computer?
  • Why didn’t the kid’s anti-virus/anti-spyware tools catch the Feds’ virus?

The first answer is more or less apparent in the article; it got there via some messaging protocol, probably email. Everybody knows Windows is a joke security-wise, but most folks — even kids — have the message at this point that clicking weird shit you get in email is a bad idea. So there’s still some mystery here. Perhaps the Feds did just assume he’d be running IE and Outlook; it’s not out of the question.

The second answer is scarier. We can assume the kid had at least some technical knowledge, since he was using a botnet, so why didn’t his AV software catch the Feds? The possibilities are that either the Feds know about a Windows exploit nobody else knows about (either because they found it and are mum, or because someone built them a back door), or they’ve strong-armed AV makers into whitelisting their pet virus.

In the first case, they’re compromising everyone’s security by sitting on an exploit they think is theirs alone. It’s the responsibility of everyone in computing to alert software makers when flaws are found; the stakes on nefarious intrusion get higher every day, and the notion that this exploit will remain the exclusive province of law enforcement is simply laughable.

In the second case, it’s much creepier. If we paid Norton for a package to protect our machine from malware, we don’t want them to be in the business of whitelisting spybots just because the government says they’re ok. Either detect everything we might not want on the PC, or don’t represent yourself as protection. “Trust the government not to misbehave” is a nonstarter, as is the old “nothing to hide” argument.

Anyway, News.com surveyed several AV makers this week, and all said it was their “general policy to detect police spyware. Some, however, indicated they would obey a court order to ignore policeware, and neither McAfee nor Microsoft would say whether they’d received such a court order.”

The implications are clear: You cannot trust commercial malware-detection vendors. We know trusting governments is a bad idea. The only real option is to use a real secure OS — something Unix-based — and seek open-source solutions to security problems. We doubt the Open Source community will be particularly compliant when the cops come calling for backdoors or whitelists.

Our “liberal” media

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So, if you’ve been paying attention, you know that there’s been some fun in the Senate in the last 24 hours. Basically, the GOP signaled its intent to prevent a vote on a measure calling for troop withdrawal with a filibuster. In modern times, the filibuster is usually not carried through a la Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; the intent is usually enough, the outcome assumed, and the next move made by the non-filibustering party.

Well, this time it’s different. Reid stated he’d hold the Senate open all night, forcing Republicans to actually DO the filibuster in order to prevent a vote on the troop measure. This is well within the playbook, and is in no way an underhanded move. However, the press is utterly failing to report this accurately, and has on more than one occasion suggested it was the Democrats who were filibustering. Diane Sawyer even claimed that it was Reid who “vowed to filibuster.” Reid can’t filibuster, since he’s in the majority here. Let’s set the record straight.

From MediaMatters:

On July 11, Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Jack Reed (D-RI) proposed an amendment to the defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2008 (H.R. 1585) calling for troop redeployment from Iraq to begin within 120 days. On July 16, Senate Republicans blocked the Democratic leadership’s effort to schedule an up-or-down vote on the amendment. In response, Reid scheduled a July 18 cloture vote on the amendment, which would require a 60-vote supermajority to cut off debate on the measure. On the Senate floor, Reid criticized the Republicans for “using a filibuster to block us from even voting on” the amendment and announced his intention to extend the debate on the measure through the night on July 17 in order to “highlight Republican obstruction.” From his statement:

REID: But now, Republicans are using a filibuster to block us from even voting on an amendment that could bring the war to a responsible end. They are protecting the President rather than protecting our troops. They are denying us an up or down — yes or no — vote on the most important issue our country faces.

I would like to inform the Republican leadership and all my colleagues that we have no intention of backing down. If Republicans do not allow a vote on Levin-Reed today or tomorrow, we will work straight through the night on Tuesday. The American people deserve an open and honest debate on this war, and they deserve an up-or-down vote on this amendment to end it.

Given the Republican leadership’s decision to block the amendment, we have no choice but to do everything we can in the coming days to highlight Republican obstruction. We do this in hopes of ultimately getting a simple up-or-down vote on this and other important amendments that could change the direction of the war.

A 2003 Congressional Research Service report on “Filibusters and Cloture in the Senate” defined filibustering as “any use of dilatory or obstructive tactics to block a measure by preventing it from coming to a vote.” While senators once routinely mounted filibusters by holding extended debates on the Senate floor, it is more common now for the Senate to recognize filibusters merely through cloture votes. If a cloture motion fails to get 60 votes, debate continues and the measure does not move to the floor for an up-or-down vote. By calling an all-night session, Reid is forcing opponents of the withdrawal plan to sustain the filibuster by actually speaking on the floor.

So, bottom line: The Democrats want to vote on a troop withdrawal measure favored by wide margins, if poll after poll is to be believed, and the GOP minority are hell-bent on keeping this measure from reaching a vote, because it will PASS. They planned to filibuster, and Reid made them actually execute on it rather than just threaten.

Moral: Stock up on batteries. And shotguns.

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We may have covered this before, but Mrs Heathen was wondering “how long will the power last in the event of a catastrophic mankind-eliminating event?”

Well, this is awful close to Straight Dope’s answer to “When the zombies take over, how long ’til the electricity fails?” Cecil covers both sudden and gradual zombification. Sadly, the answer in both cases is “not very long,” though obviously we do rather better in a gradual scenario. Coal plants require nearly constant activity to keep creating power[1], and they form a big chunk of the grid. Add to this the inter-relatedness of the whole affair, and you can see how the failure of a few coal-fired plants could bring down entire regions, if not more.

[1. Yes, we know they’re not “creating power.” They’re actually converting matter to energy. Shut up.]

More TSA Stupidity

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BoingBoing points us to the story of the Menacing Battery Charger. Briefly, a man used a kit to build a two-D-cell charger for his iPod so he could watch more videos on his iPod when flying. TSA goons freak out because “it looks like an IED,” despite thorough checks yielding no trace of explosive residue. They also attempt to confiscate his laser pointer. Police are called, TSA is smacked down, and the writer notes the terrible truth of the situation:

They wouldn’t have grasped that the spare battery for my laptop was far more dangerous than the iPod charger. A dead short of the MintyBoost! would produce a little heat (maybe 4 watts total), a dead short of the laptop battery would likely cause an explosion of the battery…. and I had two of them fully charged.

He continues:

A handful of people with no knowledge of physics, engineering, or pyrotechnics are responsible for determining what is and what is not safe to bring on a plane. They’re paid minimum wage and told to panic if they see something they don’t recognize. Does this make me feel safer?

(We need to get one of these chargers, TSA trouble or no. Sounds like a great device.)

Dept. of Geek Snark

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We’ve finally found a use for the Opera browser!

We’ve always sort of ignored this also-ran in the Browser Wars, largely because their market share is negligible, and Firefox is so good and so free. However, on our phone, the Pocket version of IE just sucks rocks, and fails when we try to do some Important Work online.

As it happens, though, Opera plays Travian just fine.

Maybe someday ours will grow up into one of these

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Jalopnik has coverage of the upcoming Porsche 911 GT2, which has the distinction of being the first 911 capable of breaking 200 mph on the way out of the dealership. Twin turbos on top of the 3.6 liter boxer engine produce 530 horses and 505 lb-ft of torque. Zero to sixty in just over three and a half seconds. Price? Don’t ask; we’re guessing somewhere in the buck-and-a-half range, since this is the upmarket version of the turbo.

(By the way, the headline is tongue in cheek; fast as this is, it’s got a radiator. That’s an automatic DQ.)

Wil and Radley Preach Truth

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Wil has a great post on the bullshit “be vewy vewy afwaid” warnings from Homeland Security head Chertoff; he quotes extensively from Radley Balko’s piece in Reason. Go read both. Here’s a taste:

Wil:

Yesterday, Michael Chertoff, the director of Homeland Security, told the nation that they should be scared out of their minds, because he has a “gut feeling” that Al-Qaeda will launch a terrorist attack within the United States sometime this summer, and a bunch of anonymous government sources are breathlessly leaking truly scary things to Mass Media.

Bull. Fucking. Shit. This is the same recycled crap that we’ve heard over and over again from this administration, and I’m really fed up with my government doing its best to terrify me and my fellow Americans.

Radley:

By definition, the aim of “terrorism” is not to topple the U.S. government, or even to rack up a massive body count […]. The aim of terrorism is to cause terror. It’s to scare us. Frighten us. Alter our way of life, and get our government to change its policies.

In this sense, the very people who are supposed to be protecting us from terrorists are playing right into the terrorists’ hands.

Wil brings it home:

This is part of a long-established pattern from this administration: when the public begins to see them for what they are, they scramble to issue a bunch of terrorist attack warnings, so we’ll be afraid and give them whatever they want, so they can “protect” us.

[…]

What’s going on right now? Ah, yes, Bush and Cheney have the highest disapproval ratings since Nixon, and Bush’s approval among Americans is in freefall. The opposition to Bush’s complete failure in Iraq is at an all-time high. The outrageous commutation of Scooter Libby’s jail conviction — well within federal guidelines — because Bush thought it was “excessive” has infuriated Americans across the political spectrum. The Attorney General is quite clearly a liar, acting not to uphold the Constitution, but in fealty to Bush and Bush alone. Cheney brazenly claimed to be his own branch of government. The US Attorney Firing scandal shows no sign of going away, as Congress finally brings some investigation and oversight to a criminal administration which has acted as if the laws don’t apply to it since the day the Supreme Court put them into power. Americans are waking up to all of this, and the reality is difficult to deny: Bush, Cheney, Rove, and everyone in their rotten administration are crooks.

So, in a transparent effort to distract us from the damage they’ve done to our country, all they have is fear. All they can do is terrify people into submission, and it’s disgusting. We’re better than this. We’re stronger than this. We’re smarter than this.

So, please, don’t be afraid this summer. Don’t be part of Bush and Cheney’s Culture of Fear. Don’t let the terrorists win.

True dat.

Way to take responsibility, Georgie

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The President admitted yesterday that the leak of Plame’s name came from his administration, but said that his commutation of Libby was “fair and balanced,” and that he was now “moving on.”

It would be difficult for this to be more clear. Bush’s message is simple: commit a felony breach of national security in the pursuit of political retribution against his enemies, and you can expect to spend zero time in jail. Yet again, we point out that we have never had a president so hostile to the concept of “rule of law.”

Call for Heathen Help

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So, Mrs Heathen’s briefcase broke, and we need to get it fixed. The leather’s fine; it’s just that the side hardware where the strap clips on, well, wore through. It appears the quick-clip on the end of the strap was much, much harder than the D-ring on the bag, since the clip’s unscathed, but one D-ring is worn completely through, and the other is nearly there.

We had a not-terribly-good experience with Houston Shoe Hospital on a handbag repair a while back. Where else might we go to have this done? We need to get it done soon, since Levenger has agreed to reimburse us for the repair cost. Reply in comments or via email. Thanks!

Today’s Wikipedia Find

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43-Man Squamish, a sport designed to be unplayable. Under “Participants,” we find:

Each team consists of one left and one right Inside Grouch, one left and one right Outside Grouch, four Deep Brooders, four Shallow Brooders, five Wicket Men, three Offensive Niblings, four Quarter-Frummerts, two Half-Frummerts, one Full-Frummert, two Overblats, two Underblats, nine Back-Up Finks, two Leapers and a Dummy — for a total of 43.

The game officials are a Probate Judge (dressed as a British judge, with wig), a Field Representative (in a Scottish kilt), a Head Cockswain (in long overcoat), and a Baggage Smasher (dressed as a male beachgoer in pre-World War I years). None has any authority after play has begun.

Gameplay is described thusly:

Before any game, the Probate Judge must first flip a coin, usually a new Spanish peseta, while the Visiting Captain guesses the toss. If he guesses correctly, the game is cancelled immediately. If not, the Home Team Captain must then decide if he wishes to play offense or defense first. Play begins after a frullip is touched to the flutney and the recitation “My uncle is sick but the highway is green!” is intoned in Spanish. Penalties are applied for infractions such as walling the Pritz, icing on fifth snivel, running with the mob, rushing the season, inability to face facts, and sending the Dummy home early.

The offensive team has five Snivels (equivalent to downs in football) to advance to the enemy goal. Carrying the Pritz across the goal line is a Woomik and scores 17 points; hitting it across with the frullip counts as a Durmish and only scores 11 points. Except in the 7th Ogre (and the 8th, if it rains), only the offensive Niblings and Overblats are allowed to score. In this case, the four Quarter-Frummerts are allowed to kick or throw the Pritz, and the nine Finks are allowed to heckle the opposition by doing imitations of Barry Goldwater.

Best Headline Today

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From Rob: British Blamed for Basra Badgers:

British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra.

Word spread among the populace that UK troops had introduced strange man-eating, bear-like beasts into the area to sow panic.

[…]

UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: “We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.

Bush Still Hates Science

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Former Bush surgeon general says he was muzzled:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The first U.S. surgeon general appointed by President George W. Bush accused the administration on Tuesday of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research.

“Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried,” Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation’s top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

“The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party,” Carmona added.

We keep saying this, but it bears repeating: if your political beliefs run afoul of facts, and you respond by suppressing facts, you are the worst sort of craven bastard. Bush’s administration has made a habit of this since 2000, and they and their party have made it abundantly clear that this is part of their platform. Voting for them means voting for ideology over science and facts whenever someone doesn’t like what the data shows. It has implications in virtually every sphere of life — public health, the environment, the military, you name it.

David Brooks and “GoogleStupid”

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Tom Tomorrow points out an interesting new coinage: Googlestupid. It’s defined as the unfortunate tendency of someone to make pronouncements that are trivial to investigate with the Internet, and getting them wrong. This week’s best example is yet another bit of idiocy from the Times’ David Brooks, who is called out this week for a column complaining about two female pop singers (Pink and Avril) promulgating ideas in their lyrics hostile to marriage before 30 (this, in Brooks’ world, is apparently bad). The Googlestupidity is, of course, found in the fact that Pink, 28, and Avril, 22, are married.

Anyway, this particular example of Brooks being a lazy fuck brought another article to light, this one a fairly brutal deconstruction of Brooks’ famed post-2000-election Atlantic piece “One Nation, Slightly Divided,” which we read at the time and thought little of. The author, Sasha Issenberg, has no trouble documenting that Brooks basically fabricated nearly every supposed “division” between Red and Blue America, and did so in a way that was trivially easy uncover with the most cursory of fact-checking.

Brooks’ article hinges on the comparison of two counties near DC: Montgomery County, MD, where he lived, and Franklin County, PA, which was his stand-in for Red America. We’ve been to Franklin County; it’s decidedly rural, but not at all as far from suburban DC as Brooks would like us to believe.

For example, Brooks begins (as quoted in Issenberg’s piece):

“I went to Franklin County because I wanted to get a sense of how deep the divide really is,” Brooks wrote of his leisurely northward drive to see the other America across “the Meatloaf Line; from here on there will be a lot fewer sun-dried-tomato concoctions on restaurant menus and a lot more meatloaf platters.” Franklin County was a place where “no blue New York Times delivery bags dot driveways on Sunday mornings … [where] people don’t complain that Woody Allen isn’t as funny as he used to be, because they never thought he was funny,” he wrote. “In Red America churches are everywhere. In Blue America Thai restaurants are everywhere. In Red America they have QVC, the Pro Bowlers Tour, and hunting. In Blue America we have NPR, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and socially conscious investing.”

Funny, right? Also, sadly for Brooks, bullshit. Issenberg notes that one of Goodwin’s strongest markets is deeply rural McAllen, TX, and that QVC does profoundly well in urban, wealthy areas. But Brooks was too busy to check on things like “facts.” Issenberg, though, wasn’t, and took a trip to Franklin County to check things out for himself.

Issenberg discovered many things we find not at all surprising. For example, Franklin County boats both a fine Thai grocery and gourmet coffee company (we’ve been there as well). Notwithstanding Brooks’ assertion about Red American and Woody Allen, it turned out he couldn’t rent Annie Hall at the Chambersburg Blockbuster, but only because someone had beaten him to it. Even more absurdly, Brooks had claimed he was unable to spend more than $20 on dinner anywhere in Franklin County, and further called out their Red Lobster by name as one location where he tried. Issenberg found, as any normal human knows, that Red Lobster’s menu includes plenty of options to get a single dinner tab over that mark, including a surf-and-turf for $28.75. We’ve spent many evenings eating in that area, and can tell you from personal experience that keeping a dinner tab below $20 would be the real trick — i.e., just like anywhere else in the country.

The inescapable conclusion is that Brooks basically just makes shit up; Issenberg’s money quote:

As I made my journey, it became increasingly hard to believe that Brooks ever left his home.

This comes as no surprise to anyone who’s read him or his babble for the last several years, of course. Brooks, of course, didn’t see it this way, and clearly tried to intimidate Issenberg:

I called Brooks to see if I was misreading his work. I told him about my trip to Franklin County, and the ease with which I was able to spend $20 on a meal. He laughed. “I didn’t see it when I was there, but it’s true, you can get a nice meal at the Mercersburg Inn,” he said. I said it was just as easy at Red Lobster. “That was partially to make a point that if Red Lobster is your upper end … ” he replied, his voice trailing away. “That was partially tongue-in-cheek, but I did have several mini-dinners there, and I never topped $20.”

I went through some of the other instances where he made declarations that appeared insupportable. He accused me of being “too pedantic,” of “taking all of this too literally,” of “taking a joke and distorting it.” “That’s totally unethical,” he said.

“Unethical,” Mr. Brooks, is making up facts. Brooks turns out to be employing a novel “rings true” standard, which we’re sure would be at home in any Yellow Peril article from 1885 or Jim Crow editorial from 1955, but falls a bit short of modern journalistic standards, even for editorial writers. Brooks isn’t the only one doing this, but its our dollars that keep him employed and read at his rarefied level. It’s certainly not news that people like to read what the recognize, and accept and reward “analysis” that confirms prejudices, but we’d hope that the gatekeepers in the “old media” would at least make some cursory efforts toward quality control. We know the hope is vain, but we keep it anyway.

The Lessons of History via Aussie TV

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This is brilliant. Aussie TV show decides to determine who, exactly, remembers the lessons of the Trojan Horse. It’s like that stupid Jay Leno news quiz thing, but funny:

(Hat tip to RFB, who notes that the other “Chaser” videos on YouTube are probably worth your time as well, especially their bits on airport security and Fox News.)

Today

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Today, we are sleepy, because we stayed up late finishing that Goddamn Harry Potter book, but at least now we’re clear to see the film and have ample time to read Half-Blood Prince before Deathly Hallows drops.

(We’d have finished earlier, but we had to go watch Sam Jackson chain up a nymphomaniacal Christina Ricci for two hours.)

Hmmmmmmm

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Internet Jesus (a/k/a Warren Ellis) points out TheVeidtMethod.com, the supposed web site of a firm owned by Adrian Veidt. Advance marketing, maybe, for a film of the least filmable comic ever? Perhaps:

$ whois theveidtmethod.com
Domain name: theveidtmethod.com

Registrant Contact:
   Type40 Internet Marketing and Promotion
   Michael Regina (xoanon78@hotmail.com)
   +1.5149475221
   Fax: 1.
   42 Marcel Meloche
   Kirkland, QC H9J1K6
   CA

Also, Wikipedia thinks there’s a 2008 film in the works.

Dept. of Significant Anniversaries

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Occasional Superheroine points out that 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of What’s Opera, Doc?:

“Opera” is more than just an icon of several generations’ childhoods; this piece is perhaps Jones’ best work, and was voted the #1 animated short of all time by a poll of animation pros. Jones is also the only animator with three shorts selected for preservation in the National Film registry; the somewhat surreal One Froggy Evening (YouTube) from 1955 and the fourth-wall-demolishing Duck Amuck (YouTube) from 1951 round out his trifecta (they are, incidentally, #5 and #2 in the aforementioned greatest-cartoon list). Enjoy.

How we spent our free time since Thursday

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Coming very late to the Harry Potter party. We’d seen the movies, of course, but not read any of the books. Fortunately, Mrs. Heathen had nearly a full set, which we’re consuming at something over a book a day. As soon as we post this, we’ll start Order of the Phoenix.

Hangover abated, we discuss the Fourth, Zaza, Igor, and Cabrito

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We didn’t realize Chron foodwriter Alison Cook was there, but we can confirm her observations that the fireworks views were fabulous, as was the WHOLE GOAT, not to mention the booze. Our delightfully insane friend Igor put together a little pot-luck soire in a snooty hotel suite at what used to be the Warwick overlooking Hermann Park; much fine food and booze was on hand, along with a very diverse salad of people. We’re told some relative of the deposed Shah (the 1925 one, not the 1979 one) made the guacamole, which is the sort of thing that can really only happen in Houston, so there you go. The suite was lovely, but the service deeply questionable, as Cook observed.

We are, of course, going back next year; Igor’s already booked the “Texas Tycoon” suite for 4 July 2008, which (thank God) falls on a Friday.

Inshallah.

The hits just keep on comin’

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The domestic spying suit has been dismissed at the appeals court level on a party-line vote; the GOP judges agreed with the government that those who brought the suit had no standing to do so.

The decision “insulates the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance activities from judicial review and deprives Americans of any ability to challenge the illegal surveillance of their telephone calls and e-mails,” ACLU Legal Director Steven Shapiro said in a news release.

We’ve said it before, and we say it again: the damage this Administration has done to our country is tremendous, and it starts with Bush’s utter contempt for the rule of law.

The Goddamn Intarwub Just Stole $14 From Us

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So we were reading our morning feed of stuff, and ran across this video over at JWZ’s blog (watch all 3 when you go over, but the 1st and 3rd are the best):

The video pointed out to us a frankly unacceptable gap in Heathen Central’s musical archives, so now we’re downloading the best of Earth, Wind & Fire from Steve. Dammit.

(Incidentally, there’s apparently a whole series of videos with the boogie-down stormtrooper. The Japanese are very, very different from us.)

Give ’em hell, Keith

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Mr Olbermann gives them both barrels over the disgraceful commutation of Libby’s sentence. There’s video and a transcript at the link. Read, watch, or at least listen.

A bit:

We enveloped “our” President in 2001.

And those who did not believe he should have been elected — indeed, those who did not believe he had been elected — willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.

And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and sharpened it to a razor-sharp point, and stabbed this nation in the back with it.

Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.

Did so even before the appeals process was complete…

Did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice…

Did so despite what James Madison — at the Constitutional Convention — said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes “advised by” that president…

Did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder: To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish — the President will keep you out of prison?

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental compact between yourself and the majority of this nation’s citizens — the ones who did not cast votes for you.

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States.

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President… of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party.

And more:

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but instead to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of you becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

And more:

The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the “referee” of Prosecutor Fitzgerald’s analogy… these are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.

But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush — and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal — the average citizen understands that, sir.

It’s the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one — and it stinks. And they know it.

Thank God for Keith. We just hope people are listening.

Happy 4th

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We’ll be busy boozing it up, but maybe you want to try this name the Presidents quiz. It gives you 10 minutes to name them; it helpfully puts them in order, and even gives hints by color-coding for “died in office,” “assassinated,” and “resigned.”

We got 33 of 43, but in so doing actually managed to include the most-forgotten Commander In Chief, which is worth something, we guess. Enjoy.

Dept. of Beautiful Things

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The NYT on the new Ferrari F340, the $185,000 “entry level” car[1]:

The F1 sequential manual transmission does away with a clutch pedal, instead giving the driver shift paddles on either side of the steering column, just like a Formula One car (although traditionalists can still order a six-speed manual). The steering wheel features Ferrari’s “mannetino,” a small rotary switch with six settings to tailor the car’s electronic aggressiveness, from a snow-and-ice mode (as if!) to race, to the position beyond race that Ferrari’s people politely asked me not to engage, as it disables all traction and stability control and could easily lead to a Code Red Disgraced Journalist Situation.

More:

One habit I got into with the F430 was digging deep into the throttle and then pulling back for an upshift a few thousand r.p.m. short of the redline. This seems to trick the engine computer into dumping loads of fuel into the intake ports in anticipation of a run to 8,500 r.p.m., because when the F1 transmission clicks off the shift, it’s accompanied by a rifle-shot report, a supersonic whip-crack from the exhaust that prompts you to look in the mirror to see if the car behind you is engulfed in a contrail of flame. That never got old, frankly.

Some of my colleagues in the motoring press tell me that on a track, the F430 can be drifted, tail-out, balanced on the razor edge of adhesion.On the street, its handling imparts a sense of invulnerability that finds you wondering why everyone else is dawdling down off-ramps when they’re perfectly negotiable at 80 m.p.h.

Heh.

[1. That’s $185K new. It’s much, much more than that used, since Ferrari never makes enough to satisfy demand. The author notes that Ferrari left nearly half a billion dollars on the table when it elected to stick with a hard limit of 400 cars for its $650K Enzo.]

(Via Rob.)

Clearly, there aren’t enough of you

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We finally got around to checking the account.

Since last November, we’ve earned, oh, something under six bucks. What’s really odd is that $2.56 came last December alone. People are Christmas shopping on Heathen? Who knew?

We’d cancel, but Google won’t pay up for anything under ten bucks, so skating now means we lose six bones. We’ll put up with the ad banner for another 5 months to get our tenspot.

Apparently, it’s not illegal if a Republican does it

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Bush has commuted Libby’s sentence, thereby sparing him prison. Details sketchy; it’s a breaking story.

Asshole.

Update: the responses are coming in, this, quoted by Sullivan, from Obama:

This decision to commute the sentence of a man who compromised our national security cements the legacy of an Administration characterized by a politics of cynicism and division, one that has consistently placed itself and its ideology above the law. This is exactly the kind of politics we must change so we can begin restoring the American people’s faith in a government that puts the country’s progress ahead of the bitter partisanship of recent years.

Word. But one-time Bushite Sullivan continues:

A great move by Obama. This has to be hung around every Republican’s neck. They are now the party of corruption, irresponsibility in national security, and perjury. The Republican party impeached the last president for perjury over sexual harassment. But they commute the sentence of a man who perjured himself in part because he leaked a national security secret. That tells you everything. They care more about their privileged friends than the rule of law. We now know that for sure.

As if there were ever any doubt.

Dept. of Ewwww

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Via JWZ, we find the story of Lonesome George, the last surviving member of a species of Galapagos tortoise.

The “eww” part? Apparently, it’s someone’s job to give the turtle a hand job.