Ohio State Who?

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Tonight Florida showed their selection for the title game against supposed No. 1 Ohio State was earned, and in the process made pretty clear what paper tigers the Buckeyes were. We’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, as at this moment the score has just gone 41-14 on a short punch by Tim Tebow, but with that kind of margin we’re reasonably sure that Ohio State can’t manufacture a win when they’ve been limited to a single offensive touchdown all night.

The final stats on this game will make it clear that it wasn’t as close as the score, even. LSU’s performance in the Sugar Bowl wasn’t this dominant, at least not over the whole game. Florida sacked Ohio State’s Heisman winning QB over and over, once very nearly forcing a safety. The Gator defense was unstoppable, giving up only 7 points and holding the Buckeyes to a pitiful 82 offensive yards. 41 points and 369 total yards tells the tale of the Florida offense, for which Ohio State had no answer at all. (Meyer could have easily tacked another 7, or at least 3, onto the total had he been bloody-minded; we like that he did not.)

Now, for the record:

  • Alabama (UR) — Independence, vs. Oklahoma St (UR) — LOST
  • Arkansas (12/13/12)– Capitol One, vs. Wisc (6/5/7) — LOST
  • Auburn (10/10/9)– Cotton, vs. Nebraska (22/22/23) — WON
  • Florida (2)– BCS Championship, vs. Ohio State (1) — WON
  • Georgia (UR)– Chik-Fil-A, vs. VaTech (14/14/13) — WON
  • Kentucky (UR) — Gaylord Hotels Music City, vs. Clemson (UR) — WON
  • LSU (4) — Sugar, vs. ND (11) — WON
  • SC (UR) — AutoZone Liberty, vs. Houston (UR) — WON
  • Tenn (17) — Outback, vs. Penn State (UR) — LOST

So, 6 and 3 for the SEC, or one worse than Heathen predicted. Congrats to the Gators, our new national champs, and to the other five bowl-winning teams who made it clear once again that the SEC is the toughest conference in college football.

Update: The rankings are in, and Florida’s championship is official. However, Ohio State managed to hold on to the No. 2 spot — ahead of LSU, which strikes us as iffy at best. We’re pretty sure the Tigers would eat the Buckeyes alive, too.

ESPN also came up with another little fact worth remembering: Ohio State may be all that in the Big 10, but they’re 0 and 8 against the SEC in bowls. In major BCS bowls this year, the SEC is 2-0, with dominating margins (amusingly, 41-14 in both). In major BCS bowls this year, the Big 10 is … 0-2.

We couldn’t agree more

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ESPN’s Mark Schlabach: “Notre Dame shows it doesn’t belong in BCS bowls“

Against LSU, Notre Dame once again proved it doesn’t deserve to play in BCS bowl games, which have become its birthright because of the school’s national stature and ability to draw high TV ratings.

And by shutting out the Fighting Irish in the second half and erupting for 577 yards of offense in the game, the Tigers again proved Notre Dame is no longer capable of beating teams like LSU. Or Ohio State, Michigan and Southern California, which also handed the Fighting Irish lopsided losses in the past 12 months.

We Now Live In A Police State

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You thought we were done being pissed off now that the Democrats control Congress and we’ve got football? Think again.

John Gilmore has been pursuing a case against the Feds over the right to fly domestically without identification; it’s been amply demonstrated by folks like Bruce Schneier that the ID requirement has no security implications (and in fact exists to solve an airline business problem, not a security issue; n.b. that it’s now impossible to sell airline tickets to another person) — every one of the 9/11 hijackers, for example, had valid ID. Part of Gilmore’s case is a desire to force the government to disclose the law in question, something they won’t do because they claim the law is classified.

Think on that for a minute. We now have classified, secret laws that are not available for our review, nor are they available when they’re legally challenged, as in this case.

That’s all kinds of fucked up. And yet, the Supremes have decided not to hear the case, rejecting the appeal without comment and letting stand the lower court’s opinion that Gilmore’s right’s aren’t abridged by being forced to show ID. The question of secret law has been effectively shoveled under the rug until the next challenge, but that doesn’t help us today.

More at Slashdot and BoingBoing.

Signs of the Apocalypse, Musical Edition

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Overheard…

NEW YORK (Billboard) – Kelly Clarkson’s next album will boast some punk rock flavor.

The inaugural “American Idol” champ secured the services of bassist Mike Watt, who co-founded ’70s punk band Minutemen, ’80s combo fIREHOSE, and is now working with Iggy Pop and the reunited Stooges.

“I ended up playing on six of the songs. I had no idea what it was going to be like, but it ended up being pretty interesting,” Watt said of the sessions for Clarkson’s third RCA studio album.

Watt said he was a bit skeptical about working on the project, since he knew hardly anything about “American Idol” or Clarkson herself.

“I heard that Kelly won some game show, but I was really impressed how she sang her ass off. It was intense. I’m really glad I had the experience — it was trippy and everyone gave me much respect.”

The album is being produced by David Kahne, who previously worked with the likes of Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett and Stevie Nicks.

“(Kahne) let me try all kinds of stuff like fuzz bass, fills and solos besides just making things fatter,” Watt said.

Watt also found an admirer in Clarkson guitarist/songwriter Jimmy Messer, who “was very enthusiastic and helped me much — he was a skater when he was younger and knew all about my music.”

The Stooges, meanwhile will release “The Weirdness,” March 20 via Virgin. Watt is expected to be on the road with the group in the spring.

Dept. of “ZOMG!!! Wifi Hotspots are Insecure!”

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(Otherwise known as the “um, duh” category for technical types, natch.)

David Pogue over at the NYTimes has an illustrative bit up today (well, Thursday) about just exactly how insecure traffic is at a public wifi hotspot. Your computer itself may be secure, but the data you send out is pretty much open for perusal by anyone who can get on the network.

While this isn’t news to at least some of you Heathen, we figure it’s a big enough topic that we may as well cover it here. Go read Pogue, or follow along with our summary.

The Intarwub — a series of tubes, of course — is basically insecure. Mail and web traffic move all over the world in completely unencrypted packets. This wasn’t that big of a deal in the years before wireless, since getting access to a network involved plugging in an actual cable; sure, the guy in the cube next to you could read your incoming mail, but he’s probably got better stuff to do, and (furthermore) probably isn’t a nefarious identity thief.

Well, enter Wifi. Now every self-respecting coffeeshop, sandwich place, pizza joint, etc., has a $99 Linksys and a DSL connection, the better to attract customers with. This is great and all, but there’s a downside. All that traffic that was moving over a physical wire is now in the air, unencrypted, and anyone with a smattering of technical know-how can sniff the network and get access to everything you send or receive.

No, really.

This is actually a HUGE deal for business travellers, since lots of biz hotels use wifi instead of wired connections in the rooms — meaning a bad guy could just check into room 105 and leave his laptop running all night, merrily capturing packets for later analysis.

Scary, huh?

Some of you are now wondering “But Mr Heathen! My bank/webmail/dominatrix/catfish purveyor/whatever web site says they’re secure!” This may be true! There’s hope! Web browsers have, since forever, had the ability to negotiate a completely encrypted connection to a given server. This is what that little lock icon means (Firefox goes one better by turning the address bar yellow when the connection is secure). This technology is called “SSL” (for “secure sockets layer”), and it’s pretty robust. A network-sniffing goon could still get at your network packets, but he’d get only gibberish if the traffic was encrypted (and while SSL is breakable, few will go to the trouble when there are plenty of plaintext packets to sniff).

Gmail and, we think, several other webmail providers have an option to encrypt your mail session with SSL. So do most banks as well as any online retailer worth a damn (though they probably won’t offer it until you get to the part where you put in identifying details or credit card info). Also, some kinds of email can be sent over SSL as a matter of course, which is an excellent idea for road warriors (ask your sysadmin).

So, there are a few important takeaways here:

  1. First, secure your home wifi. Use WPA encryption if you can, WEP if you can’t, and consider even applying a MAC filter. This “MAC” has nothing to do with Apple or cosmetics; every network device (wired or wireless) has a unique Media Access Control address; it’s a string of letters and numbers. All modern home routers have the ability to limit their service to a list of known-good MAC addresses (or, conversely, keep known-bad MACs off the network).

  2. When you’re in Starbuck’s or whatever, be careful about how you read your mail and what you do online. Just reading the news? Don’t sweat it. Reading your email? Probably time to think about some countermeasures. Shopping or doing something sensitive for work? Go home, or get secure.

  3. If your email provider offers an encrypted method of getting email, USE IT.

  4. If you must do sensitive things on an open or near-open wireless connection, consider using any of the fine personal Virtual Private Networking tools mentioned in the comments to Pogue’s piece. We don’t use any of ’em, so we can’t tell you which one is better.

(What do we do? Something terribly geeky, but very effective. We use a technology called “SSH tunnels” to manage email and web browsing on the road, which sends all our traffic to our secure server in an encrypted “tunnel” before it goes out to the Internet at large. Sniff our coffeeshop packets all you want; we’re locked up tight. (This is sort of like a primitive VPN solution, but it’s quick and easy if you know what you’re doing, and even then nonsavvy can use it if a savvy type sets it up for them. (HDANCN?)))

NYT and Schneier on Airport Insecurity

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In this fantastic bit, they discuss airport security with expert Bruce Schneier:

Inherent in the obsession on liquids and gels, Mr. Schneier said, “is the notion that we can stop the bad guys by focusing on tactics, which is moronic. I pick a defense, you see my defense, and then you, the bad guy, decide what to do. That’s a game we can’t win.”

He added, “Screeners are so busy looking for liquids that they’ve missed decoy bombs in tests. We’ve defined success so weirdly. When T.S.A. takes away some frozen tomato sauce from grandmom because it might become a liquid, they think of it as a success. But that’s a failure. It’s a false alarm.”

(Local copy, since NYT rots links.)

“Hi, I’m from NBC scheduling, and I’m dumb as a box of hair!”

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So, as you have certainly noticed (some of you more verbally than others), Heathen enjoys the college football, especially bowl season. We’re by no means alone, obviously, given the ratings these games get; chief among them are the major BCS bowls: Fiesta, Rose, Orange, and Sugar, plus the championship game.

These games are also, for the most part, the biggest things on TV during bowl season, since most network programs are on holiday hiatus until early to mid January.

However, this year, there was a collision at Chez Heathen. We went upstairs yesterday to start watching the Sugar Bowl only to discover the Tivo already capturing, on another channel, one of the very small number of those network shows enjoyed in our household (Mrs. Heathen, natch). It wasn’t a repeat; it was the first new episode of this program in over a month, scheduled opposite the Sugar Bowl.

This struck us as really dumb, and we’re sure you agree. What makes it cross the line into absolute stupidity is this: the program in question is Friday Night Lights, a show about big-time Texas high school football. Just exactly WTF was NBC thinking?

(For the record, we’re gentlemen here at Heathen; we went to a bar for the first half.)

Hey, even Heathen are right sometimes

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As predicted, LSU just handed perennially-overrated Notre Dame their 9th consecutive bowl loss[1] in the Sugar Bowl. Final score: LSU 41, Notre Dame 14. LSU quarterback Jamarcus Russell outproduced the much ballyhooed ND golden boy Brady Quinn by better than 2 to 1 — and he’s a junior who could come back and lead the Tigers next year.

Revised bowl rundown, now with final AP/USAT/BCS rankings:

  • Alabama (UR) — Independence, vs. Oklahoma St (UR) — LOST
  • Arkansas (12/13/12)– Capitol One, vs. Wisc (6/5/7) — LOST
  • Auburn (10/10/9)– Cotton, vs. Nebraska (22/22/23) — WON
  • Florida (2)– BCS Championship, vs. Ohio State (1) — 1/8, 8pm
  • Georgia (UR)– Chik-Fil-A, vs. VaTech (14/14/13) — WON
  • Kentucky (UR) — Gaylord Hotels Music City, vs. Clemson (UR) — WON
  • LSU (4) — Sugar, vs. ND (11) — WON
  • SC (UR) — AutoZone Liberty, vs. Houston (UR) — WON
  • Tenn (17) — Outback, vs. Penn State (UR) — LOST

The SEC has played 8 of its 9 bowls, and taken 5 of them. Cross your fingers for the big show next week.

[1. The last time Notre Dame won a bowl, Heathen lived in Tuscaloosa, and most of you people had never heard of the Internet. It was the January 1994 Cotton Bowl, against A&M.]

Look, we weren’t the only ones who said OU was going to win in a walk

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We’ll own our SEC predictions, good and bad, but you Sooners are on your own. Zabransky played a damn near perfect game, and it was a hell of a lot more fun to watch than any of the other contests we saw today. Come on: how often do you see a Statue of Liberty work that well, in OT even — especially when smart money would’ve had them kick the PAT and move on to a second OT?

Also, Division I-A Playoff NOW.

Bowl Update

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We we learned today: Never count on Arkansas or Tennessee. At least Auburn came through. Updates in red.

  • Alabama — Independence, vs. Oklahoma St — LOST
  • Arkansas — Capitol One, vs. Wisc — LOST
  • Auburn — Cotton, vs. Nebraska — WON
  • Florida — BCS Championship, vs. Ohio State — 1/8, 8pm
  • Georgia — Chik-Fil-A, vs. VaTech — WON
  • Kentucky — Gaylord Hotels Music City, vs. Clemson — WON
  • LSU — Sugar, vs. ND — 1/3, 8pm
  • SC — AutoZone Liberty, vs. Houston, WON
  • Tenn — Outback, vs. Penn State — LOST

This leaves the Southeastern Conference at 4-3 with two games to go — our strongest pick (LSU) and our weakest (Florida).

(This is why we don’t make our living calling football games, but we’ll note that many actual sports pros agreed with our expectation that Arkansas and Tennessee would win their respective bowls. We have, at least, the consolation of knowing the Fulmer lost.)

Behind the Music: Internet Edition

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Remember that fantastic flash thingy from earlier in the week?

Apparently, it’s (a) 4 frames from a Japanese Anime combined with (b) a section of a Finnish folk song performed by a down-on-their-luck Finnish band that (c) turns out to be not actual Finnish, but gibberish with a few Finnish words stuck in it. See for yourself:

The cartoon uses the second half of the fifth stanza (four lines) and the complete sixth stanza (eight lines) from the song. Unlike the rest of the song, these two stanzas have no meaning, consisting mostly of phonetically-inspired gibberish that vary from performance to performance and are usually made up on the spot by the singer.

We love the Internet.

Dept. of Football Prognostication

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So, it’s Bowl Season, and of the dozen teams in the SEC, 9 got bids.

Let’s pause for a moment and see if any other conferences did as well, shall we?

Ok, that’s out of the way. (No, I don’t think so, but we could be wrong — we can’t be bothered to check.)

Here’s the bowl picture for the SEC:

  • Alabama — Independence, vs. Oklahoma St — LOST
  • Arkansas — Capitol One, vs. Wisc — 1/1, 1:00
  • Auburn — Cotton, vs. Nebraska — 1/1, 11:30
  • Florida — BCS Championship, vs. Ohio State — 1/8, 8pm
  • Georgia — Chik-Fil-A, vs. VaTech — WON
  • Kentucky — Gaylord Hotels Music City, vs. Clemson — WON
  • LSU — Sugar, vs. ND — 1/3, 8pm
  • Ole Miss — no bowl
  • MSU — no bowl
  • SC — AutoZone Liberty, vs. Houston, WON
  • Tenn — Outback, vs. Penn State — 1/1, 11:00
  • Vandy — no bowl

No big surprises here — the schools in the Heathen Home State have lagged for years (modulo Eli’s tenure at Ole Miss), and Vandy is hampered by actual admissions requirements, but the balance is solid.

Only 4 of the 9 have been played; of those, only one team disappointed (and it was ours, dammit). Coming up, though, we have very good expectations about the final five games:

Wisconsin lost to its only ranked opponent in the regular season, while Arkansas emerged as a surprisingly powerful presence in the SEC this year. We give the edge to the Razorbacks.

Auburn’s still very strong, so we’ll pick them to beat Nebraska — playing in a stronger conference, they still have a better record than the Cornhuskers, who beat only one ranked team in four shots during the season (#24, A&M, back in November).

LSU should be a shoe-in over perennially-overrated ND. They played four top-ten teams on the road, as we previously noted, while ND hasn’t beaten anyone of note all year. The Tigers can disappoint, the ND does have a good guy behind the center, but we’re still wearing purple and gold in our hearts on this one (as much as it pains us).

Penn State’s in a bowl? Why? Expect Fulmer (9-3 in the SEC) to whip Joe Pa (8-4, heavy on the creampuffs — is Youngstown State even Div I-A?), leg or no leg. We can’t bring ourselves to root for Rocky Top, so we’ll have to content ourselves with pulling against Penn State.

That leave the Big Show on January 8. Right now, we still pick Urban Meyer’s Gators over Ohio State, but that’s a closer call. Both had 4 ranked opponents in the regular season, but one of Ohio’s was an on-the-way-out Penn State back in September. Florida dropped one of its ranked games, losing to Auburn in a hell of a game back in October. All we’re really sure about here is that it’s likely to be quite a football game.

We figure we may be wrong about one of these picks, so we estimate the final SEC bowl record at 7-2.

(Oh, one more, designed to bait certain readers: in the Orange Bowl — featuring a shatteringly irrelevant pairing of Wake Forest vs. Louisville — we pick “whatever else is on”.)

I turned my face away / and dreamed about you

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In a surprise move, Shane MacGowan is still lucid and blogging, which suggests the degree to which he’s said to have become a derelict may be slightly overstated. In any case, the aforelinked entry is about the other voice in Fairytale of New York, Kristy MacColl, who’s been gone now six years (and was recently lionized at Gawker, which is in fact where we picked up MacGowan’s blog).

In the entry, Shane mentions those who’ve sung Kristy’s part at the inevitable live renditions of Fairytale since her death:

When we do the song live these days, there are people in and around the Pogues who nominate guest singers for the Kirsty part. I leave it to them to argue it out. I can’t be bothered with the politics any more than Machiavelli could. To say I have any favourites for that role other than Kirsty is to sully her name. I’m old fashioned like that. Besides, it’s hearing the original group playing it that keeps me happy.

The role – and it is a role – frequently goes to Ella Finer, daughter of Jem in the band who co-wrote the song with me. It works fine with Ella, partly as it keeps it in the family, and partly because Fairytale is meant to be a song from an older man to a younger woman. And I knew her before she was born.

In Irish pubs where they still sing together, Fairytale has become as much a standard as Danny Boy or The Fields of Athenry or whatever. So I’m now like the writers of all those other traditional standards, except I’m not anonymous. Or dead. The best surprises in life are the ones you never dream about.

We like that last sentence rather a lot.

Anyway, go back up to “inevitable live renditions” link above, which is an MP3 of just such a live performance, from Brixton (we think from 2001; it lacks Kristy). Hearing the crowd sing along is wonderful and raises the hair on our Heathen necks. Enjoy, and toast Kristy. We certainly are.

He Is Spartacus

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Kirk Douglas issued the following press release on the occasion of his 90th birthday:

My name is Kirk Douglas. You may know me. If you don’t … Google me. I was a movie star and I’m Michael Douglas’ dad, Catherine Zeta-Jones’ father-in-law, and the grandparents of their two children. Today I celebrate my 90th birthday.

I have a message to convey to America’s young people. A 90th birthday is special. In my case, this birthday is not only special but miraculous. I survived World War II, a helicopter crash, a stroke, and two new knees.

It’s a tradition that when a “birthday boy” stands over his cake he makes a silent wish for his life and then blows out the candles. I have followed that tradition for 89 years but on my 90th birthday, I have decided to rebel. Instead of making a silent wish for myself, I want to make a LOUD wish for THE WORLD.

Let’s face it: THE WORLD IS IN A MESS and you are inheriting it. Generation Y, you are on the cusp. You are the group facing many problems: abject poverty, global warming, genocide, AIDS, and suicide bombers to name a few. These problems exist, and the world is silent. We have done very little to solve these problems. Now, we leave it to you. You have to fix it because the situation is intolerable.

You need to rebel, to speak up, write, vote, and care about people and the world you live in. We live in the best country in the world. I know. My parents were Russian immigrants. America is a country where EVERYONE, regardless of race, creed, or age has a chance. I had that chance. You are the generation that is most impacted and the generation that can make a difference.

I love this country because I came from a life of poverty. I was able to work my way through college and go into acting, the field that I love. There is no guarantee in this country that you will be successful. But you always have a chance. Nothing should interfere with it. You have to make sure that nothing stands in the way.

When I blow out my candles — 90! … it will take a long time … but I’ll be thinking of you.

Fundamentalists are still in control and still stupid

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“In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology.”

Yep; the National Park Service is still prohibited from stating the actual age of the Grand Canyon, as the fundies are unhappy with anything older than 6,000 years; the park shop still sells a book that describes the Canyon in fundamentalist (i.e., unscientific and flat-out wrong) terms, a move that one park geologist described as the “equivalent of Yellowstone National Park selling a book entitled Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan.”

This is what voting for Republicans gets you.

Warning: More Suckage Ahead

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Or, rather, there is if you plan on upgrading to Vista. Bruce Schneier points us at an exhaustive review of all the ways Microsoft is removing functionality and making Windows less useful as part of the changeover to Vista. Here’s it in a nutshell: Vista is going to be chock full of Digital Rights Management “features” that no user would ever want, let alone pay for. There’s more analysis of the paper elsewhere, but only the really geeky of you will read the whole thing, so I’ll include the executive executive summary as a teaser:

The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.

Word.

Get up, get on up

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James Brown died this morning in an Atlanta hospital, probably of pneumonia. Brown needs no introduction; he belongs in the musical pantheon with folks like Elvis, the Beatles, Ray Charles, and Bob Dylan. It’s sad to note how few of these folks we still have walking among us — basically, just two Beatles and Bob.

The Yahoo Obit was the first one we found, and the NYTimes is still running an AP obit, though presumably they’ll have one of their own soon. The Wikipedia article is worth your time, too.

What’s this? People in Dallas with more money than sense? Horrors!

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Heh. The DallasFood web site takes on a firm claiming — fraudulently, as it turns out — to be actual chocolate makers.

Noka had hoped to establish itself as a superpremium confectioner, with prices far, far north of folks like Godiva (hundreds of dollars a pound). They intimated they actually “made” the chocolates, but it turns out they’re just buying and remolding another brand (Bonnat, which is good chocolate, at leaest). This is what chocolatiers do, and is a recognized trade, but it’s not being a manufacturer, and doesn’t command superpremium prices. Also, they aren’t even very good at that: “Noka’s truffles and molded chocolates are exactly what one might expect from a pair of accountants with limited experience and no formal training.”

Nevertheless, they got on shelves at Niemans and Dean and Deluca and the like, though this 10-part series may well put the kibosh on that, even in Dallas.

Seriously, it’s ten parts, but it’s great. Read all 10. DallasFood.org is definitely getting a bookmark based on the strength of this and their chicken-fried steak coverage alone.

They like ’em Goode in Virginia. Goode and Bigoted.

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Rep. Virgil — Virgil! — Goode, R-VA, has a problem with all Muslims, which we’re guessing plays pretty well to his base. This is the dufus who’s been on the warpath about the new Muslim member of Congress taking his oath on a Koran rather than a Bible.

I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.

Our Stupid Government Employees, Again

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Can anyone enlighten us on the snowglobe menace?

snowglobe menace

We note again that there is not a damn thing that makes sense about any of the TSA regs that have gone into effect since 9/11, and that they probably make us LESS safe. Binary explosives of the sort thought to be planned for the London non-attack-attack won’t work; nail files aren’t dangerous; the ID requirement is for the airlines, not security. It’s all bullshit, and nobody in a position to change anything cares. Hell, most citizens don’t care; they’re fat and happy and complacent, and naively assume this theater makes us safer.

And people wonder why we’re misanthropic.

Best News Quote Today

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From the LA Times:

Today, Hacienda Napoles is in ruins, taken over by jungle foliage and bats. The sprawling Spanish-style mansion has been gutted, scavenged by treasure hunters looking for stashes of gold and cash buried under the floors. Escobar is long gone, cut down in a hail of police gunfire.

But the hippos are still here.

Case in point on why judicial review of even military incarceration is important

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The military locked up a whistleblower for 97 days in a maximum security facility in Iraq.

One night in mid-April, the steel door clanked shut on detainee No. 200343 at Camp Cropper, the United States military’s maximum-security detention site in Baghdad.

American guards arrived at the man’s cell periodically over the next several days, shackled his hands and feet, blindfolded him and took him to a padded room for interrogation, the detainee said. After an hour or two, he was returned to his cell, fatigued but unable to sleep.

The fluorescent lights in his cell were never turned off, he said. At most hours, heavy metal or country music blared in the corridor. He said he was rousted at random times without explanation and made to stand in his cell. Even lying down, he said, he was kept from covering his face to block out the light, noise and cold. And when he was released after 97 days he was exhausted, depressed and scared.

Detainee 200343 was among thousands of people who have been held and released by the American military in Iraq, and his account of his ordeal has provided one of the few detailed views of the Pentagon’s detention operations since the abuse scandals at Abu Ghraib. Yet in many respects his case is unusual.

The detainee was Donald Vance, a 29-year-old Navy veteran from Chicago who went to Iraq as a security contractor. He wound up as a whistle-blower, passing information to the F.B.I. about suspicious activities at the Iraqi security firm where he worked, including what he said was possible illegal weapons trading.

But when American soldiers raided the company at his urging, Mr. Vance and another American who worked there were detained as suspects by the military, which was unaware that Mr. Vance was an informer, according to officials and military documents.

They did this to an American citizen who could not have been more emphatically a good guy. And he had virtually no recourse. Trusting people in power is never a good idea; they need oversight, which is why we have a system of checks and balances in our government. This administration has sought from the very first to dismantle these failsafes and create an imperial presidency; stories like Vance’s are the inevitable result.

(Local PDF because the NYT links rot.)