Year Zero is today.

Wear your goddamn seatbelt, okay?

Fred Clark points out some interesting commentary on why Don Imus got torpedoed this time, considering how often he’s said utterly obnoxious things before:

[…] he screwed up. He didn’t steal power, he used it. Used it to say just shitty things about people who, in our minds, just didn’t deserve it. He broke the power equation. And when he did, we balked, even if we don’t quite understand why this one got under our skin. The wiring goes both ways. It’s actually heartening, because it confirms one of the admirable things about American society at large:

America loves a rebel.

America loves a bad boy.

But America hates a fucking bully.

Or, as Clark puts it himself:

The gist of what he’s saying echoes something I was taught both in seminary and in the newspaper biz, the shared motto of preachers and journalists: “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” That’s what good preachers, and good journalists, do. It makes sense that comics, who sometimes preach and sometimes report the news, would follow this motto as well.

Imus “broke the power equation,” Rogers says. He afflicted the afflicted, which made him a bully instead of a comic. That’s not funny.

The Consumerist gets an FDA guy to admit that bagged lettuce isn’t so safe.

Orlando is shameful, and Fred makes it very, very clear.

Apparently, it’s now illegal to feed the homeless in Orlando without a permit, and only two such permits will be given to any given group in a year. This is seriously stupid shit, and pretty damn far from anything any normal human would recognize as just, wise, or reasonable. From the story:

Undercover officers filmed the food line, meticulously counting Montanez serving “30 unidentified persons food from a large pot utilizing a ladle,” according to an arrest affidavit.

Police approached Montanez and asked for his identification. They considered issuing him a summons on the misdemeanor count, but when he tossed his ID, police took him into custody, the affidavit says.

Jonathan Giralt, 16, a Boone High School junior who was near Montanez, disagreed with the police account. He and other volunteers said the activist showed his ID and complied with police orders.

“I was like, OK, this guy [Montanez] is going to be arrested for absolutely nothing,” Jonathan said. “It makes me feel unsafe.”

Police also collected a vial of stew as evidence.

Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot.

So, the University of Florida faculty senate voted recently to deny Jeb Bush an honorary degree, on pretty sound grounds. This didn’t sit well with the right-leaning state politicos, so they’ve forced the University to rename the education school after him as a direct retaliatory move.

“Poop transplant“

No, we are not — to coin a phrase — shitting you.

The Brits have grown a heart valve from stem cells.

Consider for a moment where this breakthrough might have occurred had our idiot boy-king and his equally anti-intellectual party not put the kibosh on funding for such research in the U.S.

The ongoing conversion of the UK into a surveillance society took another large step this week, as some jurisdictions are adding speakers to the video cameras in public places so that minders can scold miscreants in real time.

Home Secretary John Reid told BBC News there would be some people, “in the minority who will be more concerned about what they claim are civil liberties intrusions”.

“But the vast majority of people find that their life is more upset by people who make their life a misery in the inner cities because they can’t go out and feel safe and secure in a healthy, clean environment because of a minority of people,” he added.

W. T. F? Seriously, what the hell is wrong with Britain?

How Specialist Town lost his benefits:

Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town’s neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways, neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September 2006 he and the Army agreed he was no longer combat-ready.

But instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: They claimed Town’s wounds were actually caused by a “personality disorder.” Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits.

Town is not alone. A six-month investigation has uncovered multiple cases in which soldiers wounded in Iraq are suspiciously diagnosed as having a personality disorder, then prevented from collecting benefits. The conditions of their discharge have infuriated many in the military community, including the injured soldiers and their families, veterans’ rights groups, even military officials required to process these dismissals.

They say the military is purposely misdiagnosing soldiers like Town and that it’s doing so for one reason: to cheat them out of a lifetime of disability and medical benefits, thereby saving billions in expenses.

If we’re going to call these men and women into harm’s way in a war, we’d damn well support them when they come home broken.

Alabama remains provincial and stupid. We think even the Heathen Home State allows better beer than Alabama. Maybe they should change the state motto to “Alabama: Nearly bankrupt, but safe from dildos and decent beer.”

The University of Florida beat Ohio State for the national title, for the second time in 4 months. This time, it was in something called “basketball.”

They apparently missed 90 percent of the test bombs in a Denver test. Fucktards.

Undercover agents were able to slip bombs and IEDs past the Transport Security Agency checkpoint at Denver airport 90 percent of the time. Last time I was in Denver, the eagle-eyed agent was able to spot and confiscate my toothpaste, and of course, my suitcase arrived damaged, contents filthy, having been pawed at by a TSA goon and then improperly closed. These eagle-eyed guardians of freedom are so obsessed with making sure that we’re all sharing our foot-funguses with each other on while our shoes go through the X-ray machine that they can’t actually find actual bombs.

Michael Jackson remains a derenged egomaniacal freak. You know, in case you were wondering.

From BoingBoing: Panda porn to encourage breeding.

(Heathen believe it’s because they’re all crazy for classic Jenna Jameson.)

Frogs as big as dogs.

Fortunately, they’re apparently liquified into fertilizer before they can make good on their nefarious plans. (Via BoingBoing, but their permalink thingy isn’t working.)

The idea of “human-sheep hybrid” is no longer confined to science fiction, or to the fevered erotic dreams of lonely hillbilly onanists. Now they’re real, and that’s just plain creepy.

This has been a great year for underdogs. The tiny Barton comes back to whip Winona — the end of their 56-game streak — in the Division II finals to become National Champs. Who gives a rat’s ass about NCAA or NIT? The only name that matters is Atkinson. This is magic:

They’re suing Massachussetts because the state picked a different brand of e-voting machine.

Hat tip to RadioFreeBaltimore for the heads-up, who points out:

Suing your potential customers for not picking your product is a move so fucking brilliant that they must have consulted with the RIAA.

Word.

Dude, check this out:

Florida: City to Seize Homes Over a $5 Parking Ticket
Brooksville, Florida proposes to foreclose homes and seize cars over less than $20 in parking tickets.

Brooksville, FloridaThe city council in Brooksville, Florida voted this week to advance a proposal granting city officials the authority to place liens and foreclose on the homes of motorists accused of failing to pay a single $5 parking ticket. Non-homeowners face having their vehicles seized if accused of not paying three parking offenses.

According to the proposed ordinance, a vehicle owner must pay a parking fine within 72 hours if a meter maid claims his automobile was improperly parked, incurring tickets worth between $5 and $250. Failure to pay this amount results in the assessment of a fifty-percent “late fee.” After seven days, the city will place a lien on the car owner’s home for the amount of the ticket plus late fees, attorney fees and an extra $15 fine. The fees quickly turn a $5 ticket into a debt worth several hundred dollars, growing at a one-percent per month interest rate. The ordinance does not require the city to provide notice to the homeowner at any point so that after ninety days elapse, the city will foreclose. If the motorist does not own a home, it will seize his vehicle after the failure to pay three parking tickets.

Any motorist who believes a parking ticket may have been improperly issued must first pay a $250 “appeal fee” within seven days to have the case heard by a contract employee of the city. This employee will determine whether the city should keep the appeal fee, plus the cost of the ticket and late fees, or find the motorist not guilty. Council members postponed a decision on whether to reduce this appeal fee until final adoption of the measure which is expected in the first week of April.

Jesus. Via The Agitator.

It’s from an email, but it FEELS like a post.

“Bellinger, in Brussels for meetings with European legal advisers, did not comment on details of the case but said the United States would never hand over a suspect to another country without assurances about their treatment.”

Assurances about what? That they won’t be tortured unless they use the officially approved methods of torture employed by the U.S.? Geeez.

MORE

Congrats, Lawyer, you’re bloggin’!

Check out our new favorite judge — and in FLORIDA, of all places.

John Coffin won’t spend any more time in jail for beating up two sheriff’s deputies inside his house, striking one in the head with a Taser gun he took from the other.

Circuit Judge Rick De Furia said at Coffin’s trial Tuesday that he doesn’t condone the violence against the deputies.

But Coffin, 56, had a right to defend his family and property because the deputies had no right to be in Coffin’s house in the first place, De Furia said.

Hold them to the rule of law. More specifically, when attempts to extradite kidnappers fall on deaf ears, engage Interpol.

See, the kidnappers were CIA. They snatched a German citizen and sent him to be tortured as part of extraordinary rendition. Five months later, they realized they’d fucked up, and brought him back to Europe where they released him on the side of a road in Albania. “Ooops!”

The German government is, understandably, upset. A court in Munich has issued arrest warrants for the 13 agents connected with the kidnapping, but the US has thus far refused to entertain the idea of extraditing them. It’s not hard to imagine how the US would act had one of OUR citizens been treated this way; why they think other countries will accept such behavior is beyond us. “24” is fiction, people.

In the latest example of truly, epically strange bedfellows, Robertson’s anti-ACLU American Center for Law and Justice (note acronym) has filed briefs in support of the kid in the Bong Hits 4 Jesus (NYT link; local PDF) case headed for the Supreme Court. Also on the kid’s side? The real ACLU, natch. On the other side? The Bush Administration. Yep: we’ve actually got Robertson and Bush on opposite sides of an issue, and it’s Robertson who’s with the angels. Crazy.

First, the gist:

On the surface, Joseph Frederick’s dispute with his principal, Deborah Morse, at the Juneau-Douglas High School in Alaska five years ago appeared to have little if anything to do with religion — or perhaps with much of anything beyond a bored senior’s attitude and a harried administrator’s impatience.

As the Olympic torch was carried through the streets of Juneau on its way to the 2002 winter games in Salt Lake City, students were allowed to leave the school grounds to watch. The school band and cheerleaders performed. With television cameras focused on the scene, Mr. Frederick and some friends unfurled a 14-foot-long banner with the inscription: “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”

Mr. Frederick later testified that he designed the banner, using a slogan he had seen on a snowboard, “to be meaningless and funny, in order to get on television.” Ms. Morse found no humor but plenty of meaning in the sign, recognizing “bong hits” as a slang reference to using marijuana. She demanded that he take the banner down. When he refused, she tore it down, ordered him to her office, and gave him a 10-day suspension.

Pretty ridiculous, right? Well, Frederick sued, and has won his case every time it’s been tried; the SCOTUS is the peabrained school’s last chance. And this is when it gets weird:

While it is hardly surprising to find the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Coalition Against Censorship on Mr. Frederick’s side, it is the array of briefs from organizations that litigate and speak on behalf of the religious right that has lifted Morse v. Frederick out of the realm of the ordinary.

The groups include the American Center for Law and Justice, founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson; the Christian Legal Society; the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization based in Arizona that describes its mission as “defending the right to hear and speak the Truth”; the Rutherford Institute, which has participated in many religion cases before the court; and Liberty Legal Institute, a nonprofit law firm “dedicated to the preservation of First Amendment rights and religious freedom.”

The institute, based in Plano, Tex., told the justices in its brief that it was “gravely concerned that the religious freedom of students in public schools will be damaged” if the court rules for the school board.

More:

The religious groups were particularly alarmed by what they saw as the implication that school boards could define their “educational mission” as they wished and could suppress countervailing speech accordingly.

“Holy moly, look at this! To get drugs we can eliminate free speech in schools?” is how Robert A. Destro, a law professor at Catholic University, described his reaction to the briefs for the school board when the Liberty Legal Institute asked him to consider participating on the Mr. Frederick’s behalf. He quickly signed on.

Having worked closely with Republican administrations for years, Mr. Destro said he was hard pressed to understand the administration’s position. “My guess is they just hadn’t thought it through,” he said in an interview. “To the people who put them in office, they are making an incoherent statement.”

Oh, and Ken Fucking Starr is of course arguing for the government here. Does that guy EVER do anything that isn’t evil?

The scientists say there’s nothing to worry about, but any time I hear stories about enormous domestic volcanos “rumbling”, we get a little nervous. A dramatic eruption at Yellowstone would be, um, damaging.

In Florida, you can rot in prison for taking legally prescribed meds. No shit.

Florida’s Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from Richard Paey, a wheelchair-using father of three who is currently serving a 25-year mandatory prison sentence for taking his own pain medication. In doing so, the court let stand a decision which essentially claims that the courts have no role in checking the powers of the executive and legislative branches of government when an individual outcome is patently unjust.

Richard Paey — who suffers both multiple sclerosis and from the aftermath of a disastrous and barbaric back surgery that resulted in multiple major malpractice judgments–now receives virtually twice as much morphine in prison than the equivalent in opioid medications for which he was convicted of forging prescriptions.

There’s so much wrong with this it’s hard to know where to start:

• Judicial oversight ought to be a check on Executive tyranny and Legislative cravenness. The Florida Supremes are seriously derelict here.
• Also, just why the fuck did the Executive target this dude in the first place? We’re under the impression that there’s a trade in actual illegal drugs in Florida; why do they have time to chase wheelchair-bound pain patients?

(We really like that some are calling this “USAgate,” btw.)

Some in Congress are beginning to wonder if the AG ought to resign, considering the fact that using the Federal law enforcement machine to punish political rivals, and firing those who don’t play along, is, well, illegal.

Take a look here. They are now, have always been, and probably always will be a mouthpiece for the most extreme wing of the Bush partisan GOP. Everything pro-Bush is good; anything at all contrary to White House talking points is buried or slimed. That’s SOP for them, and there’s no reason to think they’ll shape up. They’re not journalism; they’re propaganda.

China blocks LiveJournal.

They’ve convinced the copyright royalty board to charge webcasters and online radio stations rates that will almost certainly doom the format.

A bipartisan bill to restore some of the fair use protections gutted by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is meeting with predictable amounts of bullshit and distortion from the always-clueless RIAA. Check it out. The DMCA is the law that makes it illegal to circumvent any copy protection scheme for any reason. Under it, ripping a copy-protected CD you bought so you can listen to it on your iPod is a criminal act. It’s a disaster for fair use, and desperately needs to be repealed (and the Consumer Electronics Association agrees).

Security maven Bruce Schneier tackles the elephant in the room where post-9/11 security is concerned. Worth your time.

He opens with what is essentially a distillation of his position. He’s on solid ground here:

Since 9/11, we’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars defending ourselves from terrorist attacks. Stories about the ineffectiveness of many of these security measures are common, but less so are discussions of why they are so ineffective. In short: much of our country’s counterterrorism security spending is not designed to protect us from the terrorists, but instead to protect our public officials from criticism when another attack occurs.

This is all over the damn web, but it’s still funny as hell: George Takai responds to Tim Hardaway:

Chimpanzees have been observed hunting with spears.

From WaPo:

One ambassador in Washington said he was taken aback when John Hannah, Vice President Cheney’s national security adviser, said during a recent meeting that the administration considers 2007 “the year of Iran” and indicated that a U.S. attack was a real possibility. Hannah declined to be interviewed for this article.

How can anyone think that’s a good idea at this point?

Security guru Bruce Schneier lays it out for you in essentially untechnical language.

Short answer: Microsoft has sold you out in favor of kissing up to the entertainment conglomerates, so consequently Vista is always trying to figure out if it needs to stop you from doing something unauthorized with copyrighted material. Always. We think we know enough about software in general and Microsoft in particular to realize that this will NOT end well for anyone concerned.

Options? If Windows is a must, stay on XP. If you’re buying new, consider switching to OS X or, if you can, Linux (geeks only, really). Vista is a non-starter; at the end of the day, if you pony up several hundred to several thousand for a computer AND a few more bills for an operating system, the resulting system should be unequivocally and absolutely YOURS, and should take orders from nobody else. We don’t think that’s an extreme position, but apparently Redmond does.

With Congress pushing ISPs to log all your surfing and net activity indefinitely, it might really be time to start using Tor to protect your activities from prying eyes. Seriously, why trust your ISP to do the right thing, or your government not to abuse this information?

Of course, once you start viewing it this way, it’s easy to see just exactly how effective such a scheme is likely to be. Law-abiding citizen traffic will be there in droves, but easy access to anonymizing tools will ensure that anyone who values privacy will escape logging. Oh boy!

This is fucking bizarre:

Lisa Marie Nowak was accustomed to hard training, prolonged deprivation and a strong sense of mission. But this is not exactly what NASA had in mind when they made her an astronaut.

Equipped with a knife, pellet pistol, can of pepper spray, steel mallet and 4 feet of rubber tubing, Nowak arrived at Orlando International Airport early Monday morning, police said, to confront one challenge the space agency had never considered: a romantic rival.

Nowak, 43, remains in Orange County Jail without bail on a variety of charges arising from a confrontation with Colleen Shipman, an Air Force captain whom she allegedly assaulted in the parking garage during what police characterized as an attempted kidnapping.

Touchdown Monkey!

Bruce Schneier weighs in with some excellent points.

More:

Wil Wheaton has this to say:

You know, if the goal of terrorists and the whole point of terrorism is to scare the shit out of us so badly that we leap ten feet in the air whenever someone says “boo,” then the terrorists are clearly kicking our national asses.

The folks at Making Light are also all over it; this rundown is entitled “Why the Boston Police have no credibility.”

The Agitator reminds us that the power imbalance between citizen and cop is getting worse all the time.

Techdirt reminds you that if your TV is too big, the NFL may think you’re infringing their copyright if you have folks over to watch the game tomorrow.

Pyrex is actually no longer Pyrex, and may well shatter if exposed to rapid temperature changes. The original, real McCoy Pyrex is a brand of borosilicate glass created largely FOR its enormous resistance to thermal shock; today, “Pyrex” is really just a brand of garden variety glass (it’s not even borosilicate), and is just as resistant to thermal shock as any other glass, which is to say “not at all.” Needless to say, there’s been no effort at all to make sure consumers know that Pyrex is no longer Pyrex, so many folks have been surprised in messy and dangerous ways when they trusted “new” Pyrex to be the same durable and solid material.

Basically, some beancounting marketer has destroyed the brand and thought nobody would notice. Don’t buy Pyrex.

Electrolite has easily the best summary of the whole “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” bullshit today in Boston. Here’s the money shot:

Implications:

1. The devices have been up for weeks in ten other cities, and no one’s panicked.

2. The devices have been up for weeks in ten other cities, and the Department of Homeland Security doesn’t know about it.

We don’t know which is sadder.

This. (Via MeFi)

Woman Jailed after Reporting Rape. As a consequence, she was also denied the morning-after pill while incarcerated because of the religious beliefs of a jail worker. Lovely.

They have declined to accredit some course from right-winger Christian schools that use profoundly questionable source materials; of course, the school is suing.

UC seems to be in a good position; from their own fact sheet:

Some of the courses rejected by UC used certain textbooks published by Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books as primary instructional materials. Although UC has approved courses that use other textbooks from these publishers, these books were reviewed by faculty who concluded they did not meet UC’s guidelines for primary textbooks. Had the courses at issue used these textbooks as supplementary, rather than primary, texts, it is likely they would have been approved.

The question the University must confront in reviewing these texts is not whether they have religious content, but whether they provide a comprehensive view of the relevant subject matter, reflecting knowledge generally accepted in the scientific and educational communities and with which a student at the university level should be conversant. In the books in question, the publishers themselves acknowledge that the primary goal is to teach religious doctrine rather than the scholarship that is generally accepted in the relevant fields of study. For example, the introduction to the primary textbook for the science courses in question states clearly that it teaches students that their conclusions must conform to the Bible, and that scientific material and methods are secondary (emph added.)

Um, holy cow. That’s right; it’s a science textbook that places the Bible and issues of faith over that of the scientific method and the observable world. If you’re in a science class that does that, it’s not a science class. It’s Sunday School. UC should be under no obligation to treat such courses the same as genuine work done at a real school.

The stakes here are high, but dammit, somebody has to take a stand for actual education. The fundie POV is explicitly anti-intellectual and anti-science; the whole idea that a course like that could get you into college is laughable, and we pray (yes) that the courts see that.

The ASCI and Calvary lawyers have framed this as outright religious discrimination, and an abridgement of freedom of speech. According to them, UC is reaching its Orwellian hand into their classrooms and dictating what they can and can’t teach. They can’t seem to distinguish the difference between someone saying, “We have standards, and this book or course doesn’t meet them,” (according to UC, between 10 and 15% of all high school courses they vet fail to make the grade; yet Calvary offers 43 other courses that UC accepts without issue), and outright religious discrimination.

UC is not telling them what to teach. They are still free to choose whatever curriculum they deem appropriate to a Christian education. What they’re asking for is freedom from facing the consequences of those choices. I can’t spend a semester reading whatever books I choose, and then accuse the university of discrimination when they flunk me for not knowing what’s in the syllabus. But that’s pretty much what Calvary is trying to do.

The lawsuit has already been in process for 18 months, and has survived preliminary hearings. It looks as though it will be coming to trial sometime this year. If UC wins (and their case looks good), it may set a powerful precedent that will allow other universities to take a stand for real science in the future. If they lose, all bets are off: no university anywhere will be allowed to set or maintain admissions standards. Such a ruling could undermine the foundations of merit-based secular education as we’ve known it — which may, in the end, be exactly what the plaintiffs are looking for.

Godspeed, UC.

In ten years, bananas may be extinct.

Eventually, it was a given that someone who came of age in the 70s would run for office, and that pictures like this would surface. About this, we can only say that we hope he remembers Lavon when it comes time to pick a running mate. Awwwwwww, yeah. Shut up and put your butt in the puddin’.

Of course, it’s still a profoundly stupid idea, but this is at least an improvement. Sort of. In the sense of being “marginally less stupid,” though, not “smarter.”