Frank notes that perhaps I was unfair to Mississippi yesterday, so I’ve provided supplemental and clarifying remarks in reply to his comments.

On one hand, we have shameless mouthpiece Condi Rice, insisting in New York (NYT link; use nogators/nogators) that the terror attacks happened because prior administrations didn’t do enough to stop terrorism (odd, by the way, that instead of just naming Clinton, she used a phrase that implicitly damns GHWB as well, not to mention the Gipper himself). Er, right, Condi.

As a counterpoint, I’ll note that Clinton’s attempts at neutralizing Osama bin Laden are frequently held up as “wag the dog” scenarios by the Right, happening as they did during the GOP’s 7-year attempt to remove Clinton from office. Make of this what you will.

On the other hand, we have Paula Zahn being horrified that 9/11 is being used for political gain in this election cycle. Is she talking about Condi Rice? No. She means Wes Clark’s comments:

There is no way this administration can walk away from its responsibility for 9/11. You can’t blame something like this on lower-level intelligence officers, however badly they communicated memos with each other. The buck rests with the commander-in-chief, right on George W. Bush’s desk.

Zahn and her guest, Joe Klein, behave as if the notion of a leader taking responsibility for events that happen on his watch comes straight from Red China, or at least Mars. They say nothing, of course, of the aforementioned “not my fault” claim from Rice, and conveniently fail to mention the fact that the Bush White House has done everything in its power to avoid cooperating with the Congressional 9/11 investigation. An inciteful analysis of this little bit can be had at the oft-cited, always compelling Slacktivist.

Who’s politicizing 9/11? Tell me again: which president’s go-it-alone, isolationist, we-ought-not-be-nation-building policies ruled the roost until September 10? You do the math. Obviously the truly responsible parties are (a) atomized bits languishing in Fishkill; and (b) Osama bin Laden, whereabouts unknown. However, the buck does stop at 1600 Pennsylvania. He doesn’t get blame, but as our President he is expected to take responsibility. To do so would be a mark of character, which heretofore has been something that mattered to the GOP. Instead, we get the behavior Slacktivist describes here:

To this very day, the Bush administration is stonewalling the commission led by Tom Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey. This determined refusal to investigate smells rotten — it stinks of corruption, complicity and an utter rejection of adult responsibility.

The Justice Department has been trying for quite some time to prevent the release of an independent workforce diversity study. It finally turned loose of the document this week, though nearly half of it was redacted.

Nobody told Justice, however, that the format they released it in (PDF Image+Text) retained the redacted portions, so now the whole thing is available via MemoryHole. Clever, aren’t they? (Calpundit coverage).

GOP bigwig and almost-certain Mississippi governor Haley Barbour is busily wrapping himself in the Confederate Battle Flag via his campaign literature, no doubt to appeal to those who see removing the symbol from the state flag as creeping Yankee-ism. Many in the state (two years ago, the vote was 2 to 1 to keep the current state flag) continue to insist that it’s a symbol of “heritage, not hate,” and that it’s tied to Southern history and not the war specifically.

This is, of course, absurdly wrong. The battle flag wasn’t used until the South took up arms against the Union and its Constitution. It’s not about State’s Rights (an argument which seems to suggest that states need not honor the Bill of Rights). It’s not about heritage. It’s about a war fought over slavery, and our ancestors seemed to think owning people was a good idea — or, at least, they wanted to fight for their right to do so.

The most stunning thing to me is how hell-bent some folks seem on keeping the battle flag despite how offensive it is to a huge percentage of Americans and Mississippians. Even if the heritage argument held water, it’s still indisputably a flag tied directly to a treasonous regime dedicated to positions such as this:

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [i.e., opposing the notion that all men are created equal – ed]; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. March, 1861 speech by CSA VP Alexander Stephens, cited here.

Given that, what do we gain by insisting on its continued presence on our flags? And what do we lose? And what would our mommas say about us clinging to this battle flag despite the distress it causes the decendents of those same slaves? What does this say about us? And what does Barbour’s cynical use of it, and almost certain success therein, say about my home state?

I want to be proud of Mississippi. I really do. But issues like Barbour and the battle flag make it damned hard to convince outsiders that my home state isn’t full of unreconstructed racists.

Hollywood, Inc., is about to win another battle in the war on Fair Use and flexible technology. The FCC is set to approve something called the Broadcast Flag, which will require that personal computers and other devices contain technology to block unauthorized copying of copyrighted content. This will make just about every existing computer and operating system illegal, and is unlikely to sit well with just about anybody who isn’t Jack Valenti. The Electronic Frontier Foundation — a fine organization you should support — has coverage here and provides a way for you to make your voice heard here. The Washington Post‘s Jonathan Krim summarizes the issue in a column from a week ago.

Read. Act.

A trade group representing Diebold & others is working on a PR offensive designed to counter critics’ charges that the machines are unreliable, insecure, and tailor-made to facilitate election fraud. This, presumably, in lieu of manufacturing a secure, auditable system that we could, you know, TRUST. From the story:

David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University who runs a website called VerifiedVoting.org , said: “The voting machine industry doesn’t have a PR problem. It has a technology problem. It is impossible to determine whether their machines, in their current form, can be trusted with our elections.” Instead of trying to convince people the machines are safe, the industry should fix the technology and restore public confidence by “making the voting process transparent, improving certification standards for the equipment and (ensuring) there is some way to do a recount if there is a question about an election,” Dill said.

In a surprise move, however, Diebold has reversed its position on issuing paper receipts to voters.

I hate to keep baning the Diebold voting machine danger drum, but dammit, it’s important. The Independent has a great story on the direction voting technology is taking in this country, and how dangerous it is to the very idea of one man, one vote. READ IT. A sample:

The vote count was not conducted by state elections officials, but by the private company that sold Georgia the voting machines in the first place, under a strict trade-secrecy contract that made it not only difficult but actually illegal – on pain of stiff criminal penalties – for the state to touch the equipment or examine the proprietary software to ensure the machines worked properly. There was not even a paper trail to follow up.

If that doesn’t scare the bejesus out of you, I don’t know what will.

The Agonist has a great rundown of a variety of stories on the leak investigation, including the ongoing call for a special prosecutor as well as the first public appearance by Plame herself. Novak, of course, continues to hide behind his (negligable) journalistic integrity (never mentioning, of course, his own anger when Mike Spann was “outed” as a CIA operative in the early days of the Afghan war — after he was killed; for Novak, outing the dead is apparently wrong, but the living are fair game).

Easily the best story of the lot is also covered in a Slacktivist post. It seems Bush is really upset about this whole leak thing, and he’s made it clear on no uncertain terms that such leaks from his staff will have serious consequences. How do we know this? To quote the Philadelphia Inquirer:

WASHINGTON -Concerned about the appearance of disarray and feuding within his administration as well as growing resistance to his policies in Iraq, President Bush – living up to his recent declaration that he is in charge – told his top officials to “stop the leaks” to the media, or else. News of Bush’s order leaked almost immediately. Bush told his senior aides Tuesday that he “didn’t want to see any stories” quoting unnamed administration officials in the media anymore, and that if he did, there would be consequences, said a senior administration official who asked that his name not be used.

A more accurate description of this turn of events is almost certainly “theater for the masses;” they want to look like they’re doing something, when in reality they’re anything but serious about this investigation.

Just ask the Stars and Stripes.

The White House is using the Secret Service and local police to sequester dissenting voices in “free speech areas” far from motorcades, media, and the public at large at Presidential appearances. Just dissenters, not supporters, mind you.

There is no reasonable justification for this behavior. It’s certainly not safety; do we think a militant anti-Bush nut bent on violence can’t pretend to be a supporter long enough to get closer? I think not. This is about control, about scripting appearances, and about hiding and marginalizing dissent. This is not American. We’re said to be fighting those who “hate freedom,” but what do actions like this suggest about those leading that fight?

Lots, I’ll tell you. Actually, instead of telling you, I’ll point you at Slacktivist again, who provides an excellent discussion of the idea of NMPW. It is pretty much without exception a bone thrown to the hard right, for whom protecting marriage means making sure gay people don’t get married. That we could have such an “official” week without discussing issues like domestic violence should make clear what the actual agenda is.

Homeland Security sent a Homeland Security employee’s fiancee back to Germany for no good reason last week. Read this. There have been dozens of stories like this, and some turn out to be fabrications or misrepresentations. I’ll be very interested to discover that rationale, if any, DOHS is able claim for holding her for 20 hours and shipping her home despite her valid documents.

Well, Mr. Bush, among other things it prohibits collective punishments, like bulldozing orchards because their owners won’t tell you anything about the resistance attacks.

That the owners may not know anything is, of course, immaterial.

The embattled White House — in the midst of an avoidable quagmire in Iraq, an utter lack of WMD, no real connection between Saddam and Al Queda, and a complete failure in locating either boogeyman we’ve been chasing for 2+ years (not to mention the Plame affair) — has gone on the offensive. Powell, Rice, and Cheney have all given aggressive speeches in the last week (Cheney’s was apparently the standout) wherein they insist again how justified the action in Iraq was, how bad Saddam was, how useless the UN was, and how (PNAC-style) we can and should do anything we want. (They leave out the whole lies-about-yellowcake bit, not to mention the complete-lack-of-postwar-planning bit, and don’t even ask about the how-can-we-afford-to-do-this-alone problem.)

Also included in this PR offensive may be a campaign of identical letters from different soldiers published in newspapers across the country this week. Gee, I wonder who wrote them?

Did David Kay find evidence of Iraqi WMD or not? It’s hard to tell from the media, which can’t be trusted to actually, you know, ask questions, but fortunately there’s handy examination of the findings disclosed so far. Hint: the White House isn’t happy.j

Yeah, you read that right. A Fresno, California liberal group (Peace Fresno) discovered that the quiet guy taking notes in their meetings who claimed to be “independently wealthy” was in fact an undercover sheriff’s detective (who died in a motorcycle accident on August 30; coverage of his death in the paper included a photo that members noticed).

Local law enforcement insists there was no investigation of the group (described in the article as “a bunch of Unitarian schoolteachers”), and that there are no documents or notes resulting from his surveillance. The officer’s family insist he was unlikely to be a member of the group on his own time, however, and he was using an assumed name for his role there.

In July, state attorney general Bill Lockyer told California law enforcement to not collect intelligence on religious or political groups without evidence of criminal activity. But under the federal Homeland Security Act of 2002, intelligence agents can look at acts of civil disobedience and minor law-breaking.

Shit like this gives me The Fear.

This Administrations’ Drug Czar (John Walters) wants to institute random drug tests of schoolkids. I have a notion that treating kids like criminals isn’t the best way to teach them to be citizens, but maybe there are folks who think it’s best if they’re just brought up to do what they’re told. (via TalkLeft)

Does anyone else think it’s curious that the “War on (Some) Drugs” is being ramped up when we’re in a quagmire in Iraq, we can’t find Saddam or Osama, and the economy is languishing?

With all the attention focussed on the White House and the DOJ’s investigation thereof vis a vis the Plame affair, one basic avenue appears essentially unexplored: why not go to Bob Novak himself and insist that he disclose his source? Journalists are subpoenaed every day to participate in trials and investigations, with varying degrees of success. There’s certainly a stance that suggests that pursuing Novak would be inappropriate and contrary to our free press, but, as Mark Dowie points out in Salon, there is little doubt what Ashcroft’s DOJ might have done had Novak been a partisan columnist for that other party.

Remember before, when I noted how the grad student at Princeton may well have violated the law by pointing out the using the shift key will bypass SunnComm’s new “copy protection” on CDs? Go on back and read the other entries, if you want: one and two.

SunnComm is suing him. Excellent response, boys: rather than, you know, selling a product that doesn’t suck, or (failing that) abandoning the snake oil business altogether, you sue the guy who points out that your emperor is as naked as a jaybird. It’s worth noting, I’m sure, that SunnComm’s stock is down 20% — to something like twelve cents a share — since the introduction of this “technology” (which they tauted as serious best-of-breed stuff, shockingly enough; I’m not sure if it’s fair to blame the guy that says your boat’s full of holes if it turns out not to float).

N.B. that the complaint utterly ignores the whole idea of Fair Use:

SunnComm is taking a stand here because we believe that those who own property, whether physical or digital, have the ultimate authority over how their property is used. Owning copying technology is not an unconditional ‘free pass’ to replicate or distribute protected work.

I guess that only applies to them owning the copyright, and not to me owning the CD, huh?

The Vatican is insisting now that condoms do not in fact stop the AIDS virus, so there’s no reason for people in AIDS-ravaged countries to use them.

The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which the HIV virus can pass – potentially exposing thousands of people to risk. The church is making the claims across four continents despite a widespread scientific consensus that condoms are impermeable to the HIV virus. A senior Vatican spokesman backs the claims about permeable condoms, despite assurances by the World Health Organisation that they are untrue.

Do we really need further proof how absurdly out of touch this Church is? It’s a political organization with a right-wing agenda. Given the AIDS rate and horrifying life-expectancy statistics in many African countries, it’s hard to see claims like this as anything but pure, unadulterated evil.

The White House’s response to the Plame affair has been pretty absurd so far, but now they’re into theater. By insisting on disclosure from 2,000 people, they’ve cast the net so wide they’re almost certain to allow the real culprit to escape. Novak’s “Senior Officials” must have come from a group much smaller than 2,000 Executive employees, and smart money is on folks very close to the Oval Office.

Not that they care, of course. They have aggressively tried to shape this as an issue of an innocuous leak, not one that put real people in real danger and that really, honest-to-God violated Federal law. Now Bush is saying he has “no idea” whether Justice will find the person responsible. I’m sure Ashcroft’s DOJ is working overtime on this one, too, aren’t you?

(All via Prof. Felton’s Freedom to Tinker blog)

SunnComm’s president asserts in today’s Boston Globe that nothing in Alex Halderman’s report (noted yesterday) is surprising to them. BMG spokesperson Nathaniel Brown insists even they were completely aware of how trivial the new “protection” is to circumvent (to recap: press “shift” when you put in the CD). The Globe continued:

”There’s nothing in his report that’s surprising,” said SunnComm president Bill Whitmore. ”There’s nothing in the report that I’m concerned about.” Whitmore said his company’s system is simply supposed to give honest music lovers a legal way to make copies for personal use, not to stop large-scale piracy.

I suppose pointing out that we already have a legal way to make copies for personal use with perfectly normal CDs would be rude, huh? I’ll go ahead and say it anyway: making copies for personal use — say, to put on your iPod, or to use in your car — is perfectly legal. It’s called Fair Use, but the RIAA would like very much to make that go away.

Whitmore goes on to note that future versions of this protection will be harder to circumvent, since they will interact directly with the computer’s operating system, and that “the deployment of this mechanism will be throughout all operating systems.” Really, Bill? Even Linux and FreeBSD and Mac OS X? I doubt it.

A few things are worth noting here. First, I wonder if they’re deploying something so trivial to bypass simply because of the anti-circumvention clauses in the DMCA — i.e., as sort of an additional gotcha on top of the RIAA’s sue-kids-and-grandmothers strategy.

Second, you gotta wonder how much BMG paid for this absurdly trivial “copy protection” mechanism. I mean, c’mon, people; this is a bad joke. As Halderman points out, this isn’t some “dark secret of computer science.” Anyone with a brain can figure out how to bypass this “security.”

Finally, I want to point out that what he means when he says this tool will be integrated into your operating system, he means that future computers from Microsoft (and maybe others, but probably not) will include code specifically designed to STOP YOU from doing things that those computers can do now. Music files aren’t distinct from other files, nor are video files. Music files you make with a kazoo and a $5 microphone aren’t distinct from copies of the new OutKast CD. The flexibility of computing is that you an do anything you want to any of these files. DRM means, basically, removing that flexibility. This is why it’s unlikely that the programmers behind Linux and FreeBSD will support such schemes: removing flexibility is anathema to these people, and for good reason.

Food for thought.