The Boston Globe is reporting that GOP members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have been infiltrating their Democratic rivals’ computer files for a year (at least).
Just imagine the field day the GOP would have with this if the situation were reversed.
Pointed out by My Attorney:
Don’t you drink? I notice you speak slightingly of the bottle. I have drunk since I was fifteen and few things have given me more pleasure. When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whisky? When you are cold and wet what else can warm you? Before an attack who can say anything that gives you the momentary well-being that rum does? The only time it isn’t good for you is when you write or when you fight. You have to do that cold. But it always helps my shooting. Modern life, too, is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
Speak slightingly of the bottle? Not I. Cheers.
My house has very tall ceilings on the second and third floors, which means very inconveniently placed smoke detectors. In our bedroom, the device is about twelve feet up, if not more. This is, of course, exactly where you want such a device, but this is not without its challenges.
As I am not twelve feet tall, I had not bothered to inspect said detector since moving in. I could see a red light, and assumed all was well. They’re integral detectors with a backup battery, so drain on the battery is presumably quite low — so low, in fact, that it took more than three years for the battery to began circling the drain, emitting its beep occasionally and irregularly, but (mostly) not at night.
We, of course, ignored it.
As the beep became more frequent and persistent, we began asking friends about borrowing ladders, but the logistics were always a bit ugly — neither Erin nor I own a car that can transport an extension ladder long enough to reach the detector. The best option seemed to be walking such a ladder over from Chris and Joann’s place, about half a mile away — a plan that was appealing on a surreal level, at least. (“Where are you going with that ladder?” “What ladder?”)
Saturday night, the beeps reached a fever pitch. Around 4:00 AM, we decamped to the spare bedroom and promised ourselves we’d resolve the battery issue on Sunday, and that we did. At Home Depot — previously maligned in this space, you may recall — we located a weird sort of hybrid ladder made by Gorilla (not “made by A gorilla,” mind you) that manages to be both an extension ladder and a stepladder. It’s quite a clever animal, and compact to boot — in its extension form, it’s good for eighteen feet, but is only about five and a half feet long when fully folded; a similar extension ladder would be twice as long. It wasn’t cheap — $200, vs. about $120-$150 for a regular extension ladder — but the added flexibility more than compensates. It’s certainly cheaper than owning BOTH types, and takes up less space to boot.
Of course, this development makes me wonder how long ladders as a category have gone without significant advances in design or materials. Certainly extension ladders became more viable at greater lengths as materials got lighter and stronger, but they’re still fundamentally a straight-line unsupported ladder, and I’d be willing to guess such devices have been around for thousands of years. In any case, it appears that the Gorilla is the result not of material science advances, but of simple human cleverness, and that appeals to this here geek.
NASA is using something called Aerogel as the collector for that comet-material catching mission. The substance is the least-dense solid ever, yet can support a huge amount of weight. It’s a near-perfect insulator, of course.
I want some.
Just about every amusing bit that we used to pass around the Internet before it became “September Forever“) is available at milk.com, which I found by looking for that story about heavy boots.
(No idea what I’m talking about? Don’t worry about it.)
Get Your War On does Mars.
Two defendents apparently winning their medical pot case in California court have been arrested by the Feds to stand trial under Federal laws, which of course don’t recognize California’s decision to allow medical use.
While their defense attorneys were meeting in the judge’s chambers to discuss the case with Tehama County assistant district attorney Lynn Strom, Strom announced that she was dropping the state charges because Davidson and Blake were being arrested in the courtroom on a federal indictment.
Good God, when will this kind of crap stop? Actually, I know the answer: never, unless we get ideologues out of the White House and DOJ. Remember this in November.
Marshall’s coup of an interview is here. Read it even if you think Bush is on the right track. Seriously.
Specifically, he lives in Oregon.
So far, I’ve been silent on the recess appointment of my cousin Charles Pickering (his father and my great-grandmother were siblings) to the 5th Circuit. I’ve said before he was getting a bad rap, and that Bush’s other right-winger judicial nominees (some openly hostile to the idea of Constitutional Privacy altogether, which is to say hostile to not just Roe but also Griswold) were a much greater cause for concern. Judge Pickering is a Republican, of course, but we can hardly expect progressive judicial nominations from a neocon-dominated administration. I do believe he is a fair jurist, and that he’s been treated very poorly by the political process — though I understand why, too; it’s a bed the GOP made for eight years.
In any case, I think, perhaps, I can say all I need to say on the subject of the recess appointment with this quote:
“Any appointment of a federal judge during a recess should be opposed.” Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) opposing the appointment of an African American judge, December 2000
I agree, Trent. It does seems wrong, doesn’t it?
Some tourists saw some killer whales off Port Aransas this weekend.
That’s Port Aransas, TEXAS. Who knew? Well, apparently several people; the article notes that they suspect about 70 of ’em live in the Gulf, but they’re not often seen. Neat. Just don’t tell the game and fish commission, or some good ol’ boy will try to hook one.
Oh, and recognizing that this is a story linked to a TV station’s web site, let’s try not to imagine the dialog surrounding this story during whatever newscast it graced, since it almost certainly included “Some local fisherman had a whale of a time on Sunday…” Gack.
Someone’s done a reasonably exhaustive guide to electonic music, complete with subgenre relationships, samples, and pithy commentary. Don’t miss his discussion, on the home page, of “Funky Drummer.”
Pocket Smalltalk, for Palms.
It’s well documented at this point that CBS has refused to carry an anti-Bush ad by the progressive group MoveOn.org during the Super Bowl on the grounds that they don’t run “issue ads.”
Er, right. Of course, they do plan to run one of those hamhanded, ridiculous, Office of National Drug Control Policy ads, which I’m pretty sure counts as an “issue ad.”
Lessig points out why we ought to be concerned about this.
Girls Eating Sandwiches. SFW, as far as I can tell.
The Wacko Moonie Washington Times is reporting on a study ranking Mississippi as the most corrupt state in the union. Oh, joy.
The best part, though, is probably this Baton Rouge headline.
Some rural California firefighters are walking off the job to protest the fact that one of their colleagues has an adult web site.
In the current New Yorker, George Bush is quoted as saying “No President has ever done more for human rights than I have.” Billmon points out why this might be just a bit off base.
They’re challenging a WHO report on reducing obesity on the grounds that reducing fats and sugars in favor of more fruits and vegetables is “faulty science.” It couldn’t have anything to do with the beef industry or the sugar lobby, could it?
In their never-ending quest to establish more-or-less unfettered, unregulated industry, the Office of Management & Budget is attempting to get control of governmental peer review. This is blatent power grab, and yet another attempt by this Administration to have ideology trump science.
Predictably, it’s getting very little coverage.
Josh Marshall points out today that it took Justice 74 days after Novak outed Valerie Plame’s name to start an investigation into who leaked the name of a secret CIA operative, but only ONE day for them to draw knives on Paul O’Neill for allegedly taking secret Treasury documents with him. Of course, their real grievance is that he’s criticizing the adminstration, but that’s not illegal.
Yet.
Adobe actually has a page on its site detailing the proper use of the word “Photoshop.” Hint: you must not use it as a verb. You shouldn’t use it without saying “Adobe” first.
Err, right. Language is always checking with corporations before evolving. Just ask Xerox. Or Kleenex.
Mars’ day is 39 minutes longer than ours, which presents a bit of a problem for the Mars team at NASA, since they’re running the lander project on Martian time.
To facilitate this, NASA has arranged for the creation of a limited number of mechanical watches set to run Martian time.
So, Hewlett-Packard announced that they’ll be licensing Apple’s iPod to sell as their own music device. They’re also set to preinstall iTunes for Windows on all their new PCs.
Microsoft is crying foul, complaining that this “reduces choice.” I think what they mean is “reduces our complete control.”
An Army War College report presents a scathing critique of the scope of the “Global War On Terrorism” and the distraction of the Iraqi invasion.
It seems certain that we’ll see a news item noting that its author has been dismissed within a fortnight.
In the last week or so, some interesting bits have come to light regarding Saddam, Iraq, and the alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction — those selfsame weapons that Tony Blair said could be launched with 45 minutes’ notice.
First, an exhaustive report appeared in the Washington Post firmly establishing that any WMD arsenal in Iraq was on paper only. Previous announcements by Bush that we had located “mobile weapons labs” have been termed “premature,” “embarrassing,” and “a fiasco” by David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group. Those trailers, it seems, were actually used for the production of helium for use in weather balloons (which the Iraqis used as artillary spotters).
Now, this week, we get former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s statement that Bush had planned to oust Saddam long before 9/11, and that the terror attacks and claims of WMD were simply means to that end. According to O’Neill, the administration’s position was “find me a way to do this.” Oddly, this story isn’t getting much play, which is bewildering to me and to the proprietor over at Whiskey Bar, who says:
Personally, I think it’s kind of a big deal when a president deliberately sets the wheels in motion to invade another country, before the events later used to justify the war have even taken place. To me that seems like a story worth pursuing.
So: No weapons exist, or are likely to be found; and a former cabinet official has publically stated that the search for such weapons was at best a pretext for a preimptive war in the works since Bush took office, long before the 9/11 attacks.
Make of this what you will.
We’ve all seen plenty of far-right fundie websites complaining about short-haired women, or women who wear pants, or versions of the Bible other than the King James, but the folks at DemonBuster.com take the prize, but only because they’re such a throwback. Basically, everything bad is because of EVIL SPIRITS and DEMONS. Have a look at what they have to say about:
Finally, I’m sure Frank will be happy to know that they’ve done extensive research into the area of diabetes. As it happens, it’s caused by a 10-armed squid demon, which you’ll need to cast out instead of piercing your flesh with those needles, because eventually you’ll have to get the mark of the beast to get that insulin, and then where will you be?
Now a squid has ten (10) arms and an octopus has eight (8) arms. In the study of mind control we found out there was an octopus type spirit with 8 arms. With a squid type spirit it has 10 arms and such is the case with the spirit of DIABETES.
You can’t make this shit up.
The second Gulf War had many victims, but perhaps the least of those was the career of Jerry Haleva, Saddam Impersonator (as we noted back in March).
Weep for Jerry no more; he’s back, and insurgent-quagmire be damned.
Really, really, really strong magnets for sale. Cheap.
While Chris Kirk was out of town, some friends wrapped every item in his apartment with tin foil. (Via BoingBoing)
American Conservative Magazine is running an excellent article the Bush Administration’s use of bogus “protest zoning,” arrest, and intimidation to stifle protest and dissent at Presidential appearances, presumably to keep the protesters out of campaign photos and footage.
Read it, and remember that this is a perspective from the Right. Salon.com covered this back in October.
These 9 drawings were created by an artist under the influence of LSD as part of a government test in the 1950s.
Wired News is reporting on the Administration’s newest power grab, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, which grants the FBI access to financial records without judicial oversight. The law also, of course, prohibits intitutions from disclosing that the Feds are sniffing around, natch.
The bill passed the House in November with no uproar at all — it’s of course part of a larger bill with politically untouchable provisions. The Senate approved it on a “voice vote,” which means there’s no record of how our representatives voted.
From the Wired News piece:
But Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minnesota), who opposed the legislation, told the House, “It is clear the Republican leadership and the administration would rather expand on the USA Patriot Act through deception and secrecy than debate such provisions in an open forum.”
This Must Stop.
The Guardian is running an op-ed by Osama bin Laden calling for jihad.
While initially disturbing, there’s a significant argument to be made that this is a case of “give ’em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves.”
You can now search the Accumulated Heathen. Rejoice.
The domain is misleading.
Next up: Far From Heaven.I mean, after I work some, and watch some bad TV, and sit on the couch sneezing and coughing.
Pork Martini. No, really.
