coercing confessions, FBI-style

An amazing story here:

The long and the short of it was that an Egpytian national, Abdallah Higazy, was staying in a hotel in New York City on September 11 and the hotel emptied out when the planes hit the towers. The hotel later found in the closet of his room a device that allows you to communicate with airline pilots. Investigators thought this guy had something to do with 9/11 so they questioned him. According to Higazi, the investigators coerced him into confessing to a role in 9/11. Higazi first adamantly denied any involvement with 9/11 and could not believe what was happening to him. Then, he says, the investigator said his family would go through hell in Egypt, where they torture people like Saddam Hussein. Higazy then realized he had a choice: he could continue denying the radio was his and his family suffers ungodly torture in Egypt or he confesses and his family is spared. Of course, by confessing, Higazy's life is worth garbage at that point, but ... well, that's why coerced confessions are outlawed in the United States.

So Higazy "confesses" and he's processed by the criminal justice system. His future is quite bleak. Meanwhile, an airline pilot later shows up at the hotel and asks for his radio back.

Can you believe this shit? Well, the good news is that he sues, and the judge rules that he is entitled to damages. However, then something strange happens after the opinion is posted online: the court has to take down the opinion and redact it, because the details of the FBI coercion are classified.

Imagine that.

political compass

An oldie but a goodie. It's a test created by (so it sounds, at least) political scientists in the UK that plots your political ideology on an X/Y axis. The X axis-- that's the horizontal one for the geometrically challenged-- represents the economic spectrum. Thus, people on the positive, or right, side believe in varying degrees that the government should not meddle in the market, while those on the left believe the government is obligated to provide certain basic services and ensure fair play in the marketplace.

The Y axis is related more directly to political power, specifically whether it should be located in the authorities (for those with positive scores) or in individuals (for the negatives). This is your quintessential fascists vs. hippies axis.

My score this time: -6.0, -5.23
My score 2 years ago: -6.25, -4.92

Apparently I'm slowly becoming less leftist and more civil libertarian.

They've since added some helpful info. Here they've tracked all the candidates currently running for president. I think Republican primary voters would be especially shocked to see this, though you lefties won't be so surprised. And here, even more shockingly, is the graph of the 2004 presidential election. I really think that this shows what Kerry campaigned as in the general, rather than his record as a senator, because I'm virtually positive that he's well to the left of where they put him.

putting the "oral" back in Oral Roberts University

I think we've been on this merry-go-round before.
Mrs. Roberts was crestfallen upon hearing her secrets exposed.

Conspicuous consumption. Living to excess. Public drunkenness. Sleeping with minors. Just another day in the Christian Right.

Gored

Here is a great little rant on the treatment Al Gore has received both of late and long ago. Some things never change.

bu-dum, pssssshhhh...

From AP:

SPARTANBURG, S.C. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate John McCain took one look at a nursing school's training mannequin and asked if the dummy's name was Hillary.

Campaigning Thursday at the University of South Carolina Upstate nursing school, McCain couldn't resist a swipe at Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"I was very glad to meet the dummy, named 'Hillary,'" McCain said to laughter after a tour of the school. "Is that the name?"

It wasn't. The dummy, or human simulator, doesn't have a name.

"Oh, that's a good one, Senator! Say, maybe you'd like to see the cadaver we let the students train with. We call it, 'John McCain's relevance.'"

Obama got blindsided by his own

So the Senate introduces a bill granting telcos immunity from lawsuits.

Dodd releases a statement condemning the bill.

Then the lefty blogs organize to lobby Chris Dodd to put a hold on the bill.

Then he does.

Then the lefty blogs crucify Obama for not beating Dodd to the punch?

Kudos to Dodd, but does Obama really deserve to take so much heat for this? Sure, Dodd put out a statement before he did, but wouldn't this be more fair if, I dunno, the lefty blogs had lobbied both Obama and Dodd?

And why is Edwards taking no flack for this? I know he can't put a hold on the bill, but to my knowledge he hasn't even released any statement condemning it. Neither has Clinton, and she is in a position to do something.

Furthermore, just 3 days ago Bush's nomination to the Federal Election Commission of Hans von Spakovsky, the mastermind behind the infamous purging of the Florida voter rolls in 2000 that literally cost Gore the election, was derailed by a hold in the Senate. What do you think would be our chances of ever having fair elections again if a guy like that gets his hands on the FEC? I'm thinking maybe that was a pretty important hold.

You probably can tell where I'm going with this. Who put that hold on him? Barack Obama. And yet Kos had the gall to say yesterday: "...for a guy who claims he's going to "challenge the status quo", Obama sure as heck has done none of that as of late." How quickly our deeds tumble down the memory hole.

Maybe us dirty bloggers should be happy that we at least have the 2-man team of Obama and Dodd keeping the Senate from handing W our entire democracy while Hillary Clinton sits by and wonders how tasty those powers will be in 2009.

poor Aggies

I didn't do this earlier, so here's my little gloat before we go to Columbia:

How do you get an Aggie to stop masturbating?

Answer: Paint his junk red and black. He won't beat it for 4 years.

35-7, bitchez.

"a hot circle of garbage"

Office fans, check it out.

Time: the Supremes don't matter anymore anyway,

so it's ok to vote for Giuliani.

Maybe it sounds like I'm impugning the motive of the writer, but how else can you explain an article that says this:

The irony is that the Court's ideology is playing a dwindling role in the lives of Americans. The familiar hot-button controversies--abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, police powers and so on--have been around so long, sifted and resifted so many times, that they now arrive at the court in highly specific cases affecting few, if any, real people. And it's not clear that Roberts wants to alter that trend.

Yeah, except that the death penalty has now been halted by the court not once but twice in the last 3 weeks. And one of the liberal Supremes, John Paul Stevens, was appointed practically during Reconstruction. And the GOP frontrunner for president is screaming from the rooftops that he'll put more Scalias on the bench, and everyone who's not a complete f**king fool (or a writer for Time Magazine, apparently) knows that one more Scalia = the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

worst. majority. ever.

From the Washington Post:

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

Disclosure of the deal followed a decision by House Democratic leaders to pull a competing version of the measure from the floor because they lacked the votes to prevail over Republican opponents and GOP parliamentary maneuvers.

The collapse marked the first time since Democrats took control of the chamber that a major bill was withdrawn from consideration before a scheduled vote. It was a victory for President Bush, whose aides lobbied heavily against the Democrats' bill, and an embarrassment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had pushed for the measure's passage.

Why? Why would you do this, Democrats? What kind of gutless chickenshits do you have to be to sell out the 4th Amendment just so the least popular president in history won't call you names?

News flash: he's going to call you names anyway.

I swear to God, only the Democrats would watch their approval ratings slip to 11% and then conclude that it's because they haven't been caving enough.

Greenwald reflects on how utterly inappropriate of a use of congressional power this is, since it's basically Congress intervening in a number of active litigations asking the very same questions as Congress, at least one of which AT&T recently lost, on behalf of major campaign contributors Verizon and AT&T.

And here's Kagro X with the rundown of the wording of the law and all the backdoor dealings that went down between the telecoms and the government.

"I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat." --Will Rogers

King Wilkie

Great new band out of Charlottesville, VA. Get on iTunes and check out their song "Wrecking Ball." It was on 91.1 Globe Radio this morning, and it's been in my head ever since.

what's wrong with renewables?

Just read this article on the GOP candidates' response to climate change, and I noticed something new: several of the candidates were willing to admit that global warming is real, and several even laid out "comprehensive" solutions, but none included current renewable energy technology (wind/solar/tidal/geothermal) in their grand solutions to stop climate change. Not one.

Why is that? What is it about renewable energy that is so offensive to conservatives?

I have a theory: because they're actual solutions. Notice the other things McCain and Romney and the others mention to stop climate change: clean coal, nuclear power, drilling in ANWR, more refineries, ethanol. ANWR and more refineries don't do anything to solve climate change (those are energy independence fixes). Nuclear power and ethanol are boondoggles, as ethanol barely produces more energy than it takes to produce it (and, apparently, drives up the price of corn), and nuclear power is enormously expensive-- moreso than anything but photovoltaics-- when you include all the hidden costs. There's a reason why power companies that invest in nuclear often have to ask the government for handouts a couple of years later to recoup their "stranded costs."

And, of course, there is no such thing as clean coal. Clean coal with carbon capture and sequestration (coal burning that doesn't contribute to climate change) is still in the "experimental phase." Like hydrogen fuel cells (yet another popular GOP chimera), time travel, and establishing colonies on Mars.

They did also mention conservation, but Republican lawmakers will often say they want conservation, but when pushed they admit that they only mean making a public service announcement asking people to "turn off their lights when they leave the house."

Renewable energy, on the other hand, is real, it is viable right now, and in some forms, it's even cheap! It can be established, at least to a degree, on an individual basis; any shmoe can put a wind turbine in his backyard or a solar panel on his roof. Farmers and ranchers can use it to supplement their income, becoming small-time energy producers in their own right. It creates jobs (someone has to build the things, right?). And, most importantly, it produces no CO2, nor any pollution of any kind (only the generators themselves are left over).

Pushing renewables, however, means cutting into the profit margins of oil, gas, coal, and electric companies. It means making some real change in the fabric of our country that doesn't involve the reversion to some utopian caricature of the 1950's. It means admitting that liberals were right on the environment--and the worst kind of liberal: the hippies. It means admitting that what's best for big business is not always what's best for America.

Thinking about it, this is merely another aspect of e. coli conservatism, the willingness to sacrifice the health and safety of your own constituents to protect the profit margins of big business. Sometimes it's the natural consequence of the doctrinaire, free market fundamentalist belief that deregulation is always good. To these people, the unfettered market is like Divine Providence on X, giddily weaving its way around the room touching all the worthy people. Other times it's merely because the politician in question is a wholly bought-and-owned susidiary of the companies that lobby him/her. Whether it's meat infested with bacteria, lead-painted toys, or climate change-causing coal, these conservatives are more than happy to subject you to it all day long if it means shares of ExxonMobil or Conagra gain $.40.

Do you really want one of these characters in the White House? Correction: do you really want another one of these characters in the White House?

bulls**t

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

you ran as a WHAT?

The GOP is on the verge of nominating for president a guy who self-identified as liberal only 10 years ago. 1996.

That's how badly W torched the brand.

Are you starting to get a sense of why Giuliani hasn't been too enthused about a Youtube debate?

Blackwater pulled guns on US soldiers

From MSNBC:

The colonel was furious. "Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers." He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad's Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company.
...
Unlike nearly everyone else who enters the Green Zone, said an American soldier who guards a gate, Blackwater gunmen refuse to stop and clear their weapons of live ammunition once inside. One military contractor, who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution in his industry, recounted the story of a Blackwater operative who answered a Marine officer's order to put his pistol on safety when entering a base post office by saying, "This is my safety," and wiggling his trigger finger in the air. "Their attitude was, 'We're f---ing security; we don't have to answer to anybody'."

You pay with your tax dollars for Blackwater agents to pull their firearms on American servicemen and -women, disarm them, and make them lie flat in the streets of Baghdad.

Here's a couple of questions I have: what if the soldiers hadn't backed down? Would the mercenaries have shot them? How long until there IS a firefight between Blackwater and the US Army? How long until one of the mercenaries kills an American soldier? And what, exactly, could the US government, by whose laws Blackwater is not bound in Iraq, do about it?

take back your pot pies

Unbelievable. ANOTHER recall, this time by (surprise!) big Ag company Conagra. From The Chicago Tribune:

ConAgra Foods Inc. recalled all its Banquet pot pies and store brand varieties Thursday after the products were linked to a nationwide salmonella outbreak. The company included beef pot pies in the recall after initially saying only the chicken and turkey pot pies should not be eaten. ConAgra issued a consumer alert Tuesday and asked stores nationwide to stop selling the poultry pot pies, but the company stopped short of a recall until Thursday evening.
...
The pot pies made by ConAgra have been linked to at least 165 cases of salmonella in 31 states. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at least 30 people have been hospitalized as part of the ongoing outbreak, but so far no deaths have been linked to the pot pies. The company and federal officials warned customers not to eat the pot pies and to throw them away, and ConAgra is offering refunds. The store brand versions are sold under the names of Albertson's, Hill Country Fare, Food Lion, Great Value (sold at Wal-Mart stores), Kirkwood, Kroger, Meijer and Western Family.

And the USDA did nothing; Conagra had to initiate the recall themselves because so many people were getting sick and they were getting sued, but the USDA dragged their feet and failed to figure out the meat was diseased until after it had already been a) slaughtered b) cut up into small pieces c) blended into little pies, d) frozen, e)shipped to Wal-Marts all over the country, f) unpacked from trucks and moved into storage in the stores, g) moved to the front of the shelves after all the older pies were sold, h) bought, i) taken home, and j) baked.

But remember, folks: government regulation is bad for big business, and what's bad for big business is bad for America. Another win for e. coli conservatism!

Funny how every single one of these recalls, be they food, toys, or whatever, always seems to involve stuff sold at Wal-Mart.

Salmonella thrives best in conditions where lots of chicken are couped close to each other, exposed to each other's feces and whatnot, like in industrial feedlots. Free range chickens are far less likely to cause salmonella, unless, of course, they're processed in slaughterhouses/meat packing plants that also kill industrially raised chickens.

Salmonella also is found in eggs, which is just great news for those of us who like them sunny side up.

Cowboys vs. Patriots

CBS, 4:15ET on Sunday is the game of the season (potentially). The old powerhouse vs. the new powerhouse? Tom Brady vs. the next Tom Brady? Once great, not-quite-washed-up receiver with an attitude problem vs.... uh...? Does Dallas have the D to get this done? Is it even possible to stop an offense with Tom Brady AND Randy Moss? What does it mean if the Patriots win, if anything? Who's it gonna be?

My pick is the Patriots, who I wanna hate but kinda like, over the Cowboys, who I really hate but actually love, and always root for in spite of myself. I wonder if this is what William Faulkner would feel like while watching Ken Burns' Civil War documentary.

In other news, big chance on Saturday for the Red Raiders against A&M, coming to Lubbock, as always, with a suspect pass D (the Aggies haven't won there in 15 years), which, coincidentally, is sorta like playing Boston College with a weak secondary, or for that matter a herd of inexperienced running backs. I say a "herd" because they might be large beasts that run fast, but when they get spooked they just close their eyes and bolt; they don't really know where they're going.

The winner of the game in Lubbock, in all likelihood, will be ranked next week. The winner of the game in South Bend, on the other hand, will still be #4.

UPDATE: Aggies got their heads kicked in, 35-7. Delicious.

John McCain's health care plan

A strong dose of finger-wagging at patients for not buying insurance, getting too much care, eating too much, and always suing their doctors, combined with a solid regimen of cutting the number of procedures Medicare covers and using that money to subsidize HMO profits.

If that's not a winning combination, I don't know what is!

Oh, and a message for the Mitthead and Ru9/11dy: ya know what's the most "portable" insurer of health care? Medicare.

neato test

Are you right-brained or left-brained? Most people are left-brained, which means they see the dancer in the link moving counter-clockwise. I saw her moving clockwise, so I guess I'm right-brained (though I did get her to change direction!)

Apparently that means I'm big on these functions:

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
"big picture" oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can "get it" (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking

UPDATE: I'm starting to wonder if they didn't screw up this test. Sounds like everyone sees the dancer going clockwise.

Notre Dame needs more Jesuits

Dan Wetzel makes a point apropos of many of our ND discussions:

Boston College has a whole bunch of numbers going for it right now. There is the record (6-0), the national ranking (No. 4) and the possible position in the Heisman race for quarterback Matt Ryan (No. 1).

Then there is the number that makes the Eagles one of the most unlikely national title contenders in years: 93.

That's the graduation rate for BC football players according to the latest NCAA figures. The Eagles finished third in the country behind Navy (95) and Northwestern (94).

Wetzel also notes that the Admissions Dept. at BC doesn't lower its standards for student-athletes.

I'm pulling this out because I think BC puts the lie to the old Theismann canard that ND needs to decide whether it's gonna have academic integrity or a quality football program, because "athletes" (generally assumed to be African American football recruits with 4.3 40's) just can't perform to strong academic standards and will always turn such a program down for a school that lets them merely pretend to be in college. It just ain't so.

In fact, I think Notre Dame's commitment to both athletic AND academic excellence is one of the (few) great philosophical stances the school has taken. Notre Dame doesn't separate the meatheads from the nerds, because it believes brains and brawn don't always have to be separate; balance both within a student body and within a student's body are possible, even preferable.

There's a second, and perhaps even more important, lesson in the BC/ND tack as well: you don't have to sacrifice your principles to be successful. If there's anything religious institutions like Notre Dame and Boston College try to ingrain in their students, that is it.