Another Document Dump

Ken AshfordAttorney FiringsLeave a Comment

Yesterday saw even more documents from the White House in the attorney purge scandal, and this one, while small, provides far more proof that the White House was heavily involved in the DOJ’s hiring and firing decisions of federal prosecutors.  Carpetbagger sums it up.

UPDATE:  The lastest doc dump has sparked two significant subpoenae — one to Harriet Miers, and one to Sara Taylor. 

CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin reports, “The White House has made clear it will cite executive privilege for conversations that took place within the White House on the U.S. attorney matter, and if the people with those conversations happen to have subsequently left the White House, that doesn’t matter. They’re still going to cite executive privilege, and these people are not going to be allowed to testify anytime soon, it appears, if the White House remains as it has been. … Even if they want to testify.”

This thing ain’t over yet.

WMDs On Our Coastline

Ken AshfordEnvironment & Global Warming & EnergyLeave a Comment

The Army has admitted to secretly dumping over 64 million pounds of biochemical weapons materials — along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste — off the coast of the United States.

(Click graphic to enlarge)

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Thought you might like to know that.  This guy found out….

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Fact Checking The Fact Checkers

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/IdiocyLeave a Comment

Right-wing columnist Andrew Ferguson wrote a hit piece on Al Gore’s new book for the Washington Post, which started this way:

You can’t really blame Al Gore for not using footnotes in his new book, "The Assault on Reason." It’s a sprawling, untidy blast of indignation, and annotating it with footnotes would be like trying to slip rubber bands around a puddle of quicksilver. Still, I’d love to know where he found the scary quote from Abraham Lincoln that he uses on page 88.

You get the gist of what Ferguson is trying to say in his slam piece: Gore is just writing any old blather down, without giving citations and sources, so how can you trust Gore’s facts?

Slight problem for Ferguson, though.  It turns out that Gore’s book, while not having footnotes, has 20 pages of endnotes.  And in the endnotes, Gore does source the Lincoln quote on page 88.

Now, what happened here?  Did Ferguson not bother to look through the entire book before he critiqued it for its supposed lack of sourcing?  Or was he trying to pull a fast one on his readers, by making a lame footnote/endnote distinction?

In any event, Ferguson’s column was originally titled (very ironically) "Fact Check", but since Ferguson’s error (deception?) have been noted, the column title has been changed and the Post has had to run a rather embarrassing correction at the top, letting readers know that the Post itself apparently dropped the ball when it failed to properly factcheck Ferguson’s "factchecking".

Tom Schaller at Tapped has more.

Do Albanians Love Bush Or Did They Just Want His Watch?

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

It must be nice for President Bush to go someplace and have adoring crowds cheer him.  That’s reportedly the reaction he got yesterday in Albania, which is probably the only place on the planet where such a reaction would happen.

Here’s some video of Bush working the Albanian crowd.  You’ll notice — around the 3:15 mark — that his watch is stolen, right in front of the cameras!

UPDATE:  White House says it wasn’t stolen.

From A Paris Hilton Fan

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

This epistle by someone named "Larry" was posted at a Paris Hilton fansite.  It is basically one long run-on sentence — which I’ve broken up — but otherwise, I haven’t changed a letter.

It seems to me that her attorneys should obtain a federal injucntion against the judge punishing Paris for the enforcement of a federal ruling.

Yes, this makes perfect sense.  A judge tries to enforce a federal rule — we simply cannot have this!  So let’s get a federal injunction to stop a judge from enforcing the law.

His action of more than doubling her time to be spent in jail for the implimentation of the federal ruling on overcrowding is a violation of her civil rights.

Wow.  Try to diagram that sentence.  I think "Larry" is saying that Paris Hilton tried to implement a federal ruling on overcrowding.  What WAS that federal ruling on overcrowding, and how did Paris try to implement it?  Anyway, it seems that the judge doubled her sentence and violated her civil rights.  Maybe next time, Paris won’t go around trying to implement federal rules.  (Personally, I don’t think she’s qualified).

It also seems that he is retaliating against her for being mentally upset or Sick and being noticed by her jailors as being sick.

Right.  Because nothing upsets judges more than sick people.  They take it personally, and this is just payback.

It is their job to monitor their prisoners and make decisions on the running of the jail unhindered by a state authority judge.

What’s a "state authority judge"?

Her rights under the Americans with Disabilities act have been violated.

Problem.  To have rights under the ADA, you must actually be — oh — you know — disabled.  As in, have a history of medical or psychological problems that have hindered your life in a major way, and for which you have received treatment.

Being a whiny rich daddy’s girl doesn’t count.

The judges anger at her being released is unlawful….

The judge’s anger is unlawful?  ANGER is unlawful?

The judges anger at her being released is unlawful in that he has allowed his perception of public opinion to sway his legal judgement and then punish her for the implimentation of the federal ADA law and mandated federal overcrowding ruling.

Ah.  Ok.

It also seems that his sending her back to serve 40 some days in prison for the Sherrif’s decision to send her home is double jeopardy.

That’s Omar Sharif, for those of you confused by this letter.

Non the less until the issue of violation of her civil rights and the issue of fair and equal treatment has been addressed in FEDERAL COURT she should be released.

Non the less, I think Paris’s fans are walking on very thin ice if the basis of their complaints is that Paris is NOT getting "equal" treatment.

What she did was wrong but her perception of that wrong was a product of the enviroment that she was raised and should be considered when deciding how to punish her.

Right.  See, it doesn’t matter what the law says.  What matters is your perception of the law .  For example, if you murder someone, but you think (because of your upbringing) that murder is okay, then you get less of a sentence than someone who was raised to think that murder is bad.  Don’t you get it?

This has not been done and again perhaps this violates the ADA.

She’s disabled because she had stupid parents?  Whaaaa?

She has a mental childhood related handicap.

Far be it for me to second-guess the brilliant legal and medical mind of "Larry".

Captcha-a-gogo

Ken AshfordScience & TechnologyLeave a Comment

If you’re like me, you have a hard time with captchas.

What are captchas, you ask?

They are those widgets on the Internet consisting of letters and numbers that you fill out so that the Internet site can make sure you’re a human and not a computer, thus keeping spammers from infiltrating your website or blog.  Here are examples of captchas:

Captcha

290pxmoderncaptcha

11code1901

There are two problems with captchas:

(1)  They are often hard.  Idiot humans like me sometimes have difficulty determining what the letters and numbers are.

(2)  Spamming computers are getting more sophisticated and being able to "read" them, thereby thwarting their utility.  In fact, you probably won’t find a captcha like the top one shown above, because computers can now easily identify the letters.

What’s the solution?

As a result, the hunt is on for puzzles that are friendlier to humans and more difficult for computers. Many researchers are focusing on expanding the test beyond the constrained realm of 26 letters and 9 digits.

Microsoft has developed a captcha that uses images.  The user is asked to simply distinguish a dog from a cat — something VERY easy for a human, but pretty hard for a computer.  Here — give it a try.

There are other human-friendly captchas out there that also abandon the scriggly-letter-and-number approach.

Here’s a good one.

Here’s another (scroll down a bit)

So that’s what’s going on in the world of captchas.  Now you can impress your friends.

The Gay Bomb

Ken AshfordSex/Morality/Family Values, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

I thought this was a hoax, but apparently it is true:

The proposal came from the Air Force’s Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, which requested $7.5 million to develop a so-called "gay-bomb." Using the Freedom of Information Act, Edward Hammond, director of the U.S. office of the Sunshine Project, obtained a copy which was "part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons." If completed, the bomb would release a chemical aphrodisiac "and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical… soldiers would become gay." This would cause their units to break down as the troops "became irresistibly attractive to one another."

Fortunately, smarter heads prevailed and the Air Force project never took off.

Hmmmm.  I wonder if it was a guided bomb, operating on gay-dar…..

Kind of sounds like a bad bad movie.  Oh, wait, it WAS a bad bad movie.  Sort of.

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Fashion Tips From GOP Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee

Ken AshfordElection 2008Leave a Comment

In Marie Claire magazine:

Q: I read that you’re against miniskirts.

A: If a person dresses provocatively, they’re calling attention — maybe not the most desirable kind — to private parts of their body.

Q: What about a burka?

A: No, that hides everything. I think a person’s hair, arms, shoulders, legs are an appropriate display of who they are.

So …miniskirts are out; burkas are out.  Tch!  Typical politician.  Moves to the center.

Then Mike "I Heart" Huckabee just gets creepy:

A;  I want people to be attracted to me because they find me interesting, not because I’m wearing something … well, I doubt I own anything provocative.

Q: How about a minskirt?

A: A thong.

His chances of getting the GOP nomination just went from 0% to -0%.

Theological Question

Ken AshfordRandom Musings1 Comment

The new tech guy where I work — whose name is Bill — has a tendency to talk about himself in the third person, as in:

"When he gets a chance, Bill will come and take a look at your computer problem"

or…

"Bill does not like it when you have a bottle of water so close to the keyboard.  It could spill over and that would make Bill mad."

Am I permitted to stone him?

As Basil Fawlty Might Say…

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

Fawlty"Don’t mention the war":

Fox spent half as much time covering the Iraq war than MSNBC during the first three months of the year, and considerably less than CNN, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.

The difference was more stark during daytime news hours than in prime-time opinion shows. The Iraq war occupied 20 percent of CNN’s daytime news hole and 18 percent of MSNBC’s. On Fox, the war was talked about only 6 percent of the time.

Fox News viewers are the most reliable constituency for Bush.  They voted for him 88-7, which is more than conservatives, gun owners, evangelicals, and war supporters.  They like to say that Fox News is "fair and balanced", but when it fails to cover the truth about the war (it must be going pretty bad, huh?), it’s no surprise that many Bush supporters remain delusional about what is happening in Iraq.

The President Of 9/11

Ken AshfordElection 2008Leave a Comment

Andy is right:

Former New York mayor Giuliani is always entertaining, and he hasn’t disappointed. The most remarkable aspect of his candidacy is its complete immunity from anything that has actually happened in the last five years. For Rudy, it’s still 9/12 and always will be. And why not? He hasn’t felt so significant since – although his speaking fees have. He has no qualms about Iraq. It’s simple, after all. We just have to win.

His entire analysis of the war on terror can be reduced to the notion that we stay “on offense”. Offense means anything aggressive, it appears. He wouldn’t rule out a nuclear strike on Iran, for example. He endorses “any methods necessary” to extract information from anyone who might seem like a terrorist.

He spoke of two recent terror plots – one involving a handful of loons who wanted to invade a military base, another a crew of Caribbeans who dreamt of blowing up JFK airport (they had no weapons and no firm plans) – as if they were an imminent threat to America’s very existence.

As his eyes flash through his wire-rim glasses, and he bobs up and down on his shiny corporate shoes, you can just see him drooling over the chance to fire a few missiles, round up a few immigrants, strip a few more Americans of habeas corpus rights and nuke Tehran. This is the man, remember, who banned ferret-ownership and jaywalking in New York City. Next stop: Falluja. Piece of cake.

I keep meaning to write a post about my own personal brushes with Rudy (when I worked in a criminal defense law firm in NY, Rudy was friends with my managing partner, even though Rudy was a US District Attorney at the time).   The reason I haven’t yet is because I keep waiting for his campaign to implode, thus making such a post moot (as we say in the law biz).

Suffice it to say, I was non-plussed.

Rudy really is running on the coattails of all the things he did on 9/12 and the days after — which, when you get down to it, really wasn’t a lot.  New Yorkers, of course, know better.  They remember Rudy pre 9/11.  They remember the FIRST terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, the car bomb which failed to level the buildings but killed 8 people nonetheless. 

So, following that 1993 attack, where did Rudy decide to put the Command and Control Center for the entire New York City emergency services apparatus?  Against the advice of fire and police personnel, he place it right in the center of the target — within the World Trade Center itself.  Because that’s really the first thing that you want in the event of a terrorist attack — the entire communications center of local emergency services to be knocked out.  And that’s exactly what happened on 9/11.  Smaaaaart.  And there are people who still think he’s the man to fight global terrorism?

Paris Hilton Finds God

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

She called Barbara Walters and said that being in jail is like being "in a cage".

Why, yes, Paris, it IS like being in a cage.  Those metal bars going down are a dead giveaway.

By the way, it usually takes some time before jailbirds find God.  Paris saw the light in a couple of days:

"I’m not the same person I was," she said. "I used to act dumb. It was an act. I am 26 years old, and that act is no longer cute. It is not who I am, nor do I want to be that person for the young girls who looked up to me. I know now that I can make a difference, that I have the power to do that. I have been thinking that I want to do different things when I am out of here. I have become much more spiritual. God has given me this new chance."

"My spirit or soul did not like the way I was being seen and that is why I was sent to jail."

"God," she said, "has released me."

Look, I don’t mean to be cynical.  If this is a true conversion, that’s great.  But why does a part of me think this is a PR ploy?

Court Believes In That Thing Called The Constitution

Ken AshfordConstitution, War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Good decision:

President George W. Bush cannot order the military to seize and indefinitely detain a Qatari national and suspected al Qaeda operative, the only person being held in the United States as an "enemy combatant," an appeals court ruled on Monday.

In a major setback for Bush’s policies in the war on terrorism adopted after the September 11 attacks, the appellate panel ruled 2-1 the U.S. government had no evidence to treat Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri as an "enemy combatant." The court ordered him released from military custody.

"The government cannot subject al-Marri to indefinite military detention. For in the United States, the military cannot seize and imprison civilians — let alone imprison them indefinitely," Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote.

Al-Marri has been held in a U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina, for about four years without any charges.

The ruling sent the case back to a federal judge in South Carolina with instructions to direct the secretary of defense to release al-Marri from military custody within a reasonable period of time.

The government can transfer al-Marri to civilian authorities to face criminal charges, initiate deportation proceedings, hold him as a witness in a grand jury proceeding or detain him for a limited period of time under the Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law.

“Let Those Apples Fall”

Ken AshfordConstitutionLeave a Comment

Spring Awakening fans may have noticed some self-censoring done by the Spring Awakening performance last night on the Tonys.   

For example, in the song "Totally Fucked", the offending word (not "totally"; the other one) was replaced with the cast members covering their mouths.  At another point, they sang "totally screwed".

Not that bnit of self-censorship, I can understand.  It’s a harsh word.  It doesn’t bother me particularly (especially in the context of the song), and it doesn’t mean (in the context of the song) sex.  But it’s a strong word, and it’s okay to modify language for the more faint-hearted viewers.

However, in the song "The Bitch of Living", the word "breast" was replaced with "chest".  So instead of:

See, each night, it’s like fantastic-
Tossing, turning, without rest
‘Cause my days at the piano
With my teacher and her breasts…

it became:

See, each night, it’s like fantastic-
Tossing, turning, without rest
‘Cause my days at the piano
With my teacher and her chest…

The moments later, the lyric is supposed to be:

I mean, God, please
Just let those apples fall

and it became something about "I want it all".

Now here’s my issue: in the clean version, don’t we still know what he is talking about?  It’s still clear that the singer is talking about his adolescent fascination with his piano teacher’s mammorial endowment.  If the meaning is clear, then what difference does it make whether he uses the word "chest", "breast" or something else ("bodacious funbags")?  Are people offended by the word "breast" but somehow "chest" is okay?  I don’t get it.

Anyway, this was going to be a long post not about morality, but about the law surrounding the use of certain words on television and radio.  But a poster had BlueNC has done a nice job covering the legal history of the FCC and "naughty words" up to and including the recent Second Circuit decision which basically took the FCC to task for arbitrarily fining networks for supposed decency violations.  I urge anyone interested to read it as it does a good job of laying out the competing interests of (1) the First Amendment and (2) parental privacy (i.e., not having your kid exposed to evil words).