Shorter Court Of Appeals: “They’re Just Words. Shit Happens”

Ken AshfordCourts/Law1 Comment

Gotta love this profanity-laced decision (PDF) of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The issue was whether the FCC was being too arbitrary in fining the national networks for indecency — specifically, for the occasional profanity that leaks through.  For example, at the live telecast of the Golden Globes a few years ago, Bono got up there and said "This is really really really fucking brilliant", and Fox got fined. 

More recently, during a live news telecast from Iraq, an explosion scared a reporter and the soldier being interviewed, the latter exclaiming "Fuck!".  For that, the network got slammed with an FCC fine.

The Court of Appeals decision takes the FCC to the woodshed.  They note, quite correctly, that sometimes (like in the examples above), the network cannot be responsible for the "indecent" material that occasionally leaks through — what the court calls "fleeting expletives".  Moreover, they stick in a little dig, as the New York Times reports:

If President Bush and Vice President Cheney can blurt out vulgar language, then the government cannot punish broadcast television stations for broadcasting the same words in similarly fleeting contexts.

***

Reversing decades of a more lenient policy, the commission had found that the mere utterance of certain words implied that sexual or excretory acts were carried out and therefore violated the indecency rules.

But the judges said vulgar words are just as often used out of frustration or excitement, and not to convey any broader obscene meaning. “In recent times even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced sexual or excretory organs or activities.”

Adopting an argument made by lawyers for NBC, the judges then cited examples in which Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had used the same language that would be penalized under the policy. Mr. Bush was caught on videotape last July using a common vulgarity that the commission finds objectionable in a conversation with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Three years ago, Mr. Cheney was widely reported to have muttered an angry obscene version of “get lost” to Senator Patrick Leahy on the floor of the United States Senate.

For those of you who don’t know what that last bit was about, it’s when Cheney turned to Leahy and said "Go fuck yourself".

In an ironic response to the court’s ruling, the FCC chairman put out a press release (PDF), complete with four-letter words.  It begins:

Today, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said the use of the words "fuck" and "shit" by Cher and Nicole Ritchie was not indecent.

The press release, of course, only proves the court’s point — if the FCC in its official capacity can release a public document (like the press release) which contained "dirty words", then how can the FCC fine the networks for the very same thing?

Who Do I Like

Ken AshfordElection 2008Leave a Comment

Kevin Drum:

I’m probably more genuinely undecided between the major Democratic candidates this cycle than I have been for a long time. All three of them appeal to me in significant ways but none of them have completely sealed the deal. (In Obama’s case, I’d like to see him be a little more willing to make some of the right enemies.) It’s a pretty tough choice this year.

The upside of this is that I don’t think I’ll be disappointed regardless of who wins. They’re all good candidates. And there’s still plenty of time to make up my mind.

I’m largely in sync with this assessment.  I’ll even go so far as to add Bill Richardson to the three major contenders (Clinton, Obama, and Edwards) although realistically, he doesn’t stand a chance.

If a gun were held to my head today, I think I would still lean toward Obama.  He’s something rare in politicians –a NON-panderer.  In other words, he’s not afraid to stand for what he believes in, even in front of hostile crowds:

It may not be all that unusual for a Democrat to castigate automakers in an environmental speech. But when Obama did the castigating, it was in front of the Detroit Economic Club. Nor did he help his chances of winning the endorsements of the city’s big unions by asserting that any aid Washington gives the automakers for their soaring health-care costs should be tied to improving fuel efficiency.

"We anticipated that there weren’t necessarily going to be a lot of applause lines in that speech. It was sort of an eat-your-spinach approach," Obama conceded when I asked him about the stony silence that greeted his address. "But one thing I did say to people was that I wasn’t going to make an environmental speech in California and then make a different speech in Detroit."

That kind of conspicuous candor has been part of Obama’s campaign since his announcement tour in February. When a questioner at a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, wanted to know whether he would cut the military budget to make room for other priorities, Obama answered, "Actually, you’ll probably see an initial bump in military spending in an Obama Administration" to replace the equipment that has been depleted by the Iraq war and build up the size of the active forces. When a teacher asked him about the No Child Left Behind law that is so unpopular with educators and their unions, Obama agreed that it "left the money behind." But while he endorsed higher pay for teachers, Obama also talked about "the things that were good about No Child Left Behind," including more accountability. By then, his listeners were shifting in their chairs.

Regarding Social Security, the social program enshrined like no other in the theology of the Democratic base, Obama has said he is open to such politically heretical ideas as upping the retirement age and raising payroll taxes to shore up the system. Before black audiences, Obama regularly condemns violent and misogynist rap lyrics and chastises African Americans for disenfranchising themselves by not voting.

Maybe this revelation about Obama as a basketball player says a lot about him:

He is gentleman enough to call fouls on himself: Steven Donziger, a law school classmate, has heard Mr. Obama mutter, “my bad,” tossing the other team the ball.

Edwards, so far, is running an exception campaign (despite a few boneheaded gaffes) and I think he’s largely right on the issues.  And even though I’m wary of the whole Clinton-Bush co-dynasty, even Hillary is going up in my estimation.

But Kevin’s right: there’s still a long road ahead to the White House, and unlike my GOP counterparts, it’s nice to be in a position where I have so many good choices, rather than having to hold my nose and pick the lesser of who-cares.

Short Bites

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

Kind of busy day, so I’ll compile one long lazy post:

(1)  Scripps spelling bee: The winner spelled "serrefine", a noun describing small forceps.  The five-time player (but never champion) Samir Patel got utzed on "clevis", and came in 34th.

I managed to only watch some it on TIVO.  The best moment was during one of the bio-clips when one of the spellers revealed her favorite word, kakistocracy :

kak·is·toc·ra·cy n., pl. -cies.

Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.

I’ll bet we’ll be seeing a lot more of that word.

(2)  White House counsel Dan Bartlett resigns.  You’ll never guess why.  Yup, "to help raise his children".  They’re not even trying to make good excuses anymore.

(3)  Archeologists find 2,100 year old melon.  That reminds me — I need to clean out my refrigerator soon.

(4)  Hurricane season begins today.  If you ask me, I think it’s a bit of a "Hallmark holiday", so I don’t celebrate it that much.  FYI:

NOAA forecasts 13-17 named storms and seven to 10 hurricanes, of which three to five are expected to be major hurricanes with destructive winds of at least 111 mph.

(5)  I think the President is losing it:

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated “I am the president!” He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of “our country’s destiny.”

Next up, he’ll hold his breath until his face turns blue.

(6)  A new video, purporting to be the Loch Ness monster:

(7)  Nature’s a bitch (NOTE: watch the whole thing to see who "wins":

(8)  So is war: April 2004 (135) and November 2004 (137) were the only months with higher rates since the start of the war. Of the seven months with US casualties over 100, two have been in 2007 and four of the seven have occurred since October 2006. More statistics including Iraqi estimates and US/coalition wounded here.

(9)  Bush supporter Peggy Noonan now admits that she feels like a battered wife, and can no longer support Bush anymore.  What sent her over the edge?  Immigration

For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don’t like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don’t like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.

But on immigration it has changed from "Too bad" to "You’re bad."

Okay, that’s it.  Enjoy the weekend.

Google Snooping

Ken AshfordWeb RecommendationsLeave a Comment

If you ever use Google maps, you may have noticed an interesting new feature: Google Streetview.

Most online maps nowadays (including Google) now have satellite images which can be superimposed over the map.  Streetview goes one step further — click on the map, and you get a picture of what the street looks like from street-level, facing any direction.

Obviously, most streets in the world won’t have those images on Google map, so don’t bother looking for your house/street.  But right now, there’s a Google truck driving all around New York, Oakland and other places, taking constant images from all angles for loading onto Google Maps.

What Googlephiles are finding are lot of interesting images — like people entering porn shops, some public displays of affection, etc.

Here’s a site that keeps an ongoing list….

“Stupid In Space”

Ken AshfordEnvironment & Global Warming & Energy1 Comment

I heard this interview on NPR this morning too, and I almost fell out of the bed:

Showing that there is no place safe from idiocy, here’s an absolutely astronomically stupid comment from NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.  A statement so stupid, it makes the invasion of Iraq and the management of Katrina look like genius.

Michael Griffin NASA Administrator has told America’s National Public Radio that while he has no doubt a trend of global warming exists "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with."

Griffin confirms that global warming exists, and in fact only hours before NASA had issued a report showing that ice in the Arctic was being lost at higher rates than previously predicted.  So what’s behind Griffin’s Qué será, será attitude?  Is it a fatalistic view that we can’t do anything about global warming?  Nope.   

In an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep that will air in Thursday’s edition of NPR News’ Morning Edition, Administrator Griffin explains: "I guess I would ask which human beings – where and when – are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take."

There you go.  Trying to stop global warming is arrogant.  Who are you to say folks in Norway that they can’t have palm trees!

The part that Griffin seems to be forgetting is the billions of people who would die if our current economy collapses due to sinking cities and shifting growing regions.  Might the future inhabitants of tropical Greenland be happy as they gaze southward over the swollen sea?  Maybe.  But I’m not anxious to sink Miami to find out.  Idiot. 

Oh, and expect this to become part of the standard kit for those on the right.  I give it ten hours before Rush gets around to "trying to stop global warming is racist."  Start your stopwatch.

Griffin’s remarks are stunning, coming just days after his own agency released a report warning of the “disastrous effects” of climate change:

Even “moderate additional” greenhouse emissions are likely to push Earth past “critical tipping points” with “dangerous consequences for the planet,” according to research conducted by NASA and the Columbia University Earth Institute.

With just 10 more years of “business as usual” emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas, says the NASA/Columbia paper, “it becomes impractical” to avoid “disastrous effects.”

Chris Mooney weighs in on this too:

What Griffin is ignoring is the whole issue of risk and its distribution. Our global society is set up for–adapted to–the current climate. But now we’re moving in the direction of raising the sea level considerably–even as much of the global population is coastal–and melting large amounts of ice, while also altering the occurrence of phenomena, such as droughts, that could have a dramatic impact on food and water supplies.

How can anyone think this is not a tremendous societal risk, even if there might be some people–in, say, Buffalo, New York–who may actually have more pleasant weather under global warming?

NASA is already backtracking. James Hansen, the agency’s top climatologist, is slamming his boss. Assuredly there will be many more jeers and groans over the course of the day.

It’s All About the White Christian Male Power Structure

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

At least O’Reilly admits it:

O’REILLY: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have. In that regard, Pat Buchanan is right. So I say you’ve got to cap with a number.

MCCAIN: In America today we’ve got a very strong economy and low unemployment, so we need addition farm workers, including by the way agriculture, but there may come a time where we have an economic downturn, and we don’t need so many.

O’REILLY: But in this bill, you guys have got to cap it. Because estimation is 12 million, there may be 20 [million]. You don’t know, I don’t know. We’ve got to cap it.

MCCAIN: We do, we do. I agree with you.

And there you have it.  If your a woman, non-Christian, and/or a minority, the white Christian man owns you.

More On The Scripps National Spelling Bee

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

Oh, someone is liveblogging it! (UPDATE: Another bee blog here)

(You can also get updates of the results of each round here).

UPDATE:  Come on, Joshua!  The local boy is still in it, having correctly spelled "hybrid" in Round Two (not very tough, I admit) and "chattel" in Round Three.

It should be noted that two Italian food-related words — "ricotta" and "minestrone" — knocked out 2 of the 6 North Carolina kids in Round Three.  I’m not sure what significance to read into that…

UPDATE (4:30 pm):  Looks like Round Four has begun, with 94 still in the competition, and the words are a lot harder.  Several casualties already.

UPDATE (5:45 pm):  Winston-Salem’s Joshua Wright made it through Round Four, correctly spelling "unguiculate" (a medical term meaning "having claws or nails"), so he’ll be in the televised rounds tomorrow.  Otherwise, Round Four is turning out to be a bloodbath.

Heather & Jeff Maggs Do Not Need To Be Quarantined

Ken AshfordHealth Care3 Comments

AP:

A man with a form of tuberculosis so dangerous he is under the first U.S. government-ordered quarantine since 1963 had health officials around the world scrambling Wednesday to find about 80 passengers who sat within five rows of him on two trans-Atlantic flights.

The man told a newspaper he took the first flight from Atlanta to Europe for his wedding, then the second flight home because he feared he might die without treatment in the U.S.

***

He flew to Paris on May 12 aboard Air France Flight 385, also listed as Delta Air Lines codeshare Flight 8517. While he was in Europe, health authorities reached him with the news that further tests had revealed his TB was a rare, "extensively drug-resistant" form, far more dangerous than he knew. They ordered him into isolation, saying he should turn himself over to Italian officials.

On reading this, I immediately had to see when Heather flew to Paris on her honeymoon.

Sunday, May 13.  Out of Greensboro.  Okay, I figured.  But I just wanted to be extra sure.

By the way, how adorable is this?

Hpim0520

Speaking of diseases, doesn’t this lede sentence in another AP news story strike you as a tad alarming:

The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

That’s right.  The Bush administration is vowing to keep meatbackers from testing for mad cow disease.

And why?  Because one responsible meatpacking company wants to do it:

A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.

And if one company chooses to be socially responsible, what does that mean?

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

So now, the government is trying to restrict Creekstone from performing mad cow testing.

This is bizarro.  The conservative mantra is that business should be self-regulating, without government interference.  Well, along comes a company that is trying to do the right thing and protect social wefare, and the Bush Administration wants it to not do it.

Go figure.

Imagine, if you will, that the Bush Administration is successful in blocking the testing for mad cow.  And then imagine, if you will, an outbreak of mad cow here in the United States.  Kind of reminds you of the August 2001 "Bin Laden Determined to Attack U.S." memo that the Bush team ignored, yes?

Rick Perlstein comments:

There’s your conservatism, America: not extremism in defense of liberty. State socialism in defense of Mad Cow.

Lou Dobbs Has A “Flexible Relationship With Reality”

Ken AshfordRight Wing Punditry/Idiocy1 Comment

Lou Dobbs reported in April 2005 (and repeated several times since then), that 7,000 immigrants into the U.S over the past three years have been diagnosed with leprosy.  FACT:  There have been only 7,000 cases of leprosy in the United States over the past thirty years, and not all of them are from immigrants.

Lou Dobbs reported in November 2003 that one-third of the federal prison population is illegal immigrants.  Way off.  According to the Justice Department, 6 percent of prisoners in this country are noncitizens (compared with 7 percent of the population). For a variety of reasons, the crime rate is actually lower among immigrants than natives.

He’s also provided microphones to nutjobs with "intriguing assertions" (Lou’s words) — like the guy who claimed that Hurricane Katrina was actually the result of eco-terrorism committed by terrorists.

Nice to see the New York Times do a number on Mr. Dobbs: Read Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs.

“Verschärfte Vernehmung”

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Jur503Earlier this month, the Republican contenders for President were asked a debate question by moderator Brit Hume:

Imagine, Hume told the candidates, that hundreds of Americans have been killed in three major suicide bombings and "a fourth attack has been averted when the attackers were captured … and taken to Guantanamo…. U.S. intelligence believes that another, larger attack is planned…. How aggressively would you interrogate" the captured suspects?

This was where the GOP candidates — with the exception of John McCain (a man who actually was tortured) and Ron Paul (a man with an actual brain and sense of morality) — dropped their pants and showed the country just how BIG they were.  What would they do?  The answers were typified by Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo:

"We’re wondering about whether water-boarding would be a — a bad thing to do? I’m looking for Jack Bauer at that time, let me tell you."

Yup, most of them would torture, just like you see on teevee (because teevee is, you know, real).

Of course, the most "presidential" of the pack — candidates like Romney and Guiliani — couldn’t bring themselves to actually use the word "torture":

"Enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used."

"Enhanced interrogation techniques".  Wink, wink.  Not "torture".  Get it?  Wink, wink. wink.

Well, Andrew Sullivan does a little research and discovers that the phrase "enhanced interrogation" was coined by — you guessed it — the Nazis:

It’s a phrase that appears to have been concocted in 1937, to describe a form of torture that would leave no marks, and hence save the embarrassment pre-war Nazi officials were experiencing as their wounded torture victims ended up in court. The methods, as you can see above, are indistinguishable from those described as "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the president.

Sullivan continues, invoking Godwin’s Law, and making it stick:

Here’s a document from Norway’s 1948 war-crimes trials detailing the prosecution of Nazis convicted of "enhanced interrogation techniques" in the Second World War. Money quote from the cases of three Germans convicted of war crimes for "enhanced interrogation":

Between 1942 and 1945, Bruns used the method of "verschärfte Vernehmung" on 11 Norwegian citizens. This method involved the use of various implements of torture, cold baths and blows and kicks in the face and all over the body. Most of the prisoners suffered for a considerable time from the injuries received during those interrogations.

Between 1942 and 1945, Schubert gave 14 Norwegian prisoners "verschärfte Vernehmung," using various instruments of torture and hitting them in the face and over the body. Many of the prisoners suffered for a considerable time from the effects of injuries they received.

On 1st February, 1945, Clemens shot a second Norwegian prisoner from a distance of 1.5 metres while he was trying to escape. Between 1943 and 1945, Clemens employed the method of " verschäfte Vernehmung " on 23 Norwegian prisoners. He used various instruments of torture and cold baths. Some of the prisoners continued for a considerable time to suffer from injuries received at his hands.

Freezing prisoners to near-death, repeated beatings, long forced-standing, waterboarding, cold showers in air-conditioned rooms, stress positions [Arrest mit Verschaerfung], withholding of medicine and leaving wounded or sick prisoners alone in cells for days on end – all these have occurred at US detention camps under the command of president George W. Bush. Over a hundred documented deaths have occurred in these interrogation sessions. The Pentagon itself has conceded homocide by torture in multiple cases.

He concludes:

Critics will no doubt say I am accusing the Bush administration of being Hitler. I’m not. There is no comparison between the political system in Germany in 1937 and the U.S. in 2007. What I am reporting is a simple empirical fact: the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn’t-somehow-torture – "enhanced interrogation techniques" – is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death.

So, as the issue comes up in the run-up to the ’08 elections, remember one thing: "enhanced interrogation techniques" = "torture".  They’re the same thing.  One just sounds nicer to our ears, but to the person at the receiving end, there is no distinguishable difference.

And why shouldn’t we engage in torture enhanced interrogation techniques?  Because we’re not Nazis, that’s why.  Keep America safe?  Sure.  But it makes no sense to try to preserve American ideals through techniques that run counter American ideals.

Didn’t We Settle This Before?

Ken AshfordPlamegateLeave a Comment

In a court filing today, Patrick Fitzgerald provides a summary of Valerie Plame Wilson’s status with the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division at the time she was outed to the press by members of the Bush administration. Guess what? She was covert:

While assigned to CPD, Ms. Wilson engaged in temporary duty (TDY) travel overseas on official business. She traveled at least seven times to more than ten countries. When traveling overseas, Ms. Wilson always traveled under a cover identity — sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias — but always using cover — whether official or non-official cover (NOC) — with no ostensible relationship to the CIA.

At the time of the initial unauthorized disclosure in the media of Ms. Wilson’s employment relationship with the CIA on 14 July 2003, Ms. Wilson was a covert employee for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.

For years, the rightwing blogosphere and Fox News pundits were crowing to anyone who would listen, that Plame was not a covert agent.  They were wrong then, as we all knew.  Glenn Greenwald looks back.

Christy Hardin Smith weighs in:

Now, let’s see. Who called this correctly? Victoria Toensing and Joe DiGenova, the Boris and Natasha of bobbleheads, who shilled their asinine fact-free "oh no, clearly not covert" bullshit on every talk show from here to China and back again? Nope.  Wrong. Over and over again. Completely wrong.  On cable teevee. In the WaPo. You name it.  And did I mention they were wrong?

Oh wait…and to Congress.

Waxman: Ms. Toensing, I just only can say that we are pleased to accommodate the request of the Minority to have you as a witness and some of the statements you’ve made without any doubt and with great authority I understand may not be accurate so we’re going to check the information and we’re going to hold the record open to put in other things that might contradict some of what you had to say.

Oooopsie.  Wonder if the time has elapsed to revise and extend Ms. Toensing’s remarks to Rep. Waxman’s committee?  Sure hope not, because I hear a perjury charge can really set you back.