[Quote:]

One of the goals of existing businesses is to raise the barriers of entry to stifle competition in whatever form it may come in. For example, a standard practice of the major airlines is to buy up all the gates at airports to block access to newcomers.

Another way to raise barriers is through expensive litigation. The cost of going to court is so high that it easily can sap away the assets a young company. This is why it is such an effective tool for large corporations with deep pockets. Suits, even under the most frivolous conditions, can foist debilitating legal expenses on any potential contender without a hundred million dollars in venture backing (and even then as the original MP3.com – who had $300 million in backing – found out before it went out of business).

MetaMachine, the parent of eDonkey, is NOT one of those richly-back entities the company’s president, Sam Yagan, told a Senate Judiciary committee. Yagan was a witness at the committees hearing, “Protecting Copyright and Innovation in a Post-Grokster World”, a fact finding mission for Capitol Hill to see if Congress wants to jump into the post-Grokster decision fray or sit it out and give the market an opportunity to settle it first.

During his testimony Yagan dropped the bombshell. “…I am not here as an active participant in the future of P2P, but rather as one who has thrown in his towel and with no interest in replaying past issues…” Yagan had decided to give up the fight, with prejudice.

As Yagan continued, “The Grokster standard requires divining a company’s “intent,” the decision was essentially a call to litigate. This is critical because most startup companies just don’t have very much money. Whereas I could have managed to pay for a summary judgment hearing under Betamax, I simply couldn’t afford the protracted litigation needed to prove my case in court under Grokster. Without that financial ability, exiting the business was our only option despite my confidence that we never induced infringement and that we would have prevailed under the Grokster standard.”

Yagen made his statement. He feels eDonkey did nothing wrong, but the burden to prove it is too expensive. The “call to litigate” raised the barriers of entry to a level beyond the company’s means.

If Xerox were a startup today, they wouldn’t have made it out of the garage…

“Why babble about brutality and get indignant about tortures? The masses want them. They need something that will give them a thrill of horror.”

- Adolf Hitler

[Quote:]

The following letter was sent to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Sept. 16:

Dear Senator McCain:

I am a graduate of West Point currently serving as a Captain in the U.S. Army Infantry. I have served two combat tours with the 82nd Airborne Division, one each in Afghanistan and Iraq. While I served in the Global War on Terror, the actions and statements of my leadership led me to believe that United States policy did not require application of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan or Iraq. On 7 May 2004, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s testimony that the United States followed the Geneva Conventions in Iraq and the “spirit” of the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan prompted me to begin an approach for clarification. For 17 months, I tried to determine what specific standards governed the treatment of detainees by consulting my chain of command through battalion commander, multiple JAG lawyers, multiple Democrat and Republican Congressmen and their aides, the Ft. Bragg Inspector General’s office, multiple government reports, the Secretary of the Army and multiple general officers, a professional interrogator at Guantanamo Bay, the deputy head of the department at West Point responsible for teaching Just War Theory and Law of Land Warfare, and numerous peers who I regard as honorable and intelligent men.

Instead of resolving my concerns, the approach for clarification process leaves me deeply troubled. Despite my efforts, I have been unable to get clear, consistent answers from my leadership about what constitutes lawful and humane treatment of detainees. I am certain that this confusion contributed to a wide range of abuses including death threats, beatings, broken bones, murder, exposure to elements, extreme forced physical exertion, hostage-taking, stripping, sleep deprivation and degrading treatment. I and troops under my command witnessed some of these abuses in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

This is a tragedy. I can remember, as a cadet at West Point, resolving to ensure that my men would never commit a dishonorable act; that I would protect them from that type of burden. It absolutely breaks my heart that I have failed some of them in this regard.

That is in the past and there is nothing we can do about it now. But, we can learn from our mistakes and ensure that this does not happen again. Take a major step in that direction; eliminate the confusion. My approach for clarification provides clear evidence that confusion over standards was a major contributor to the prisoner abuse. We owe our soldiers better than this. Give them a clear standard that is in accordance with the bedrock principles of our nation.

Some do not see the need for this work. Some argue that since our actions are not as horrifying as Al Qaeda’s, we should not be concerned. When did Al Qaeda become any type of standard by which we measure the morality of the United States? We are America, and our actions should be held to a higher standard, the ideals expressed in documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Others argue that clear standards will limit the President’s ability to wage the War on Terror. Since clear standards only limit interrogation techniques, it is reasonable for me to assume that supporters of this argument desire to use coercion to acquire information from detainees. This is morally inconsistent with the Constitution and justice in war. It is unacceptable.

Both of these arguments stem from the larger question, the most important question that this generation will answer. Do we sacrifice our ideals in order to preserve security? Terrorism inspires fear and suppresses ideals like freedom and individual rights. Overcoming the fear posed by terrorist threats is a tremendous test of our courage. Will we confront danger and adversity in order to preserve our ideals, or will our courage and commitment to individual rights wither at the prospect of sacrifice? My response is simple. If we abandon our ideals in the face of adversity and aggression, then those ideals were never really in our possession. I would rather die fighting than give up even the smallest part of the idea that is “America.”

Once again, I strongly urge you to do justice to your men and women in uniform. Give them clear standards of conduct that reflect the ideals they risk their lives for.

With the Utmost Respect,

– Capt. Ian Fishback

1st Battalion,
504th Parachute Infantry Regiment,
82nd Airborne Division,
Fort Bragg, North Carolina

And the result? This:

[Quote:]

The torture end-game is approaching – and Rumsfeld and Cheney know it. What is now being done to the hero, Captain Ian Fishback, who braved 17 months of obstruction, threats and intimidation by military brass to keep quiet, is a national disgrace. Fishback has now been sequestered at Fort Bragg under orders restricting his contacts (the pretext is that he is a key witness in a criminal investigation and that he should not be in contact with outsiders while it continues). My sources tell me that he has been subjected to a series of long, arduous interrogations by CID investigators. Predictably, the CID guys are out to find just one thing: they want to know the identities of his two or three NCO corroborators. The CID folks are apparently indifferent to the accounts of wrongdoing – telling him repeatedly not to waste their time with his stories. Fishback knows if he gives their identities up, these folks will also be destroyed – so he’s keeping his silence, so far. The investigators imply that he failed to report abuses, so he may be charged, or that he is peddling falsehoods and will be charged for that. They tell him his career in the Army is over. Meanwhile the peer pressure on him is enormous. I’m reliably told that he has been subjected to an unending stream of threats and acts of intimidation from fellow officers. He is accused of betraying the Army, and betraying his unit by bringing it into disrepute. His motives are challenged. He is accused of siding with the enemy and working for their cause. And it goes on and on. This is not surprising. My email in-tray tells me each day that I am a supporter of Islamo-fascism, a traitor, someone who should be deported and so on, for insisting that legalized torture in the U.S. is one of the most important issues we now face. But I’m a free man and they cannot silence this blog. Fishback, whose courage deserves a medal, is not. They are slowly smearing and breaking him. But I have a feeling we have finally found a man with the integrity, faith and patriotism to stand up to the culture of fear and brutality he is now enduring.

Another source informs that the word is around that Rumsfeld has taken a strong interest in this. He is quoted by some as saying “Either break him or destroy him, and do it quickly.” And no doubt about it, that may be just what they are doing. Expect some trumped up charges against Fishback soon, similar to what they did to Muslim Chaplain Captain James Yee, whom they accused of treason with no solid evidence and then, when those charges evaporated, went on to accuse him of adultery. The bottom line, as the NYT reports today, is that the military and the Bush administration are determined to stop any real investigation about how torture and abuse came to be so widespread in the U.S. military. The scapegoating of retarded underlings like Lynndie England is an attempt to deflect real responsibility for the new pro-torture policies that go all the way to the White House. It’s a disgusting cover-up and it rests on breaking the will and resolve of decent servicemen and women brave enough to expose wrong-doing.

[Quote:]

Lawrence Franklin, the former Defense Department analyst charged with passing classified military information to pro-Israel lobbyists, has agreed to plead guilty in a far-ranging national security investigation, officials said today.

[..]

The three defendants were to go to trial in January on charges that they had conspired to gather and disclose national security information to journalists and an unnamed foreign power, which government officials have identified as Israel.

That’s bad news for the folks who outed Valerie Plame Wilson, because Franklin was indicted under the Espionage Act (specifically 18 U.S.C. 793 (d)) for giving classified information to those not eligible to receive it, including members of the media.

No money involved, no inteligence identities. And Franklin is pleading out. Looks to me as if the Espionage Act is still alive, and as if it applies squarely to the facts of the Plame case.

And if you combine that with this development, interesting times may be coming:

[Quote:]

Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who has been jailed since July 6 for refusing to testify in the C.I.A. leak case, was released from a Virginia detention center this afternoon after she and her lawyers reached an agreement with a federal prosecutor to testify before a grand jury investigating the matter, the paper’s publisher and executive editor said.

Ms. Miller was freed after spending more than 12 weeks in jail, during which she refused to cooperate with the criminal inquiry. Her decision to testify came after she obtained what she described as a waiver offered “voluntarily and personally” by a source who said she was no longer bound by any pledge of confidentiality she had made to him. She said the source had made clear that he genuinely wanted her to testify.

[Quote:]

Erwin, R-Montevallo, is of the opinion that Hurricane Katrina and other storms on the Gulf Coast were a punishment from God. He said so this week in a column he distributed to news outlets.

“New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness,” Erwin wrote. “It is the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of God.”

The French Quarter, the scene of so much ‘debauchery’, was pretty much spared from the destruction. As Jon Stewart said, God hates gay-adjacent people.

And I guess Erwin missed this part:

And he also conveniently forgot this George W. Bush Speech – because Erwin’s comment clearly show God is a Terrorist:

[Quote:]

You know, something we — I’ve been thinking a lot about how America has responded, and it’s clear to me that Americans value human life, and value every person as important. And that stands in stark contrast, by the way, to the terrorists we have to deal with. You see, we look at the destruction caused by Katrina, and our hearts break. They’re the kind of people who look at Katrina and wish they had caused it. We’re in a war against these people. It’s a war on terror. These are evil men who target the suffering. They killed 3,000 people on September the 11th, 2001. And they’ve continued to kill. See, sometimes we forget about the evil deeds of these people. They’ve killed in Madrid, and Istanbul, and Baghdad, and Bali, and London, and Sharm el-Sheikh, and Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv. Around the world they continue to kill.

[Quote:]

With Rep. Tom DeLay’s indictment in Texas yesterday, Rep. Blunt has taken the reins as the new House Majority Leader. Despite Rep. DeLay’s innumerable ethics problems, the House leadership remains blind to the ethics issue, naming Rep. Blunt as Leader despite his trail of ethics violations. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) this week released a 88-page report entitled Beyond DeLay: The 13 Most Corrupt Members of Congress, documenting the unethical and often illegal activities of the most tainted Members of Congress. Rep. Blunt was included in the report which, for the first time compiles and analyzes ethics violations in light of federal laws and ethics rules.

[..]

In 2003, Rep. Blunt divorced his wife of 31 years to marry Philip Morris (now Altria) lobbyist Abigail Perlman. Before it was known publicly that Rep. Blunt and Ms. Perlman were dating – and only hours after Rep. Blunt assumed the role of Majority Whip – he tried to secretly insert a provision into Homeland Security legislation that would have benefited Philip Morris, at the expense of competitors.

In addition, Rep. Blunt’s son Andrew lobbies on behalf of Philip Morris, a major client he picked up only four years out of law school. Notably, Altria is Rep. Blunt’s largest campaign contributor, having donated more than $270,000 to political committees tied to him.

In 2003, Rep. Blunt helped his lobbyist son Andrew by inserting a provision into the $79 billion emergency appropriation for the war in Iraq to benefit U.S. shippers like United Parcel Service, Inc. and FedEx Corp. The provision required that military cargo be carried only by companies with no more than 25% foreign ownership. UPS and FedEx were seeking to block the expansion of a foreign-owned rival’s U.S. operations. Andrew Blunt lobbies on behalf of UPS in Missouri, and UPS and FedEx have contributed at least $58,000 to Rep. Blunt since 2001.

Members of the House are prohibited from “taking any official actions for the prospect of personal gain for themselves or anyone else.” 5 CFR §2635.702(a). By pushing for legislation benefitting Philip Morris and UPS, and, as a consequence, his then-girlfriend and his son, Rep. Blunt may have violated this provision.
Federal law also prohibits public officials from directly or indirectly demanding, seeking, receiving, accepting or agreeing to receive or accept anything of value in return for being influenced in the performance of an official act. If Rep. Blunt accepted campaign contributions from Philip Morris, FedEx or UPS in exchange for legislative assistance, he may have violated federal bribery laws.

Same shit, different day…

[Quote:]

Senior American officials say they are confident that Iraq’s draft constitution will be approved in the referendum to be held Oct. 15, even though Sunni Arabs in Iraq are mobilizing in large numbers to defeat it.

In testimony before Congress on Thursday, the senior American military commander in Iraq, Gen. George W. Casey Jr. of the Army, said the most recent analysis of intelligence from across the country supported the Bush administration’s optimistic predictions that the referendum would pass.

But if the constitution is defeated, several officials said they feared that Iraq would descend into anarchy.

Approval “is critically important,” a senior administration official said, “to maintain political momentum. That is the critical thing for holding this whole thing together.”

I know the situation cannot be compared, but I distinctly recall an earlier vote for a constitution in a few other countries where the same “threat” was made: vote in favour or the country will slide into chaos.

[Quote:]

NEW YORK – A federal court today ordered the Department of Defense to turn over to the American Civil Liberties Union more than 70 photographs and three videos depicting abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The release of the photos has been stayed for 20 days pending the government’s expected appeal.

“Today’s historic ruling is a step toward ensuring that our government’s leaders are held accountable for the abuse and torture that happened on their watch,�? said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. “The American public has a right to know what happened in American detention centers, and how our leaders let it occur.”

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein today agreed, saying publication of the photographs will help to answer questions not only about the unlawful conduct of American soldiers, but about “the command structure that failed to exercise discipline over the troops, and the persons in that command structure whose failures in exercising supervision may make them culpable along with the soldiers who were court-martialed for perpetrating the wrongs.�?

The images are part of a series of photographs turned over by an Abu Ghraib military policeman, Joseph Darby, to the Army’s Criminal Investigative Division. The ACLU, the New York Civil Liberties Union and its allies have been seeking the photographs and videos as part of a Freedom of Information Act request aimed at uncovering the truth about allegations of torture and abuse of detainees at U.S. controlled facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.

[Quote:]

A post-production house organized a competition where assistant editors ‘re-cut’ trailers for famous movies to try and make them seem like different movies… this is the one that won:

Shining (Quicktime file)

[Quote:]

I believe that this nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, this path relies on truth, justice and the rigorous application of the principle that no man is above the law.

Now, the other road is the path of least resistance. This is where we start making exceptions to our laws based on poll numbers and spin control. This is when we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us, when we ignore the facts in order to cover up the truth.

Shall we follow the rule of law and do our constitutional duty no matter unpleasant, or shall we follow the path of least resistance, close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking, forgive and forget, move on and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system? No man is above the law, and no man is below the law. That’s the principle that we all hold very dear in this country.

It’s probably useful to know he was talking about a blowjob…

[Quote:]

The political committee of Rep. Roy Blunt, who is temporarily replacing Rep. Tom DeLay as House majority leader, has paid roughly $88,000 in fees since 2003 to a consultant under indictment in Texas with DeLay, according to federal records.

House Republicans may want to move to Plan C.

[Quote:]

Ever notice how many times the Bush administration and the Pentagon tout the killing or capture of high level al Qaeda operatives? Just how many ‘Number 2,’ ‘Number 3,’ and ‘Number 4′ men can bin Laden and Zarqawi possibly have, anyway? I know, I know. It’s an old joke. But while we may realize that, the media has seemed completely incapable of recognizing that maybe not every al Qaeda figure we eliminate is as important as the administration claims he is.

In an online-only piece for Newsweek, Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball delve into the claim that Abu Azzam, a terrorist recently killed in Iraq, was Zarawi’s number two man. Speaking in the Rose Garden this morning, Bush made just such a claim.

…Iraqi and coalition forces tracked down and killed Abu Azzam, the second most wanted al Qaeda leader in Iraq. This guy is a brutal killer. He was one of Zarqawi’s top lieutenants. He was reported to be the top operational commander of al Qaeda in Baghdad. He is one of the terrorists responsible for the recent upsurge in attacks in the Iraqi capital…

Isikoff and Hosenball ran down the information and found that’s not really the case. Abu Azzam may have been important, especially in Baghdad, but there are serious holes in the claim that he was anywhere close to being second in command for all of Iraq.

But veteran counterterrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann said today there are ample reasons to question whether Abu Azzam was really the No. 2 figure in the Iraqi insurgency. He noted that U.S. officials have made similar claims about a string of purportedly high-ranking terrorist operatives who had been captured or killed in the past, even though these alleged successes made no discernible dent in the intensity of the insurgency.

“If I had a nickel for every No. 2 and No. 3 they’ve arrested or killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, I’d be a millionaire,” says Kohlmann, a New York-based analyst who tracks the Iraq insurgency and who first expressed skepticism about the Azzam claims in a posting on The Counterterrorism Blog (counterterror.typepad.com). While agreeing that Azzam–also known as Abdullah Najim Abdullah Mohamed al-Jawari–may have been an important figure, “this guy was not the deputy commander of Al Qaeda,” says Kohlmann.

Three U.S. counterterrorism officials, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject, also told NEWSWEEK today that U.S. agencies did not really consider Abu Azzam to be Zarqawi’s “deputy” even if he did play a relatively high-ranking role in the insurgency.

On my own, referring to nothing more than the CENTCOM press release announcing the warrant for Abu Azzam’s arrest, I checked out the rewards being offered for certain figures linked to Zarqawi. It would make sense that the more important someone is, the higher the reward for his capture would be.

Out of 29 wanted terrorists listed in the warrant, no one has a smaller reward offered for his capture than Abu Azzam. In fairness, he’s tied for last place with ten others. However, the $50,000 offered for Abu Azzam pales in comparison to the $25 million, $10 million, $1 million, and $200,000 offered for others. If he was “the second most wanted al Qaeda leader in Iraq,” as Bush referred to him, why such a small reward?

With Bush’s poll numbers in the toilet and Tom DeLay about to be indicted, it wasn’t at all surprising that this claim was made this morning. When Bush needs good news and there isn’t any to be had, they just make it up. But promoting Abu Azzam to such a position of importance? There must be sheer desperation at the White House if they’re stretching this far. Nice to see that at least some in the media aren’t biting this time.

[Quote:]

Two years after the National Do Not Call Registry took effect — and with more than 100 million numbers enrolled — dinner-time conversations are still being interrupted by telemarketing calls.

Regulators say the system is working, but a recent random survey (by telephone) by the Customer Care Alliance, a Virginia-based consortium of three customer-relations consultants, found that 51% of registered consumers say they’re still getting calls they think the list is supposed to block. Lois Greisman, the Federal Trade Commission official in charge of the registry, says the agency receives a “steady flow” of between 1,000 and 2,000 complaints about telemarketers every day.

Yet to date, there have been remarkably few fines issued by federal regulators. Despite one million reports of violations, the FTC has filed only 14 lawsuits and levied only four fines. The Federal Communications Commission, which jointly administers the program with the FTC, has issued warnings but only two fines, one to AT&T Corp., the company with the contract for administering the program.

A random survey, by telephone. Right.

Blackadder: Baldrick, have you no idea what irony is?
Baldrick: Yeah, it’s like goldy and bronzy, only it’s made of iron.

I guess I won’t be getting my landline back anytime soon.

(From Samizdata) [Quote:]

I do not usually bring my professional activities to the pages of Samizdata, but I have a very interesting little story to tell.

There are things going on out in Cyberspace of which most are little aware. Some will have heard reports saying Cyberwar backed by nation states will soon be able to bring down economies. Other reports equally vehemently say the idea is an over-hyped load of bollocks.

I can tell you from personal experience ‘on the front lines’ there are indeed goings on which I find difficult to explain without recourse to State backed Cyberwar activities as fact. I cannot give specific details: that would be violating customer trust. What I can tell is the broad brush tale of a rather interesting discovery I stumbled upon late one night.

I was trying to assist a ‘Road Warrior’ CEO in getting at his email. This was not my reason for being at the ISP working – I was there on a consulting job – but I was the only one available at that hour. Their customer was in Moscow on a business trip and was becoming more and more strident over his inability to read his office mail.

I began tracing the ISP’s systems and trying to pull needles out of haystacks of system and mail logs. At first I thought he was appearing through a different address than he claimed to be using in his hotel. Proving this was made more difficult by the Moscow hotel not having its systems properly set up.

Someone was reading his mail and it was not him. Further more, that someone was in Beijing. Most disturbingly, it was from a Beijing network through which several years ago I had a near penetration of a firewall of mine. A friend who was a reformed ‘black-hat’ could not even explain what had happened. They were that good. So seeing someone on the same network repeatedly picking up this CEO’s email was a nasty surprise. My investigation suddenly shifted from ‘help the idjit customer’ mode to defense and forensics.

I will not bore you with details. After conferring with some other network and security people I had a story that fit the facts. I cannot absolutely swear the following is what was going on, but I can make a fair case for it.

It seems old hardline KGB have a presence in China and they use Beijing as a cutout for some of their activities. Since the password had to get there somehow, I infer either in the Moscow hotel or somewhere in a nearby Russian backbone node there is a data mining operation going on.

Imagine you are a businessman arriving in Russia for a trade show or other event. You check into the hotel and immediately use the internet connection to pick up your home office email. As you are not a network security expert, you do not realize your normal ‘pop3′ mail pickup is sending a clear-text user name and password when your laptop connects to your office (or gmail) server.

Your poor, unprotected little password gets scarfed up before it reaches the border. Along with other captives it gets passed on to the cutout operation in Beijing. Someone then connects and reads your mail. Presumably all the mail then gets dumped into a huge database where it can be cross-indexed and mined for proprietary data, internal data security info, blackmail possibilities and other attack vectors into yours or other corporate networks.

I could be wrong. There are other scenarios… but not many. One must explain how a password journeyed to Beijing within no more than a day or two of the CEO’s Moscow arrival. This does not happen accidentally.

I find this all quite disturbing.

[Quote:]

Dutch police have fined 50,000 people for breaking a new law making possession of identity papers compulsory “at all times”.

The law, which applies to everyone over 14, was introduced at the beginning of the year and justified as a response to terrorism.

From Jan 1 all Dutch citizens and foreign visitors have had to carry a passport, a driving licence or a newly issued ID card.

The prime minister, Jan Pieter Balkenende, said earlier this year that he was “determined to crack down hard on suspected terrorists”.

Those stopped without papers face a fine of 50 euros (£34).

But the new cards and the alacrity with which the police have enforced the new law have unnerved many Dutch residents.

A group of 250 people will appear before a high court judge in Utrecht on civil disobedience charges today after refusing to carry identity papers in protest.

Good for those 250 Dutch people! Stick it up ‘em!
Remember, it is only the farmer who benefits from branding the cow.

[Quote:]

The Republican majority leader in the US House of Representatives Tom DeLay has been indicted with criminal conspiracy by a grand jury in Texas.

The charge relates to a campaign finance scheme in which two of Mr DeLay’s associates also stand accused.

[Quote:]

The idea is disarmingly simple. Two bronze sculptures pee into their oddly-shaped enclosure.

While they are peeing, the two figures move realistically. An electric mechanism driven by a couple of microproccesors swivels the upper part of the body, while the penis goes up and down. The stream of water writes quotes from famous Prague residents.

Visitor can interupt them by sending SMS message from mobile phone to a number, displayed next to the sculptures. The living statue then “writes” the text of the message, before carrying on as before.

[Quote:]

Facing criticism that he appeared disengaged from the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina, President Bush has been looking for opportunities to show his concern. But the White House will take the effort a step further Tuesday, venturing into untested waters by putting the nation’s first lady on reality television.

Laura Bush will travel to storm-damaged Biloxi, Miss., to film a spot on the feel-good, wish-granting hit “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” Mrs. Bush sought to be on the program because she shares the “same principles” that the producers hold, her press secretary said.

You mean like exploiting the poor to sell 30 second time slots for advertising?

[Quote:]

On Thursday, 13 September, Manuel Bravo, was the sixth asylum-seeker in custody awaiting deportation to commit suicide in the past 12 months at the Yarl’s Wood detention centre for asylum-seekers in Bedfordshire. Manuel Bravo, an asylum seeker from Angola, hanged himself in front of his 13-year-old son at detention centre

Manuel Bravo took his own life in despair at his imminent deportation and in a desperate final attempt to prevent the expulsion of his son. Bravo hanged himself on his 35th birthday, less than a day after he was taken to Yarl’s Wood detention centre for asylum-seekers in Bedfordshire with his son, Antonio, pending their deportation to Angola.

Subsequently, the British Home Office has indicated that Antonio is now unlikely to be deported before his 18th birthday, which will mean he will be able to finish his schooling in Britain. He will then be able to apply for asylum.

The Independent reported that Bravo had made his case for asylum based on the murder of his parents in Angola in August 2001. Bravo’s father was a leader of the Association of the Youth Democracy, founded in 1998 to challenge President José Eduardo dos Santos’s regime. Government warnings resulted first in the arrest of him and his father, then the murder of his parents in August 2001.

Although Bravo moved to Britain with his wife and two sons, Antonio and Mellyu, his wife returned to Angola with Mellyu earlier this year to care for an orphaned niece. She was subsequently arrested and jailed for two months and is now living as a refugee with her son in another African country.

Last week, a sunset rocket launch lit up the sky and was photographed by sky enthusiasts as far as hundreds of miles away.
The lingering result was a photogenic rocket plume.
Not everyone who saw the resulting plume knew its cause to be a Minotaur rocket launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA.
The cloud was visible after sunset on 22 September.
Fuel particles and water droplets expelled from the rocket swirled in the winds of the upper atmosphere, creating an expanding helix.
The noctilucent plume was so high that it still reflected sunlight, where lower clouds in the foreground appeared dark.
The above image also captured part of the plume reflecting sunlight as a rainbow or a colorful iridescent cloud.
Below the launch plume is the planet Venus.

[Quote:]

After weeks of prodding by Republican lawmakers and the American Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said yesterday that it will use taxpayer money to reimburse churches and other religious organizations that have opened their doors to provide shelter, food and supplies to survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

FEMA officials said it would mark the first time that the government has made large-scale payments to religious groups for helping to cope with a domestic natural disaster.

Aiding the hungry, hurt, sick, and displaced out of the goodness of one’s heart, or because it’s the right thing to do, is so old-fashioned. Where’s the percentage? Hell, you can’t expect a church to just give the stuff away!

The only appropriate moral choice for these churches to make is to refuse the payments. (that is, unless all shelters etc get reimbursed, regarless of affiliation)

Oh, and by the way, Bush ran on a platform that Churchs should supply for the needy instead of Federal welfare and other programs. What happened to that?

(from this beautiful weblog about Katrina)

(via)

Today, while testifying under oath, Mike Brown claimed that Louisiana Gov. Blanco’s August 27th request to the President for a federal emergency declaration excluded Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquerines parishes. Here’s Brown today under questioning by Rep. Steve Buyer:

BUYER: So I’d like to know why did the president’s federal emergency assistance declaration of August 27th not include the parishes of Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines?

BROWN: …[I]f a governor does not request a particular county or a particular parish, that’s not included in the request.

BUYER: All right.

Orleans Parish is New Orleans. I was listening to my colleague, Mr. Jefferson’s, questions about when they talked about, you know, they asked for this assistance for three days and then president responded the very next day, not the day that it was made — the request — but the governor of Louisiana actually excluded New Orleans from the president’s federal emergency assistance declaration?

BROWN: Again, Congressman, we looked at the request.The governors make the request by…

BUYER: Let me ask this. Since you went through the exercise in Pam, was that not shocking to you that the governor would excluded New Orleans from the declaration?

BROWN: Yes.

BUYER: When that request came in excluding these three parishes, did you question it?

BROWN: We questioned it. But I made the decision that we were going to go ahead and move assets in regardless because we have the ability to add those parishes…

In fact, Blanco requested the President to declare a disaster in “all the southeastern parishes,” which includes Orleans, Jefferson and Plaquemines. See the request for yourself HERE.

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When scientists announced last month they had determined the exact order of all 3 billion bits of genetic code that go into making a chimpanzee, it was no surprise that the sequence was more than 96 percent identical to the human genome. Charles Darwin had deduced more than a century ago that chimps were among humans’ closest cousins.

But decoding chimpanzees’ DNA allowed scientists to do more than just refine their estimates of how similar humans and chimps are. It let them put the very theory of evolution to some tough new tests.

If Darwin was right, for example, then scientists should be able to perform a neat trick. Using a mathematical formula that emerges from evolutionary theory, they should be able to predict the number of harmful mutations in chimpanzee DNA by knowing the number of mutations in a different species’ DNA and the two animals’ population sizes.

“That’s a very specific prediction,” said Eric Lander, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Mass., and a leader in the chimp project.

Sure enough, when Lander and his colleagues tallied the harmful mutations in the chimp genome, the number fit perfectly into the range that evolutionary theory had predicted.

Their analysis was just the latest of many in such disparate fields as genetics, biochemistry, geology and paleontology that in recent years have added new credence to the central tenet of evolutionary theory: That a smidgeon of cells 3.5 billion years ago could — through mechanisms no more extraordinary than random mutation and natural selection — give rise to the astonishing tapestry of biological diversity that today thrives on Earth.

Evolution’s repeated power to predict the unexpected goes a long way toward explaining why so many scientists and others are practically apoplectic over the recent decision by a Pennsylvania school board to treat evolution as an unproven hypothesis, on par with “alternative” explanations such as Intelligent Design (ID), the proposition that life as we know it could not have arisen without the helping hand of some mysterious intelligent force.

Maddison Campbell, 19, right, wife of Sgt. Jeremy M. Campbell, of Middlebury, Pa., is presented the U.S. flag by Maj. Gen. Howard Bromberg, left, during funeral services at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2005. Campbell died on Sept. 11, 2005, in Baghdad, Iraq, where an improvised explosive device detonated near his Humvee during patrol operations. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

A U.S Army bugler stands among tombstones as he plays Taps during funeral services for Sgt. Jeremy M. Campbell.

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According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the MPAA is trying to ram broadcast flag legislation through Congress again, this time as an amendment to a budget reconciliation bill. Ever since the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the Federal Communications Commission overstepped its authority in mandating that all consumer electronic devices capable of receiving digital television signals incorporate support for the flag, the media industry has been working on getting Congress to enact the flag.

This latest attempt involves tacking on an amendment to a budget reconciliation bill. Reconciliation bills are an optional part of the government spending cycle, where Congress attempts to cut some mandatory spending in order to bring expenditures closer in line with the budget for the fiscal year. Since reconciliation is about cutting spending�something that always sounds good�such legislation cannot be substantially changed by the Budget Committee once it is presented, nor can it be filibustered.

With those limitations, reconciliation bills are a great way to get “stealth” legislation through Congress. Get it tacked on before it goes before the Budget Committee where it will get a straight “yea” or “nay” vote as part of the larger package, have it sped down to the floor of the House and Senate for another quick up or down vote, out to a joint conference to work out differences between the House and Senate versions, and on to the president’s desk for signing. Once Congress passes complementary legislation mandated in the reconciliation bill, in a figurative blink of an eye the broadcast flag goes from a gleam in the MPAA’s eye into your living room.