Last night, I watched the episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! which talked about the USA PATRIOT Act. I wondered, "What does it really do? What does it really say?" Any person who has time, resources, and a basic understanding of legal jargon can wade through the USA PATRIOT Act. The time required is devoting to cross-referencing changes in the U.S. Code with the changes listed in the legislation. The resources required are minimal: the text of the USA PATRIOT Act obtained from the ACLU's website, and an online copy of the U.S. Code, available from Cornell University's Legal Information Institute.

I decided to make this a sort of a serial, since each title of the USA PATRIOT Act is pretty big. But while I'm going through another title, I'll post my "fisking" of the previous title here. My objective summary of the legislation's text is in black. My sardonic comments are in red. Let's begin!

TITLE I – ENHANCING DOMESTIC SECURITY AGAINST TERRORISM

Sec. 101

Establishes a “counterterrorism fund” to “[provide] support to counter, investigate, or prosecute domestic or international terrorism.”

Sec. 102

Expresses the Sense of Congress that there is discrimination against Muslim and Arab Americans following September 11, 2001 and condemns “acts of violence or discrimination against any Americans.”

A lot of legislation puts this "sense of Congress" crapola in there. It's basically Congress's official stance on a particular issue. It's not legally binding, but in interpreting the law, courts could go to sections like this to find out what the intent of the legislation was.

Sec. 103

Increases funding for the FBI’s Technical Support Center.

Sec. 104

Amends § 2332e of 18 U.S.C. This portion of the United States Code deals with “Requests for military assistance to enforce prohibition in certain emergencies.” This is the original text:

The Attorney General may request the Secretary of Defense to provide assistance under section 382 of title 10 in support of Department of Justice activities relating to the enforcement of section 2332a of this title during an emergency situation involving a chemical weapon of mass destruction. The authority to make such a request may be exercised by another official of the Department of Justice in accordance with section 382(f)(2) of title 10.

This section of the USA-PATRIOT Act removed the word “chemical” in line 5.

I guess they omitted "chemical" so that they could take into account biological as well as nuclear weapons.

Sec. 105

Expands National Electronic Crime Task Force Initiative “for the purpose of preventing, detecting, and investigating various forms of electronic crimes, including potential terrorist attacks against critical infrastructure and financial payment systems.”

Sec. 106

Amends 50 U.S.C. 1702, the International Emergency Powers Act, to allow the president to investigate, regulate, or prohibit any foreign exchanges; or transfers of payments through banking institutions; or importing or exporting currency or securities “by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.” This last sentence is what was added to 50 U.S.C. 1702.

This part is interesting. Before, the president could prohibit a lot of things in a general sense. Now, the language of 50 U.S.C. 1702 has changed, specifying that it applies only to things within the jurisdiction of the United States.

And this is the end of Title I. Pretty prosaic stuff. Turns out most of the USA PATRIOT Act is pretty banal stuff. A lot of it is just updating legislation like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to come up to speed with current technology. For example, the law before the USA PATRIOT Act really didn't allow the government to wiretap computer networks, since such networks weren't around when FISA was written. Now, the government can wiretap computer networks. Penn & Teller, in their show, were right: about 95% of the USA PATRIOT Act isn't very sexy: increase funding there, change that definition there.

Look for Title II, coming soon!

Posted by Mark at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

According to the excellent Frontline documentary entitled "American Porn," the Bush administration under John Ashcroft was totally ready to declare a War on Pornography immediately after it came into office. The Reagan administration spent the 1980s combatting porn, but during the Clinton administration, porn experienced a resurgence because the Justice Department decided that porn wasn't as important as, oh, I don't know, combatting terrorism.

With the advent of September 11, Ashcroft had to put the War on Porn on hold in favor of the War on Terror. But apparently, the War on Terror has been won, because the Justice Department is now diverting resources to a new War on Pornography:

The agents were stunned to learn that a top prosecutorial priority of Acosta and the Department of Justice was none of the above. Instead, Acosta told them, it's obscenity. Not pornography involving children, but pornographic material featuring consenting adults.

Acosta's stated goal of prosecuting distributors of adult porn has angered federal and local law enforcement officials, as well as prosecutors in his own office. They say there are far more important issues in a high-crime area like South Florida, which is an international hub at risk for terrorism, money laundering and other dangerous activities.

What? Apparently we haven't yet won the War on Terror? But kids might see boobies! Well, if money talks, then companies might lobby their congressmen to stop this War on Porn. Porn is a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry, and most of the country's major cable companies are also the country's major porn companies, since they distribute porn via pay-per-view or premium (HBO, Showtime, Skinemax) services.

Posted by Mark at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I have a few points to make.

First, I have found the difference between whiskey and bourbon. After many people asking me, and being forced to answer, "I don't know," I know the answer. It is contained in a restaurant in Boulder called the West End Pub. Brian and I visited the West End Pub because I chose it. I chose it because it said "pub" and I figured, "Oh, 'pub' means Guinness." But, sadly, I was wrong. The West End Pub contained generic food at high prices. Its only saving grace was a full page of bourbon in the drink menu. I have never before seen a restaurant so exclusively devoted to bourbon.

So, what's the difference? Well, bourbon is a type of whiskey. Most whiskey is made of 50% corn and 50% other grains. Bourbon, to be called bourbon, has to contain from 65% to 75% corn and 35% to 25% other grains. That's it. It has nothing to do with where it's made (although most of the country's bourbon is made in Kentucky), like champagne. It has to do only with the proportion of corn it contains relative to other grains: bourbon contains more corn than whiskey.

Second, Blue Moon Pumpkin Ale comes out the first week of October, and I plan to be there. Doesn't that sound delicious? I think I've had pumpkin cider before; Matt, didn't we have pumpkin cider last Halloween? I seem to remember drinking some while watching Wild Zero.

Third, I've been downloading and watching episodes of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! and I like it. Each episode of the show de-bunks some commonly held political or social belief. In one episode, they de-bunk the validity of the Bible. In another, they call the efficacy of circumcision into question. In another show, they even suggest that recycling is a bad idea. I encourage those of you with Showtime to watch, and those without Showtime to ... ah, obtain the show via other means. It's a good show.

Fourth, teaching for The Princeton Review has proven to be a good job. High school students aren't as bad as we thought they were. They're usually tired, because (1) they had to get up early on Sunday to come to my class, or (2) they had to be at my class late on Wednesday. Here's my plan: make money with The Princeton Review for the next year. I'll take the LSAT in October, get a 170, and apply to Stanford Law School. After I'm accepted to Stanford Law School, I'll move to the Silicon Valley/San Francisco Bay area. Stanford has a deal with local renters to supply apartments in the area to Stanford students at a discount, so that will be good. During the summer after my first year, I'll intern at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I'm at Stanford for three years, during which time I get involved with the law review there, as well as the Center for Internet & Society, where I'll help work on technology-related briefs. My specialties will be intellectual property and constitutional law. Hopefully I'll get to be taught by Larry Lessig, Stanford's celebrity intellectual property lawyer. I'll graduate and go to work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, or maybe even the ACLU, where I'll fight for your civil liberties in both the digital and analog spheres. Take that, The Man!

Fifth, Scott, if you're reading this, we've been worried sick about you. Where are you? No one has heard from you in a long time!

Posted by Mark at 9:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

This was going to be a comment, but it's longer than I'd like it to be, so it's a whole post.

Ned writes:

"Also, Cindy Sheehan said that she herself would gladly have gone to war if it were for a noble cause; e.g., Afghanistan."

Actually, Mark, Cindy Sheehan is against the war in Afghanistan as well. Here's the link to her discussion on Hardball with Chris Matthews: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8972147/

Also, I have never heard Karl Rove describe a person as unpatriotic. I have never hear Pres. Bush describe someone as unpatriotic. I have never heard Donald Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, McClellan, Fleischer...you get the point. Past or present staffers, I have not heard the word "unpatriotic" uttered once.

I think the real situation is that whenever someone questions anyone on the left, their knee-jerk reaction is to say "How dare you call me unpatriotic," when in fact the original statement was never made.

Ned's right. I thought that I had heard Cindy Sheehan mention that she was in favor of the war with Afghanistan, but her appearance on Hardball suggests otherwise. I happen to disagree with her on this point.

And, regarding Karl Rove, cf. his comments made June 22, 2005: "Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers. Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war." This is a complete revision of history that would make O'Brien proud. Does he honestly think our memories are so short? Everyone, post 9/11, was totally willing to do anything to find whoever was responsible for the attacks, including pass ridiculous legislation like the USA-PATRIOT Act. I remember politics post-9/11, and I was surprised at how genial and united everyone was. Rove was attempting to re-write the history of 9/11 to suit his own purposes; namely, the thesis that liberals are pacifists who would rather talk problems out, while conservatives are willing to take action. His suggestion, of course, is that liberals somehow like terrorists, whereas conservatives don't like them. Oh, and there's that whole Valerie Plame thing.

Posted by Mark at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Things are getting worse for the Gulf of Mexico, particularly New Orleans, which is below sea level. A hurricane would be bad, but unfortunately for the Big Easy, the end result of a hurricane wouldn't be traditional hurricane damage as much as it would be a whole lotta flooding.

I hope Dr. B, The Human Jukebox, makes it out okay. It would be a shame to lose his dead-on impressions of classic jazz artists and off-beat snapping.

Posted by Mark at 9:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Speaking as a guest on The Randi Rhodes Show today, Cindy Sheehan said that a Republican PAC called Move America Forward is distributing press releases saying that she is funded by al Qaeda and white supremacists.

These are pretty harsh allegations, so I investigated them.

What has happened is that David Horowitz's Frontpage Magazine has taken comments she made on Nightline wildly out of context, suggesting that she is anti-Semitic. Horowitz is a loony who maintains that no matter what Israel does, it is always right, and no matter what the Palestinians do, they are always wrong. Horowitz weasles his way into college campuses through the benignly-named Students for Academic Freedom. Little do they know that "Academic Freedom" requires a radical pro-Israel policy (not that a pro-Israel policy is radical, but Horowitz's approach to a pro-Israel policy is radical).

Ben Johnson, a columnist at Frontpage Magazine, wrote an Aug. 18 column entitled "American Nazi Idol." The column makes the (fallacious) argument that, because David Duke wrote a column supporting Cindy Sheehan, it follows that Cindy Sheehan believes in what David Duke believes. But then there are these statements made by Sheehan in a letter to Nightline:

my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC [Project for a New American Century] Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel.

PNAC is a neo-con agenda. It was established in 1997 by such famous figures as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz as a neoconservative think tank. Their statement of principles, presented at their opening in 1997, gives you some indication as to what they think. It is no coincidence that the chief architects of the Iraq War were also the chief architects of an organization that believes in "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity." Oh, and most of these people worked for Reagan, too.

As for her comment that her "son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel," how does this comment make her a Nazi? Partially it's because Horowitz views any criticism of Jews as hostile and on par with Nazism. Why? Because it's an easy trope to use, not because the analogy holds true. There are many "mainstream" people in the United States who are not Nazis who believe that America gives too much support to Israel. In fact, the amount of support we give Israel is one of the reasons that Arab countries don't particularly like us. Her comments about Israel may be on the extreme left of opinion concerning Israel, and I may not particularly agree with them, but these statements do not make her a white supremacist.

But funding by white supremacists? I haven't found anything to back that up, yet. Randi Rhodes also reports that, in private, Bush called the anti-war protestors in Crawford "m-fers" (only he used the full word) and said, regarding his meeting again with Sheehan, she can "go to hell." This is merely speculation, though.

UPDATE: This article from Capitol Hill Blue describes Bush's frequent White House "tirades." It also confirms that he said, regarding meeting again with Cindy Sheehan, "I'm not meeting again with that goddamned bitch. She can go to hell as far as I'm concerned!" Also, he called war protestors "m-fing traitors" (expletive deleted). In the opinion of a prominent Washington psychiatrist, Bush's actions are "all too typical of an alcohol-abusing bully who is ruled by fear." Capitol Hill Blue is published by the Save America Foundation, "a not-for-profit, non-partisan educational foundation."

UPDATE: After doing some research on Capitol Hill Blue, I've concluded that it's probably not a credible website. It makes far too much mention of anonymous "aides" and "staffers," and besides, if this were true, the major newspapers would have jumped on it by now. So the Captiol Hill Blue article is probably nothing more than fiction. This online forum discusses the veracity of Capitol Hill Blue, which looks not very voracious. Or something like that.

Posted by Mark at 4:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

If there is one piece of legislation that's detrimental to liberty, it's the USA PATRIOT Act. If there are two pieces of legislation that are detrimental to liberty, they are the USA PATRIOT Act and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Signed into law in 1998, the original intent of the DMCA was to protect copyrighted works from piracy and hacking. Under the DMCA, it is a federal crime to circumvent electronic anti-infringement protection, like the kind you might find on the copy of Warcraft III you cracked. Makes sense, right?

But the DMCA has been abused by corporations seeking to maintain a monopoly on their products. "Anti-infringement" protection has become "anti-competition" protection as corporations lock down their products, forcing you to come to them whenever you have problems.

Thankfully, the courts are working. Whenever corporations file lawsuits to have the DMCA protect crazy things, judges see right through them. In the most recent case of the DMCA being used to stifle innovation and competition, we have a company called StorageTek, which makes automated tape cartridge libraries for backing up data. StorageTek required its clients to have StorageTek service all of its machines, due to the fact that the machines used proprietary software.

In steps Custom Hardware Engineering & Consulting (CHE), which figures out how to intercept the error messages sent by this proprietary software and diagnose problems with the machines. To do this, CHE has to crack password protection software designed to prevent unauthorized reconfigurations of this proprietary software.

As expected, StorageTek sued, alleging violations of the DMCA, since the software was copyrighted and there was an anti-circumvention scheme in place. CHE defended itself by saying that the existence of such an anti-circumvention scheme constitutes antitrust; in designing software that should only be altered by StorageTek, the company has locked anyone else out from repairing the machines. While it's clear even to Judge Magoo that this is an antitrust violation (an attempt to lock out competition in a given industry), the trial court in this case refused to grant an injunction to CHE, since it believed that CHE did not have a good chance of winning the case on the merits.

Huh? That's a stupid baby opinion. Thankfully, an unnamed Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the trial court's decision:

That result follows because the DMCA must be read in the context of the Copyright Act, which balances the rights of the copyright owner against the public’s interest in having appropriate access to the work.

Maintenance is not prohibited by the Copyright Act, and in examining whose interest is at stake, the court concluded that, in this issue of maintenance, the public's interest in accessing the work in order fix it trumps the copyright owner's rights. CHE's cracking of StorageTek's protection software does not violate the DMCA, since there is no danger that CHE will steal the proprietary software. The DMCA, therefore, cannot prohibit third-party maintenance of a protected "work." (I put "work" in quotes because I don't believe that software code can be copyrighted. Software code is a set of instructions, not a work of art, and as such, should be covered by patents, not copyrights. See my previous post about patents and copyrights.)

Slowly but surely, our activist, liberal, baby-killing federal courts are doing the right thing and curbing the excessive power that the DMCA gives to copyright-holders.

Posted by Mark at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

This past Monday, students at Miami University went back to class. If I were becoming a senior this year, I too would be going back to class. I can remember the beginning of last year. Scott and I arrived a week early so that we could help with freshman move-in. Unlike the previous year, last year, we had techs posted at all of the freshman dorms. I remember that I was posted to Peabody Hall. This was a problem because the Ethernet jacks we were supposed to use didn't work. Fortunately, Peabody had a wireless network in the building, so we were able to use that to access the call-tracking database.

Like the year before, Matt's girlfriend lived off-campus, so he moved into our on-campus room a little bit at a time but stayed at his girlfriend's apartment to avoid the crazy charges. I probably went to a party later that evening. I went to lots of parties the week before class started and the first week of class.

And then, on Monday, I went to class. I went first to my religion class, and later that day to my Spanish class. I was pleased to see that Ashli and I were in the same Spanish class. And that was the end of that day.

But no more.

Class, for me, did not begin on Monday. There was no celebratory uptown walk to Mac and Joe's. Never again will I be able to play Bases Loaded on the Nintendo. Never again will I be able to walk over to Scott's room and both him, or go visit Ashli, Jess, or Elizabeth upstairs. Katie Spurrier doesn't live downstairs anymore.

One by one, our friends left. During our sophomore year, everyone lived in Bishop Hall -- except Scott, who practically lived in Bishop Hall. Then Drew, Cole, Emily, and Dree moved away. The next year, Katy Gonzales moved away and Carman never returned to Miami University. The dynamics changed, often resulting in us having to go off-campus for our parties, but all of our friends were there.

Mark doesn't live here anymore. He lives in Centennial, Colorado, which is more or less where Katy used to live. His room is inhabited by Brad "Rasputin." Matt doesn't live here anymore. He lives in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. Scott lives in Pickerington. Ashli lives in Kazakhstan. Katy and Mike live in Cincinnati. Elizabeth lives in San Francisco. Jess lives in Timberlake, Ohio. Katie Spurrier lives in Hamilton. She has one more year left at Miami. So does Sarah Tilton, who's moved out of the house on Main Street in which she spent three years. Now she lives in a dorm. Carman lives in South Carolina. Drew goes to OSU's law school, which is pretty close to Scott and Matt. Andrew lives far away from everyone; he's at New York University.

Here's a map of where we live now:

Minus Ashli, though. This is where Ashli lives relative to the rest of us:

All things are transient. People come and people go. But we have our memories. We have memories of the greatest days we spent together, and the worst. We can think upon them fondly or angrily whenever we want. But we mustn't let memories rule our lives. We're forging new memories right now, and when we meet again -- which I know we will -- we'll have new memories to share.

Kids, take heed: college is the best time of your life. You'll hate it when it starts and long for it when it's gone. It's a place where you'll make some of your best friends and have your greatest experiences. It's like a transitory period between childhood and adulthood, a place where you can do things that you will never be able to do again. Live down the hall from your friends? Go to parties every weekend? Never again. Enjoy the experiences while they happen. Don't ignore anything. And remember so that, one day, in a moment when you're reading a book, you'll suddenly be reminded of the time that Cole got drunk and decided he would go shave in the bathtub.

Posted by Mark at 1:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Copyright law is complicated.

There's no such thing as open-source DRM. Open-source is about encouraging users to make changes to a system. DRM is about locking a user out of a system.

We all need one of these.

AOL intentionally makes it difficult for you to cancel its service. My dad recently got a free cable modem if he agreed to sign up for an AOL account. He signed up for the account, and then canceled it the next day. He spent about fifteen minutes on the phone as the customer service representative begged and pleaded with him not to cancel, and enticed him with a dozen special offers. Of course, he wouldn't relent, and they canceled the account. A month later he received a letter in the mail stating that his account had been canceled, but not before AOL customer service called the house, trying to talk him into re-activating his account.

Posted by Mark at 10:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

You may be familiar with Hugo Chavez. He's the democratically-elected president of Venezuela. He's also a socialist and doesn't like the United States very much. Oh, and he's bosom buddies with Fidel Castro.

The United States doesn't like Hugo Chavez much, either. Back in the early days of the Bush Administration, before we believed in crap like democracy and freedom, we wholeheartedly endorsed an illegal coup that replaced Chavez with someone who wasn't democratically elected. Rather than deride the action as undemocratic and demand that Chavez be re-instated, we formally recognized the new government hours after the takeover!

Memory hole? What's that?

Anyway, we don't like Hugo Chavez very much. And Pat Robertson really doesn't like him. Pat Robertson is a televangelist and founder of The Christian Broadcasting Network. He's an evangelical Protestant and is best friends with such notable asshats as Jerry Falwell. In the tradition of loving one's neighbor and turning the other cheek to your enemy, here's what good Christian Pat Robertson had to say yesterday about Hugo Chavez:

We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. [...] We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with. [...] You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop.

You know, Pat, you're right. Jesus would have assassinated Hugo Chavez. Because Jesus hates commies, as the Cold War proved beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Don't forget that on September 13, Robertson suggested on his show The 700 Club that September 11 was a punishment from God because America had fallen into sin:

The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I'll hear from them for this, but throwing God ... successfully with the help of the federal court system ... throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad...I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America ... I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen.

For encouraging the murder of a democratically-elected president because he didn't agree with his politics, and also for suggesting that 3,000 people were killed on September 11 because of the homo-gays and the ACLU (of which I am now a card-carrying member; I actually got my card just now), Pat Robertson is a long-overdue SEDHE Villain of the Forever.

Posted by Mark at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

As an Official Coors Beer Taster, I feel that I am qualified to tell you which beers are the best. Here are the top five:

1. Coors

Not the sissy Coors Light that you bought by the case for your jerky fraternity's jerky party, but Adolph Coors' original-recipe 1874 lager. Lighter than many beers, but delicious, nonetheless.

2. Guinness

What list would be complete without the dense, meaty taste of Guinness? The darkest of all beers, Guinness is also one of the tastiest. Again, this is not for mass-consumption at your sorority's "get drunk as fast as you can so you can do the first fratboy you see" party. Guinness is meant to be enjoyed in a gentleman's atmosphere, like the study or in a hotel room before a night on the town. Best if not served frozen.

3. Moosehead

Moosehead is lighter than Coors, but it has just as much flavor. Brought to you by Canada's oldest independent brewery, Moosehead is good to top off your evening. It's a great just-before-bed beer or a beer for those times when you're just after a beer.

4. J.W. Dundee's Honey Brown Ale

Made with the power of real honey, Honey Brown is a great beer for any occasion. Dark and tasty. But not in bulk. Too many or too much too soon can prove nauseating, since it does have a little more sweetness than other beers.

5. Barman

Guess what, kids? You can't get Barman anywhere! Coors brews Barman for only about a dozen bars and restaurants in Golden, Co., so you'd have to come here to get it. It's a dark beer and it's very good.

Well, we've seen the top five; now, let's look at the bottom five.

1. Miller High Life

The champagne of beers? More like the bathtub gin of beers. Like all the Miller products, this one was designed to be consumed by the truckload by jerky fratboys. Avoid at all costs.

2. Eliot Ness

This beer is made by Cleveland's Great Lakes Brewing Company to honor Eliot Ness, who, after he was an Untouchable in Chicago (and helped put Al Capone in the slammer), was Cleveland's Director of Public Safety (police chief). Unfortunately, they went the extra step of filtering the beer through Eliot Ness's corpse. This beer is abominable.

3. Aspen Edge

Introduced in 2004 as Coors' "low-carb" beer, Aspen Edge tastes like nothing. Seriously, it tastes like water that's turned. Good thing I got some for free instead of buying a case and finding out it sucks.

4. Milwaukee's Best

Derided by most as "Beast" and by myself as "Milwaukee's Worst," this is truly the worst of all beers. I can handle Natural (Natty) Light and Keystone, but Milwaukee's Worst makes me blind for a short amount of time.

5. Natural Light

Usually called "Natty Light," it's one of the cheapest beers you can buy. Every major beer company has its low-end, crappy brand. For Coors, it's Keystone. For Anheuser-Busch (Budweiser), it's Natty Light. The boon of, yes, fratboys, Natty Light costs about 25 cents per can. And when you need seven thousand cans for Fall Rush, your choice will be the cheap, crappy beer. (Note: Keystone, however, is cheaper than Natty Light but tastes better.)

And those are your beers. I find that Coors beers are better in general than other companies' beers. Did you know that Coors makes Blue Moon and Killian's Irish Red? And that it owns the trademark on Grolsch? I'd set my watch by a frosty glass of Coors [not Coors Light]. Man, that stuff's good!

Posted by Mark at 4:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

In protest of the Kansas State School Board decision to teach intelligent design in classrooms, several people created their own religion, Pastafarianism, out of protest. Boing Boing has chronicled the evolution of this religion from its beginnings in June, 2005. Most notably, in response to "creation scientist" Dr. Kent Hovnid's $250,000 offer for definitive proof of evolution, Boing Boing has raised $1 million and is willing to offer it to any person "if [he] can produce empirical evidence which proves that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster." The Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is the chief deity of Pastafarianism.

Now, you can print your own FSM bumper stickers, which of course vaguely resemble the infamous "Jesus fish."

Posted by Mark at 7:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

A cursory glance of the Internet Movie Database has revealed that there will be a Futurama movie in 2007! The information was updated on IMDb on July 17. Hopefully, this is true.

Posted by Mark at 9:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Matt was concerned that I was spending too much time on Cindy Sheehan and not enough time telling people what's been going on. So I'll depart from politics and talk about me.

Going to Denver, San Francisco

In June, I had applied for several jobs in the Mentor area and not gotten them. I decided to move out to Denver, where my dad lives. He had said that I could come and live there if I wanted to, and I thought it would be a good change of scenery. Mentor is nice and all, but after living there for ten years, I wanted something new. Plus, since the summer of 2001, the only times I've seen my dad are Christmas Break and Thanksgiving Break. He's a stand-up guy and I feel like I should spend some time with him before I go out on my own.

I found a listing on craigslist.com for a job teaching the SAT in Denver for the Princeton Review. I jumped at the chance, since auditions weren't that far away. This was the reason for my hasty departure from Mentor: I had to get to Denver in time to audition for the job. (When you're applying to be a Princeton Review teacher, they make you "audition" by teaching them something non-academic, like wine-tasting, kickboxing, or in my case, how to stand on your head.) I drove to Denver in two days with a stop in Blue Springs, Mo. Since there were about two weeks between the audition and the time when I'd be told if I had the job or not, I thought I'd visit Elizabeth in San Francisco. She had been living there for only two weeks at that point and she didn't know anyone. I spent many a night on the phone with her for a few hours because she was lonely. So I thought I'd visit her.

On June 23, I drove to California and got there a day later after a stop in Winnemucca, Nevada. We spent the next week and a half doing the "touristy" things in San Francisco -- visiting Chinatown, Alcatraz, and the Exploratorium -- because Elizabeth didn't want to be one of those people that lives in New York all her life and never visits the Statue of Liberty. I also went camping for the first time in my life, on Angel Island, an island in the middle of the bay. It was what they call "ecological camping," which means it's you and a pit-toilet. And we had to hike about two miles uphill to get to our campsite. Nothing difficult, but it was no KOA campground.

As a note to Scott, yes, I know where Emperor Norton I is buried. It's quite literally in Elizabeth's backyard. In the part of Daly City where she lives, there are about a dozen cemetaries, and he's buried in one of them. But curse my feeble brain, I was halfway to Sacramento, on my way back to Denver on July 5, when I realized I never got a photo of him. So Elizabeth told me she would take one.

Photos of San Francisco will be on Yahoo! as soon as I can sort through them all and put them there.

Princeton Review training

Training to teach the SAT for the Princeton Review consisted of spending three weekends essentially learning the course. From 6-10 PM on Friday and 10AM-6PM Saturday and Sunday, for three weeks, I listened as Amanda taught the course and as we did "teachbacks," where we get up there and teach some of the material back to the other trainees.

The rest of the time, I hung out here or visited the city of Denver -- which is interesting -- or the city of Boulder, which is an awesome hippie college town.

From July 27 to Aug. 3, Cathy came to visit and to babysit the two girls, since my dad and stepmom were spending the weekend at a Nestle retreat somewhere in the mountains. We saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I'm happy to report is great.

By myself

From Aug. 6 to Aug. 14, I was here by myself, since the whole fam-damily went to Utah for a week. Fortunately, Brian decided to drive out to visit and stayed from Aug. 6 to Aug. 9. We stayed up late playing Perfect Dark on the old N64. At its height, my accuracy was 49.9%.

During this time, I applied for two jobs: one as a "junior webmaster" and another teaching Spanish at a Montessori middle school in Golden, Co. Both jobs interviewed me, but neither job hired me. So it goes. I'm still looking for jobs to augment The Princeton Review.

On Friday, Aug. 12, Katie Spurrier, Jessica Jewell, and Steve came to town for Katy Gonzales's wedding. It was good to see friends again. Katie was supposed to stay with Jess and Steve in the Cherry Creek Hotel, but their room had only one bed, so she stayed at my house, instead. We had some good conversation.

On Saturday, before the wedding, we visited the Coors brewery in Golden. It was awesome! We learned how beer was made, why Coors was better than everyone else, and then we got to have free beer in the visitors' lounge! I'm happy to report that Coors regular beer is great, but Aspen Edge -- Coors' low-carb beer -- is abominable. Then we went to the wedding, which was great. Drew, Josh, and I were after the Kristoffersen sisters, but I don't know how that went, since I went home at about 1:30 AM, since Katie had to go to the airport fairly early in the morning. All I know is that Caroline Kristoffersen is a Hotty McHotterson.

Life goes on

On Sunday, my friends left, my family returned, and I was kind of depressed, since I still didn't really know anyone here. During the first part of the week, I was heartened as I got three tutorials to teach for The Princeton Review. (A tutorial is when you go to a kid's house to tutor him one-on-one.) This will provide a great augmentation for the SAT course I'm teaching. They also might be my only tutorials for a while, since August and September are our hell time, as kids prepare to take the Oct. 8 SAT. Things slow down in November and December, then pick up again a little in the spring. In September, they're offering training in the GRE, which I'll probably do so that I can teach more stuff. The training will be done by Amanda, which is awesome, since she's a great trainer.

I had put a personal ad on craigslist.com in an attempt to meet people and I got some replies. One of the reply-ees, Beth, invited me to go to a comedy club downtown to go to open mic night. The next night we went to see Grizzly Man at the local indie theater. It's a great movie about an amateur naturalist who wants to live with bears, ending with the bears killing him and his girlfriend. This interaction has proven interesting, so much so that details cannot appear here.

And that's what I've been doing.

Posted by Mark at 6:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Ned writes:

This is a bum deal. Every time someone criticizes Cindy Sheehan we are told, "she has a right to free speech." Then when they clarify that they are not challenging her right to dissent, but rather her authority as a geo-political analyst, Sheehan's ilk says, "How dare you question the mother of a dead solider." Which side is really trying to restrict speech here?

First of all, Cindy Sheehan is not purporting to be a geo-political analyst. She wants to know, "What noble cause did my son die for?" She, like many others around the country, wants to know what her son died for. Is it weapons of mass destruction? Nope, it can't be that, since we never found any WMDs. Was it because Saddam Hussein was in violation of U.N. resolution 1441? Nope, it can't be that, since ninety U.N. resolutions are currently being violated, and we're not invading the countries that are violating those. Was it because Saddam Hussein was linked with al-Qaeda? Nope, it can't be that, since the September 11 Commission determined that the two had no operating relationship, despite the Bush administration's attempts to sneakily suggest that there was (cf. All the President's Spin). Was it to liberate the Iraqi people? Nope, it can't be that, since the Iraqi people are worse-off now than they were under Saddam and instead of being threatened by a central state, they are being threatened by multiple terrorist groups in Iraq.

All of the reasons we had been given for going into Iraq have been refuted. We've discovered that people high up in the administration, like John Bolton, knowingly and deliberately mischaracterized intelligence so that they could bolster their case for war. We've discovered, through the Downing Street memos, that Bush was going to go to war as early as 2002. We've discovered that Bush ignored repeated warnings about al-Qaeda and forcibly silenced people who disagreed.

And now Cindy Sheehan's son is dead. And she does not think that her son died for a noble cause; she thinks the Iraq was is wrong and she wants to meet with the president. She is doing that most First Amendment of things: "petitioning [her] government for a redress of grievances."

My beef is not with people challenging her right to dissent. My beef is with people (1) attempting to smear her through ad hominem attacks and other kinds of attacks as those same people have done before with people who questioned the Bush administration. My beef is also with people (2) suggesting that she shouldn't question her government. The Bush administration has engaged in a systematic attacking (or smearing, or discrediting, or whatever) of any person -- that's any person, be he grieving mother, war veteran, or senator -- who becomes inconvenient for the administration or dares to question the administration. We're dealing with a very arrogant, patriarchal "father knows best" attitude about the world. "Don't question your president; he knows best." Conservative commentators even act surprised that someone would dare to criticize the president, as though we live in Communist China, where dissent is squelched by tank. Who is the president to think he is beyond reproach? And who are these commentators to think that he is beyond reproach? Of course his actions are being criticized; his actions must be criticized or we will have fallen into a situation where we blindly trust our leaders and don't question why they do things. There are some times when they do not have the most upstanding of reasons for doing things, and as citizens -- from where Bush's power comes, not the other way around -- we must demand accountability of the people in which we have invested power. These current leaders not only do not want to be held accountable, but they stonewall attempts at accountability, and they have a coordinated Republican Spin Machine to help them.

This Republican Spin Machine agrees ideologically with the war and buys into the things the Bush administration said to justify the war. Fair enough. But when it tries to go the extra step to say that dissent decreases troop morale and is treasonous (the latter not said suggested by Bill O'Reilly, who actually said that other people might regard her actions as treasonous), that enters the realm of the totalitarian. Suddenly there is an entire class of things that the citizens cannot say for fear that it might hinder "morale" or might be "treasonous." The word treason has been thrown around a lot lately, just as references to Nazis have been thrown about in the past month, and both sides would do well not to take treason lightly. Giving "aid and comfort to the enemy" does not mean criticizing our leaders and suggesting that their actions are wrong. To look at the true definition of treason, go and find Jose Padilla or John Walker Lindh, American citizens who actually went to fight with the enemy.

Who is un-American when he suggests that dissent is wrong? Not the dissenters. Again I resort to Thomas Jefferson, who said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." In a democracy (or a democratic republic), the citizenry is responsible for keeping the leaders in check and assuring that they do not abuse their power. We have a record of power abuses, and we are entitled to some answers, and if that is "treason," then there's no reason to be fighting this war at all.

Posted by Mark at 5:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

So, now (1) questioning the actions of your country (2) petitioning the government for a redress of grievances is "Stalinist":

To expiate the pain of losing her firstborn son in the Iraq war, Cindy Sheehan decided to cheer herself up by engaging in Stalinist agitprop outside President Bush's Crawford ranch. It's the strangest method of grieving I've seen since Paul Wellstone's funeral. Someone needs to teach these liberals how to mourn.

I like this one, too:

We're sorry about Ms. Sheehan's son, but the entire nation was attacked on 9/11. This isn't about her personal loss. America has been under relentless attack from Islamic terrorists for 20 years, culminating in a devastating attack on U.S. soil on 9/11.

Back that train up! Cindy Sheehan's son died in Iraq, and as far as I know -- although information may have changed -- Iraq didn't attack us on September 11. Afghanistan-based al-Qaeda attacked us. But, of course, somehow the words "Iraq" and "9/11" became mixed up to the point where 21 percent of the country believed that Iraq was directly involved with September 11. Or is Ann Coulter trying to perpetuate the myth that September 11 = Osama bin Laden = al Qaeda = terrorism = Saddam Hussein? Throw "Saudi Arabia" in there and the equation might start to make sense.

And, by the way, Coulter commits the "guilt by association" fallacy by lumping Cindy Sheehan in the same pot with Michael Moore, suggesting that her opinions are invalid and baseless only because his opinions are invalid and baseless.

The only method that the Spin Machine has discovered to discredit Cindy Sheehan is to suggest that she's not in control of her message, that somehow Michael Moore and George Soros are operating her like a puppet. Need we remind them that Cindy Sheehan started out in front of the ranch with her and her sister? She never asked anyone to come join her. She was there first. George Soros and MoveOn.org joined her because their messages are congruent. But the Spin Machine continues to try and discredit and smear dissenters. If anyone -- anyone -- gets it into his head that he knows better about what's good for the country than the President of the United States, or dares to question the sacred authority of the president, then he must be destroyed in the media. Here's Rush Limbaugh saying that Cindy Sheehan ... well, I don't even know what he's saying. That she made this all up?

I mean, Cindy Sheehan is just Bill Burkett. Her story is nothing more than forged documents. There's nothing about it that's real, including the mainstream media's glomming onto it. It's not real. It's nothing more than an attempt. It's the latest effort made by the coordinated left.

So is Rush's suggestion that Cindy Sheehan didn't lose a son in Iraq and that she's lying about it? If so, it's Rush that's incorrect, because we certainly have documented evidence that she did.

Why does the Spin Machine go to such great lengths to destroy reputations in order to prevent the American public from believing anyone who suggests that America's current policies are wrong? To suggest that dissent and the questioning of one's government is treasonous is, in itself, treasonous. Thomas Jefferson once wrote that "eternal vigilance" was the price of freedom, and yet the Bush Administration would like you to be eternally ignorant and just let them handle the situation, please. Surrender your vigilance and we'll protect you from the gays.

Posted by Mark at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years."

"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."

Who said those things, do you suppose? Michael Moore? George Soros? Some other person or group that Bill O'Reilly has sanctimoniously dubbed "far left"?

The first quote came from Joe Scarborough, formerly R-FL. The second came from Rick Santorum, R-PA. Both quotations come from over ten years ago when Bill Clinton said he would commit troops to Bosnia. Back then, these Republican senators thought that going to war was a terrible idea. What about cost? What about an exit strategy?

This comes courtesy of Daily Kos, where a longer post there contains more comments from Congressmen that, in 2005, prove to be incredibly hypocritical.

Posted by Mark at 8:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Wikipedia has an entry called "logical fallacy" which goes through most of the logical fallacies that one can commit. It's pretty good reading. Here are the ones that I find most often when I watch, read, or listen to anything:

Ad hominem - attacking a person rather than attacking a person's argument in order to suggest that, because the person is bad, that person's arguments are necessarily wrong (cf. Ann Coulter's referral to Ambassador Joe Wilson as "Clown" Wilson, or practically anything else Ann Coulter says).

Appeal to emotion - attempting to persuade people by appealing to their emotions rather than by constructing a reasonable argument (cf. Karl Rove spreading rumors that John McCain had adopted "a black baby").

Appeal to motive - suggesting that, since a person's motive for arguing is questionable, then it follows that their argument is questionable (cf. Dick Cheney suggesting that Richard Clarke was criticizing the administration because he was disgruntled and had a book to sell).

Appeal to tradition - attempting to persaude people that a course of action is correct only because "that's the way it's always been done" (cf. Suggestions that gay marriage is wrong because marriage has never been that way).

Argument from ignorance - suggesting that, because something is inexplicable or or because a person can't conceive of something, it must necessarily be false (cf. Creationists or Intelligent Design advocates who can't believe that natural selection must be responsible for human evolution, therefore natural selection must be wrong).

False dilemma - setting up a situation in which it is presumed that there are only two options, when in reality there are more than two options to choose from (cf. The O'Reilly Factor of Aug. 10, 2005, where O'Reilly asks Delores Kesterson, mother of a soldier killed in Iraq and supporter of Cindy Sheehan, "If you had to throw in with one person, President Bush or Michael Moore, if you had to make a decision on who I'm going to back here, who would it be?").

Guilt by association - suggesting that because A is related to B, then A and B are necessarily the same only because of their relationship (cf. Any conservative commentator who suggests that Cindy Sheehan is a "radical" because information about her appears on Michael Moore's website and because her P.R. is being funded by MoveOn.org).

Straw man - mischaracterizing an opponent's argument in such a way that a person claims that his opponent's opinion is A, which is easier to refute, when in fact his opponent's opinion is really B (cf. Suggesting that liberals hate America and refuting that opinion rather than refuting liberals' real opinion, which is that America's policies are wrong).

But there are plenty more logical fallacies out there. Please become familiar with them so that you can spot them in the wild.

Posted by Mark at 7:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Whereas four years ago they were the highest-rated computer company in terms of customer service, ITworld.com reports that Dell has been sent back several notches with the other PC companies. Apple is now leading in customer service:

For the second year in a row, Apple received the best rating from PC buyers in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), said David Van Amburg, general manager of the ACSI. The University of Michigan compiles the ACSI in numerous product categories by randomly calling U.S. residents and surveying their buying habits, he said.

Apple received a score of 81, compared to an industry average score of 74, in results released Tuesday. The Cupertino, California, company's focus on product innovation and customer service has won it a cadre of famously loyal customers unlike any other PC vendor, Van Amburg said. Apple also received a score of 81 in 2004.

Dell, on the other hand, earned a score of 74, down from a score of 79 the previous year. Survey respondents complained mostly about the quality of Dell's customer service, not its products, Van Amburg said. The ACSI doesn't ask specific questions about the type of problems customers are having with a company, but customers were clearly more frustrated with the Round Rock, Texas, company than last year, he said.

But the quality of Dell products has gone down, too. As a person who spent three years fixing the things (Dell was definitely the PC of choice for Miami University students, followed by Gateway), I watched as the product line got more and more horrible. Why did Dell build a huge hinge system in their desktops that only made the case heavier? Why do the laptops routinely overheat now? What's with those hinged panels in the front of the desktop that don't seem to do anything but collect dust? Also, recall 2003, when we learned that Dell told its customer service reps in no uncertain terms that they were not allowed, ever, to suggest spyware-removal programs to customers. On top of that, in May of this year, it was revealed that Dell may have spyware installed on the computer by default, anyway. The moral of the latter story is that you should format and re-install if your computer came with pre-installed software.

But Apples come with the system software, its associated utilities, iLife, and demos for one or two other programs, like QuickBooks. Apples are so well-engineered that they hardly ever break, mechanically, unless a user has done something to them (yes, I understand that PowerBooks have had problems in the past, most notably with the screens on the 15" PowerBooks of two years ago). I talked to an Apple support guy once, and he reported that most calls to tech support come about because a user decided to play with the system in Darwin. This means that the user has to try to break an Apple. PCs will break down, no matter what.

This is why Apple has such a loyal following. People who own Macs love Macs and don't want to go back to Windows. Everything about them is great, even the packaging! (As Elizabeth noted when she took her recently-purchased iPod out of the Circuit City bag, "I want to have sex with this box.") The PowerBook comes in a form-fitted styrofoam case inside of a box with a handle on it! A handle! So you can carry it around! Now if only Apple would have offered a free laptop carrying case with the PowerBook, I would have been very happy indeed.

But Apples are expensive. But you know what's not expensive? Upgrading them. If you buy a low-end Mac, you can upgrade it for much less than Apple would have charged you. I recently purchased 512 MB of PC2700 DDR SDRAM for my PowerBook, bringing my total memory up to 1 GB. Purchasing the memory from Apple would have cost $150, but I bought a 512 MB SO-DIMM from newegg.com for less than $50. And every review of this kind of memory (from a company called A-DATA) was excellent; some reviewers even went to far as to say it was the best kind of memory to put in a Mac.

If money were no option, then I think everyone would switch to Mac. Unfortunately, Macs are more expensive than PCs, and quite often, people choose price over quality, thinking that "it's all the same, anyway." But the difference between a Mac and a PC is like the difference between a Rolls-Royce and a Ford Escort. Sure, the Ford Escort gets the job done, but it will break down periodically. The Rolls-Royce is a fine-tuned machine, which is good, because Rolls-Royce's other job is making jet engines. I wouldn't want Ford making my jet engines. And I don't want Microsoft making the OS that powers my servers or my computer.

I wanted to end this by providing a link to a good website which talks about why Macs are terrible, but if you type "macs suck" into Google, you get 150,000 results, most of which are people's personal web pages that are outdated by several years. Type in "macs are great" and you'll get 1,720,000 results. Even the Internet agrees, by a margin of 11 to 1, that Macs are great.

Posted by Mark at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Washington Post reported yesterday that "[t]he Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq." (Registration required.) A "senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion" was the source for these statements. "What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said this unnamed individual. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

This isn't surprising, considering that the Bush Administration wanted to fight the Iraq War on the cheap, putting far fewer troops on the ground than generals wanted. Secretary of Defense Donald "Duck" Rumsfeld insisted that the United States' modern army could easily defeat the Iraqi army with fewer troops than might seem necessary. And, true to form, we took Baghdad with lightning speed. What we did not expect, however, was the insurgency. With a power vacuum, the insurgents came from around the Islamic world to attempt to wrest control of Iraq from the United States. Oops; I guess we didn't plan for that.

A lot of the problems in Iraq come from this lack of infastructure. Roads, pipelines, and electrical lines were destroyed during the invasion, and they have yet to be rebuilt. Under Saddam Hussein, there was a bureaucracy in place that got everyday tasks done. Now, there's nothing. Power generation remains below pre-invasion levels. And the Texas tea that we thought would flow like manna from heaven ended up flowing like the trickle of a broken faucet. Pipelines are still destroyed and have not been rebuilt fast enough. The oil is there, but there's no way to get it out. The Bush Administration had hoped that oil sales would -- pardon the term -- fuel the country's growth, but those oil sales haven't happened, and neither has the growth.

Oh, and the world is a safer place now that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.

Posted by Mark at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

The Republican Spin Machine, which consists largely of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, and sometimes Ann Coulter, is kicking into gear over Cindy Sheehan. Sheehan's son Casey was killed in the double Black Hawk helicopter crash over Masul last year. After the crash, she met with President Bush and asked him why they went to war in the first place. Bush gave her the usual run-around about September 11 (which, you'll recall, did not involve Iraq) and freedom and so forth. Sheehan left her meeting with the president appalled by his attitude toward the Iraq War. Now, Sheehan is protesting the war at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. She had a dozen supporters when she started. There are currently over 200 people now protesting at the ranch.

On the Aug. 9, 2005 episode of The O'Reilly Factor, Bill O'Reilly and his guest, syndicated Right Wing Mouthpiece Michelle Malkin, had nothing but wonderful things to say about Ms. Sheehan:

O'REILLY: Well, I have to say that she obviously does because she's the lead story on Michael Moore's Web site on an almost daily basis. And she knows -- I mean, Michael Moore isn't a subtle guy. Everybody knows where he stands.

So I mean, I think Mrs. Sheehan bears some responsibility for this, and also for the responsibility of other American families who have lost sons and daughters in Iraq, who feel that this kind of behavior borders on treasonous.

So, here we have some things. First, any person appearing as a news item on Michael Moore's website, by association, believes all of the things that Michael Moore does. Appearing on Michael Moore's website makes one, metonymically, like Michael Moore. The Spin Machine is calling Sheehan's motives into question because of who she associates with -- or who they think she associates with. O'Reilly even used the word "handlers," suggesting that someone else is using Sheehan as a mouthpiece for a "radical" agenda. I'll call this "logical fallacy number one."

Second, "other American families [...] feel that this kind of behavior borders on treasonous." What's that? It's treasonous to go to Bush's ranch and demand that the war be stopped? Attempting to meet with a government official to ask that official to change his stance on an issue sounds a lot like, oh, I don't know, attempting "to petition the government for a redress of grievances." This phrase appears in the U.S. Constitution. As Mr. O'Reilly may or may not be aware, it is a right afforded to U.S. citizens. But there are some people out there -- legal experts, mostly, it seems -- who disagree with the obviously "activist" notion that Ms. Sheehan is exercising her constitutional rights. Or it could be that the Constitution itself is full of so many internal contradcitions that it must be thrown out in favor of a new system of government.

But, of course, this is not the first time that the Republican Spin Machine has circled the wagons around the Bush Administration or the Republican Party. Paul Hackett was a U.S. Marine who went to Iraq and came back disillusioned with the war. He joined the Democratic party and became involved with party politics. A seat in Ohio's Second Congressional District -- that's Cincinnati -- opened up two weeks ago when the previous holder of the seat was given a spot as a trade deputy or something like that. Hackett ran against Republican Jean Schmidt and lost, but only by about 3000 votes. The victory in what seemed to be one of the most Republican districts in the country was so slim that it scared Newt Gingrich into warning Republicans that the Democrats are gaining steam.

Hackett, though, who is a veteran of the Iraq War and who is critical of the Bush Administration, did not escape the wrath of the Republican Spin Machine. This time, the spin came from Rush Limbaugh. He had this to say of Paul Hackett's service to his country just this past week:

This Paul Hackett is a trial lawyer, folks [laughing]. He's a personal injury lawyer like John Edwards. And it appears that, you know, he goes to Iraq to pad the resumé, come back and run as a big supporter of the war, or at least finishing the project over there.

Goes to Iraq to pad the resume? This coming from a guy who didn't want to go to Vietnam, so he found a doctor who would say that he couldn't fight because of his anal cyst. When Limbaugh tells you he couldn't go to Vietnam because of "football knee," he's lying. In any case, Paul Hackett's service to the United States means nothing because he is a Democrat. And by the way, he obviously didn't care about the war; he was just trying to "pad the resume." Yes, folks, there's no easier way to make your resume look better than joining the Marines and going overseas to fight a war! I've been concerned lately about my resume. But, you know, I don't need to take classes to improve my credentials on my resume. There's a much easier way to do it than that. I'll just join the Marines because that's incredibly easy.

Fortunately, Hackett is a real straight-talking guy who doesn't let people like Limbaugh ruin his day. In discussing Limbaugh, Hackett referred to him as a "fat-assed pill-popper." I like him already. Why can't I live in Cincinnati? Oh, wait. Because it sucks.

This is what happened to former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill on Hannity and Colmes in January, 2004. He had a new book out called The Price of Loyalty in which he alleged that Bush had been planning to go to war with Iraq ever since he came into office. Here's what Hannity had to say about O'Neill:

But he was fired. He's obviously very bitter, very angry. So when people are angry and bitter, and they want to get back at people because he was embarrassed for having been fired, he may want to lash out in such a way.

So, Paul O'Neill's opinions can be chalked up to bitterness about being fired.

In 2000, rumors circulated in South Carolina that John McCain had adopted "a black baby." In reality, McCain's adopted daughter is from Bangladesh, but someone knew what buttons to push with South Carolina voters. Bush political strategist Karl Rove denied being behind the dirty tricks campaign, but reporters who investigated the issue concluded that Rove was responsible for spreading those rumors.

Former Georgia Senator and Vietnam veteran Max Cleland spent 2004 campaigning for John Kerry. Oh, and by the way, Cleland lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam after he picked up a live grenade. But that didn't stop Ann Coulter from saying, in a Feb. 11, 2004 column, "If Cleland had dropped a grenade on himself at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a U.S. Senator in the first place. Maybe he’d be the best pharmacist in Atlanta." Also, "He didn't 'give his limbs for his country,' or leave them 'on the battlefield. There was no bravery involved in dropping a grenade on himself with no enemy troops in sight."

Here is what actually happened to cause Max Cleland to lose three limbs, according to his commanding officer:

As they were getting off the helicopter, Max saw the grenade on the ground and he instinctively went for it. Soldiers in combat don't leave grenades lying around on the ground. Later, in the hospital, he said he thought it was his own but I doubt the concept of "ownership" went through his mind in the split seconds involved in reaching for the grenade. Nearly two decades later another soldier came forward and admitted it was actually his grenade. Does ownership of the grenade really matter? It does not.

The grenade was live and it exploded, causing him to lose two arms and a leg. Again, as with Paul Hackett and John Kerry, a person's service to the United States matters only if that person is (1) a Republican or (2) agrees with the Bush line.

In March, 2004, Vice President Dick Cheney personally went on Rush Limbaugh's show (and Rush claims that he's "just a talk show host") to smear former Bush counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke, who said before the 9/11 commission (and in a 2004 book, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror) that the Bush Administration ignored repeated memoranda warning about al-Qaeda:

Q All right, let's get straight to what the news is all about now, before we branch out to things. Why did the administration keep Richard Clarke on the counterterrorism team when you all assumed office in January of 2001?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I wasn't directly involved in that decision. He was moved out of the counterterrorism business over to the cyber security side of things, that is he was given a new assignment at some point here. I don't recall the exact time frame.

Q Cyber security, meaning Internet security?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, worried about attacks on the computer systems and the sophisticated information technology systems we have these days that an adversary would use or try to the system against us.

Q Well, now that explains a lot, that answer right there explains -- (Laughter.)

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, he wasn't -- he wasn't in the loop, frankly, on a lot of this stuff. And I saw part of his interview last night, and he wasn't --

Q He was demoted.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It was as though he clearly missed a lot of what was going on. For example, just three weeks after the -- after we got here, there was communication, for example, with the President of Pakistan, laying out our concerns about Afghanistan and al Qaeda, and the importance of going after the Taliban and getting them to end their support for the al Qaeda. This was, say, within three weeks of our arrival here.

So I guess, the other thing I would say about Dick Clarke is that he was here throughout those eight years, going back to 1993, and the first attack on the World Trade Center; and '98, when the embassies were hit in East Africa; in 2000, when the USS Cole was hit. And the question that ought to be asked is, what were they doing in those days when he was in charge of counterterrorism efforts?

[. . .]

Q Well, I guess what I'm getting at --

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I've worked with a lot of them over the years. I suppose he may have a grudge to bear there since he probably wanted a more prominent position than she was prepared to give him.

As Paul Krugman noted in a Mar. 23, 2004 column, "What loop? Before 9/11, Mr. Clarke was the administration's top official on counterterrorism." It would be like Condoleezza Rice being "out of the loop" on foreign policy. When you're in charge of foreign policy, you are the loop! Of course, in the Bush Administration, a small, elite group of Bush acolytes does all the policymaking, so it's not surprising that they might shut out a voice that's saying something they don't want to hear.

And, of course, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame. Here's what Coulter had to say about them:

The whole story was already nutty enough to be believed by every columnist at The New York Times. But then journalist Robert Novak revealed that Clown Wilson had been sent as an unpaid intern to Niger by his wife, a chair-warmer at the CIA who apparently wanted to get him out of the house. This in turn provoked our own Walter Mitty to accuse Karl Rove of outing his wife as an undercover "spy" in retaliation for his attacks on the Bush administration. (And P. Diddy told me Britney Spears is out to get me! I'm a spy too!)

Ann Coulter has also repeatedly said that "'Clown' Wilson was going around implying that he had been sent by the CIA and had reported to Dick Cheney's office." The Republican Spin Machine views this as evidence that he's a liar. In fact, Wilson has never claimed that he was sent anywhere by the vice president's office. He said that the Vice President was interested in his findings, but he has never said that Dick Cheney suggested sending him to Niger. In the July 13, 2005 Hannity & Colmes interview cited above, Coulter repeatedly refers to Joe Wilson as "Clown" Wilson.

Okay, so Ann Coulter might not be the mainstream of conservatism. Sean Hannity, on his June 24, 2005 WABC radio show, suggested that Valerie Plame wasn't an undercover operative, and not only that, but she wasn't even a very good not-an-undercover-operative. I have no quotation for this because I can't find a transcript of this show; it comes only from my memory, so take it as you will. All I know is that I heard Hannity talk about Plame this way as I was driving through the Sierra Nevada mountains, which works out to June 24. He also had a guest who was fervently agreeing with him. If anyone has a transcript of this show, it would be appreciated.

The reason the Republicans are winning the war of ideas in this country is that they have a large, coherent, strategically-operated network of syncophants who will repeat any lie, distortion, or smear in order to discredit someone, even if that person is actually right! The success of the Bush Administration is the goal of the Republican Spin Machine, and if that means discrediting administration officials who don't tow the line, grieving mothers, or war veterans, then so be it. As Karl Rove said of Valerie Plame after Joe Wilson published his New York Times op-ed in 2003, "She's fair game." That's the attitude we're dealing with, here.

Posted by Mark at 7:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Reuters reports, "After months of debate over science and religion, the Kansas Board of Education has tentatively approved new state science standards that weaken the role evolution plays in teaching about the origin of life." This does not mean that intelligent design is in the curriculum, but it does mean that the official position of the state of Kansas is skepticism regarding evolution, which could lead to intelligent design being brought into the curriculum.

Time has a great article this week about the evolution/intelligent design controversy. One of the most important points the article brings up is that scientists don't wish to debate intelligent design theorists not out of fear, but out of scientific integrity:

Many scientists have been reluctant to engage in a debate with advocates of intelligent design because to do so would legitimize the claim that there's a meaningful debate about evolution. "I'm concerned about implying that there is some sort of scientific argument going on. There's not," says noted British biologist Richard Dawkins, professor of the public understanding of science at Oxford University, whose most recent book about evolution is The Ancestor's Tale. He and other scientists say advocates of intelligent design do not play by the rules of science. They do not publish papers in peer-reviewed journals, and their hypothesis cannot be tested by research and the study of evidence. Indeed, Behe concedes, "You can't prove intelligent design by an experiment." Dawkins compares the idea of teaching intelligent-design theory with teaching flat earthism-- perfectly fine in a history class but not in science. He says, "If you give the idea that there are two schools of thought within science--one that says the earth is round and one that says the earth is flat--you are misleading children."

President Bush's statement last week that he would like to see intelligent design taught so that all viewpoints can be expressed is playing right into the hands of ID supporters. There is no "all viewpoints" about evolution within the scientific community. Real, actual, no-foolin' scientists accept that evolution is true. There is no controversy in the legitimate scientific community about evolution. No scientist is suggesting that there is scientific evidence for ID; on the contrary, it is ID people -- who are not scientists, even if some of them have scientific credentials -- who suggest that there is "scientific" evidence for ID. But their evidence amounts to saying, "Your evidence can't possibly be right." There is no positive theory being put forth by ID people. Their theory is nothing more than a negation of evolution, and they are using rhetoric and reason, not empirical data, to support their claim. More importantly, they appeal to public ignorance about how evolution really works and disguise their true purpose, claiming that they just want to "teach the controversy." They invented the controversy! It's like claiming that the Earth is flat and then teaching both the round-earth and flat-earth theories in order to "examine all the viewpoints," even if the flat-earth viewpoint is held by only a small minority of people who have no credentials to make such a determination.

So, rather than put forth their creationism theory, ID supporters have taken to inventing something that weakens evolution in the minds of people, making them ready to accept creationism in the future. ID is not about science; it's about public relations. It's about using straw men to confuse the public and it's about ID supporters counting on the fact that most people don't really know how evolution works. ID people tell the public, "Evolution states that X happened. Doesn't that sound silly?" when in fact evolution does not state that X happened. The public is getting its information about evolution from the ID supporters, and that's not good.

Posted by Mark at 5:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Peter Jennings died today at the age of 67!

I was dumbfounded when I heard. Surely it must be a joke? But, sadly, it wasn't.

Peter Jennings will always remain special to my friends and me. Four years ago, we were college freshmen who couldn't take our eyes off the news in the days following September 11. We had been at school for scarcely two weeks when the disaster hit. We watched the news religiously. And through it all was Peter Jennings. The man looked like he had been awake for days. Indeed, says his obituary at ABC News, "He anchored more than 60 hours that week during the network's longest continuous period of news coverage." He must not have slept for 60 hours.

In recognition of his steadfast service to the United States, we created The Peter Jennings Fan Club in an effort to urge ABC to let the man get some sleep, for crying out loud.

Peter Jennings will be missed by all. He was one of the greatest news anchors ever.

Posted by Mark at 1:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)