Originally, I was going to travel to San Francisco via I-80, an interstate that goes through Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California before stopping in Berkeley. The trip was going to take two days, with one stop in Nevada, but that would be okay: it would be efficient.

Elizabeth said that she wanted to come out to Denver to accompany me back with her, so she spent her own money on a plane ticket, flew out to Denver on Wednesday, and left with me on Friday morning. We had Thanksgiving at my house. For the past week, Elizabeth had been nervous about something. She claimed that she had something in store for me that she hoped I would like. Then I became nervous.

Friday morning, at 12:30 AM, we set out into the vast, unknown west. We took I-70, which is a lot more scenic than I-80. It goes right through the Front Range in Colorado and there are dozens of little mountain towns/ski resorts (Vail, Breckenridge) along the way. When we stopped for gas in Silverthorne, Co., the temperature was 3 degrees! It reached only 2 degrees on our trip through the mountains, but we hoped it would get down to 0 sometime.

After Colorado came Utah. Elizabeth's idea was for us to go to Arches National Park on the way back to Berkeley, so about an hour into Utah, we got off of I-70 and traveled south to Moab. It was 7:30 AM when we got into Arches.

There are a lot of arches in Arches. Some of them are free-standing, others are in the hills. The arches there formed because of a salt lake that was in the area millions of years ago. Over time, the lake flooded and receded about 29 times, leaving different layers of sediment and salt behind. The salt in the rock expanded horizontally, forcing the rock to expand vertically. This rock then began to erode from the ground up, leaving a hollow -- the arch that everyone knows and loves today.

Arches is good if you like arches. Turns out I don't like them a lot, but I was also kind of cranky, since I hadn't slept in seven hours. But after some Wendy's, I felt better.

Elizabeth also decided that we should visit Canyonlands National Park and Dead Horse Point State Park, since they were both in Moab. Dead Horse Point State Park is very small and its centerpiece is a large piece of rock that juts into the Colorado River. I thought it was spectacular: the river is 2,000 feet below you and you can see for miles in any direction. There's lots of canyons, which I liked. Canyonlands National Park was even more chock-full of canyons. Again, it's 2,000 feet up, and you can see for miles. There's even canyons in the canyons. We watched the sun set there and then drove off to our next destination.

But where would that be? I had no idea.

Elizabeth drove through Utah while I slept. Sometime in the night, she told me that she was lost and that we'd have to just stop at a motel for the night. I was tired and agreeable. But let me fill you in on some facts. Prior to the trip, Elizabeth told me she had booked two hotel rooms, one with a fireplace. She also told me that she'd be doing a lot of lying on this trip so as to conceal the surprises that were in store for me. Was this a lie? I thought. Were we really lost?

Turns out not. We arrived at exactly the motel we were supposed to, a Best Western that included one room with a fireplace! It was totally awesome. Guess what was more awesome? We were a few miles from Bryce Canyon National Park! I had told Elizabeth that I visited Bryce Canyon National Park many years ago as a kid. She was heartened when I said that I liked canyons, because apparently her anxiety for a week before was due to the fact that she wasn't sure if I would like the trip she had planned. She also told me we would be visiting Zion National Park, since it was very close to Bryce Canyon. Awesome!

Bryce Canyon National Park was amazing. Each bunch of canyons has its own unique thing. Bryce Canyon's unique thing is that it was a lot of orange-and-pink rock layers, as well as tall rock towers called "hoodoos." It snowed a little the night before, which should give you an idea of how cold it was. The temperature was about 30 degrees and the wind was a-blowin'. Walking around the rim of the Bryce Canyon Amphitheatre, their largest canyon, was bone-chilling. Nevertheless, we drove around the park, looking at all the different sites to see. The views are amazing and sometimes terrifying, especially when a vista point is located on a narrow rock bridge that juts into the canyon, with only a short metal fence to keep you from careening into the canyon.

At about noon, we left Bryce (it's pretty small) and drove to Zion National Park. Zion is different from the other parks; it's primarily a driving tour. You drive down into the canyon and see the different sites. Of course, there are lots of trails to hike, but we only had until sunset that day, and besides, you could spend a week at any one of these parks if you wanted to. We only had a few days to see all of them. Zion has a lot of interesting natural rock formations, but again, its rock stuff is different from the rock stuff in any other national park. There was a really cool waterfall -- more like a water trickle -- that came from mud that filtered through the sandstone.

We left Zion at sunset and I wondered where we would go next. Elizabeth said that her plan was for us to go around the Grand Canyon at night and head to a mystery location, which I would see in the morning. How intriguing!

At about 11:00 that night, Elizabeth announced, "Oh no, I've lost us again. We're at the Grand Canyon." The saucy minx had lied again! The Grand Canyon was our mystery destination! We stayed at a hotel in Tusayan which is more the gateway to the Grand Canyon than Williams, Az., which claims to be the "Gateway to the Grand Canyon®." (And, yes, they've trademarked that phrase.) Tusayan is two miles from the south rim entrance to the Grand Canyon; Williams is about an hour away. Many a foreign tourist has booked a hotel in Williams, thinking that it was really close, but was horrified and annoyed to find that it wasn't.

The Grand Canyon is amazing. It's so big that it's more like an omnibus canyon -- a giant canyon made out of little canyons. It's about a mile deep, which makes Canyonlands, with its 2,000-foot depth, look like a ditch. It's also ten miles across and over two hundred miles long. That's a big freaking canyon. It was carved over the course of millions of years by the Colorado River. Looking a mile down into the canyon, you can see the river, and it's mind-boggling to think that something so tiny carved a canyon so monstrously huge. We took a little shuttle around the scenic points on the South Rim, the more developed side of the canyon. After a stop at Hermit's Rest, a little shop on the South Rim (that's on the South Rim -- as in, twenty feet from the rim), we headed back.

And that was Ed's Whirlwind Tour of the West. For the next several hours, we drove back to Berkeley, finally getting there at 6 AM on Nov. 28. All of Elizabeth's friends said she was crazy to attempt such a tour of five of the nation's national parks in three days. Elizabeth was terrified that I'd hate it. But you know what? We did it. And I loved it. It was a hundred thousand times better than just driving to Berkeley along I-80. And she figured, hey, we'll be in the area, why don't we visit these places? And that's the truth. Don't do things hurriedly and efficiently if you don't have to; instead, stop and look at nature along the way. It make take a few more days, but you'll be glad you did it. And I'm glad I got to see the nation's canyons on my way to my new home.

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Details to follow. The trip here was awesome. There will be pictures.

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You heard me.

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By Richard D. Erlich

There is currently a debate going on in The Miami Student (Oxford, Ohio) over Miami's becoming more fully a research university, and various professors have argued well both pro and con. I'd like to extend the argument with a discussion of the advantages of what I'll call "the Big U Model for higher education."

I draw here on the work of Murray Sperber in Beer and Circus (2000), Michael Moffatt in Coming of Age in New Jersey (1989), and my own informal research at Miami at Oxford, Ohio, in the mid-1980s.

Briefly, the Big U -- the large, public research university -- works.

You should now ask, "Works for whom, and to what ends?" The system works for employers, the university as an institution, established faculty, and for most students.

It does not work particularly well to educate on an advanced level large numbers of Americans; but, as an old joke has it, "Most jobs require only a decent high-school education, which is why employers require college degrees." For employers, any system works that certifies potential employees who are able to work their ways through complex bureaucracies. A college degree does that, certifying graduates have "satisfied in full the requirements for the degree of" whatever, and are therefore people who can show up fairly regularly, follow orders, and get a job finished more or less on time.

For the university as an institution, in part a business operation, there is this from a former Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs: "The purpose of Miami University is to process the maximum number of students in the most cost-efficient manner." For cost-effectiveness, that VP and economist insisted on "maintaining the value of the Miami degree as a piece of social currency": i.e., our degrees had to certify enough competence to make them exchangeable for a chance at a good job.

Since the 1980s, add to necessities for the university as business "The Three Rs" of Recruitment, Retention, and Renewal: Bring them to your school, keep them there, send them out happy and ready to contribute money ("renewal"). Which brings us to students and faculty.

Students are and should be attracted by the status of universities, and that status rests to a large extent on an impressive faculty in terms of impressive published research. If that research takes time and emphasis away from undergraduate education, well, research still serves the interests of many faculty members, whose personal status is increased by well-received research more than by teaching. And less faculty attention to teaching and to undergraduate students may not be altogether negative for students in terms of the desires of students.

Murray Sperber suggests revising somewhat and recycling an old "taxonomy," yielding for students the subcultures Collegiate, Academic, Vocational, and Rebel (3-11). We can discount "Rebel" for most schools, and note that high percentages of undergrads desire most what has been politely called "The full collegiate experience" and less politely called--in titles from two of my students--"College: Half-Way House to Adulthood" and "College: The Four-Year Vacation."

Some Miami students are very serious about school; I found about one-third of our students work hard. Far more students want College! ("The Four-Year Vacation") plus the "paper": a degree with a decent transcript as "social currency."

Michael Moffatt handles such issues in his comments on the 1968 sociological work, Making the Grade: The Academic Side of College Life: "Three sociologists have written an excellent ethnography of the grading process at the University of Kansas based on research in the late 1950s that proves that the pragmatics of 'making the grade' came first for almost all the students and that substantial intellectual understandings of the material they were learning came a distant, optional second." Moffatt's more recent study of Rutgers undergrads showed the same result, and he wonders, given the institutional system, "why three otherwise intelligent sociologists should have expected" anything else (287).

Most students are Collegiate and/or Vocational and in college for College! and for the "paper"; for those whose primary goal is academic, there are Honors and other small programs, such as Miami's Western College Program.

High-quality, published research improves the reputation of a university, hence improves the value of its "paper"; and the Big U Model serves "Collegiate" goals.

Emphasis upon research requires freeing faculty time for that research, which in turn means--money always being short--many classes taught in a cost-efficient manner: large lectures with machine-graded exams.

"When thinking about formal learning," Moffatt notes at Rutgers, "the students clearly disliked the herd approach to higher education. In other ways, however, this aspect of academia contributed to the students' freedom and autonomy in college." Moffatt sums up, "You could, in other words, take it very easy indeed in the Rutgers classroom in the 1980s if you so desired. Or you could pace yourself exactly as you liked. And so the students did" (292-93), in many cases freeing up time for Collegiate social life.

Unlike training, about all education is good for is helping people become well-informed critical thinkers, capable of citizenship in a Republic. So one can attack the Big U for not earning its keep as a support of the Republic and the life of the mind. But to do so is to speak a language foreign to important constituencies for which the Big U works just fine.

Richard D. Erlich has taught at Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) since 1971.

Sources

Erlich, Richard D. "It's Time to Rethink How Colleges Are Financed." The Chronicle of Higher Education 4 Dec. 1985. Rpt. in Points of View on American Higher Education. Ed. Stephen H. Barnes. Vol. 2. Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1990. 56-60.

---. "Rethink College Financing." The Plain Dealer 10 Apr. 1985: 2B.

Moffatt, Michael. Coming of Age in New Jersey: College and American Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 1989.

Sperber, Murray. Beer and Circus (How Big-Time College Sports Is Crippling Undergraduate Education). New York: Holt, 2000.

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Remember last November, when Ohio voters decided that they didn't like the gays? The amendment to the Ohio Constitution prohibiting gay marriage went beyond mere marriage and said that state entities could not confer marriage-like status upon people who were not married. Gays could not get married, and therefore, they could not receive marriage-like benefits.

The summer before that November, Miami University's Board of Trustees voted to allow "domestic partners" to receive the same benefits as spouses. Onlookers suggested that, due to the wording of the Ohio constitutional amendment, such benefits could be interpreted as "approximat[ing] the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage." And we waited for someone to sue.

Well, wait no more! Ohio state representative Tom Brinkman, Jr. has filed suit against Miami University, "claiming its same-sex partnership policy violates an Ohio constitutional ban on civil unions that went into effect a year ago." Brinkman is also the father of two Miami University students.

Miami, to its credit, claims that it will not rescind domestic partner benefits, so it isn't scared by the prospect of a lawsuit. That's good, even for a university as conservative as Miami.

For attempting to take away the rights of an entire class of people, Tom Brinkman, Jr. is a SEDHE Villain of the Forever.

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A lot of people think that I have a good Arnold Schwarzenegger impression. Most of these people are my dad, who dared me to make a CD of Christmas carols as sung by Arnold. He wanted this as his Christmas present. Slightly daunted, I set out in October to figure out how the heck I would do this.

Fortunately, I had a PowerBook. Macintosh computers are 100% super-perfect for making homemade anything: CDs, movies, whatever. It's a multimedia powerhouse. I obtained a copy of Apple Soundtrack Pro, a Griffin iMic, and one of those skinny computer microphones. I already had a bunch of symphonic Christmas music, fortunately. Over the course of a few days, I recorded voice tracks. I think they sound really good, even though I was using just a regular old computer microphone.

The recordings were made and composited in Apple Soundtrack Pro. I designed the cover art in Adobe Illustrator. The album is licensed under an attribution, non-commercial, share-alike Creative Commons license. This means that you can share this stuff all you want, provided you (1) don't sell it for money, (2) cite me (Mark Wilson) as the author, and (3) provide the same license to all subsequent reproductions or remixes.

Download all 15 tracks of A Very Arnold Christmas as MP3s in a zip file (65 MB) in a torrent file. The MP3s have been encoded at 192 Kbps. Included are JPGs of the cover art.

Merry Christmas!

UPDATE: Thanks to Scott for creating a torrent of this file so that my bandwidth doesn't get shot. See, Hollywood? Watch as we use the BitTorrent network to legally distribute files!

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WASHINGTON -- In a move that startled both Republicans and Democrats in the nation's capital, President Bush became the first president in U.S. history to not pardon the White House turkeys.

Traditionally, the White House has been given a turkey and one alterate turkey to be killed for the White House Thanksgiving dinner. Each year, presidents "pardon" the turkeys, sparing them from being killed. This year, however, President Bush announced that he would not pardon "Marshmallow" and its alternate, "Yam."

"Killing these turkeys will send a message to turkeys everywhere: we will not bow down under pressure from animal rights groups. We will not cower in the face of challenges to our freedom. These turkeys are vicious killers, possibly carriers of the bird flu, and pardoning them would tell the animal kingdom that it is okay to infect us with diseases which threaten our American way of life," said Bush this morning on the South Lawn of the White House.

Bush also suggested that the turkeys may have links to al-Qaeda, but a senior White House official told SEDHE that the intelligence supporting that link was questionable, at best. "We heard that the turkey Marshmallow may have met with Mohammed Atta in Prague, but that information comes from a source we know to be uncredible."

Nevertheless, the White House has not mentioned that the informant's credibility was in question and chose to act as though the intelligence were sound.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) criticized Bush's handling of the situation. "Every president before him has pardoned the White House turkey," he said. "I have introduced a bill into the Senate that would require the president to pardon every turkey from now on."

In response, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) called McCain a "coward" and suggested that years of torture in Vietnam had driven him crazy. "He also adopted a black baby," she said in a statement on the Senate floor that drew jeers from Democrats and some Republicans.

President Bush has said that he will veto any legislation that requires him to pardon the White House turkey. "We're in a war on turkeys. We need to be able to confront the enemy any way we can." Bush said that alternate turkey Yam would not be killed immediately; rather, he would be held at an undisclosed location, without being charged for a crime, and interrogated until he told CIA officials how to cure the bird flu.

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With the administration running damage control in the wake of Bush's and Cheney's insane comments ("It's perfectly all right to question why we want to war, as long as you don't question why we went to war"), Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was sent out to take bullets on no fewer than four Sunday news shows: FOX News Sunday, Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, This Week, and Face the Nation.

What's most fascinating are the comments Rumsfeld made on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. Blitzer tells Rumsfeld that the administration's push for war was made based on faulty intelligence. He cites an instance in which the administration claimed that there was a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, only to have its source for that information discredited later. Rumsfeld's response:

There is no question that there are fabricators that operate in the intelligence world. And there's also no question you can find intelligence reports on every side of every issue.

When you look at the reams of intelligence information that the United States develops from different agencies, they gather from other friendly foreign liaison services, you can find in any given week intelligence that conflicts with each other. The implication that there's something amazing about that is just ridiculous.

Finally! An administration official that actually answers a question instead of bringing up September 11, al-Qaeda, or "Saddam Hussein was a very bad man."

Rumsfeld's response to this question is, "There will always be bad intelligence." Fair enough. And it's the job of intelligence experts at the CIA to separate the "good" intelligence -- substantiated information based on credible sources -- from the "bad" intelligence -- unsubstantiated information that comes from uncredible sources (like the implication that Mohammed Atta met in Prague with Iraq officials -- that one comes from a source known to be uncredible).

And then, in a moment that I will remember forever, Rumsfeld said this:

It's clear the intelligence was wrong.

Whaaa? Whoosa-- ? Whaaa? Is this a Bush administration official telling the truth? Start the presses! Alert the newsmedia! Get Hearst on the phone! Prepare the teletype!

Yes, Rumsfeld admitted that the intelligence was wrong. So, what do we have here? On Veterans Day, Bush said that it was irresponsible to suggest that the administration manipulated intelligence, and besides, he said, Democrats got the same intelligence and they still voted for war. Bringing together Rumsfeld's statement that the intelligence was wrong, we can come to the following conclusions:

1. The Bush administration knew the intelligence was wrong and disseminated it, anyway, in which case, Bush is lying and the administration did manipulate intelligence; or,
2. The Bush administration didn't know that the intelligence was wrong.

In the first case, the administration is malicious; in the second, the administration is incompetent. If we take Bush at his word -- I know, you'll have to suspend disbelief for a second -- then the administration's overarching reason for going to war was, "We were too dumb to be able to discern the bad intelligence from the good intelligence." They're pleading stupidity as a reason for sending 2,000 people to die! "Oops, our bad" is the administration's position on the war. "But, hey, we're there already and we can't leave now."

It's a sorry sign when the administration has to resort to pleading stupidity in order to save its own ass.

(By the way, there is a good deal of evidence to suggest that case number one -- the administration disseminated intelligence as fact even though it knew that said intelligence was false -- is actually what happened. Take, for example, Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger and his conclusion that documents showing that the Iraqis bought yellowcake uranium were obvious forgeries, a conclusion every other intelligence agency in the world came to. Bush is also lying when he says that every other intelligence agency in the world believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was willing to use them.)

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Thursday, Representative John Murtha (D-PA) called for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. Friday, House Republicans said, "Okay, you want to withdraw troops? Let's withdraw troops" and presented a resolution for withdrawing troops. While the Democrats were brave enough to suggest an Iraq withdrawal, they completely -- how shall I put it? -- pussied out when it came to an actual resolution. An AFP story about the resolution observes, "Republicans put up their own version of the resolution, calling for 'the deployment of United States forces (to) be terminated immediately,' aiming to make the Democrats appear unpatriotic if they voted for the measure." The resolution, H.R. 571, was defeated 403 to 3, with spineless Democrats voting to defeat the resolution. Which House members aren't spineless? Cynthia McKinney of Georgia, José Serrano of New York, and Robert Wexler of Florida. Apparently, Democrats will talk all day long about doing things, but when it comes to actually doing things, they're afraid of appearing "unpatriotic."

Why are they so afraid? President Bush is on the defensive, or at least, he should be. He attacked his critics on Veterans Day and followed up earlier this week. He sent Cheney out to repeat the talking points that war critics are trying to "revise history." Any junior high school-level debater should be able to take these speeches down; Bush and Cheney make a lot of claims, but offer no evidence to support their assertions. In contrast, war critics offer a plethora of evidence indicating that the administration cherry-picked intelligence -- whether true or not -- in order to support its attempt to convince the world and the American people that we needed to go to war with Saddam Hussein right now!

Instead, the Democrats do nothing. If Bill Clinton's White House were in charge of the Democratic Party, we would be seeing a lot more criticisms of the war and we would be seeing the Democratic Party trying to "win the hearts and minds" of moderate Americans who are unsure of what to believe.

Instead, they send Howard Dean to Meet the Press with the nebulous promise that "sure, we have ideas, and our ideas are better than the Republicans' ideas, but we can't tell you what our ideas are. Just trust us on this one."

The strongest criticisms of the administration are coming from what might be considered the fringes of the Democratic Party -- blogs like Daily Kos, and Air America Radio. Put these people on Capitol Hill and you'll see the Republicans quaking in their boots, which are made from the skin of the poor.

But the Republicans have a coordinated media strategy, something Democrats don't have. The RNC sends out daily talking points, and Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Rush Limbaugh all obediently repeat the talking points like the syncophantic, despicable lap-dogs that they are. This means that, in the heartland of America (and I dare you to find a state in the midwest where you hear Rush on more stations than you hear Air America shows), voters hear day in and day out that Democrats are lying, and Republicans are just trying to spread freedom, and the Iraq War is going really swell, and by the way, if you keep voting for us, we'll take care of that whole gay marriage and abortion thing and we'll give the richest one percent of Americans cherry tax breaks because, hey, they work really hard and deserve it more than you do.

If the Democrats want to do anything about the administration, they have to be unafraid to challenge the administration where it counts.

Oh, and in other news, THOMAS, the Library of Congress's searchable database of legislation, has updated its look. The web page no longer looks like it was designed in 1995.

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GYEONGJU, South Korea -- Barely a week after first going on the offensive by suggesting that Iraq War critics want to "rewrite history," President George W. Bush yesterday leveled his harshest criticism yet against war critics while on a multi-nation Asian tour.

"Now, I understand when the American people want to criticize the conduct of my war," Bush said, "the First Amendment gives them that right. But I want to let them know who else uses the First Amendment. Osama bin Laden uses the First Amendment. He uses freedom of speech to spread his message of violence and hate. He uses the First Amendment to recruit dangerous killers who want to murder women and children."

At a press gaggle later in the day, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan assuaged reporters' fears that the president somehow equated war critics with terrorists. "I want to be very clear on this point," said McClellan, "the president did not suggest that people who exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech are like Osama bin Laden. I think that if you go back and look at what the president said, you'll find that he said exactly the opposite of that."

King Features Syndicate columnist Helen Thomas, however, challenged McClellan. "I don't know why you would say that. The president very clearly equated people who utilize free speech with Osama bin Laden," she said.

"No, Helen, that's not what he said," replied McClellan. "I'm not going to stand up here and listen to you play the blame game. I'm not going to stand here and watch you play politics and take the president's comments out of context. The president was very clear on this point and I'm not going to watch you endorse the actions of dangerous killers."

Vice President Richard Cheney, appearing later that day in a press conference in Washington, D.C., defended the president's comments. "I don't know how any American who pretends to call himself patriotic can criticize the president's handling of the war, especially when we have such convincing intelligence that Osama bin Laden, the person responsible for the horrific, terrible events of September the eleventh, is such an ardent defender of free speech. I think it's reprehensible that any person who loves this country would be doing the same thing that terrorists do," he said.

Following Bush and Cheney's speeches, the Department of Justice released a new policy initiative aimed at cutting down on what Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales called "the problem of aiding terrorists by lowering troop morale at home." The policy paper recommended solving the problem by declaring critics of the war to be "unlawful comabatants" and placing them in secure military prisons where they would be held without a trial or other constitutional protections. "A strict reading of the Geneva Convention of 1949 reveals that war critics cannot be guaranteed the same protections as other citizens." Calls to the Department of Justice were not returned by press time.

"Finally, we're seeing a policy that makes sense," said FOX News host Bill O'Reilly on his radio show, The Radio Factor. "I'm glad that the liberal terrorist sympathizers are finally going to be dealt with in a fitting way. Their vile words have demoralized the troops and provided aid and comfort to the deranged killers that we are trying to fight around the world."

Lance Eddington, a Professor of Law at the Pakled University School of Law, said that the president's comments were wildly out of proportion. "The suggestion that war critics are like terrorists is very offensive and dangerous," said Eddington. "The First Amendment is one of our most sacred protections, and yet the president is suggesting that people who exercise this right are attempting to kill Americans. This is a dangerous precedent."

Argyle Schotenstein of the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research disagrees. "The president's statements are not at all without precedent," he said. "In order to stave off war, James Buchanan suspended the writ of habeas corpus for anyone who suggested that the United States should go to war to deal with the issue of slavery. William McKinley routinely imprisoned critics of the Spanish-American War. And I won't even go into the issue of John Adams and the Sedition Act. This president is only exercising all the options available to him. We're involved in a global war on terror, and we can't afford to send our troops mixed messages, messages that only increasing the terrorists' resolve."

The White House has not yet indicated when it would implement the Justice Department's policy, or if the policy would apply to members of Congress or other government officials. Requests made to the White House for interviews or clarification were repeatedly and systematically denied.

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I was writing the previous blog entry while watching John Hodgman on The Daily Show. Hodgman appears occasionally on NPR's This American Life. He appeared on The Daily Show today to promote his new book, The Areas of My Expertise. I actually stopped writing the last entry, saved it, and then wrote this entry before I forgot what I was thinking.

John Hodgman is, I think I can safely say, the funniest human being alive. He came up -- without missing a beat -- with the most hilarious responses to Jon Stewart's questions, all perfectly deadpan. I'll post video as soon as I can.

Among the things in his book are "700 hobo names" (which is apparently a song), something that we've seen before on Boing Boing. In that instance, Boing Boing linked to a website that was drawing cartoons for each of the 700 hoboes chronicled in Hodgman's song.

The more I watched Hodgman during his brief appearance, the more I was completely stupified how perfect his timing was, and how quickly he came up with hilarious answers to Stewart's questions. Even Jon Stewart was cracking up, even though he was trying to play along.

I'm going to buy Hodgman's book now.

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Most high school students who learn about the 1950s have been trained to hate Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy, who intimidated the government from 1950 to 1954 with his allegations of communism. Students who learned about McCarthy in a history class should probably have been told that most of the people he accused of being communists turned out to be communists. "McCarthyism," though, was always about using the lowest of tactics, usually intimidation, to get someone to admit something. It was also about casting a wide net in an attempt to catch a few people who may have been genuinely guilty of a crime.

But Good Night, and Good Luck isn't about whether or not McCarthy's ends were right. The film -- as Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) makes clear -- is about the means by which McCarthy goes about accusing actors, Congressmen, and Army officers of being communists. McCarthy's strategy was to break down his opponents, embarass them, and generally bully them with rhetoric that didn't make sense but sounded good on television. In the film, Murrow acknowledges that, while it is important to investigate allegations of Communist infiltration, it is equally important to adhere to due process. McCarthy's tactics revived the phrase "witch-hunt," meaning an investigation undertaken with guilt presumed and all facts used to support that presumption of guilt. Indeed, Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible during the 1950s as an allegory of "McCarthyism," the modern-day synonym for "witch-hunt."

The film depicts Murrow as a crusader for democracy, armed with only producer Fred Friendly (George Clooney, who also directed the film) to defend him against the power of television. CBS, the station on which Murrow appeared, wasn't as worried about the political bent of Murrow's newscasts against McCarthy as it was worried about the loss of advertisers due to the broadcast of such a controversial topic. The end of the film reinforces a truth that holds to this day: no matter how good a televison program may be, if it doesn't bring in ratings, it's gone. Clooney depicts Murrow as someone who stands up for what he believes in; Murrow suggests it's his duty to take on McCarthy, as he believes that there is no justification for what McCarthy is doing. He urges the higher-ups to let him take on McCarthy because, as he puts it, sometimes there aren't two sides to an issue: sometimes, something is just flat-out wrong. There's no way to present McCarthy objectively because there is no objective way to say that his tactics are somehow justifiable; any moral person would understand that what he is doing is totally wrong, and for the press to pretend that there is a morally upstanding "pro-McCarthy" side would make them complicit in his witch-hunting.

Given this article from The New York Times Review of Books, it looks the media today are in trouble. Large media corporations -- Clear Channel, Infinity Broadcasting, Viacom, the Sinclair Group -- are buying each other up and consolidating within markets. A few years ago, Congress eased restrictions on how many media outlets a company could own within a given market. News is no longer about reporting facts; it's about making money. Arguably, our pining for a time long since past when the media were objective might be romanticizing the history of media, but what about Edward R. Murrow? What about Woodward and Bernstein? What about people who have searched for the truth? I'm remided of the motto of my hometown newspaper, The News-Herald: "Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a virtue." (Turns out that that quote comes from ... Joe McCarthy! No, just kidding; it comes from a 19th century French writer, Anne Louise Germaine de Stael.)

The lesson -- and there is a lesson -- to be learned from Good Night, and Good Luck is that you shouldn't back down when you know you're right. There are a lot of people out there who are afraid to speak up about the truth of things like, oh, I don't know, the Iraq War. We've seen that the administration consistently smears these people, even when they come from the Republican party. We've seen that corporate news companies -- the "mainstream media" -- will print only what will sell newspapers, not what is true. It's high time for this to change. Anchors from CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, and the major networks -- as well as the owners of all those networks -- should look at Strathairn's Edward R. Murrow and be ashamed of themselves.

Posted by Mark at 3:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's about time for Bill O'Reilly to be a SEDHE Villain of the Forever. Here's a list of things he has done to put himself into such a nefarious group:

• Created a show with the tagline "the no spin zone" even though O'Reilly repeats the Republican talking points, which are themselves "spin"
• Suggested that Cindy Sheehan was not speaking for herself, but rather was a puppet of George Soros and the "hate America" crowd
• Made mistakes of fact and then refused to admit that he made such mistakes
• Sanctimoniously acted as though he were in a position to lecture Americans about morality, then was caught sexually harassing an employee
• Represented himself as a person with some sort of hard news background when in fact his job prior to working at FOX News was as an anchorman for the tabloid show Inside Edition

Well, last week, O'Reilly became incensed after San Franciscans overwhelmingly approved Proposition I, a ballot initiative that would prohibit military recruiters from being given information about public school students in order to recruit them. The city, though, cannot legally enforce such a measure, so the 59% of voters who favored the measure were making a symbolic statement.

On his syndicated radio show, The Radio Factor, O'Reilly had this to say to San Franciscans:

Hey, you know, if you want to ban military recruiting, fine, but I'm not going to give you another nickel of federal money. You know, if I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, "Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead."

And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.

O'Reilly later tried to weasel his way out of this statement by suggesting that it was a "satirical riff" and that of course he wasn't really calling for terrorists to blow up Coit Tower. And I have no doubt that if a liberal talk show host had said the same thing, Republicans wouldn't pounce on that person, because Republicans would understand that the statement was meant satirically.

(That last paragraph was a satirical riff, by the way. Republicans would tear the talk show host apart and demand that he or she be fired, crucified, and shot into the sun.)

Military recruiting at public schools is a complex issue, and suggesting that recruiters shouldn't recruit on high school and college campuses does not -- as O'Reilly suggests -- mean that those who oppose such recruiting hate the military or love terrorists. I wonder if O'Reilly has even read the measure and understands what it means. Taking things wildly out of context would just be par for the course for him.

According to the text of Proposition I, the measure opposes "U.S. military recruiters using public school, college and university facilities to recruit young people into the armed forces" and suggests that the city provide college scholarships to underprivileged students so that they don't have to join the military in order to pay for college or earn money (what the measure calls an "economic draft").

Interestingly, the measure also mentions that the No Child Left Behind Act, in addition to leaving children behind, compels public schools to provide personal records of children in those schools to the military for recruiting purposes. Prior to No Child Left Behind, a piece of legislation called the Federal Educational Records Protection Act Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act made it a federal crime to disclose student records denied federal funding to schools that provided personal student information to anyone other than the student and the student's parents. But since we're living in a militaristic society, it's okay to violate FERPA make stupid exceptions for the purpose of sending more bags of meat to die in a pointless war. (And by the way, George Bush, Democrats did not receive the same intelligence you did prior to the war. They received only the intelligence that you elected to show them!)

Perhaps O'Reilly is unaware of a court case called Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (04-1152). Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights (FAIR) is a coalition of over 30 law schools and faculties. In 1997, Congress added to an omnibus spending bill and the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill of 1997 an amendment called the Solomon amendment. The amendment allows the Secretary of Defense to deny federal funding to colleges and universities that prohibit ROTC or military recruiting on campus.

FAIR protested the amendment, calling it a violation of campus' freedom of expressive association. Forcing college campuses to accept military recruitment would foster the impression that the colleges condoned military recruitment, as well as the policies of the military. Especially at issue are the military's anti-homosexual policies. The colleges' ban on military recruitment was an expressive act protesting the military's ban on gays, says FAIR. The government says the Solomon amendment doesn't impinge upon freedom of speech; colleges are free to dissent by banning military recruitment, but the federal government is also free to deny them federal funding.

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals didn't buy the government's argument and sided with FAIR. The court said that the Solomon amendment creates "compelled speech" by forcing students to support the military's stance on gays. This, of course, violates the First Amendment: the government cannot, through some action, compel a particular organization to take a stance on an issue that is counter to what that organization actually believes. (This is the flip side of the same coin that we saw in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, 99-699 [2000]). The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Rumsfeld v. FAIR on Dec. 6.

For being the World's Most Colossal Jerk, Bill O'Reilly is a SEDHE Villain of the Forever.

UPDATE: § 9528 of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 requires public schools to "provide, on a request made by military recruiters or an institution of higher education, access to secondary school students names, addresses, and telephone listings." This is not in violation of FERPA, as FERPA allows schools to release such "directory information" (as defined by 20 U.S.C. 1232g(a)(5)(A)) without the consent of the parent or student.

Posted by Mark at 8:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, appeared on Meet the Press yesterday. Tim Russert says, "Do you believe that Democrats have a clear message, a vision for the future? Fifty-two percent of independent swing voters say no. One in four Democrats say you have no clear vision, no agenda, no clear message."

Sounds good. This is Howard Dean's big chance to prove that the Democrats do have a clear agenda.

Dean responds:

We have an alternative agenda. We made it very clear. We want a strong national security based on telling the truth to our people at home, our soldiers and our allies. We want jobs in America that'll stay in America, and we believe that renewable energy is one of the areas where we can do that. We want a health-care system that covers everybody, just like 36 other countries in the world. We want a strong public education system. And most of all, we want honesty back in government. I think that's a pretty good agenda.

Okay, you've got an agenda. Russert asks, "What do the Democrats stand for?"

Dean replies, "Tim, first of all, we don't control the House, the Senate or the White House. We have plenty of time to show Americans what our agenda is and we will long before the '06 elections."

Okay, Howard Dean. Fair enough. I mean, right now you don't control the Senate or the House or the White House. But, I mean, you're on national television and you could persuade all those swing voters that your ideas are better than the Republicans' ideas. So, come on, humor us. What do Democrats stand for?

Right now it's not our job to give out specifics. We have no control in the House. We have no control in the Senate. It's our job is to stop this administration, this corrupt and incompetent administration, from doing more damage to America. And that's what we're going to do. We're doing our best. Look at the trouble they're having putting together a budget. Why is that? Because there's still a few moderate Republicans left who don't think it's OK to cut school lunch programs, who don't think it's OK to do some of the appalling things that they're doing in their budget. I saw a show last night which showed a young African-American man in California at the UC of Davis who hoped to go to law school. The Republicans want to cut $14 billion out of higher education so this kid can't go to law school. We're going to do better than that, and together, America can do better than that.

You're killing me, Howard Dean. I mean, it's great to talk about what the Republicans are doing wrong. We've been talking about that for years. Seriously; I want to know what the Democrats are going to do to fix the country. I mean, I don't like George Bush or the Republicans. I was going to vote Democrat, anyway. But what about all those people on the fence? How are you going to persuade them by merely criticizing the Republicans? You need to make a positive argument! Tell me why you're better than the Republicans! If you guys want to get elected in 2006, it sure is your job to give out specifics.

Okay, Howard Dean, you get one last chance. Tim Russert, lead the way.

MR. RUSSERT: But is it enough for you to say to the country, "Trust us, the other guy's no good. We'll do better, but we're not going to tell you specifically how we're going to deal with Iraq."

DR. DEAN: We will. When the time comes, we will do that.

MR. RUSSERT: When's the time going to come?

DR. DEAN: The time is fast-approaching. And I outlined the broad outlines of our agenda. We're going to have specific plans in all of these areas.

MR. RUSSERT: This year?

DR. DEAN: In 2006.

I give up. Howard Dean is as bad as any political pundit out there. This is why the Democrats can't get elected, even in the face of a corrupt and incompetent Republican party. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that if you "build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door." Howard Dean and the DNC are still trying to figure out how to make cheese.

Posted by Mark at 1:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Time columnist Joe Klein, in last week's issue of the newsmagazine, is finally saying in the "mainstream" media what people on the lefter-leaning Air America radio station have been saying all along: there's something wrong with the Bush administration.

His column centers around The Permanent Campaign, a phrase coined by Jimmy Carter pollster Patrick H. Caddell to describe how the president should act as though he is constantly trying to be re-elected by constantly appealing to voters and what voters want. "Dick Morris even asked voters where Bill Clinton should go on vacation," writes Klein.

Writing a paper for President Carter in 1976, Caddell observed that "too many good people have been defeated because they tried to substitute substance for style." Klein's thesis is that the Bush administration has perhaps gone too far, substituting style for substance. It was supposed to be Bush's straight-talking, shoot-from-the-hip Texas attitude that endeared him to "average" voters. At the same time, though, Bush infuriated intellectuals who saw him for what he was: a very dim bulb being manipulated by others, a man who went to Yale and Harvard Business School not because he earned it, but because his father was a former Massachusetts senator, CIA director, and -- oh, yeah -- President of the United States. The secret to Bill Clinton's popularity was that he really was the son of middle-class parents. His step-father -- Clinton's biological father was killed in a car accident before Clinton was born -- was a car salesman. The family lived in Hope, Ark., not Kennebunkport, Maine. (Let it be known that whenever the right criticizes Ted Kennedy for being a "liberal elite," they must watch as their noses grow six sizes, for Bush is a scion of the "conservative elite.") Clinton became a Rhodes scholar and attended Yale Law School because he was extremely intelligent, not because his father got him in.

But beyond Bush's obvious stupidity, there is another side to the Bush administration: it is more P.R. than anything else. "Indeed, his Administration represents the final, squalid perfection of the Permanent Campaign: a White House where almost every move is tactical, a matter of momentary politics, even decisions that involve life and death and war," writes Klein. The Bush administration uses style -- in the form of vague generalities about "evil killers" and empty pleas that involve the word "freedom" -- to conceal the fact that it has no substance. Or, it uses style to conceal the fact that a particular program might be detrimental to the country. Take the Orwellian names given to Bush legislation: the "Healthy Forests" initiative would make forests "healthy" by allowing lumber companies to cut down more trees; the "Clear Skies" initiative would make skies clearer ... by increasing the acceptable levels of pollution that industries could produce. The "No Child Left Behind" act has left lots of children, mostly poor children from cash-strapped school districts, behind (including the schools of Hamilton, Oh., where Bush made a big show of signing the bill into law).

And whenever someone criticizes the administration, the Bush team is there to destroy that person. Klein refers to this as the White House Iraq Group, which "was created to market the war and smear the President's opponents." The phrase "market the war" is chilling: it suggests that the public had to be persuaded that the war with Iraq was a good idea. The Bush administration tried to suggest to the American people that war was a good idea by using a variety of techniques: first, Saddam was a killer (but so were dozens of other world dictators, including the rulers of Saudi Arabia); then, he violated U.N. resolution 1441 (but ninety U.N. resolutions are currently being violated); then, he wouldn't let weapons inspectors in (but Bush pulled them out before they had completed their job and then blamed Saddam for not letting them finish inspecting); then, Saddam was on the verge of developing nuclear weapons (but Saddam abandoned his nuclear program after the Persian Gulf War); then, Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction (but we have found none).

Yesterday, Veteran's Day, Bush showed that he was a "uniter, not a divider" by attacking the people who disagreed with him, suggesting that people who believed that the administration manipulated intelligence were trying to "rewrite history." But evidence shows that the Bush administration -- to use a John Kerry phrase -- "cherry-picked" intelligence that supported its case for war, regardless of the veracity of such intelligence. After the war began, the Bush administration, through a concerted campaign of media manipulation and smearing, tried to convince the United States that the war was somehow justifiable. "But worse, far worse, was the tendency of the White House -- particularly Karl Rove's message apparatus -- to see the war as part of the Permanent Campaign, as a political opportunity at first, and then, as the news turned bad, merely another issue to be massaged," says Klein.

Bush's massage strategy: personally attack critics, even Republicans, if they disagree with the administration. And if you can't come up with a good way to personally attack them, then make stuff up. Send talking points to Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Rush. ("Cindy Sheehan is a puppet of George Soros," for example.) Divide the country with social issues, and proclaim the whole time that you're a divider, not a uniter. Destroy anyone who gets in your way. But don't make it look like you're destroying. Promise that, as long as middle America votes for you, you'll keep the gays away.

Under the presidency of George W. Bush, this country has reached a new low. Lower than the scandals of Rutherford B. Hayes, Warren G. Harding, and Richard Nixon, combined. The American people are an audience trying to be sold a product, as though the Iraq War were Diet Cherry Coca-Cola. We're demographics to be won by an administration whose thought process is "shoot first, ask questions later." This war was not thought out. Bush's asinine landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln, in which he declared that "major combat operations are over," marked the beginning of "major combat operations." Invading the country took three months; for the last two years, we have attempted to retain control of a country that was not ours to take. The media spin machine has been in overdrive, attempting to conceal the fact that the invasion of Iraq was the first step in a neo-conservative effort to control whatever part of the world it liked. (Why not? After all, the suits declaring war would never actually have to fight, nor would their children. It's like a game of Battleship.)

We have a president who is running the country by style, not substance, as though appearing to know what you're doing is the same thing as actually knowing what you're doing. But this emphasis on style is not, as was the case of Jimmy Carter, designed to make voters like the president more. Bush's emphasis on style is designed to conceal the fact that the country is being operated by a neo-conservative intelligensia led by Dick Cheney, and anyone who thinks so is unpatriotic, treasonous, and deserves to be killed by terrorists. The emphasis on style is designed to sell to the American people policies which are, in fact, detrimental to most of the American people. This administration has done an unfathomable amount of damage to the country, at home and abroad. It has destabilized the world, putting otherwise peaceful nations (Jordan, anyone?) at risk.

Has all of this been undertaken for money? Raw power? The worst part of all this is that there is no clear motivation on the part of the administration. They appear to be reactionary, resulting in an absurd, uncoordinated policy of spin and lies with no logical end. Maybe they thrive on disorder and chaos. Maybe they like knowing that they have the power to kill recent high school graduates from middle America. Whatever their motivation, they are destroying this country, and no one seems to be noticing. They're too blinded by the sequins and neon lights of the Permanent Campaign.

Posted by Mark at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Drug companies often justify the high prices of prescription drugs by referring to the high costs of research and development -- after all, they're just trying to get back the money they've invested in research. And for every successful prescription drug, there are a dozen unsuccessful prescription drugs, and the research cost of those must be recouped, somehow.

But exactly how much does research cost? And how much is recouped? Tonight, in a SEDHE "Just the Facts, Ma'am" special, we're going to find out.

According to Forbes magazine, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck are the world's three largest drug/biotech companies by revenue. (Pfizer is 24th on its list of largest companies worldwide, Johnson & Johnson is 46th, and Merck is 63rd.)

According to Pfizer's 2004 Financial Report [PDF], Pfizer made $52.5 billion in revenue worldwide in 2004, $10.8 billion of which came from the drug Lipitor alone. In fact, total revenue from its five best-selling drugs -- Lipitor, Norvasc, Zoloft, Celebrex, and Neurontin -- amounted to $24.7 billion. Its profits (revenue minus expenses, including income taxes) in 2004 were $11.4 billion. Pfizer spent $7.68 billion on all research and development in 2004, and when all the bills were paid, Pfizer had 148% of that amount left over.

According to Johnson & Johnson's 2004 Annual Report [PDF], the company made $47.35 billion worldwide in revenue. It spent $5.2 billion on research and still managed to take home $8.51 billion in profit, or 164% of its research costs. Johnson & Johnson's biggest seller is Procrit ($3.59 billion), a drug that helps relieve anemia associated with treatment of HIV, cancer, and kidney disease. It also owns the Band-Aid, Tylenol, Splenda, and Neutrogena brands.

According to the Financial Section of Merck's 2004 Annual Report [PDF], Merck made $22.9 billion in revenue worldwide in 2004. It spent $4.01 billion on research in development and ultimately made a profit of $5.81 billion, or 145% of its R&D expenses. You might remember Merck for Vioxx, Singulair, and Zocor. Vioxx is used for arthritis and was voluntarily recalled last year after the company found that the drug could lead to increased risk of heart attack. Singulair is used to treat seasonal allergies. Zocor reduces the risk of heart disease by reducing cholesterol.

The three largest drug companies in the world spent an average of $5.63 billion on research and development in 2004. Their average profits were $8.57 billion. The three largest drug companies in the world, then, made an average of 152% of their research costs in profit in 2004.

Posted by Mark at 8:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Slate has an amusing review of the oral arguments from a case heard yesterday, Georgia v. Randolph. After being called about a domestic disturbance at the Randolph home, police were led by Mrs. Randolph to a sock drawer upstairs where her husband kept some cocaine. Mr. Randolph returned home in the middle of this and demanded that the search stop. The police didn't stop. They found some more cocaine and arrested Mr. Randolph on drug charges.

The question facing the Supremes: what if one inhabitant of a house objects to a search, while the other inhabitant allows it? Should the law err on the side of protecting privacy -- and thus require a warrant in this case -- or should it err on the side of allowing the search? The court seemed divided, with Chief Justice Roberts on the side of "when you live with someone, you compromise your expectation of privacy" and Justice O'Connor leading the side of "just because one inhabitant says it's okay to let the police in, doesn't make it okay."

Read these briefs from the petitioner and respondent in the case and then go read the Georgia Supreme Court's opinion, which held that "the consent to conduct a warrantless search of a residence given by one occupant is not valid in the face of the refusal of another occupant who is physically present at the scene to permit a warrantless search."

Posted by Mark at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

In California, all four Arnold-backed ballot measures -- Props. 74 (teacher tenure), 75 (union speech), 76 (altering state spending procedures), and 77 (redistricting) -- failed. So did Prop. 73 (abortion notification), Prop. 78 (drug coverage without a discount from companies), Prop. 79 (drug coverage with mandatory discount from companies), and Prop. 80 (electricity re-regulation).

In Ohio, all four state constitutional amendments failed.

Texas, however, joins 18 other states in ratifying a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage; now, almost 40 percent of the country hates gays. That's promising.

And, in Pennsylvania, the school board that promoted intelligent design as an equally weighted scientific theory alongside natural selection, was tossed out by the voters. The school board is the subject of the current lawsuit Kitzmiller v. Dover, in which plaintiffs Kitzmiller, et al. challenge the teaching of intelligent design on the grounds that it violates the First Amendment. The new school board consists of members who are critical of intelligent design as a scientific theory.

And in Virginia and New Jersey, voters replaced Republican governors with Democratic ones. So, it seems like we won yesterday. California, Virginia, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania did well. Ohio and Texas did not.

Posted by Mark at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ah, entry number 400! And what a great entry it is! Oh, how I pine for the days of Mystery Science Press Conference 3000, when Matt and I would watch Ari Fleischer -- and then his successor, Scott McClellan -- distort the truth until it looked like a Picasso painting of the truth.

Today, Scott McClellan became hostile and sarcastic toward reporters who wanted to know one thing: if it is the Bush administration's policy that we don't torture people, then why is Dick Cheney asking for an exemption allowing CIA officials to engage in torture? At first, McClellan argued with 10,000-year-old White House correspondent Helen Thomas, the grandmotherly-looking lady who sits in the front row at press briefings. But be warned: Helen Thomas doesn't take crap from anyone, especially anyone as weasely as Scott McClellan:

Q I'd like you to clear up, once and for all, the ambiguity about torture. Can we get a straight answer? The President says we don't do torture, but Cheney --

MR. McCLELLAN: That's about as straight as it can be.

Q Yes, but Cheney has gone to the Senate and asked for an exemption on --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, he has not. Are you claiming he's asked for an exemption on torture? No, that's --

Q He did not ask for that?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- that is inaccurate.

Q Are you denying everything that came from the Hill, in terms of torture?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, you're mischaracterizing things. And I'm not going to get into discussions we have --

Q Can you give me a straight answer for once?

MR. McCLELLAN: Let me give it to you, just like the President has. We do not torture. He does not condone torture and he would never --

Q I'm asking about exemptions.

MR. McCLELLAN: Let me respond. And he would never authorize the use of torture. We have an obligation to do all that we can to protect the American people. We are engaged --

Q That's not the answer I'm asking for --

MR. McCLELLAN: It is an answer -- because the American people want to know that we are doing all within our power to prevent terrorist attacks from happening. There are people in this world who want to spread a hateful ideology that is based on killing innocent men, women and children. We saw what they can do on September 11th --

Q He didn't ask for an exemption --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and we are going to --

Q -- answer that one question. I'm asking, is the administration asking for an exemption?

MR. McCLELLAN: I am answering your question. The President has made it very clear that we are going to do --

Q You're not answering -- yes or no?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, you don't want the American people to hear what the facts are, Helen, and I'm going to tell them the facts.

Q -- the American people every day. I'm asking you, yes or no, did we ask for an exemption?

MR. McCLELLAN: And let me respond. You've had your opportunity to ask the question. Now I'm going to respond to it.

Q If you could answer in a straight way.

MR. McCLELLAN: And I'm going to answer it, just like the President -- I just did, and the President has answered it numerous times.

Q -- yes or no --

MR. McCLELLAN: Our most important responsibility is to protect the American people. We are engaged in a global war against Islamic radicals who are intent on spreading a hateful ideology, and intent on killing innocent men, women and children.

Q Did we ask for an exemption?

MR. McCLELLAN: We are going to do what is necessary to protect the American people.

Q Is that the answer?

MR. McCLELLAN: We are also going to do so in a way that adheres to our laws and to our values. We have made that very clear. The President directed everybody within this government that we do not engage in torture. We will not torture. He made that very clear.

Q Are you denying we asked for an exemption?

MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, we will continue to work with the Congress on the issue that you brought up. The way you characterize it, that we're asking for exemption from torture, is just flat-out false, because there are laws that are on the books that prohibit the use of torture. And we adhere to those laws.

Q We did ask for an exemption; is that right? I mean, be simple -- this is a very simple question.

MR. McCLELLAN: I just answered your question. The President answered it last week.

Q What are we asking for?

Q Would you characterize what we're asking for?

MR. McCLELLAN: We're asking to do what is necessary to protect the American people in a way that is consistent with our laws and our treaty obligations. And that's what we --

Q Why does the CIA need an exemption from the military?

MR. McCLELLAN: David, let's talk about people that you're talking about who have been brought to justice and captured. You're talking about people like Khalid Shaykh Muhammad; people like Abu Zubaydah.

Q I'm asking you --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, this is facts about what you're talking about.

Q Why does the CIA need an exemption from rules that would govern the conduct of our military in interrogation practices?

MR. McCLELLAN: There are already laws and rules that are on the books, and we follow those laws and rules. What we need to make sure is that we are able to carry out the war on terrorism as effectively as possible, not only --

Q What does that mean --

MR. McCLELLAN: What I'm telling you right now -- not only to protect Americans from an attack, but to prevent an attack from happening in the first place. And, you bet, when we capture terrorist leaders, we are going to seek to find out information that will protect -- that prevent attacks from happening in the first place. But we have an obligation to do so. Our military knows this; all people within the United States government know this. We have an obligation to do so in a way that is consistent with our laws and values.

Now, the people that you are bringing up -- you're talking about in the context, and I think it's important for the American people to know, are people like Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi Binalshibh -- these are -- these are dangerous killers.

Q So they're all killers --

Q Did you ask for an exemption on torture? That's a simple question, yes or no.

MR. McCLELLAN: No. And we have not. That's what I told you at the beginning.

Q You want to reserve the ability to use tougher tactics with those individuals who you mentioned.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, obviously, you have a different view from the American people. I think the American people understand the importance of doing everything within our power and within our laws to protect the American people.

Q Scott, are you saying that Cheney did not ask --

Q What is it that you want the -- what is it that you want the CIA to be able to do that the U.S. Armed Forces are not allowed to do?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm not going to get into talking about national security matters, Bill. I don't do that, because this involves --

Q This would be the exemption, in other words.

MR. McCLELLAN: This involves information that relates to doing all we can to protect the American people. And if you have a different view -- obviously, some of you on this room -- in this room have a different view, some of you on the front row have a different view.

Q We simply are asking a question.

Q What is the Vice President -- what is the Vice President asking for?

MR. McCLELLAN: It's spelled out in our statement of administration policy in terms of what our views are. That's very public information. In terms of our discussions with members of Congress --

Q -- no, it's not --

MR. McCLELLAN: In terms of our members -- like I said, there are already laws on the books that we have to adhere to and abide by, and we do. And we believe that those laws and those obligations address these issues.

Q So then why is the Vice President continuing to lobby on this issue? If you're very happy with the laws on the books, what needs change?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, you asked me -- you want to ask questions of the Vice President's office, feel free to do that. We've made our position very clear, and it's spelled out on our website for everybody to see.

Q We don't need a website, we need you from the podium.

MR. McCLELLAN: And what I just told you is what our view is.

Q But Scott, do you see the contradiction --

In this 1,300-word exchange, McClellan mentions September 11, "dangerous killers," and twice mentions a "hateful ideology." At no time does he address the inherent contradiction between the vice president's actions and the president's statement. Also, the version of the press conference that I have posted, which comes from the White House website, has been edited to make McClellan appear less hostile. His last sentence was, actually, "And what I just told you is what our view is. Weren't you listening?"

So, what is McCain lobbying for, anyway? Here is the text of McCain's amendment, in PDF format. It prohibits any person in the custody of the Defense Department from being subjected to "any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation." It also says that "[n]o individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment."

Okay, fair enough. But is Cheney lobbying for an exemption to this, or is Helen Thomas just a treasonous bastard? The Washington Post reported Oct. 25 that Cheney had drafted a proposal similar to McCain's, with the exception that "the measure barring inhumane treatment shall not apply to counterterrorism operations conducted abroad or to operations conducted by 'an element of the United States government' other than the Defense Department." So, yes: as predicted, Scott McClellan is lying. Cheney is asking for a CIA exemption to torture. And now they've been caught, and now Scott McClellan is becoming exasperated in attempting to do damage control; but the old Bush tactic of repeating talking points until they become true isn't going to work this time.

Why does the Bush administration, speaking through Cheney, opposed to this amendment? Because the administration was able to use legal weaseling to use torture in violation of the Geneva Convention. The language of this amendment is so clear that no legal maneuvering could get past it; therefore, the amendment has to be stopped, because the Bush administration wants to continue to engage in torture around the world.

And, finally, Andrew Sullivan made this most excellent of comments:

A man who avoided service in Vietnam is lecturing John McCain on the legitimacy of torturing military detainees. But notice he won't even make his argument before Senate aides, let alone the public. Why not? If he really believes that the U.S. has not condoned torture but wants to reserve it for exceptional cases, why not make his argument in the full light of day? You know: where democratically elected politicians operate.

Posted by Mark at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I forgot about Ohio! If you're voting there, you had five statewide issues to vote on.

State Issue 1 would sell bonds "to finance, or assist in financing, public infrastructure capital improvements for local governments." Fair enough.

State Issue 2 would amend the Ohio Constitution to allow anyone to vote by mail thirty-five days before an election, for whatever reason. If you get a ballot mailed to you, but the county board of elections hasn't received it by election day, you can cast a provisional ballot, just in case.

State Issue 3 would amend the Ohio Constitution to impose limits on political contributions, to both candidates and Political Action Committees (PACs). It would, among other things:

• Limit spending by individuals to $25,000 for all candidates and PACs per year;
• Prohibit candidates from soliciting funds from PACs, soliciting contributions from committees supporting or opposing ballot issues, or appearing in advertising regarding a state ballot issue;
• Permit labor unions to donate funds to candidates, these funds coming from membership dues;
• Prohibit candidates from receiving funds from PACs.

State Issue 4 would amend the Ohio Constitution to alter the redistricting procedure in Ohio. Under the proposed procedure, a commission of five people -- composed of two sitting judges and three people appointed by the first two people or chosen by lot -- would redistribute state representatives. But this provision is scary: "the commission may consider whether to alter a plan to preserve communities of interest based on geography, economics, or race, so long as the reconfiguration does not result in a competitiveness number that is more than two points lower for a congressional plan and four points lower for a general assembly plan." The "competitiveness number" for a district attempts to keep the district roughly balanced between Republicans and Democrats. If you ask me, I think districts should be drawn based on geography alone.

State Issue 5 is a response to lots of controversy from the 2004 presidential election, in which Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell -- a staunch Republican -- may have deliberately caused voting irregularities (such as the delivery of too few election machines to certain districts or failure to count some ballots) in order to get Bush to win in Ohio. Issue 5 would amend the Ohio Constitution to eliminate the Secretary of State's control over elections and create a nine-member board (four appointed by the governor, four by members of the General Assembly who are not of the same party as the person being appointed, and one by unanimous vote of the justices of the Ohio Supreme Court). Issue 5 would also require the state to hire an administrative director to oversee state elections.

Currently, with two-thirds of the votes in, all four of the constitutional amendments were failing two to one, according to The New York Times.

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

Cory Doctrow of Boing Boing validates what I've been saying all along: using the phrase "Wi-Fi" to mean "wireless network access" is stupid:

30,000 or so people have written in to quibble over whether WiFi stands for wireless fidelity, pointing to the fact that the WiFi Consortium has decided to claim it does. It doesn't. WiFi is a pun, based on the contraction, "Hi-Fi," which stands for "High fidelity." WiFi "means" wireless fidelity the same way that "foo" and "bar" mean "f*cked up" and "beyond all recognition" -- e.g., not at all. WiFi is derived from high fidelity, but if WiFi *means* "wireless fidelity" then it means precisely nothing, because "wireless fidelity" is a nonsense phrase whose only meaning comes from the fact that you get a pun on "HiFi" when you shorten it.

"High Fidelity" is an old audio term describing the quality of the data; therefore, "Wireless Fidelity" should also describe the quality of the data, but it doesn't. "Wi-Fi" refers to the transmission medium; i.e., "wireless." His "foo" and "bar" example refers (1) to the military acronym FUBAR, meaning "f*ucked up beyond all recognition" and (2) to the way in which programmers show how variables are assigned in tutorials or lessons. In PHP, for example, a tutorial showing how a variable is assigned a value would show this

$foo="bar"

to mean that the variable $foo has the value "bar." (This is a standard programming tutorial just as the "Hello World!" tutorial is standard for Web markup [HTML, CSS] tutorials.)

It's a similar pun in that the words sound similar, but they don't mean the same thing.

Today, Cory posts something from Phil Belanger, a founding member of the Wi-Fi Alliance who presided over the selection of the name "Wi-Fi." Belanger suggests that the phrase Wi-Fi "is not an acronym. There is no meaning." Much like "SAT" no longer stands for anything (it used to stand for "Scholastic Aptitude Test," then it stood for "Scholastic Assessment Test"; now, there is technically no acronym; it's just "SAT"), "Wi-Fi" is not short for "wireless fidelity."

I don't agree with this assessment. If you're going to have a word like "Wi-Fi," which is clearly designed to look like "Hi-Fi," then the phrases should be related somehow. Otherwise, you're diluting the meaning of the word "fidelity."

Then again, I've always been the Grammar Nazi.

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

The Supreme Court today released its first slip opinion of the 2005 Term. The case, IBP, Inc. v. Alvarez, 03-1238 (2005) [PDF], was the first case John Roberts heard as Chief Justice. At issue was whether or not employers had to compensate employees for the time they spent putting on protective clothing. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 requires that employees be compensated for walking to and from the location of "principal activity." This also included activities that were "preliminary" or "postliminary" to the "principal activity." In this particular case, employees of IBP, Inc. (a meat-packing company) sought compensation for the time they spent putting on protecting clothing and walking to the production floor.

Now, if you were some anti-labor robber baron, you'd have voted against this. Curiously, however, this was a unanimous decision of the court. All nine justices agreed that the FLSA requires employers to compensate employees for the time employees spend putting on protective clothing.

The second case the court released today, United States v. Olson, 04-759 (2005) [PDF], is a tort case. "Tort," in addition to being a delicious dessert, is an Old French legal term meaning "wrong." (I imagine that Sam Waterston enjoys a tort that is filled with raspberry-flavored justice!) Two questions need to be asked in tort cases: (1) was someone wronged? and (2) who's responsible? These two questions are tricky. In the first case, there may be a question as to whether or not there was a wrong at all. In the second case, even if it has been determined that someone has been wronged, it's hard to tell who's responsible. If Little Timmy from next door toddles into your swimming pool and drowns, is there damage? And who's responsible? Clearly, there's damage: Little Timmy is dead. Who's responsible? That's why Little Timmy's mother took you to court. (Turns out that the court would probably say that it's your fault; a swimming pool is an "attractive nuisance," which means that you should take all the measures you can to ensure that no one drowns.)

In U.S. v. Olson, the court pondered whether or not the U.S. government could be liable in a case where workers in an Arizona mine were killed. The plaintiffs in the case asserted that federal mine regulators' negligence caused the mine accident, and such, they sued the United States. So, we have (1) a wrong -- two miners were killed -- but do we have (2) responsibility? The United States, of course, claimed that it was not responsible. The Federal Tort Claims Act allows tort suits against the government are permissible "under circumstances where the United States, if a private person, would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred." A U.S. district court in Arizona dismissed the case, reasoning that Arizona law would not impose liability on a private person in similar circumstances. The Ninth Circuit Court of Ap