After almost six months of haranguing, arguing, disputing, questioning, lying, hearings, ad hominem attacks, and constitutional showdowns, Alberto Gonzales has stepped down as Attorney General, effective Sept. 17. Prior to being Attorney General, Gonzales was White House Counsel. Prior to that, he was President Bush's personal counsel. Prior to that, he was a justice on the Texas Supreme Court. Gonzales has been a Bush man through and through for at least the last ten years. Despite President Bush's assertions to the contrary, Gonzales has handled the Justice Department not with incompetence when it comes to doing his job, but incompetence when it comes to engaging in the lies and cover-ups that are a necessary part of daily life in the Bush administration.

It's no secret that the Bush administration is secretive, going to great lengths to prevent its critics and even the American people from knowing what's really going on in the White House. This tendency first became clear in the summer of 2001, when Vice President Cheney met with unnamed people to craft the administration's official energy policy. Environmental groups suspected that the petroleum-centric nature of the National Energy Policy meant that oil company executives -- who are not strangers to Cheney and Bush -- were involved. Judicial Watch and The Sierra Club sued for the right to know who exactly was involved. The case went to the Supreme Court, which affirmed the administration's justifications of executive privilege in keeping this information secret.

It went only downhill from there. September 11 was a terrific reason to start painting over the White House windows; requests for information could be -- and have been -- rejected due to "national security."

As a Bush acolyte, Gonzales was right up there with Harriet Miers. The two could have been King and Queen of the Bush Loyalty Prom. By all accounts, Gonzales was good at his job. As White House Counsel, it was he who drafted the first legal arguments that the president didn't have to adhere to the "quaint" Geneva Conventions when dealing with enemy combatants. According to former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card tried to get a drugged-up John Ashcroft to authorize an extension to the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, despite the fact that Ashcroft had transferred the powers of the Attorney General to Comey prior to entering the hospital for pancreatitis. Being bad at his job wasn't the problem. As we'll see, being bad at the Bush cover-up game was his problem.

As Attorney General, Gonzales vetted the roles of U.S. attorneys, removing anyone who was not a "loyal Bushie." But it was these same U.S. attorneys who would ultimately begin his downfall. Questions began: were these people fired for political reasons? The administration and its loyal mouthpieces (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Kristol) quickly fired back that U.S. attorneys served at the pleasure of the president, political reasons or not. And while this is true, the firing of these attorneys -- in the middle of a term, not at the beginning of one like the Clinton purges -- was tacky, nevertheless. And so Gonzales visited the Senate for questioning. From March onward, it seemed like he was testifying every week.

So began his downfall.

Gonzales soon found himself caught in a web of lies of Rumsfeldian proportions. He said he had nothing to do with the firings, that other people below him prepared lists of names and all he, Gonzales, did was sign the paperwork. Then we found out that he had attended meetings about the attorney firings, and it seemed that he was the only one who didn't remember them. Gonzales' faulty memory became chronic as he was suddenly unable to remember where he was on particular days, that he had signed particular documents, or that he had talked to particular people.

This initial investigation spawned spin-off investigations. The original series U.S. Attorney Firings morphed into mid-season replacements like Violations of the Hatch Act, Whose Wiretapping Is It, Anyway? and the favorite prime-time drama of the summer, Wheel of Perjury. Gonzales had lied himself into several corners, and when he wasn't intentionally lying, he was accidentally telling the truth, as he did when he inadvertently revealed the existence of another as-yet undisclosed warrant-less wiretapping program earlier this summer. Gonzales was to Congressional investigations what Norman Lear was to TV sitcoms of the 1970s and '80s.

At the end of six months of investigations, where did we end up? The administration refused to budge on the issue of executive privilege. Harriet Miers and Karl Rove ignored Congressional subpoenas, refusing even to show up on Capitol Hill. (Only former White House political director Sara Taylor testified, and many of her answers included the words "executive privilege," but hey, at least she put in an appearance.) We all knew, in our heart of hearts, that these attorneys were fired for political reasons, not the "performance" problems we had been told back in March. But we had no evidence to prove it. Once Gonzales is no longer Attorney General, he will not be in the spotlight. Another poor shmuck -- perhaps Solicitor General Paul Clement or even Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff (late of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, you know) will get the unenviable task of fixing the Justice Department. It doesn't really matter who gets the job, as long as he or she isn't as much of a Bush lackey as Gonzales was.

Which begs the question: why was Gonzales so loyal? He owed his entire career to George Bush, from his post as Justice on the Texas Supreme Court to Attorney General. He continued riding the Bush Train to Hell even when it became painfully clear what the destination was. That's loyalty.

Republicans will suggest that Gonzales' so-called incompetence was caused by Democrats and their incessant hounding of him. "If only they had let him do his job at Justice instead of calling him in for testimony every other day," they'll say, "the Department wouldn't be in the shape it is." But it's not Congress' fault for exercising its role of oversight. That's like a felon who shot at the police blaming them for a gunshot wound. Gonzales thatched his roof; now he had to live under it. Now that he's moved out of that house, with the way the housing market is going, he won't get back nearly what he put into it.

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

Michael Ramirez is a right-leaning political cartoonist for the ostensibly right-leaning Investor's Business Daily, and today he really ticked me off.

The editorial cartoon comes via USA Today and its Friday wrap-up of political cartoons (Ramirez's is number 5).

I have reproduced the editorial cartoon below, pursuant to my rights of "criticism" and "comment" under 17 U.S.C. 107.

Ramirez's cartoon seems to suggest that, if we don't expand spying authority the way the president wants -- which is to say, in a way that removes or restricts judicial oversight -- then we will suffer an attack. This syllogism is just as incorrect backward as it is forward: if we haven't been attacked, then our expansion of spying authority must have worked. In both cases, the logic is flawed.

The statement "if we don't expand our spy authority, we will be attacked" is flawed because it fails to take into account the facts that (1) we can be attacked even if we do expand our surveillance powers; and (2) expansion of our spying authority doesn't necessarily mean that we will be preventing attacks. The administration has refused to release any information about specific terror plots that may or may not have been foiled due to warrantless wiretapping; the American people are expected to trust the administration's assertion that that has been the case.

Beyond logic, the Bush administration has been trying to tell us that this is a new conflict that judges aren't qualified to pass rulings on, and thus the administration -- which is the expert in all matters relating to terrorism -- should have the last word on the regulation of its own wiretapping powers.

It's very disingenuous to suggest, as Ramirez does, that an expansion of spying powers is necessary to prevent another attack. We have no idea that this is the case because we, the American people, are being purposefully kept in the dark about the activities being done by our government. Ramirez's cartoon encourages tyranny, which, strangely enough, I thought this "war on terrorism" was supposed to fight?

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By Richard D. Erlich

Spam is not a victimless crime, and I immodestly propose below what I think is a suitable punishment. Before getting to that, however, I need to dispose of more moderate suggestions since it is indeed true that radical means should be adopted only if there are no other ways likely to reach important ends.

It has often been suggested, since spam first became a problem, that the obvious solution is to charge for e-mail.

A US penny per post is the usual price mentioned nowadays, but even if the cost were only a few mils --thousandths of a dollar -- the job could get done. The only reason it makes economic sense to broadcast to the world offers for sexual enhancers, fantastic mortgage deals, and the opportunity to aid notable Nigerians is that the cost of doing so is effectively nothing. Start charging for the service, and a .0001% (or whatever) rate of response won't bring any profit for the e-barrage.

However, for technical, philosophical, and political reasons, this ain't a-gonna happen any time soon; indeed it won't happen until the Internet is nearly swamped and brought to a standstill.

Nor will technological quick fixes do the trick: at least some spammers will always be ahead of their opponents.

So we need to support the geek police in the technological fight, but their efforts must be reinforced with something else, and I think I know what: what is called in the old play Gorboduc, "wholesome terror to posterity," and, more to the point, "wholesome terror" to the techno-evildoers working their evils now, and totally terminal termination of the evil-doing of several of them even more "now."

I'm philosophically against the death penalty, but I think we should apply it to spammers, and apply it in a manner that will make the point: the guillotine. I know some people will object: the guillotine is messy, and it's French, but it's quick and doesn't raise the ethical problems of needing a physician to assist, or even to certify death on the spot: any coroner's assistant can certify that someone without a head is definitely, indeed definitively, dead.

But that's a detail, and I'll hardly insist upon the method. What needs to be argued is justification.

• First, it's standard doctrine that a high probablity of punishment is a far more effective deterrent to crime than severity of punishment. Still, as the effectiveness of enforcement goes down, it is tempting to use severity to beef up deterrence. In the case of spammers, I recommend we vigorously succumb to that temptation.


• Second and far more important, it is just to execute people for spamming. And herein will consist the rest, and the heart, of my argument.

In a sense, all we have is time, and murderers take time away from us, more from the young than from the old.

Bit by bit, and byte by byte, spammers rob us of time, and those who send out millions of spam e-mails (aye, and junk snailmail and telemarketing "robocalls" as well)--well, when you add up those bits you get lives. And over the months and years you get many lives.

And when that time adds up to hundreds of lives, we must proclaim spammers mass murderers and punish them accordingly.

As they have stolen time from us, so we should limit their time.

Very firmly, very finally.

International authorities should add up the volume of spam and the seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years of people's lives shot to hell because of it, and each time it adds up to three-score and ten -- that's 70 years -- a spammer should be arrested, quickly tried, and executed.

This will not solve the problem of spam, but it should help to reduce the volume. In any event, "Though the heavens fall, let justice be done," and justice demands the ultimate punishment of those who'd suck away the life-time of millions.

Richard D. Erlich is a Professor Emeritus of English at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is a recent immigrant to the California Bear Flag Republic.

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Last week, Fox News host John Gibson took the high road toward criticizing those who would dare to criticize the president and his Iraq War. On his syndicated radio show, Gibson played a tape of Daily Show host Jon Stewart's tear-filled post-September 11 monologue and ridiculed it. Show co-host (?) "Angry Rich" called Stewart a "phony" because, in Gibson's opinion, it is inconsistent for a person to feel badly about September 11 and criticize the president.

Forget for a moment that this doesn't make sense, and let's leap into the mind of John Gibson, Bush Acolyte. Bush has polarized the country, and he has polarized its opinions, especially for Republicans. I'm not sure that Republicans actually believe half the things they say, because if they did, then perhaps they should look into careers as mental asylum inmates. But for the sake of argument, let's pretend that they actually believe what they say. This means that Republicans believe that criticism of the government, President Bush, or his policies, including (but not limited to) the Iraq War, is a rejection of American values and an implicit endorsement of terrorism. Does it stand to reason that, because you're against the war, you are necessarily in favor of terrorism? Only in the tortured minds of Fox News correspondents does this hold true.

How disingenuous and irresponsible for John Gibson to suggest that it is impossible to simultaneously feel sorrow for September 11 and contempt for President Bush. How are these opinions inconsistent? Perhaps it's the delusion that President Bush somehow "saved" the nation after September 11? How would he have done this? He did send troops to Afghanistan, but shortly afterward, he diverted those resources to Iraq. Here's inconsistency for you: suppose that a nation attacks us. Our only logical course of action is to retaliate. Suppose, also, that there exists a nation that has never attacked us. Should we divert resources from the nation that did attack us to the nation that didn't? Even though that action sounds really stupid, it's what happened. Iraq never attacked us. Why did we attack them?

As Jon Stewart pointed out on last night's Daily Show, it's only Republicans -- only Republicans -- who are calling their opponents' patriotism into question. Why resort to this tactic in a debate? Is it because they're out of real arguments and have to resort to the ad hominem attack? Is it because they can't debate properly? Is it because they're immoral, selfish douchebags? I think the answer is "(D) All of the above."

Yes, John Gibson earns the distinction of being a SEDHE Villain of the Forever for being one of the aforementioned immoral, selfish douchebags. He also earns that distinction for not only mocking legitimate sorrow but also for encouraging another September 11 attack.

Posted by Mark at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The BBC reports that Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, "has announced plans to change to Venezuela's constitution, allowing him to stand for office indefinitely." Chavez is limited by Venezuela's constitution to serving two six-year terms. His tenure as president would be up in 2012, but in the tradition of dictators, he has decided that it's best for the country that he rule indefinitely.

There's a belief among leftists that Chavez, heir to the Beard of Fidel Castro, is the one person in the world who is man enough to stand up to the United States. Never mind that he's also crazy. He has dinner-dates with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Robert Mugabe, for crying out loud. Does he think he will be taken seriously in world politics if he hangs out with those losers?

Chavez and his supporters insist that this is necessary to inaugurate his "21st-century socialism," but this futuristic title belies a very old motivation: power! All communist countries have gotten stuck at the "dictatorship of the proletariat" phase because once leaders have power, they're unwilling to surrender it. "I doubt there is any country on this planet with a democracy more alive than the one we enjoy in Venezuela today," said Chavez. Really? Because I can think of a bunch more, and all of them involve leaders stepping down once their terms are over. If Chavez really wanted a new-age socialism, he would do what other socialist countries have failed to do: namely, engage in a peaceful transition of power using free and fair elections. Chavez's unwillingness to step aside is cause for alarm, as this is Stage One of dictatorship. It appears that Latin America is heading down the same road it took in the 1970s and '80s, only instead of U.S.-installed and supported dicatorships, we have popular dictatorships.

But, as I've often said, the freedom to choose involves the freedom to choose badly.

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What is it about the Bush administration that gets even its opponents to capitulate to it? Earlier this year, the president wanted an appropriations bill for the Iraq War, and Democrats refused to give it to him unless they were allowed to insert a provision into the bill calling for mandatory timetables. Bush said no. Then, they wanted to insert non-binding timetables, but even that was too much for the Bush administration. Democrats finally caved after Bush suggested they were "playing politics" with The Troops, and passed an appropriations bill that gave Bush everything he wanted.

Now, we have both the House and the Senate voting to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to permit warrantless wiretapping on suspects whose communications travel through the U.S. According to the Associated Press, the bill's provisions expire in six months and the Director of National Intelligence -- not the Attorney General -- would have to sign off on wiretapping. These are described as "wins" by the Democrats, but the fact that this bill even got passed is staggering.

In the tradition of the Bush administration, the legislation, S. 1927, is known by the Orwellian name "Protect America Act of 2007." Let's have a look!

FISA is known to history as 50 U.S.C. 1801 et seq. For one, it defines "United States persons" as any citizen or legal resident of the United States and stipulates that foreign intelligence surveillance cannot occur under the auspices of FISA if a "United States person" is involved. S. 1927 alters that, saying that electronic surveillance cannot be used against a person "reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States." Reasonably believed? That's helpful. "Oh, sorry, we didn't mean to capture all of this information; we reasonably believed that he was outside the country!"

NYT reports:

Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.

Now, it would appear, it doesn't matter if the communications of "United States persons" are intercepted. All that change I had hoped for last November seems to be going away.

Posted by Mark at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, several crazies in the Ohio General Assembly have come up with H.B. 287, which would require "the written informed consent of the father" in order for a woman to have an abortion.

Yes, you read that right. The father of a fetus would have to approve an abortion. Naturally, such a law probably wouldn't be signed into law by current Gov. Ted Strickland, who, as far as I know, is not crazy. Even the bill were signed into law, any number of abortion rights groups would immediately sue, and try to get an injunction enjoining enforcement of the law, which they would get, because any court would rule that such a law places an undue burden on a woman's right to an abortion, as provided for in a whole host of abortion cases (which I won't look up the citations for right now; use your imagination).

But that's not at issue. What's at issue is that there are still people who are writing crap like this. One of the bill's co-sponsors is Rep. Tom Brinkman, whom you might remember from a few years ago. Mr. Brinkman was named a SEDHE Villain of the Forever in 2005 when he sued Miami University (Yours Truly's alma mater) for providing domestic partner benefits in violation of the recently-passed Ohio constitutional amendment which prohibits a state entity from providing marriage-like benefits to unmarried couples. Mr. Brinkman continues his douchebaggery even today as he attempts to take Ohio back to the 19th century, when women were beaten, and not only did they keep quiet about it, but they enjoyed it!

[Found via The Consumerist.]

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John C. Dvorak writes today in PC Magazine about the impending "Web 2.0" bubble. "Web 2.0" refers to social networking and user-generated content websites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. "Bubble" refers to the overvaluation of these companies and the eventual collapse of the Web 2.0 business model once investors pull their money out.

Why will they pull their money out? Lots of promises without the coincident profitability. The original "dot-com" bubble burst because companies promised a lot of stuff without generating a lot of money. Says Dvorak, "We were told that you'd be buying sandwiches over the Internet and having them delivered the next day by FedEx." There actually were several dot-com startups that delivered groceries that you purchased online. And while these were very whiz-bang companies, not enough people bought into their promises of changing the world to make them profitable. People don't want to buy groceries online; they want to go to the store and see them!

The Web 2.0 bubble, says Dvorak, will be worse. But why? He cites several reasons, but I can think of one big one: advertising. Advertising is fueling the Web 2.0 phenomenon. It's traditional advertising, like context-sensitive search results (such as Google Ads) or big, flashy banners on MySpace. The inherent assumption in advertising theory (if there is such a thing) is that the existence of an ad is prima facie evidence that revenue will be generated from that ad, because a person who sees an ad will necessarily buy whatever is advertised.

This ignores a few things: (1) some people aren't morons (that is, they don't automatically buy whatever is shown to them in an ad); and (2) not everyone sees the ads that you place there (due to pop-up blockers, ad blockers, or TiVo). If people can avoid advertising, they will. And I cite Second Life as my example. Second Life was touted as a revolution: you could do business in a virtual world without ever paying the fixed costs that having a business entails. Need to have a meeting? Have it in Second Life! Companies with advertising to do jumped onto this, creating stores and marketplaces in Second Life where users could purchase branded stuff.

The problem is: no one cared:

But the sites of many of the companies remaining in Second Life are empty. During a recent in-world visit, Best Buy Co.'s Geek Squad Island was devoid of visitors and the virtual staff that was supposed to be online.

The schedule of events on Sun Microsystems Inc.'s site was blank, and the green landscape of Dell Island was deserted. Signs posted on the window of the empty American Apparel store said it had closed up shop.

McGuinness said Starwood's venture into Second Life did accomplish something. Feedback from denizens gave Aloft ideas for its physical hotels.

The point is that, given advertising or none, people choose no advertising. Or no branding. Or no shopping. Advertising encourages people to buy things they need, but once everyone has everything he or she needs, advertising moves into its next phase of existence: convincing people to buy things they don't need. Convincing them that there's a void in their life that can only be filled by Banana Republic jeans, Budweiser, or Chevrolet. In the United States, shopping is a past-time. In Second Life, not so much. In an episode of The Simpsons where giant, metal advertising characters came to life and tried to destroy the town, Lisa observed that if you don't pay attention to them, they'll go away. It appears that Second Life has also learned how to use advertising's silver bullet: when no one responds, the advertisers move on.

This is Second Life, but it could be the rest of the Internet, which is much more predicated on advertising revenue than Second Life. In fact, advertising revenue is probably the number one business model, with subscriptions close behind. Advertisers pay Google or Facebook to place their ads on the page, in the hope that visitors will be attracted to these ads and then purchase the products. The entire model operates under the assumption that all ads that are put out there will be seen by consumers; and, as a correlation, all consumers who see those ads will go out and buy the products. As I said at the beginning of this article, those two assumptions are flawed, and when companies realize this, they'll pull some of their billions out of the Internet. Ad-blocking software is very prevalent, and all modern browsers (Internet Explorer 7, Safari, Firefox) offer popup-blocking options. Just because an ad is placed on a website doesn't mean that it will ever be seen. I have popup and ad-blocking software on all my web browsers: I hardly ever see advertisements.

Web 2.0 gets its money from these advertisements. That's why Rupert Murdoch paid $500 million for MySpace, and why Google paid $1.6 billion for YouTube. It's the prospect of reaching an advertising audience. But what if that audience won't see the ads, or won't click on them? The advertisers will pull out, and suddenly the social networking sites will go back to being mere social networking sites, devoid of advertising. This is a good thing for users, but a bad thing for Web 2.0 proprietors, who depend on that revenue to keep the sites going.

Posted by Mark at 5:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Alberto Gonzales and The Truth have kind of a hate-hate relationship. If you've been watching C-SPAN for the last several months, you've seen Attorney General Gonzales try to spin his way out of a web woven over the past six years by himself, President Bush, and other administration insiders.

Most recently, Gonzales suggested that, when he (as White House Counsel) and then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card visited then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in the famous Hospital Room Meeting, they discussed not the administration's warrantless wiretapping program, but a different program. At the time, we thought he was lying, attempting to suggest that he wasn't trying to "take advantage of a sick man," Attorney General Ashcroft, who had already voiced his disapproval of the wiretapping program.

Did you think the administration didn't have its lies surrounded by a mantle of more lies, all protecting a solid, inner core of some kind of truth? Turns out Gonzales, in attempting to lie, actually ended up telling the truth! This man is so incompetent, that even when he tries to lie, he can't do it right!

The Raw Story reports that, after September 11, 2001, President Bush signed an executive order authorizing a "series of secret surveillance activities." So, it turns out, Gonzales accidentally let slip that there were other surveillance activities going on without anyone's knowledge. What else has been going on that no one outside of the Bush administration knows about?

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