'Cause the White House is for Lovers

What the hell, let's talk about PropaGannonGate, aka "The Manchurian Beefcake Candidate".

So, there's this guy, see? He's a journalist for a conservative "news" site (Talon News), having something to do with GOPUSA.com, though they're scrambling to disown him now. He likes to ask very slanted questions of Scott McClellan, of the "Has <name of liberal here> stopped beating his wife yet?" variety.

People (bloggers) think to themselves...Hm! Who is this schmuck lobbing softballs at the Prez like there's no tomorrow?

Hey! Who is this schmuck who's actually getting to ask the Prez a question? (We all know how much this President loves to give press conferences.)

Hey!! Who is this schmuck who maybe got to see the Valerie Plame Leak Memo?

Well, who this schmuck is, apparently,...is a gay hooker.

So he ain't all bad.

---

Reporter with prostitution links and false name got access to Bush: Questions surface on relationship with White House staff

EXPOSE: A man called Jeff

Propaganda-Gate: Jeff/Jim Gannon/Guckert Still Does Not Get It

[T]here is only one real story here. That is that for the past few years a man with a fake name, working for a fake news agency, infiltrated the White House Press Pool. That fake reporter then was relied upon by Scott McClellan and even George W. Bush in press conferences, where he would serve up the most inane, partisan, softball questions imaginable that had ZERO journalistic integrity and value. This same fake reporter may have got his hands on a secret internal CIA memo that he mentioned in an interview he had with Valerie Plame's husband, former ambassador and administration critic Joseph Wilson. This is the only story. This is a serious story. This is a story that needs REAL journalism to get to the bottom of.

There is only one story here and that is the continuing unraveling of the propaganda machine utilized by this administration. It is not “Gannongate”, because Jeff/Jim does not deserve that much attention. It is about Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher, and Michael McManus. It is about an administration that thinks it can massage the truth, frame the truth, buy the truth or create the truth. It is about a President that thinks that it is ok to have Karl Rove give an exclusive interview to Sean Hannity so he can pimp the social security scam, and call it journalism. It is the abhorrent practice this administration has in assuming that the American people are just too plain stupid to realize that they are being manipulated and lied to.

How Do You Spell 'Education'?

Previously Untargeted Programs at Risk

The White House released the list of program cuts in response to congressional requests, sending it to lawmakers late on a Friday afternoon, when it would receive relatively little attention heading into the weekend.

Typical Administration manevouring.

The timing underscored the political calculations involved as Bush attempts to fulfill his vow to cut the federal deficit in half by 2009 while still paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and financing his ambitious proposal to restructure Social Security. While it may be politically advantageous to announce that 154 programs would be eliminated or reduced, it becomes far dicier on Capitol Hill once they are identified.

The White House claims these programs "don't work well". But basically, the White House just wants all money to go to funding federal counterterrorism efforts, and nothing else.

The NEA thinks this sucks.

Budget Should Reflect Americans' Values

"On Monday, parents, educators, and school employees will learn how the Administration plans to invest in America's public schools for the coming year. America's teachers and education employees agree with the President when he says that for America to succeed in the future, we must invest in children today."

So let's invest in them, instead of chopping 100,000 students out of their Pell Grant eligibility.

NEA Press Center

Thanks to twistedchick for the links.

The truth. Speak it.

Boxer Hits a Home Run

Barbara Boxer, speaking the truth. Go read it.

Torture and the President's "Core" Powers

Outsourcing Torture

Yoo also argued that the Constitution granted the President plenary powers to override the U.N. Convention Against Torture when he is acting in the nation’s defense—a position that has drawn dissent from many scholars. As Yoo saw it, Congress doesn’t have the power to “tie the President’s hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique.” He continued, “It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can’t prevent the President from ordering torture.” If the President were to abuse his powers as Commander-in-Chief, Yoo said, the constitutional remedy was impeachment.

I'm studying Constitutional Law right now, and I have to say, I'm stunned. Yoo is asserting that the President's power to torture is one of his "core" powers. "Core" powers, as we've discussed them in class so far, are those that are so central to [executive, judicial, legislative] branch's existence as to be non-delegable to another branch.

For example, the legislative branch's job is to make law. The judicial branch's job is to interpret law, and the executive's job is to execute or enforce it. Congress passed a law in 1934 to delegate *some* law-making authority to the judiciary, in order that the judiciary could promulgate the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. (How to serve process on someone, and stuff like that. And so they formed a committee, and came up with rules, and then Congress voted to accept them - and make them law.)

If Congress passed a law tomorrow dumping all their lawmaking power onto the executive, that would violate the structure defined by the Constitution - it would throw off the system of balancing tensions between three bodies - and that would be unConstitutional. They can't abdicate that "core" power.

What Yoo is saying, is that torture is within the President's "core power" as Commander in Chief.

Naturally, I disagree. I'll even cite Hamdi v. Rumsfeld when I do it. I'll even cite Justice Scalia, considered rather conservative, in the process.

Analogizing from Scalia's dissent* in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (and the reason he dissented is because he disagreed with the plurality opinion that the Authorization to use Military Force granted the Executive the power to detain Mr. Hamdi, among other things):

The Framers of the Consitution would have to be out of their minds to permit such (torture) to be a core power, they couldn't even stomach the idea of giving the Executive permanent military power. But power over the most vital liberty interest of them all? Are you nuts?

*"In the Founder's view, the 'blessings of liberty' were threatened by 'those military establishments which must gradually poison its very fountain.'...Except for the actual command of military forces, all authorization for their [meaning US armed forces -- Sid] maintenance and all explicit authorization for their use is placed in the control of Congress under Article I..."

Know what he's saying right there? Concentrations of power threaten liberty.

But Yoo apparently thinks that's OK, when the Executive has his CiC hat on. So, torture away, it's the Executive's core function!

People Dead Today

Pakistan Dam-Burst Kills 60 -- At least 60 people have been killed after a dam burst its banks in heavy rain in south-western Pakistan.
Iraqi insurgent attacks kill many -- A car bomb exploded outside a Shia mosque northeast of Baghdad, killing at least 13 and injuring up to 40.
Iraqi police killed in shootout -- Iraqi police said they have also found the bodies of 20 truck drivers in their burnt out vehicles south of the capital.
American playwright Miller dies -- He was one of the most significant American writers of the 20th Century...His play The Crucible was inspired by the hysteria of the McCarthy witch hunts which he became embroiled in.

There's more, many more, I'm sure. There always are.

Knitting without a Net

Strathaven folk knit themselves a room

Holy cow. That's like the ultimate in free-fall knitting. I'd love to see this in person.

No oversight? No way!

Tell Your Representative NO

On Thursday, February 10th, the House of Representatives will vote on a bill that would grant the Department of Homeland Security sweeping new authority to waive all federal and state laws, including those that protect public health, worker safety and the environment, for the construction of roads, walls, fences and other barriers along U.S. borders. Under this sweeping waiver, the DHS would be free to undertake large construction projects without oversight, accountability, or legal constraints anywhere along our borders -- from the densely populated border communities in California, Texas and Washington, to the remote wilderness of Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Arizona, to the pristine islands and waters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in northern Minnesota.

Federal and state laws that protect citizens from criminal activities and negligent business practices, as well as those that ensure civil rights, public health and safety and environmental protections, could be disregarded. Long-standing laws like the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and Safe Drinking Water Act could be ignored, putting communities at risk for increased pollution. Additionally, our border areas contain an enormous amount of protected federal lands, including national parks, wildlife refuges, forests and wilderness areas, that could be subject to this provision.

Border security can be ensured while shielding the public and the environment from harm and, indeed, the DHS has not demonstrated a need to waive any laws. In fact, not a single congressional hearing has illustrated a need for these broad exemptions. Never before has any federal agency been provided with such a breadth of unjustified exemptions from our laws.

from twistedchick

Happy New Year!

Chúc Mừng Nǎm Mới

Epiphanies

I hurt my right hand over the weekend and my typing is a little off...so I'm taking it easy this week. (Translation: check in after Valentine's Day. I might have something amusing to say then. Fortunately, I didn't cut my flexor tendon, and if I have nerve damage, it's probably no worse than the effect I get on my left hand, courtesy of being hit by a car 12 years ago. Ah, life. The trick to living is to persist in not dying when bad things happen to you.)

However, I've been meaning to comment on a couple things that occurred to me, and I realize I'll probably never write anything extensive, I simply don't have the degrees in anthropology and sociology for the first, and from one perspective, am studying parts of the second by virtue of being in law school.

1. Primate grooming habits lie at the base of the Barbie phenomenon.

2. Republicans basically believe in the divine right of kings. Why else would they treat poor people as morally inferior? Wealthy people = blessed by God.

Nice work if you can get it.

Taking Away Your Information

What the US Government wants to take away from us Librarian talks about the Government Printing Office stopping printing.

Why does this affect YOU? Well, right now, you can walk into any Depository, which is mandated by law to give you access to these Gov Docs. You can go to your Regional and see 100 year old documents, watch the history of democracy unfold. You can flip through Congressional Hearings, vast amount of Health and Scientific information, including Geological and Nautical maps. And no power hungry government can decide that "oops" they didn't want that information to get out there, so let's easily erase it from the digital copy and archive. It's much more difficult to recall hundreds of paper copies across the country, then to modify one html file. Or simply erase it.

This is a bad, bad thing.

Speaking as a lay person about government, and substantially more educated on technology matters...

The purpose of the depositories appears twofold:

1. Provide a decentralized archive of the history of our government. If the East Coast and West Coast dropped off into the ocean one day, you could still go to the depository in Kansas City (assuming there's a depository in KC) and find everything you need to know, to keep the nation on an even keel. It provides for continuity of government by making it necessary to scorch the entire nation to destroy every copy of the nation's papers. Something bad happens? We pick up and move on.

2. Provide public access to this information to every single citizen of the US.

If these depositories cease to hold government publications and are reduced in number from 53 to 2, and publications are instead primarily stored on one or two government websites, that means they will be stored on one or two government web servers.

If there's only two print depositories, our security, our continuity, no longer exist.

The internet provides for decentralized communications, but the World Wide Web is not the same as a decentralized archive. If government publications are stored on only one or two government servers, those servers may go down, or be destroyed, or be changed in the night, and that information is lost, possibly forever.

By using the Internet as an archive, those publications would no longer available be to every citizen, but only to every one with Internet access. The 'digital divide' would split Americans into 'informed', and 'uninformed', for no longer will everyone have access to this information. If the East Coast and West Coast dropped off into the ocean one day, the server hosting these government publications would go with it, leaving behind all of us, uninformed, and the poorer for it.

The American Library Association has passed a resolution opposing the GPO's decision.

Who Voted for Torture?

Who Voted 'Yea' For Torture?

Money Talks, Bullshit Sits Around and Does Nothing

Sharon Stone's Good Work for Today

Sharon Stone raised a million dollars in about 5 minutes, by standing up during a conference at Davos and offering $10K directly, personally, to the President of Tanzania, then asked others in the audience to join her.

Isolationism, ho!

ISP Verizon cuts off their customers from Europe. Verizon persists with European email blockade

If you're a Verizon customer, is the service you signed up to have them provide?

If not, join the crowd.

Verizon writes:

Some of the loudest complaints you will see or hear about spam blocking come from the spammers themselves, who lose significant income when their efforts to flood the Internet with unsolicited e-mail are foiled. Our customers expect and demand that we provide them with as safe, secure and effective an Internet experience as possible and we are firm in our commitment to do that.

What they seem to have forgotten is that what their customers expect and demand, above all else, is to deliver their damn email.

That's Internet Service Provider. Not Internet Service Denier.

I have the same question AmericaBlog has.

Say, isn't that, like, fraud, or perjury, or bribery or something?

Now, did those Senators know that when Gallagher was testifying on behalf of the Bush administration's position on marriage issues, as supposedly an independent expert on marriage, that she had in fact recently accepted money, a good deal of it, to help Bush promote his position on marriage issues? Didn't the Senators deserve to decide for themselves whether Gallagher was truly offering her independent vide on Bush's proposal, or whether she was influenced in her views to the tune of $40,000?

Someone's Spinning In Their Grave and I Think It's Me

*flees shrieking*

I thought "Galadriel" Barbie was bad, but only until I looked further down the page and spotted a link to "Titania" Barbie from Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream,
and then I shrieked again at the sight of the link to "Juliet" Barbie, from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. By now, you see, I'm in train wreck mode, and can't look away. So I followed the link, asking myself what would happen to my stuff if I died intestate...

Fortunately, there was no link to "Beatrice" Barbie, from Much Ado About Nothing, or "Viola" Barbie, from Twelfth Night, and, oh, dear, do I want to give anyone at Mattel ideas?