...on "the decline of british sea power:"

"It could be ham or spam," says me. "I have to run a Bayesian filter to see."

"Giblets rejects your hegemonic ham/spam binary!" says Giblets. "Spam is just a superior form of ham. It is man's improvement on nature's ham."

"That's true," says me. "Spam comes in a handy can while ham comes packaged in inconvenient pig form."

"In the future we will get spam from special improved spam pigs," says Giblets, "which I call 'spigs'."

I saw this today in my local fishwrap, the Seattle Times:

Bid for information on lobbyists denied

The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the Justice Department's database on foreign lobbyists: Copying the information would bring down the computer system.

"Implementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating," wrote Thomas McIntyre, chief of the Justice Department's office for information requests.

I could very well be wrong about this, and I would certainly want to hear from anyone with expertise in this area, but the DoJ story seems to me absurd on its face. Do they mean to tell me that they don't do data backups?

This isn't good at all:

The U.S. government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) is warning Web surfers to stop using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

On the heels of last week's sophisticated malware attack that targeted a known IE flaw, US-CERT updated an earlier advisory to recommend the use of alternative browsers because of "significant vulnerabilities" in technologies embedded in IE....

The latest US-CERT position comes at a crucial time for Microsoft , which has invested heavily to add secure browsing technologies in the coming Windows XP Service Pack 2. The software giant has spent the last few months talking up the coming IE security improvements but the slow response to patching well-known -- and sometimes "critical" -- browser holes isn't sitting well with security experts....

US-CERT is a non-profit partnership between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the public and private sectors. It was established in September 2003 to improve computer security preparedness and response to cyber attacks in the United States.

It has been more than two weeks since Microsoft confirmed the existence on an "extremely critical" IE bug, which was being used to load adware/spyware and malware on PCs without user intervention but, even though the company hinted it would go outside its monthly security update cycle to issue a fix, the flaw remains unpatched....

When the United States government formally identifies one of your products as crap, it may be time to redesign the product.

I use Mozilla, myself. Just sayin'.

Update 6/30/2004: Evidently, I'm not the only one using Mozilla.

From Reuters:

Report: Guantanamo Prisoners May Move to U.S.

U.S. officials may move hundreds of prisoners from a base in Cuba to facilities within the United States after Supreme Court rulings that granted military detainees access to U.S. courts, the Los Angeles Times reported on Wednesday.

Pentagon and Justice Department officials said they were considering moving all the prisoners from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a conservative judicial district within the United States, according to the newspaper. [emphasis supplied]

A good lawyer knows the law; a great lawyer knows the judge.

I have read a lot of good and informative commentary about yesterday's Supreme Court opinions in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Rasul v. Bush, and Rumsfeld v. Padilla, but the take that I found most interesting was this column by Tom (not Tim) Curry, national affairs writer for MSNBC:

Rulings hint at Abu Ghraib: Possibility of torture seems to weigh on some justices

Among the what-might-have-been questions of George W. Bush’s presidency is how his standing in public opinion would have fared had there been no Abu Ghraib prison abuse furor.

Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court hinted Monday that they, too, like the American public, have been influenced by Abu Ghraib.

Although overshadowed by Monday's Supreme Court decisions in the Guantanamo and Yaser Hamdi cases, the Jose Padilla decision — in which the court temporarily sidestepped the issue of whether the accused al-Qaida member deserves a hearing — is in some ways the most interesting of the three.

The dissenting opinion in the Padilla decision includes strong evidence that at least some of the justices were influenced by the Abu Ghraib prison abuse evidence and the recently leaked Justice Department memos that seemed to justify the torture of terrorism suspects in some cases.

Three justices joined Justice John Paul Stevens as he declared in his dissent that the court ought to immediately order a hearing for Padilla and give him the chance to try to prove his innocence.

“Even more important than the method of selecting the people’s rulers and their successors is the character of the constraints imposed on the Executive by the rule of law,” Stevens wrote. “Unconstrained Executive detention for the purpose of investigating and preventing subversive activity is the hallmark of the Star Chamber,” a reference to the court used by the seventeenth-century Stuart kings in Britain to order torture and imprisonment of their opponents.

At that point, Stevens inserted a footnote raising the issue of torture. He quoted approvingly from a 1949 Supreme Court decision by Justice Felix Frankfurter in which the Supreme Court reversed the murder conviction of a man interrogated by police relay teams for five nights and days, without being advised of his right to counsel.

“There is torture of mind as well as body; the will is as much affected by fear as by force,” wrote Frankfurter. “And there comes a point where this Court should not be ignorant as judges of what we know as men.”

Of course, as Curry mentions, the subject of torture had come up before:

During the oral argument in the Guantanamo detainees cases, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg posed a hypothetical to the lawyer arguing the Bush administration’s case, Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement.

“Suppose the executive says, `Mild torture, we think, will help get this information,’” Ginsburg said to Clement. “Some systems do that to get information.”

“Well, our executive doesn't,” Clement replied. “And I think the fact that executive discretion in a war situation can be abused is not a good and sufficient reason for judicial micromanagement in overseeing of that authority. You have to recognize that in situations where there is a war, where the government is on a war footing, that you have to trust the executive.”

Sure, but trust the executive to do what, exactly?

I want to be clear about this — I am deliriously happy about the Court's decisions in these cases. I literally pumped my fist in the air with glee when I heard the news on my car radio yesterday morning (and, let me tell you, it's not easy to pump your fist in the air when you're driving a 1991 Toyota Tercel). The Government's position — it is possessed of virtually plenary power to detain "enemy combatants" indefinitely, without process, and that the executive alone is empowered to identify such "enemy combatants" — is of a piece with the crypto-fascism (there, I've said it) revealed the torture memos (especially, the frightening assertion that the President may suspend application of the law) and the most draconian imaginable applications of the (so-called) PATRIOT Act. The Court's rulings represent a necessary smackdown of those who would concede that the three branches of government are co-equal, but that some are more co-equal than others.

Having said that, I am a little concerned by the actual holdings in Hamdi. This is one of those tortured cases (pardon the pun) where concurrences and dissents tell the story. The opinion of the Court — O'Connor's opinion — was joined only by a plurality of four Justices. Two Justices, Souter and Ginsburg, agree with plurality that Hamdi is entitled to a hearing before an Article III court and to the assistance of counsel, but disagree that Congress authorized the detention of "enemy combatants" by passage of Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). Scalia and Stevens state categorically that detention of "enemy combatants" without criminal process is constitutionally forbidden unless Congress has suspended habeas corpus pursuant to the Constitution'?s Suspension Clause, Art. I, sec. 9, cl. 2. Only Thomas would have granted Hamdi no relief.

Having concluded that Hamdi is entitled to due process, however, the plurality waffled about what process, precisely, is due. In particular, the plurality says (in dicta, but remember Thomas's vote out there) that relaxed evidence rules (permitting hearsay, for example) and, most troubling, a rebuttable presumption of guilt, may be appropriate. We will have to see how these cases play out before we know if this is too big a loophole to leave open.

Nothing to complain about in the Rasul opinion, though. A solid majority of six — five joining Stevens's uncharacteristically cogent opinion for the Court, plus Kennedy in concurrence — agree that the government cannot "disappear" detainees to Guantánamo Bay in order to avoid the jurisdiction of US courts. From now on, the government will have to "disappear" detainees to Diego Garcia for that purpose.

And, after all that, the Padilla case dangles as an afterthought. Having shaken the constitutional relationships between branches to their very roots (nice metaphor, no?), the Court clears its palate with a bit of dry, procedural jurisprudence, sharpening the already fairly keen edges of venue law in ways that will, no doubt, have unseen, subtle, profound impact on completely unrelated cases in the future. Mr. Padilla gets no relief just now, but don't shed too many tears for him (after all, his lawyer isn't). His case must be refiled in South Carolina, but after Hamdi, there can be little doubt that Mr. Padilla will get his day in court. (After all, the only real difference between the cases on the merits is that Padilla was detained on US soil, while Hamdi was arrested virtually on the battlefield. It is hard to see how this difference could work against Mr. Padilla.)

But then there's that barely conspicuous dissent to the Court's opinion in Padilla, and — as MSNBC's Curry observed — that's where the action is. Stevens (who is, inexplicably, two for two in today's Coherent Opinion Sweepstakes) drops the bomb that everyone knew was coming: Yes, Mr. Clement, we know that you are completely full of offal when you look us in the eye and tell us that "this executive" would not engage in "mild torture" (or worse). You ask us to trust these guys, and we want to trust them, because there is, after all, a war on (or something), but that no longer seems to be an option. So we'll be looking over your shoulder, thank you very much, and now you run along and keep doing what you were doing, keeping us safe from the evildoers and all.

Just keep us posted.

From Reuters, via AlertNet:

U.S. Army plans involuntary call-up of thousands

The U.S. Army is planning an involuntary mobilization of thousands of reserve troops to maintain adequate force levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, defense officials said on Monday.

The move -- involving the seldom-tapped Individual Ready Reserve -- represents the latest evidence of the strain being placed on the U.S. military, particularly the Army, by operations in those two countries.

Roughly 5,600 soldiers from the ready reserve will be notified of possible deployment this year, including some soldiers who will be notified within a month, said an Army official speaking on condition of anonymity.

A senior defense official said, "These individuals are being called back to fill specific shortages for specific jobs...."

The defense official said that while soldiers in the Individual Ready Reserve have served their voluntary obligation in the Army they still can be mobilized involuntarily for several years after returning to civilian life.

"Sometimes there's a misperception by some of the individuals ... that 'I've done my obligation, I've been in the Army, thank you very much, and I'm done'. But you're not done," the official said.

Our armed forces are stretched thinner than Dick Cheney's lips. We have nearly 160,000 troops committed to Iraq and Afghanistan alone, which, after accounting for commitments to other theaters (the Balkans, South Korea), and for training and other downtime, leaves uncomfortably little headroom as against the Congressionally authorized troop strength. Thank goodness Iran and North Korea are being so very well-behaved!

Consider the big picture: Over five thousand men and women who thought their service to their country complete are now being compelled to return. Call it a draft or don't; it's still the involuntary conscription of Americans into military service.

And the effects will be noticed here. These are people with valuable skills and training. In particular, law enforcement personnel are among those being recalled. There are communities in America — among them, small, rural communities, already hard hit by the mobilization of National Guard units — that can ill afford the loss of qualified officers.

Unless Proof Through the Night is literally the first place you turn for news (which seems, frankly, unlikely), you are aware that the Supremes have struck a blow for liberty:

A closely divided U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday barred enforcement of a 1998 federal law designed to keep Internet pornography away from minors because it likely violates constitutional free-speech rights.

By a 5-4 vote, the high court handed a defeat to the U.S. Justice Department in a case that has pitted free-speech rights against efforts by Congress to protect minors from online pornography. It sent the case back to federal court for a full review.

The thing that struck me about this story was the way the votes broke down — the Reuters article says that Kennedy wrote the opinion, and that "Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer dissented." Okay, so that means (since Breyer jumped the fence and voted with the conservatives) that one of the conservatives voted with the pro-porno majority. Let's see, there's Stevens, Ginsburg, Souter....

and oh, yeah, Clarence Thomas.

Joe Klein has a column in Time which provides a useful overview of the coming storm set to wash over the Junta:

The torture investigation is one of four major defensive battles the Administration is facing. In the weeks to come, the White House will also have to deal with the 9/11 commission's final report, the congressional investigations into the CIA's bungled assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and a special prosecutor's hunt for the White House leakers who blew the cover of CIA secret operative Valerie Plame. Not only is the Administration defending itself against the Democrats, the investigators and the media. Two other serious, surreptitious - and quite possibly unprecedented - battles are going on: the intelligence community is at war with the White House, and the uniformed military is at war with the civilian leadership of the Pentagon. The first conflict went public last week with news of the impending publication of Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terrorism, a book by an anonymous author who is known to be a senior CIA official and former chief of the agency's Osama bin Laden station. The invasion of Iraq was "an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat," the author writes. "There is nothing that bin Laden could have hoped for more than the American invasion and occupation of Iraq."

Michael Moore couldn't have said it any better - and this book was vetted by CIA censors. In fact, the views of Anonymous are an accurate reflection of the opinions I've heard from multiple intelligence sources. The spooks seem to believe that outgoing CIA Director George Tenet was strong-armed by Cheney and Rumsfeld into overassessing Iraq's WMD capacity. This may or may not be true, but it is the conventional wisdom in the intelligence community. Furthermore, there is intense anger over the White House's revealing the identity of Plame, who may have been active in a sting operation involving the trafficking of WMD components. Plame was outed in a White House attempt to discredit the finding of her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, that there was no evidence that Iraq tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger. "Only a very high-ranking official could have had access to the knowledge that Plame was on the payroll" of the CIA, an intelligence source told me. [emphasis supplied]

First, I just love reading Klein logrolling for his favorite author, "Anonymous."

But seriously, this gets right to the heart of what I found so amazing about Imperial Hubris when I first read about it — this book was cleared for publication by CIA officials! In essence, it at least appears to be the publicly stated, institutional position of the CIA that the Naked Emperor and his flying monkeys have gone completely off the rails.

This is mindboggling to me.

And, bear in mind that the Boy King is fixing to appoint a new Director of Central Intelligence. This appointment has huge implications; it will play an central role in the structure of the American intelligence community at a particularly crucial historical juncture. As of late last week, the rumor mill was elevating Porter Goss, member of the House (R-FL) and former CIA case officer, but who knows if that rumor is still operative — Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.VA), among others, made it clear that the path to confirmation would be rocky, if you will pardon the pun. In any event, the sacrificial lamb lucky nominee, whoever that may be, will be taking control of an enormous, powerful, and openly hostile agency that has publicly repudiated the President doing the nominating. Like I said: Absolutely mindboggling.

Sounding a leitmotif in this long, woeful tune is the Justice Department investigation into the Plame Affair. I remain convinced that Plame's betrayal was the incident that set the CIA irrevocably against this White House. Notice that Klein drops a small bomb here, revealing that Plame "may have been active in a sting operation involving the trafficking of WMD components." This appears to be new information, and one must wonder where Klein got it.

(By the way, I wish I was clever enough to have caught the passing mention of the alleged sting operation. Alas, I am oblivious. Fortunately, however, corrente, to whom I am indebted for the Time link, made the catch. Incidentally, those kids are on fire today — check 'em out!)

I just finished reading the opinion in Cheney v. United States District Court, the Energy Task Force case. The District Court had permitted discovery to begin in this lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club, and the defendants (including Dick "Dick" Cheney) sought a writ of mandamus (easily one of my personal top three or four favorite writs, ever since I read Marbury v. Madison) commanding the District Court to vacate its discovery orders. The Court essentially punted — the case was remanded to the Court of Appeals without any party getting the relief it had requested.

Writing for the Court, Justice Kennedy held that the Court of Appeals had erred by reading United States v. Nixon as requiring the government or individual officials to assert executive privilege in specific documents before mandamus could be granted. In essence, the Court of Appeals had avoided the sticky separation of powers issues the case presented by holding that it could not adjudicate those issues until they became ripe. The Court's opinion today rejects that reading of Nixon, at least under the circumstances presented, and ordered the Court of Appeals to reconsider the defendants' application for mandamus in light of the separation of powers issues. (Pointedly, however, the Court refused to itself issue the writ against the District Court, as Cheney and the other petitioners had requested.)

Much of the logic of Kennedy's opinion escapes my small-fry lawyer mind. One line in particular struck me as utter nonsense: Noting that Nixon presented a criminal case while Cheney's case is civil (a distinction which, I think, is less significant than the Court would have me believe), Kennedy writes

The situation here cannot, in fairness, be compared to Nixon, where a court'’s ability to fulfill its constitutional responsibility to resolve cases and controversies within its jurisdiction hinges on the availability of certain indispensable information.

Um, I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure that is exactly the situation here.

Thomas (joined by Scalia) concurs in part and dissents in part; he would have issued the writ against the District Court. Ginsburg (joined by Souter) dissents from the judgment, arguing that the Court of Appeals was handling matters quite nicely, thank you, and that in the face of the government's insistence that no discovery is acceptable, the District Court was doing fine, too. Stevens concurs separately, in an opinion that consists entirely of pure gibberish (as is his wont). Rehnquist, Stevens, O’Connor, and Breyer joined in the opinion of the Court.

So, at the end of the day, little has changed. The case gets dragged out a bit longer (past the election, not that anyone is politically motivated here), and we still don't know the story behind Cheney's task force. And the wheels of justice grind on.

America's libraries get a windfall. From MSNBC (link via boingboing):

Librarians: Free CDs too much of a good thing
Settlement of music industry price-fixing case yields some odd lots

Public librarians aren’t prone to looking gift horses in the mouth, but many have nevertheless been taken aback by the odd and in some cases overly generous allotments of free music CDs that have begun arriving in the last week as the result of the settlement of an antitrust lawsuit against major record companies.

The CD cornucopia — consisting of approximately 5.6 million compact discs — was billed as a windfall for libraries and schools when it was announced in September 2002 as part of a $144 million settlement of the lawsuit, which alleged that music distribution companies illegally inflated the price of CDs by requiring retailers to sell them at or above a set level in order to qualify for substantial advertising funding.

But when the first shipments began arriving last week, some librarians suspected that the companies — the Bertelsmann Music Group, EMI Music Distribution, Warner-Elektra-Atlantic, Warner Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment — were dumping CDs that had been gathering dust in warehouses when they received hundreds of copies of some titles for which there is little or no demand.

Computer programming glitch blamed

The good news is that the mystery has been solved and the source of the overabundance has been determined to be nothing more sinister than a computer-programming glitch that will soon be fixed, law enforcement officials say.

Excuse me. Let me just jump in here a moment.

Okay, first of all, why is "law enforcement" involved?

Second, "computer-programming [sic] glitch" my smiling Irish ass! Anyone who ever worked in a record store recognizes these as "cut outs." Hell, anyone who ever saw High Fidelity more than twice oughta recognize them. We're talking about box lots (and partial box lots) of crap that distributors sell off by the pound to liquidators, who in turn fill bins full of cheap junk at music stores and other retail outlets.

Now, don't get me wrong — I love cut outs. A collector can occasionally find some great stuff in cut out bins. My friend Rick found a sealed original pressing of the first Modern Lovers record in a cut out bin at Fred Meyer; he turned around and sold it the next day for $50 (he didn't even really like the Modern Lovers — bastard!).

But that's an example of a "contaminant," and cut outs are still, really, just junk. And it wasn't any "computer-programming glitch" that sent boxes of cut outs to these libraries.

The bad news is that libraries that were among the first to receive their free CDs are now going to have to figure out what to do with all the duplicates.

Among them are the librarians at the Tacoma (Wash.) Public Library, who last week received a shipment of 1,325 CDs that included 57 copies of “Three Mo’ Tenors,” a 2001 recording featuring classically trained African American tenors Roderick Dixon, Thomas Young and Victor Trent Cook; 48 copies of country artist Mark Wills’ 2001 album “Loving Every Minute,” 47 copies of “Corridos de Primera Plana,” a greatest hits compilation by Los Tuscanes de Tijuana (2000); 39 copies of “Yolanda Adams Christmas” (2000); 37 copies of Michael Crawford’s “A Christmas Album” (1999) and 34 copies of the Bee Gees’ “This Is Where I Came In” (2001)....

Eva Silverstone, communications director for the Spokane Public Library, said the library in eastern Washington received many copies of “Three Mo’ Tenors” among its 1,325 CDs, along with “tons of copies of Christina Aguilera’s Christmas album.” All told, she said, 15 titles represented 36 percent of the shipment....

The public library in Worcester, Mass., with a main library and two branches, received 150 copies of “Nastradamus,” a 1999 album by the rapper Nas, and 148 copies of “Entertainment Weekly’s Greatest Hits of 1971....”

The Des Moines (Iowa) Public Library was on track to take the lead in redundancies, though the identification of the programming bug may come in time to avert what might have been a record overkill. Its crate of 2,647 CDs, due to arrive in the next couple weeks, was listed as containing 430 single-song discs — 16 percent of the total -- of Whitney Houston singing “The Star Spangled Banner” at the 1991 Super Bowl, according to Steve Cox, of the Iowa State Library....

I personally boxed up about a bazillion copies of this turkey for return back in the day. If you work at a library, look for my initials on the box. It wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that the same copies are still lying around somewhere.

While some librarians said they immediately suspected the strange allotments were the result of the music companies involved in the settlement dumping unwanted product that had been gathering dust in their warehouses, state officials involved in the settlement say there is an innocent explanation for the mix-up.

“In trying to give everyone a variety of genres, the claims administrator wrote an allocation program that resulted in some entities getting large numbers of a certain title and others getting no copies,” said Tina Kondo, senior assistant attorney general for Washington state, one of 43 states and territories that participated in the antitrust suit. “We checked with the claims administrator and they’re in the process of reprogramming the allocation formula.”

Amy Lake, a spokeswoman for the claims administrator, Rust Consulting of Minneapolis, Minn., did not return phone calls seeking comment on the snafu.

I sincerely hope that no one bought that excuse. It's lame beyond comment; just sit and bask in its sublime and perfect stupidity. But, what this means is that, from now on, they'll shuffle up the cut outs into new boxes before they ship them out. That's good, because it is the only way we can assure that this awful vision of future horror remains only a bad dream:

The adjustment in the program will come as great relief to librarians who have been hearing reports of the weird shipments in the last week and contemplating what surprises they might have in store.

“We’ve been wondering if we’re going to get 12,000 Yanni CDs,” said Wallace Hoffsis, director of collections development for the Sacramento (Calif.) Public Library.

12,000 Yanni CDs! Oh, the humanity!

Update 6/24/2004: It appears as though our schools were beneficiaries of the same industry largesse. More Whitney Houston, and "48 copies of 'Scary Sounds for Halloween' from Martha Stewart." Including the clang of prison doors, no doubt.

Over at WTF Is It Now?!?, Maru has a pointer to this rather odd story from the upstart Times of London:

Bomb squad link in Spanish blasts

THE man accused of supplying the dynamite used in the al-Qaeda train bombings in Madrid was in possession of the private telephone number of the head of Spain’s Civil Guard bomb squad, it emerged yesterday.

Emilio Suárez Trashorras, who is alleged to have supplied 200kg of dynamite used in the bombs, had obtained the number of Juan Jesús Sánchez Manzano, the head of Tedax.

The revelation has raised fresh concerns in Madrid about links between those held responsible for the March bombings, which killed 190 people, and Spain’s security services, and shortcomings in the police investigation. Señor Suárez Trashorras and two other men implicated in the bombings have already been identified as police informers. Other members of the group had evaded police surveillance, despite concerns within the security services about their activities and evidence of their association with al-Qaeda.

The telephone number of Señor Sánchez Manzano was contained in a Civil Guard dossier handed to Juan del Olmo, the investigating judge, at the National Court in Madrid. The number was written on a piece of paper found in the possession of Carmen Toro, the wife of Señor Suárez Trashorras. Both are in custody accused of supplying dynamite used in the Madrid bombs.

Alrighty then.

Let's not worry, for right now, how Señor Suárez Trashorras came to be in possession of Juan Jesús Sánchez Manzano's home phone number. I want to know why Señora Toro was carrying his number.

Am I the only one who is picturing someone kind of like Sherry Palmer from 24? Only smokier?

A couple of interesting stories about lawyers and lawyering have caught my eye over the last day or two.

First, this is disturbing. If the Herald Sun has the story straight, a military lawyer assigned to represent Australian citizen and accused al Qaida terrorist David Hicks (who is currently in custody at Guantánamo Bay), is being "investigated" as a result of complaints he has raised regarding his client's treatment:

Today, ABC [Australian Broadcasting Co.] radio reported that an officer in the US Office of Military Commissions, Major John Smith, had sent an email to colleagues calling for Hicks' Australian lawyer Stephen Kenny and US military lawyer Major Michael Mori to be investigated if the allegations [that Mr. Hicks was physically abused while in US custody] were without substance.

"Major Mori, to the best of my knowledge, has not filed or made any abuse allegations with the US Government, yet is willing to go and do so to a foreign government as well as publicly state the Australian Government should not rely on reports from US officials," the ABC quoted the email as saying.

"Abuse allegations in the current climate are very serious and should be made appropriately to the US Government.

"If these are not legitimate issues and constitute grandstanding by Major Mori and Mr Kenny, their representations, statements and actions should be investigated by appropriate ethics agencies."

The ABC said one of Major Mori's colleagues, Navy Lieutenant Commander Phil Sundel, had complained about the email in a memo to a superior.

"I find Major Smith's email extremely troubling," Lt Cdr Sundel's memo said.

"It strikes me as yet another effort in a campaign of smears, innuendo and implicit threats of adverse professional actions that's part of a concerted effort to harass and intimidate members of this office."

In lighter news, Michael Moore has been denied his God-given right as an American to lawyer up:

The distribution team behind Michael Moore's hotly debated documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" will face the Motion Picture Assn. of America's (MPAA) ratings appeal board Tuesday without its newly hired legal eagle, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo.

According to MPAA rules, Cuomo is not allowed to take part in the proceedings because those appearing before the board must be directly associated with the film.

"They have to be actively part of the creation and execution of the film, not a hired gun, who turns it into a trial," one source close to the situation said.

Without Cuomo by his side, Lions Gate Films president Tom Ortenberg -- whose company is distributing "Fahrenheit" with IFC Films and Miramax co-chairmen Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Fellowship Adventure Group -- will appeal for a PG-13 rating instead of the R that the MPAA has awarded "Fahrenheit" for its "violent and disturbing images and for language."

The film is slated to unspool before the MPAA at 10 a.m. in Los Angles, with a decision expected by the afternoon. The film opens exclusively in New York on Wednesday and rolls out nationally Friday.

It's just uncanny, how effective the opponents of this film have been in keeping it off everyone's radar.

Finally there is this tidbit from icWales, "the national website of Wales," where, incidentally, fully eighty percent of the readers report in response to an online poll that their "car journeys [are] disrupted by roadworks" at least once a week (!):

Scared lawyer halts Iraq hearing

A hearing in Baghdad for a US soldier accused of prison torture has been postponed because his lawyer was too frightened to go to Iraq and wanted to defend him by phone....

When [Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick's] civilian lawyer, Gary Myers, failed to show up, Frederick's military lawyer, Captain Robert Shuck, said Myers wanted to participate by telephone because coming to Iraq "places people in peril for their lives."

"We don't want to place civilian co-counsel in position of peril," Shuck said.

The military judge, Colonel James Pohl, angrily dismissed the suggestion, saying that he had received and denied a previous e-mail request from Myers to take part by phone.

"Lawyers appear in court," Pohl snapped. "They don't appear by phone...."

"You tell Mr. Myers that [July 23] is the date," Pohl said. "I don't care how many bombs are going off - let me rephrase, I do care how many bombs are going off but unless there are extraordinary circumstances, I'm going ahead with this trial."

Now, I certainly sympathize with any lawyer who wants to avoid practicing in a jurisdiction where "bombs going off" is not per se "extraordinary." Still, The Honorable Col. Pohl sounds like just the kind of cranky old goat I enjoy appearing before.

From "Rev." Moon's Washington Times:

Canada drops missile on golf course

A Canadian military aircraft added an extra hazard to the Yellowknife Golf Club when it dropped a missile packed with high explosives on the course.

The Toronto Globe and Mail said the missile fell from a CF-18 and dug a new bunker in the course driving range when it hit the mostly sandy ground at 7 a.m. Friday. The missile did not explode, and no one was injured.

"It's a live missile, so it has a warhead and it has its rocket motor," said Captain Dave Muralt of Canadian Forces NORAD command in Winnipeg. "But it was not armed .... Everything has to be set for this thing to fire and for the warhead to explode."

Bob Kelly of the Northwest Territories Department of Transportation told the Globe and Mail an air traffic controller noticed something fall from the plane as it made its approach to Yellowknife airport.

Although the region's best-known golf club was evacuated, the annual midnight golf tournament played in the far north's 24-hour sunshine is expected to go on as scheduled next weekend.

And my friends wonder why I don't golf. It's because I can't stay up that late any more.

I couldn't decide how to respond to this jaw-dropping revelation that our little penal colony in Cuba is a total farce. Fortunately, Dibgy has already said it all for me. Go read. Now.

I have no idea why this strikes me as being significant (maybe I'm just having a Beavis & Butthead moment), but can anyone out there confirm or refute my hunch that this is the first time the term "blow job" (or, rather, "blow-job") has appeared on the op-ed page of a major American mainstream daily newspaper?

Rare, good news for us fat guys:

Analysis of data from the New York State Angioplasty Registry indicates that people who are moderately to severely obese are less likely than others to suffer major adverse events or to die after undergoing catheter-balloon procedures to open clogged coronary arteries.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I hear a pulled pork sandwich calling my name. Also, there will be cornbread.

The Stamford [CT] Advocate reports:

CIA contractor charged with assault in death of Afghan detainee

A CIA contractor charged with fatally assaulting an Afghan detainee was once fired from a Connecticut police department and had history of run-ins with wives and neighbors, authorities and acquaintances said.

The contractor, 38-year-old David A. Passaro of Lillington, was charged Thursday with two counts each of assault and assault with a dangerous weapon - a flashlight.

Note that the victim in this case — Abdul Wali — voluntarily turned himself in to officials at a US military base. He was slowly beaten to death over a period of two days.

Do we suppose that Passaro was the only American who had contact with Abdul Wali over the course of those 48 hours?

Note also that the charge is assault, not murder. The Advocate says that "Passaro was not charged with murder because no autopsy was performed to establish a cause of death." Passaro faces "up to 40 years in prison and a $1 million fine." That'll teach him.

Update: The Advocate is now reporting that Passaro's attorney claims Wali died of a heart attack. Of course, since there was no autopsy to refute that claim, and since Passaro is absolutely entitled to the presumption of innocence, he will likely be (properly) acquitted, assuming no additional evidence is discovered. Or rather, he would be acquitted, if the charge were for murder. As it is, the charge is assault — and so it is hard to see why cause of death matters (from a legal perspective).

From Reuters:

Body of dead U.S. hostage found

The body of U.S. engineer Paul Marshall Johnson, who was beheaded by al Qaeda, was found in the Saudi capital Riyadh, according to a Saudi Web news site.

"Paul Marshall's body was found in the Mowansiyah district east of the capital Riyadh," Al Wifaq Web site said. It gave no further details. Al Qaeda beheaded Johnson, held hostage since last week, after the Saudi government failed to meet demands to free jailed militants, an Islamist Web site said earlier on Friday.

My little boy is about the same age as Paul Johnson's grandson. As I write this, Nick's grandpa is safely at work at a Wal-Mart outside of Salt Lake City. Some kids get all the luck.

Growing up during the Cold War, I was regaled with tales of the depravity of the Soviet Union (or, as we knew it, "Communist Russia"). Among the most awful stories were those of dissidents who were declared "mentally ill," and rendered for "treatment" somewhere out of the public eye.

Fortunately, we here in the United States would never do such a thing.

Join us next time, when we discuss the Godless Communists' technique of encouraging children to inform on their own parents. Somehow, we will manage to do so without reference to the law enforcement successes fairly attributed to our own DARE programs.

How can it possibly be that the Department of Defense has admitted that Little Donny Rumsfeld, at the behest of the Director of Central Intelligence, personally issued orders that the Geneva Conventions be violated and yet Rumsfeld remains employed (and out of custody)?

Also — why did DoD offer this admission? Is it subterfuge? Damage control? Basic decency? (Okay, that last suggestion is a joke; I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.)

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan and I would like to wish everyone a happy 100th Bloomsday. Now, if you will excuse me — I have to see a man in Nighttown.

My readers are exceptionally well informed, so I'm sure that you're aware that ancient Rome went through three distinct historical phases: In chronological order, they were the Monarchy, the Republic, and the Empire. America has, apparently, experienced the same three phases, except in a slightly shuffled order: First the Republic, then Empire, and now, it seems, a Monarchy.

Much has been written in the last few days about the March 6, 2003, draft legal opinion described in the Wall Street Journal. To my mind, the alpha and the omega of the story was summed up in one line:

To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

All hail King George II, who stands above the law. And God help us all.

First, let's be clear about one thing: American agents (both military personnel and privately contracted mercenaries), have committed war crimes in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at Gitmo. They are guilty of torture. They have violated the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture, and so have violated both American and international law. This is unremarkable, as far as it goes. Atrocities are practically unavoidable in the conduct of war. It is unimaginable that fighting men and women, who are expected to kill the enemy and therefore are bound to think of the enemy as subhuman, could proceed in their jobs without falling back on a bit of the old smacky-smacky and a touch of the short, sharp shot. Only a very few human beings are capable of the ethical compartmentalization necessary to kill the enemy without first learning to hate the enemy (those that can do so present an altogether different problem). This is only one of the many evils inherent in warfare.

But it is quite a different matter when the people who sit comfortably in their well-appointed, air-conditioned Washington offices actually sanction, or even order, such conduct. Here, there is no heat of battle, no battlefield morality to excuse their atrocities. Such individuals are merely criminals. They deserve no empathy, only scorn and prosecution.

This week, the New York Times reports that there has been a "pervasive pattern" of using public forced nudity as a means of humiliating Iraqi prisoners. This is a clear violation of Geneva's prohibition against humiliating prisoners and exposing them to public ridicule. (Incidentally, this story was well-reported in the international press over a year ago. Thanks to Body and Soul for reminding me of that fact, and congratulations to the Times for finally regaining consciousness.) This and other examples demonstrate conclusively that the civilian leadership at the Pentagon have long been well aware of the violations of law occurring during this conflict, and have turned a blind eye.

Similarly, the Army now admits that it had one of its own beat senseless, in furtherance the goals of the War on Terror^®:

Reversing itself, the Army said Tuesday that a G.I. was discharged partly because of a head injury he suffered while posing as an uncooperative detainee during a training exercise at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The Army had previously said Specialist Sean Baker's medical discharge in April was unrelated to the injury he received last year at the detention center, where the United States holds suspected terrorists.

Mr. Baker, 37, a former member of the 438th Military Police Company, said he played the role of an uncooperative prisoner and was beaten so badly by four American soldiers that he suffered a traumatic brain injury and seizures. He said the soldiers only stopped beating him when they realized he might be American.

And, perhaps, the worst is yet to come. One of Brad DeLong's correspondents offered this description of a talk by national treasure Seymour Hersh (emphasis supplied):

He said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, "You haven't begun to see evil..." then trailed off. He said, "horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run."

He looked frightened.

So, it's come to this: Lawyers and public servants -- educated, intelligent men and women, who love our country and love their own children -- are comfortable sitting around, debating whether it is acceptable to tell a prisoner that the wires attached to his balls are connected to a generator; but not acceptable to actually turn on the juice; whether the law allows making a man piss himself by threatening him with a dog, but not let that dog actually bite; whether we may ethically write "thief" on a man's naked body and turn him loose in the streets, but may not anally rape him with a flashlight (then again, that flashlight thing is probably alright, too). And then they kiss their children goodnight.

This is who we are now.

I am mindful of Godwin's Law, which states (more or less) that once any participant in a conversation is compared to the Nazis, that conversation is essentially over. Still, I cannot help but be struck by Digby's insight from earlier this week (and I apologize for quoting his post in its entirety):

It's interesting that the crack lawyers who devised this new immunity from war crimes evoked the Nuremberg defense. Aside from the obvious fact that the Nuremberg defense failed spectacularly, it is also interesting because one of the war crimes the Nuremberg defendents, which included the SS, SA and the Gestapo as well as individuals, were tried and convicted of were using what they believed to be a legally prescribed interrogation method they called "the third degree." I'm sure you've all heard of it:

The GESTAPO and SD conducted third degree interrogations. On 26 October 1939 an order to all GESTAPO offices from the RSHA signed Mueller, "by order," in referring to execution of protective custody during the war, stated in part:

"In certain cases, the Reichsfuehrer SS and Chief of the German Police will order flogging in addition to detention in a concentration camp. Orders of this kind will, in the future, also be transmitted to the State Police District Office concerned. In this case, too, there is no objection to spreading the rumour of this increased punishment. ***" (1531-PS)

On 12 June 1942 the Chief of the Security Police and SD, through Mueller, published an order authorizing the use of third degree methods in interrogating where preliminary investigation indicates that the prisoner could give information on important facts such as subversive activities, but not to extort confessions of the prisoner's own crimes. The order stated in part:

"*** 2. Third degree may, under this supposition, only be employed against Communists, Marxists, Jehovah's Witnesses, saboteurs, terrorists, members of resistance movements, parachute agents, anti-social elements, Polish or Soviet-Russian loafers or tramps. In all other cases, my permission must first be obtained.

"*** 4. Third degree can, according to the circumstances, consist amongst other methods, of:

very simple diet (bread and water)
hard bunk
dark cell
deprivation of sleep
exhaustive drilling also in flogging (for more than 20 strokes a doctor must be consulted)." (1531-PS)

George W. Bush has been making comparisons between the "War On Terrorism" and WWII. I didn't realize that in this sequel we were the Germans.

I have said many times that, while I do not believe that September 11 "changed everything" (for example, it certainly did not change what is right and what is wrong), it clearly changed one thing: It changed a strong, confident, imperfect but essentially just nation into a small, frightened, cowardly one. Again: This is who we are.

I imagine that this is what it must be like for children born into a mob family to learn that Daddy isn't really a "human resources specialist," he is a hit man, a stone cold killer. You love him, but you must also hate him. And that is how I feel about America today. I have loved it -- loved it with all my heart, more deeply than anyone or anything other than my own son -- but now I must pray for its end. Because, if this is who we are, we have no right to carry on. And again, God help us all.

Update: Added some missed links.

No, I'm not talking about Ray Charles; I have nothing to add to this beautiful tribute by Jeanne at Body and Soul.

Rather, I am deeply saddened by the passing of Robert Quine. This brilliant guitarist, who was in his musical element as much with Richard Hell as with Susanna Hoffs, as much with Lou Reed as with Matthew Sweet, is dead of a heroin overdose at age 61. He was reportedly despondent over the recent death of his wife.

Along with colleagues and collaborators Fred Maher (drums, programming, production) and Fernando Saunders (godlike bass), Robert Quine defined a certain post-punk aesthetic that fearlessly incorporated the pure physical power of the best pop music with the intelligence, wit, and anger of "serious" music (note that he counted among his influences such pop icons as Ritchie Valens and Chuck Berry on the one hand, and such twisted visionaries as Iggy Pop and Miles Davis on the other). There were no limits, no genres, no rules; there was only the naked sound of the guitar expressing as wide a range of emotions as one poor instrument could possibly be expected to bear. He could be meditative and subtle (see his work with Lloyd Cole), or just as easily sound like the very howl of psychosis itself (Lydia Lunch, anyone?). To a certain kind of mind, they are really one and the same.

And oh, yeah -- he was a lawyer, too.

I will give the last word to Danny Elfman, whose "We Close Our Eyes" was so wonderfully interpreted by Susanna Hoffs, with Robert Quine's inestimable assistance:

I looked Death in the face last night,
I saw him in my mirror,
And he simply smiled,
He told me not to worry,
He told me just to take my time.

Goodbye Robert, and thank you.

I clearly remember Ronald Reagan's first inaugural. I was utterly sure that the country was about to enter a long, dark nightmare from which it would never fully awaken. I believed that Ronald Reagan was a dangerous ideologue, a simple-minded anti-intellectual, and a bigot. I was sure that he would bring us closer to nuclear annihilation than any president since the Cuban missile crisis, and would preside over a revival of the dreaded Nixon/Kissinger school of foreign policy which would inflict horror and death across much of the Third World. I thought, in short, that a Reagan presidency would be a horrible disaster.

Of course, I was absolutely right.

During Reagan's presidency, income and wealth distribution in this country became more unequal than at any time since, probably, the 1920's. Worse, wealth flowed offshore at an unprecedented rate. Homelessness became pandemic, the Cold War heated up, and the rate of extinction increased as the natural environment was handed over to the highest bidder. The religious right (or, if you will, the American Taliban) became a force in national politics as Reagan's Republican party pandered to Jerry Falwell and his ilk. America in 1980 was a troubled nation, beset by economic and geopolitical crises that shook our national confidence. America in 1988 had left those crises behind, but I could not say that we were better off for all that. Reagan left America colder, greedier, uglier, less compassionate, and a lot less interesting than he found her.

So you may be surprised to learn that today, on the occasion of his death, I write to celebrate Ronald Reagan.

Twentieth century America produced two Presidents who can fairly be described as "great" in the sense that they fundamentally remade the country in the image of their personal vision -- FDR and Reagan. (Incidentally, as scathing as my little precis of the Reagan years might seem, I have met conservatives who say worse about FDR -- and the poor guy's been dead for 60 years!) Love him or hate him, there can be no denying that Reagan left the country a very different place than he found it, and different in precisely the way he promised it would be. He was honest with the voters -- well, at least as honest as they wanted him to be -- and nothing that happened during his administration was a surprise. A disaster, maybe; a crime, perhaps; but never a surprise.

I fantasize that, after I'm dead, someone will say about me, "even his enemies liked him." (They won't say that about me, of course. That's why it's a fantasy.) That, in a nutshell, is the story of Ronald Reagan. Everyone liked him. Well, almost everyone. I guess my roommate, who came home every day and asked "Hasn't anyone assassinated that stupid sonofabitch yet?" didn't like him so much. But I swear, everyone else seemed to. Famously, his greatest political rivals were prominently represented among those known to have personally liked him. Tip O'Neill adored the man, even as he tried (mightily, but futilely) to destroy Reagan's political agenda.

In many ways, I think of Reagan's failures as being America's failures. Anyone who can do simple arithmetic could easily calculate that Reagan's fiscal policies would result in a huge debt left behind for our children to pay, but we voted for him anyway. So tell me, why does Reagan get blamed for the resulting gargantuan deficits, and why do the voters get a pass? Some of us were absolutely appalled by Iran/Contra, but a majority of voters seemed to think it was a pretty nifty idea. Sure, Reagan paid little attention to the Middle East, but neither did the rest of us, so it was all good.

But if all there was to the Reagan presidency was fiscal irresponsibility, contempt for international law, and diplomatic failure, it would have been nothing more than a beta test for the George W. Bush presidency. The fact is, there was more to the Reagan years than failure and doom. And, where Reagan's failures were in fact our failures, his successes were his alone, frequently arising from nothing more or less than the force of his will and towering personality. Perhaps his greatest success was the relationship he managed to forge with Mikhail Gorbachev. After calling the Soviet Union "the Evil Empire" and, in one case making a bad joke over a radio microphone that he said he thought was off about nuking Russia, it would seem unlikely that Reagan would get very far with Gorbachev. But, of course, he did. He charmed Gorbechev, just like he charmed so many voters and so many others, making people feel good about themselves and about their future (even as he was persuading them to hock that future!).

I was nineteen years old and starry-eyed in love when Reagan was elected. I was twenty seven and bitterly divorced by the time he turned the country over to his Vice President, George H.W. Bush. Eight pretty significant years in any man's life. Much of my political thinking developed during those years, and largely in reaction to Reagan. Those same eight years were pretty significant for America, too -- discounting Bush I as the nonentity he was (his presidency seemed like nothing so much as Reagan's third term), Reagan was the bridge from Jimmy Carter's America to Bill Clinton's America. Two very different times, and two very different places; the bookends to Reagan's era. I wish that the man had never been elected President. But, paradoxically, if he was to be elected President, I'm glad I got to witness it first-hand. Those may not have been good times, in particular, but no one said that historic epochs had to be pretty.

Good bye, Mr. President. I can't exactly say that I enjoyed having you around, but in an odd way, I'll miss you.

...don't bother; they're here.

In the last two weeks, any illusion of competence or control has finally fallen away from the Junta. The neocon cabal and its sock puppet "president" are in full retreat, hoping now only to avoid ignominy of Nixonian proportions, or prison. And I'm sure that the flies on the wall (attracted originally by the great stench, no doubt) are thoroughly enjoying the stories to which only they are privy.

Today we learn that George Tenet has resigned. And it's about time. A barely functional President would have fired him long ago. He has presided over Central Intelligence during two of its most humiliating failures -- 911 of course, but also (and no less significantly) the Iraqi WMD fiasco -- and yet somehow, inexplicably, managed to remain in his post. Not that these twin disasters were necessarily Tenet's fault, mind you (although they were not necessarily not his fault, either -- and on that topic, I'm sure he wishes he could take back that "slam dunk" comment about now), the sad fact remains that they happened on his watch. QED, he's finished. That's just how it's supposed to work.

Of course, many of us assumed that Tenet missed his original appointment with unemployment because, and only because, he (or individuals loyal to him) knows enough about the Valerie Plame affair to go all J. Edgar Hoover on Dubya's ass. (By the way, it is interesting -- if a little frightening -- to learn that the Boy King has lawered up. At least -- so far as we know, and, frankly, I believe him on this one -- he isn't getting any blowjobs.)

All this, while the Chalabi story continues to age (in the same sense that a body in the basement can be said to "age"). It now seems that someone close to Cheney or Rummy is going to get thrown to the wolves over this one. The amazing -- no, I mean really amazing -- thing is that people associated with the government continue to pimp for Chalabi. (Mr. Perle, Mr. Richard Perle, to the white courtesy phone.) Here's a little Chalabi nugget (or, if you prefer, "Chalablet") to chew on: As Mark Kleiman persuasively argues, giving away the knowledge that we had defeated the Iranian codes (what? they never heard of PGP?) is the one transgression that cannot be explained away simply by greed or stupidity. It is an obviously hostile and disloyal act. It makes Chalabi a clear and present enemy of the United States. And he punk'd us, bad.

And of course, being good at the game, Chalabi has lost no time in blaming George Tenet for his problems.

And so, to get back to the George Tenet story, the thing that caught my eye was the bizarre (and altogether indicative of fundamental dysfunction) way that the Naked Emperor shared the news:

Mr. Bush announced the resignation of the 51-year-old Mr. Tenet in a way that was almost bizarre. He had just addressed reporters and photographers in a fairly innocuous Rose Garden session with Prime Minister John Howard of Australia. Then the session was adjourned, as Mr. Bush apparently prepared to depart for nearby Andrews Air Force Base and his flight to Europe, where he is to take part in ceremonies marking the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion and meet European leaders — some of whom have been sharply critical of the campaign in Iraq.

But minutes later, Mr. Bush reappeared on the sun-drenched White House lawn, surprising listeners with the news of Mr. Tenet's resignation. After Mr. Tenet leaves, the C.I.A.'s deputy director, John McLaughlin, will be acting director, Mr. Bush said.

Smoooooth! Meanwhile, the buzzards are closing in.

But, send in the clowns. There ought to be clowns. Well, maybe next year.