NPR: The NPR News Blog

May 31, 2007

Iraq: The New South Korea for U.S. Troops?

So how long can we expect U.S. troops to remain in Iraq? Maybe the next 50 or 60 years.

On Wednesday, White House spokesman Tony Snow said President Bush would like to see a U.S. presence in Iraq similar to the one in South Korea, where U.S. troops provide stability but do not have a front-line combat role. U.S. troops have been in Korea since the early '50s.

"The Korean model is one in which the United States provides a security presence, but you've had the development of a successful democracy in South Korea over a period of years, and, therefore, the United States is there as a force of stability," Snow told reporters. ...
"I think the point he's trying to make is that the situation in Iraq, and indeed, the larger war on terror, are things that are going to take a long time. But it is not always going to require an up-front combat presence," Snow said.

Jules Crittenden, an editor at the Boston Herald who writes the Forward Movement blog, wonders if anyone is "seriously surprised" by this statement. But he thinks it makes a lot of sense because of the need for new Middle East bases, the ongoing sectarian violence in Iraq and "Iranian meddling and attempts at regional domination." Blogger Don Surber concurs.

But Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo sees it as another example of the Bush administration being out of touch with reality and history. Juan Cole at Informed Comment sees the analogy "as frankly ridiculous" because Iraq isn't like Korea in any way.

Gallup Poll: Americans More Accepting of Gay Rights

Public acceptance of gay rights appears to have rebounded close to the high-water mark of the early 21st century.

Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs survey, conducted each May, found that 59 percent of Americans believe that homosexual relations should be legal. And 57 percent of Americans now believe that homosexuality should be sanctioned as an acceptable lifestyle.

Public support for gay rights had declined in the backlash to the 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down a Texas sodomy law. But levels are now around the three-decade high marks seen before the ruling.

A majority of Americans -- 53 percent -- still believe that gay marriage should not be legal, but support for the idea has grown from 27 percent in 1996 to 46 percent in 2007.

The poll's trends clearly show that, over time, there has been a movement toward greater acceptance of the gay and lesbian lifestyle in America, and a high level of acceptance exists among young people today.

Blogging Leads Doctor to Make Malpractice Settlement

The Boston Globe called it "a Perry Mason moment updated for the Internet age."

It came during a malpractice case in a Boston courtroom, when well-known pediatrician Robert P. Lindeman made the dramatic confession that he was the blogger known as Flea.

Flea, jurors in the case didn't know, was the screen name for a blogger who had written often and at length about a trial remarkably similar to the one that was going on in the courtroom that day. In his blog, Flea had ridiculed the plaintiff's case and the plaintiff's lawyer. He had revealed the defense strategy. He had accused members of the jury of dozing.

The next morning, May 15, Lindeman agreed to what local experts called "a substantial settlement" with the parents of a 12-year-old boy who had died of complications from diabetes. Otherwise, now that Lindeman's secret was out, the plaintiffs' lawyer could let the jury know what he had said about them and the judicial process.

Elizabeth N. Mulvey, the plaintiffs' lawyer who asked the question that prompted Lindeman's confession, said what shocked her about his blog, drfleablog, was that so many other bloggers who knew little or nothing about the case came to Flea's defense. Other defense lawyers say they always check online for things their clients may have written, but it's hard to do when they blog under assumed names.

As for the drfleablog, well, as of this morning it is completely empty. But as my grandfather would say, that's closing the barn door after the horse has already run away.

NASA Chief Questions Need to Address Global Warming

It seems that NASA's chief doesn't think global warming is necessarily a problem that humanity needs to focus on.

Wednesday, NPR interviewed writer Gregg Easterbrook about his column in Wired that charged NASA with blowing its budget on what he considers ridiculous space exploration projects (like building a station on the moon) at the expense of dealing with problems like global warming here on Earth.

This morning, Steve Inskeep of Morning Edition interviewed NASA administrator Michael Griffin to get the other side of the story. During that interview, Griffin said global warming is not necessarily a problem that demands mankind's action.

I have no doubt that global -- that a trend of global warming exists. I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change. First of all, I don't think it's within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown, and second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings -- where and when -- are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take.

NASA issued a news release to respond to the attention generated by Griffin's comments. But the influential NASA Watch blog says in the press release Griffin only expands on the uncontroversial parts of the NPR interview and doesn't deal with the controversial global warming remarks.

Griffin's remarks, of course, have quickly become fodder for the blogosphere. "Stupid in Space" is how Daily Kos describes them. Libertas, on the other hand, calls them "Surprisingly Wise Words from NASA Administrator." DeSmogBlog calls Griffin "the White House 'denier-of-the-day.'"

May 30, 2007

Israeli Human Rights Groups Accuse Shin Bet of Torture

An Israeli human rights group has released a report accusing the Israeli counterintelligence and anti-terrorism agency Shin Bet of regularly torturing Palestinian security suspects, The Jerusalem Post reports.

The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel's report, "Ticking Bombs," draws its name from a 1999 Israeli Supreme Court ruling that declared routine abuse of Palestinian suspects illegal and banned the use of torture in interrogations. The ruling, however, allowed for physical force to be used if authorities believed the suspect would reveal the location of a "ticking bomb." Human rights groups argue that Israel's security forces use the "ticking bomb" exemption when it shouldn't apply to justify using physical force in interrogations.

The report contains the testimony of nine Palestinians arrested in 2004 and 2005, including one who accused police investigators of committing severe sexual abuse. The Post adds that the report also alleges that "prison wardens, policemen and even doctors take part in torture, as well as lawyers, military judges and senior officials in the Justice Ministry."

Haaretz reports that Shin Bet says its methods were legal and in accordance with the 1999 ruling.

Israel says that, acting on information from arrested militants, in the past six months alone it managed to [track] down 11 explosive belts in the West Bank, of the kind used in deadly suicide bombings in Israeli cities.

This latest report follows one released May 6 by Israeli human rights groups B'Tselem and HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual that also accuses Shin Bet of acting in violation of the 1999 ruling and "international law which outlaws 'special' methods of torture."

The B'Tselem-HaMoked report noted 500 complaints have been made against Shin Bet since 2001 and not a single criminal probe was instigated, even in cases where preliminary investigations showed evidence of abuse existed.

California, Ontario Sign Stem-Cell Agreement

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says his state has become "soulmates" with the Canadian province of Ontario.

Schwarzenegger signed two deals with his Ontario counterpart today, including a new agreement on stem-cell research he says will give "rays of hope" to millions of people with diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer's.

The CBC reports that Ontario will contribute U.S. $30 million to a joint research project that will focus on using stem cells to find therapies for a variety of diseases. The money will be spread out over five years.

Canadian researchers were the first to isolate cancer stem cells in leukemia, brain and colon cancer, according to the CBC.

Schwarzenegger and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty also signed an agreement that includes new low-carbon fuel standards for vehicles.

5:37 PM ET | 05-30-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Candidates Repeating Unproven Iraq-al-Qaida Links

Presidential candidates have been known to sometimes go for style over substance, even when their style points aren't exactly true.

Take, for instance, the current top GOP contenders. As The Boston Globe points out, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney are cheerfully repeating words and phrases that give misleading impressions about the links between al-Qaida and Iraq and Osama bin Laden's connection to events in Iraq.

Romney came pretty close to hitting a lack-of-accuracy trifecta in the last GOP debate.

"They want to bring down the West, particularly us," Romney declared. "And they've come together as Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda, with that intent."

The Shia and the Sunni aren't terrorist groups, of course; they are branches of Islam. Many of our major allies in the region, as well as many Americans, belong to these religious sects. The Globe also points out that specialists say that few of the groups Romney mentioned have worked together and not all of them have threatened the U.S.

Michael Scheuer, the CIA's former chief of operations against bin Laden in the late 1990s, said these kinds of remarks lead people to believe that bin Laden is directing terrorist attacks against the U.S. in Iraq, which he definitely is not. Scheuer also called another notion the candidates have been repeating -- that al-Qaida would move its base of operations to Iraq if the U.S. left -- "nonsense."

Chinese Journalist Joins Lawsuit Against Yahoo!

While the Internet operates as a forum for free speech in many places, it can earn journalists or activists in China a quick trip to jail -- especially after big U.S. Internet companies provide information about what they're doing.

A Chinese journalist and poet who is serving a 10-year sentence in prison has joined a lawsuit against the Internet company Yahoo! that was originally filed in April by Human Rights USA. Shi Tao was arrested for sending e-mail to a pro-democracy group in the United States.

Writing on Boing Boing, Xeni Jardin (a regular contributor to NPR's Day to Day) quotes Colleen M. Costello of the human rights group, who says Shi Tao's prison sentence is directly related to information that Yahoo! gave the Chinese government.

The 2004 Chinese court verdict that sentenced Shi Tao to jail specifically cited Yahoo! as having provided Chinese authorities with information identifying Shi Tao as the owner of the e-mail account and the source of the communications. Yahoo! acknowledges that it provided Chinese officials with identifying information leading to Shi Tao's arbitrary arrest and long-term imprisonment.

Yahoo! and other tech companies have defended what many see as their compliance with repressive governments, saying they are required to follow local laws where they operate. Award-winning digital cartoonist Mark Fiore has created this "iRepress" cartoon to challenge those claims.

The Yahoo! case will be discussed next week at a conference on human rights and Internet repression hosted by Amnesty International UK, which has strongly criticized the actions of companies like Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft in China.

1:31 PM ET | 05-30-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Report: Thompson Plans Run for President

Looking out and seeing a field that lacks candidates with "real" conservative credentials, actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson plans to announce around July 4 that he will run for the Republican nomination for president, Politico reports. So watch for Thompson's well-known symbol -- a red pickup truck -- to start appearing in New Hampshire and Iowa.

The Weekly Standard reported around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday that Thompson would establish an official "testing the waters" committee on June 4 -- the day before the other GOP candidates meet in New Hampshire for their third debate. (Trying to steal a few headlines, perhaps.) That's the first step toward a run for president, and the Politico report takes a step beyond that.

The Latest Politics blog at The New York Sun says Thompson's entrance into the race is "clearly huge."

"A lot of conservatives have been struggling here to figure out where to go with a candidate that can keep the coalition together," a former presidential candidate who is now president of the nonprofit American Values, Gary Bauer, told me yesterday evening, referring to the GOP alliance among economic, defense, and social conservatives. "I think Fred Thompson has a fairly decent chance of emerging as the candidate that can do that."

The most recent poll at Real Clear Politics shows Thompson at 10 percent, tied for third place among Republicans with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

10:54 AM ET | 05-30-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Have Notebook, Will Travel

Remember the 16-year-old from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who decided one day that he would just skip a few classes at his prep school and go to Iraq so he could see firsthand what was happening there? Well, Farris Hassan is now 17, and he has a new travel itinerary.

The Miami Herald's Cuban Colada blog reports that Farris wants to go to Cuba so he can write about what it's like to live as a "loser" in Fidel Castro's Cuba.

In a pitch e-mailed to several news organizations, Farris says he'd spend five to seven weeks in Cuba writing about dissidents, peasants, prostitutes, government workers and "passive city folk and professionals." He just asks that a real live news organization, like The Miami Herald for example, promise to run his stories, so that he can get around that pesky U.S. rule that prohibits travel to Cuba - but exempts journalists.

Farris has said that this time he will tell his parents that he's going. That's good. But a word of caution. Letting the Castro regime know that you're going to write about the "losers" of its culture might not be the smartest way to finagle your way into the country. Just a thought.

So far, no media outlet has taken Farris up on his offer.

May 29, 2007

Two Leading Anti-War Protesters Blame Both Parties

Two people who have become known as leading anti-war advocates now believe their work was just a waste of time.

Andrew Bacevich and Cindy Sheehan wrote in separate pieces published during the holiday weekend that their efforts have changed basically nothing about the war in Iraq. And both of them blasted Democrats as much as they did Republicans when it came to responsibility for the war.

In an intense, moving column in Sunday's Washington Post, Bacevich wrote about the death of his only son two weeks ago in Iraq. As his son had served his country as a soldier, Bacevich had tried to serve it as a citizen, he wrote, giving voice to what he considered an ill-begotten adventure. He now believes the idea that the American people could end the war by saying no to it was just "an illusion."

President Bush, he wrote, "has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as 'the will of the people.'" But Bacevich said he also feels the Democrats are now just as responsible for the war's continuation, joining hand-in-hand with Bush and "big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies."

Today, in a chat on the Post's site, Bacevich said America remains a democratic nation in a superficial sense, "But peer beneath the surface and the reality is something else again."

On Monday, Sheehan, who had protested the war since her son Casey was killed in Iraq in 2004, announced that she would protest no longer. She wrote on the Daily Kos blog that things became worse after she renounced all ties to the Democratic Party and started criticizing it, along with Republicans, for its stance on the war. The same people on the left who had first supported her activities turned on her with a vengeance, she wrote. "Blind party loyalty is dangerous whatever side it occurs on," she wrote.

But the final realization that Sheehan said ended her days as an active war protester was that her son died "for nothing."

Astronaut in Love Triangle Sent Back to the Navy

At one point in "The Right Stuff," then-budding astronaut John Glenn lectures his fellow Mercury 7 teammates about keeping their "wicks dry." It's advice that shuttle pilot Cmdr. William Oefelein might have been wise to follow.

Oefelein is, of course, the love interest in the now infamous Lisa Nowak astronaut triangle. Well, Gannett News Service reports that NASA apparently has had enough of the Top Gun flyboy and is shipping him back to the Navy. "The Navy and NASA have mutually agreed to end his detail to NASA," said Kylie Clem, a spokeswoman at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. (Yeah, right. And my children and I mutually agreed that they'll stop watching so much TV.) Nowak was sent back to the Navy a few months ago.

Both Nowak and Oefelein also could face courts-martial for cheating on their spouses, conduct that the military considers unbecoming of an officer, officials said. Oefelein is divorced and Nowak is separated. They are the first NASA astronauts to be sent back to their military branch after a public scandal. Nowak is the first astronaut ever arrested on felony charges.

Is Being Good Based on Biology?

Being a good person isn't just the right thing to do -- it's a really smart survival tactic honed over millions of years of evolution that rewards you by making you feel good.

That's the finding of a team of researchers at the National Institutes of Health, and I can see this one is going to cause a little heat along with any light it generates. The article in The Washington Post notes that this discovery, and several others, suggest that altruism is not a sign of a "superior moral faculty" but is "basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable."

I predict that some theologians, ministers and philosophers might have a few problems accepting this scientific research, based on previous reactions to similar research.

Evolutionary biologists have been saying for years that altruism developed as a survival technique. (Read Robert Wright's "The Moral Animal" for a better understanding.) But this new research goes beyond the mere reciprocal approach of evolution to show that when we do something nice for someone, a part of our brain is activated that makes us feel good. So not only do we get to survive longer, we can feel good while we're doing it.

The Role Oil Plays in the Iraq War

Is the war in Iraq about oil after all?

Writing in the liberal truthout.org, Anne Wright (who served 29 years in the U.S. Army and Army Reserves) furiously attacks last week's legislation to give additional funding to the troops in Iraq as a means to take oil rights away from the Iraqi people. As part of the funding package, Congress approved language that says if the Iraqi parliament refuses to pass oil legislation currently under review, then the U.S. will withhold reconstruction funds.

But Wright sees the Iraqi legislation as a Trojan horse for U.S. oil companies -- under the legislation, Iraq's national oil company would control only 17 of 78 known oil fields (some of these 78 have been identified but are not yet in production). The remaining known fields and all unknown ones would be up for grabs.

As Antonia Juhasz noted in an L.A. Times opinion piece in December, the much-ignored Iraq Study Group called for the privatization of Iraqi oil. Oil companies argue "increasing state ownership and rising resource nationalism" are long-term threats to global oil supplies. In this piece by NPR, an Iraqi oil expert argues that Iraq needs foreign investment, and that the new legislation would actually make it more difficult for foreign firms to invest.

But Iraqi Raed Jarrar writes in his In The Middle blog that the legislation is a direct intervention in Iraq's domestic politics and would result only in more violence in Iraq. No other Middle Eastern nation has privatized its oil reserves, Wright points out. Not surprisingly, most Iraqis want to retain control of the country's oil.

This story from The Plain Dealer in Cleveland seems to show that both sides have a point: Iraq does need foreign-based technology and companies to get its oil fields back in production, but the price may be the nation loses control of its greatest asset.

10:25 AM ET | 05-29-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

May 25, 2007

Adieu Until Tuesday

It's the beginning of Memorial Day weekend, and work is wrapping up around here. Just wanted to let you know that we'll be back Tuesday morning.

But before I go, I wanted to pass along this story and a warning to my many British friends: it's time to shape up -- or else. The Guardian reports that the principal of Wycliffe Hall (one of the leading Anglican theological training colleges) in Oxford, England, thinks 95 percent of all Brits are going straight to hell. Which basically means that outside the royal family and Anglican clergy, the entire country is doomed. (And when I think about some of the things the royals have done ... maybe only the queen is safe.)

Richard Turnbull made the comments in a speech last October to an evangelical group within the Church of England. They were first made public Wednesday on the Thinking Anglicans liberal Web site.

Love and Hate for the New Books about Hillary Clinton

This just in ... Hillary Clinton had problems with her husband's affairs and wants to be president.

Wait a minute, I'm suddenly flashing back to the '90s ... I can hear "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Bill's saying he didn't have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I'm wearing a fanny pack. "Frasier" is on TV ... Whoa, that was weird.

Anyway, two new books about Hillary Clinton that talk about her marriage and presidential ambitions are hitting the shelves: "A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton," by Carl Bernstein and "Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton," by Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. After reading the story about them in today's Washington Post, I really did have a feeling of "been there, done that."

The blogosphere has its own opinions, of course. The anti-Clinton site "The Hillary Project" quickly linked to the Post story. Patterico's Pontifications zeroes in on the already-known fact that Clinton failed the District of Columbia bar exam. Against Hillary says Bernstein's book will hit some raw nerves, and that he had better watch his back.

Clinton has her supporters as well. Earlier this month "Left Turn" writing at Jo Swift denounced the book by Bernstein (or, as she calls him, "the guy played by Dustin Hoffman") as a slur on Clinton, "refracting her through the prism of the men around her to a nexus of feminine roles: daughter, wife, blah." The Carpetbagger Report says the two new Clinton books have no new facts and asks if they'll be in book stores' remainder bins by July or August.

(Tom's Update: Here is a Saturday morning piece from Politico that details what it says is the Clinton campaign to "kill" the books, including ensuring "that it emerges into the public eye on the Friday of a holiday weekend.")

Four Separate Conflicts Converge in Tripoli Fighting

"We are ready to die."

That's the message a spokesman for the Fatah al-Islam militant group gave to a reporter for The Daily Star in Lebanon. The Islamist group is holding out against the Lebanese army in a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli. "We only have two options now, to die as martyrs or win," Abu Salim Taha said.

The reasons for this conflict are complex, but a piece by Daily Star columnist (and frequent NPR guest) Rami Khouri explains it better than anything else I've seen. He says the fighting represents the convergence of four separate regional conflicts.

The four are the uneasy legacy of tensions between various Lebanese forces and armed Palestinian refugee groups in the country, going back to the 1960s; the continued tensions between Syria and Lebanon since a popular uprising forced the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon two years ago; the regional spin-offs from the US-led war in Iraq; and, the expanding clashes as US President George W. Bush's "global war on terror" both battles and breeds assorted Islamist terror groups that pursue Al-Qaeda-like goals and tactics.

On an ironic note, today is a holiday in Lebanon. It's Liberation Day, which commemorates the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in 2000. But the holiday has quickly become little more than a day off work, the paper notes in an editorial. Seven years later, much of the unity felt after that first Liberation Day has vanished in the resurgence of Lebanon's sectarian divisions.

1:57 PM ET | 05-25-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Hillary Clinton Seems to Get It Right for YouTube

Believe it or not, Hillary Clinton has produced a pretty funny YouTube video.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has created a "countdown" of the presidential candidates' YouTube offerings. And surprise, Clinton gets kudos for a really entertaining offering. I actually laughed out loud when I watched it. Clinton seems relaxed and having fun -- I don't know if I've ever seen her that way before.

Not everyone faired so well. Sen. Chris Dodd looks like he is speaking from the old politburo in Moscow. Sen. Joe Biden's video has a professional look, but at 13 minutes, it feels like one of those long-winded speeches he loves to give. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has tons of videos. So why put this one online? Still photos and bad audio? So not YouTube.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has those great job application videos. But Rep. Dennis Kucinich ... hmmm. Watching him standing in front of the wall map of Iran and Iraq made me feel like I was back in Mr. Fitzgerald's ninth grade social studies class. As Countdown notes, you expect you'll be given a quiz after watching the video.

New Poll Slams War, But Some Ask for Closer Look

Laura Bush was probably tempted to hide this morning's copy of The New York Times from the president. It includes a new opinion poll that shows that ratings for the Iraq war and for President Bush are lower than, as I once heard a comedian put it, a snake's belly in a wagon rut.

According to the New York Times/CBS News poll, Americans now view the war in Iraq more negatively than ever before: "Sixty-one percent of Americans say the United States should have stayed out of Iraq and 76 percent say things are going badly there, including 47 percent who say things are going very badly, the poll found." President Bush's approval rating (30 percent) looks more like the temperature on a cold day in December.

But two other statistics have Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters questioning whether we should throw out the entire poll. If Americans are so opposed to the war in Iraq, Morrissey wonders, then why are 69 percent still open to the idea of continued funding for it if the Iraqi government meets certain goals and deadlines? He also questions why Congress, which in two other recent polls scored lower than Bush on the approval meter, is suddenly six points in front.

Morrissey says he knows the president and the war are unpopular, but he would like to get a look at the poll's sample to see if that provides any answers. It's not included in the Times or CBS news stories about the poll online. Morrissey refers to the comments of a panel of professional analysts at a recent Online News Association conference, who said that if people aren't willing to show you the methodology behind their work, you should reject it.

It's a good principle, but after a little digging, I did find the sample information on the CBS News site. (It would have been nice if the Times Web site also had included a link to it.) Morrissey has a point about who was sampled (there are quite a few more Democrats than Republicans), but I think this means the poll gets to stay.

May 24, 2007

How Our Media Choices Reinforce What We Believe

A comment posted in response to Wednesday's post on American Muslims pointed out that 60 percent of those surveyed said they didn't believe Arabs were involved in the Sept. 11 attack.

That's an interesting point to note from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press' report on American Muslims, which overall showed the group is mostly mainstream. I would like to venture the theory that part of the reason this belief persists is that we choose media that reinforces our personal beliefs about world events, whether right or wrong, and that helps us to continue to believe them even if they are disproved.

Many Arab-Americans watch Arab-language satellite channels that originate in the Middle East. These channels often interview politicians, religious leaders or commentators who promote the view that Arabs had nothing to do with the attack. That makes it easier not to believe that people from a similar background would commit such a horrendous act.

Or take another example -- the belief that Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida were working together before the Sept. 11 attack and Iraq was involved in the attack.

These perceptions have been discounted by many sources: the CIA, the 9/11 Commission and declassified Defense Department documents to name three. Yet according to a poll taken in March 2006 by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, 49 percent of Americans still believed that Saddam's Iraq was involved in the attacks or gave substantial support to al-Qaida.

And the media connection? In a study in late 2003, the Maryland program found that media choices directly affected the way people viewed three myths about the Iraq war, including "There's clear evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein worked closely with the Sept. 11 terrorists."

Eighty percent of Fox News viewers were likely to hold one of the three incorrect beliefs identified in the study. Seventy-one percent of those who relied on CBS for news held a false impression, as did 61 percent of ABC's audience and 55 percent of NBC viewers. Fifty-five percent of CNN viewers and 47 percent of Americans who rely on the print media as their primary source of information also held at least one misperception. Twenty-three percent of the NPR/PBS audience held one of the three incorrect beliefs.

The report attributed the results to several factors. For instance, supporters of the war in Iraq were more likely to hold one of the misperceptions. So it would appear that many war supporters turned to Fox News, which had the highest percentage of viewers with misperceptions, to find support for their assumptions about Saddam and al-Qaida.

Report: Using the War on Terror to Get U.S. Aid

Many U.S. allies in the war on terror supported the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies in an effort to get more foreign aid, according to a new series of reports in the Center For Public Integrity's ongoing series "Collateral Damage."

This new wave of foreign lobbying, combined with an emphasis "on counterterrorism objectives over broader human rights concerns," has cost the United States both financially and politically, according to the center's reports.

Countries like Poland and Romania -- two of the European countries accused of hosting secret CIA prisons where terrorism suspects could be held and possibly tortured -- saw the level of their foreign aid from the United States skyrocket after the Sept. 11 attack.

In the three years before 9/11, Poland received just over $33 million in U.S. military training and assistance. Three years after, the amount was nearly tenfold, more than $300 million in mostly Coalition Support Funds to reimburse expenses incurred by Polish forces in Iraq, according to ICIJ's database of military training and assistance. Since 1998, Romania has received more than $100 million in U.S. military aid, primarily from the Foreign Military Financing program, which provides grants to buy U.S. military equipment and services.

According to the reports, many of the countries that received increases in U.S. foreign aid also saw an increase in human rights violations.

Collateral Damage involved 10 investigative journalists working on four continents "who examined U.S. military assistance and foreign lobbying expenditures and human rights abuses after 9/11." The center's team combed through thousands of Department of Justice lobbying records and human rights reports and used Freedom of Information Act requests to get information on U.S. funding for the countries covered in the series.

5:21 PM ET | 05-24-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Has the Supreme Court 'Retired' A 50-Year-Old Practice?

There is considerable debate in online legal circles about a Supreme Court decision released Monday and whether it ends a 50-year-old practice in civil procedure that makes it easier for people to initiate lawsuits.

In Bell Atlantic v. Twombly, major telephone companies had been accused of conspiring to suppress competition.

The court decided in favor of what is now known as Verizon. But it also slammed a 50-year-old practice developed in a previous ruling that prevented lawsuits from being dismissed for failing to state a claim "unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief." Mostly used in what are called "notice pleadings," it meant plaintiffs only had to give "a short and plain statement of their cause of action" in their initial complaint. A plaintiff who had a good but not perfect case could put the other side on notice of a lawsuit and then collect evidence during discovery.

In this posting on the Civil Procedure Prof Blog, Professor Scott Dodson gives a quite readable overview for the lay person. Scotus Blog looks at the case as well and wonders if this means the end of notice pleading, which would have a considerable impact on the ability to sue a company.

2:54 PM ET | 05-24-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Army Awards New Vest Contract Despite Media Report

A couple of days ago we told you about the controversy over the type of body armor used by the military. NBC News had done an investigative report that included interviews with experts who said that an armored protective vest known as Dragon Skin, made by Pinnacle Armor, would better protect troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than the current vest, known as Interceptor.

But the Pentagon produced test results that it said showed Dragon Skin was actually inferior to the current model, and some defense commentators at blogs like RedState backed the military. Then Wednesday, The Army Times reported that the brouhaha over the right vest didn't stop the Army from awarding new contracts worth $167 million for a new vest to protect soldiers.

Specialty Defense of Dunmore, Pa., and Point Blank of Pompano Beach, Fla., were awarded the contracts Monday to make the Improved Outer Tactical Vest, a redesigned version of the Interceptor that offers design improvements including a quick release system, increased coverage, lighter weight, and better fit and comfort, according to a press release from Program Executive Office Soldier.

May 23, 2007

The Fall and Rise Of John Ashcroft

Jonah Goldberg has, as they say, hit the nail on the head. Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online writes that he is amazed by the way former Attorney General John Ashcroft has been redeemed in the eyes of official Washington because of one simple act -- he said no to Alberto Gonzales.

In 2001, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) led the Democratic opposition to Ashcroft's nomination, casting Ashcroft as a terrifying religious zealot lacking the integrity, temperament and racial "sensitivity" to be attorney general. Last week, Schumer saluted Ashcroft's "fidelity to the rule of law." The liberal Web site Wonkette praised Ashcroft's "heroic stand." ... Ashcroft's rehabilitation was sealed by a Washington Post story about how the former AG was often the only firebreak against the Bush White House. Even Ralph Neas, the hyperpartisan president of People for the American Way, managed to mumble to the Washington Post that Gonzales had managed to make Ashcroft look like a "defender of the Constitution."

It made me think of my dad, who worked in politics for much of his life. He once told me about the "six-month rule" -- the public never remembers what happened more than six months ago. Anybody can be redeemed if they just wait long enough.

Richard Nixon did it ... twice. Barry Goldwater. Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton. Now John Ashcroft. It'll be interesting to see what people think about George W. Bush six months after he's left office.

A New Curse in Boston

The curse of the Bambino plagues the Red Sox no longer. The Patriots play like they wouldn't care if there was a curse. The Bruins aren't cursed -- just badly managed and coached.

But the Boston Celtics ... ah, the Celtics are cursed.

The Celtics, at one time the winner of 16 NBA championships in 30 years, seemed to play the past season for one reason only -- to lose enough games to receive one of the top draft picks that go to the worst teams in the league. The idea of drafting Ohio State's dominating big man Greg Oden or Texas' dynamic Kevin Durant made fans drool, seeing a return to the promised land shimmering on the horizon.

But when the lottery balls fell, so did the Celts. Instead of first or second, they were fifth. No Oden, no Durant.

So why murmurs of a curse? Because it's Boston and Bostonians love curses! The Boston Globe's Bob Ryan, who knows basketball like few other writers, explains:

And who didn't believe that the bad fortune, which began with the death of Len Bias, proceeded with the death of Reggie Lewis, and continued 10 years ago with the faulty drop of the Ping-Pong balls when Tim Duncan was available (and the Celtics had the best chance at him), would finally be reversed? Nope. Sorry. Somebody up there loathes them.

Bill Simmons, who writes on Page 2 on the ESPN website put it this way - "We're headed for another decade in which the Sox and Pats are Michael, and Sonny and the Celtics are Fredo."

You want to know the most ironic touch to this whole sad story? The Celtics' mascot is called "Lucky."

Abstinence-Only Education Facing Funding Cut

Get ready for another cultural battle.

Last week, Democratic Rep. John Dingell, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, made it clear that Democrats do not intend to re-fund a $50 million grant program for abstinence-only sex education. Dingell says he considers the funded programs "a colossal failure."

Dingell and other Democrats were given fresh ammunition when Mathematica Policy Research Inc. released a federally funded study of four abstinence-only programs. It found that "the programs had no effect on the sexual abstinence of youth." (Previous studies had indicated similar results.) Dingell says he plans to let the programs' funding expire on June 30 and replace them with funding for both abstinence and safe-sex education.

But conservative religious groups are fighting back. Over 100 supporters were on Capitol Hill Tuesday to lobby for retaining the abstinence-only education. On Saturday, The Christian Post reported that religious leaders like Tony Perkins are arguing the Mathematica report ignored several important points and was too narrowly focused on four of a possible 900 programs.

Michael Craven, founding director of the Center for Christ & Culture, wrote in another column for the Post that he felt the programs studied were aimed at children too young to absorb the message and needed to be continued into high school. (In fact, the Mathmatica report also supports this statement.)

But many people who support the idea of abstinence education also believe that it should be combined with more information about safe sex. As Tarryl Jackson writes for The Jackson Citizen Patriot of Michigan "...why not just give teenagers all the facts about sexuality and sexual health? Ignorance is not bliss."

The Real Picture on Muslim Americans

It's always nice when a major research center releases a study that lends support to something I've believed for a long time -- that one of the main reasons that there have been no further terrorist attacks in the U.S. since Sept. 11 is that Muslims are more integrated into American society and culture than their counterparts are in Europe.

In the report from the Pew Research Center for The People and the Press on Muslim Americans, "Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream," I wasn't surprised to read that "Muslim Americans have a generally positive view of the larger society. Most say their communities are excellent or good places to live." Nor that 71 percent believe that if you're willing to work hard you can get ahead here. Nor that 63 percent see no problem between being a devout Muslim and living in a free society. Nor that 80 percent believe that a suicide bombing in the name of Islam is a bad thing.

These survey results, of course, don't mean something horrible won't ever happen here again. Or that there aren't any grievances in the American Muslim community. But I'm a firm believer that freedom of religion is one of the greatest gifts America gives to those who come here. I've seen it firsthand.

Several years ago, my family hired a young au pair from France named Najat. She had grown up in a secular Muslim household. She was a great au pair and my kids loved her. But she was restless and often unhappy. She started, more as a lark than anything else, attending some meetings at the mosque in Cambridge, Mass., near where we lived. It changed her life.

One day, toward the end of her stay, she said the most amazing thing. Coming to America had given her the freedom to choose to be a Muslim, something that she didn't feel she had in France. She said that America was "the greatest country in the world" for Muslims because you could live as you liked, in a free society. She said those who wanted to destroy America just didn't understand that.

Will Chagos Islanders' Return Mean Problems for U.S. Base?

Britain tried to keep them away. The United States tried to keep them away. But it now looks as if the Chagos islanders might finally be going home.

The Guardian reports that the islanders -- who were expelled by Britain in 1966 after it gave the United States a 50-year lease to build an airbase on Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean -- won a resounding victory in Britain's court of appeals Tuesday.

The court ruled that thousands of people who were tricked, starved and even terrorized from their homes could return immediately, with the decision likely to draw a line under what is widely seen as one of the most shameful episodes in British colonial history.

In 2006, after an earlier court decision, the Daily Telegraph painted a bleak picture of Britain's actions during the expulsion.

The islanders won their first court ruling in 2000. The late Robin Cook, then British foreign secretary, said there would be no appeal and that he would begin a "feasibility study" into the possibility of the islanders' return. But the U.S. told Britain it didn't want anyone near the Diego Garcia base for fear of "terrorists infiltrating the islands."

So in 2004, Tony Blair's government tried to use a procedure called royal prerogative to effectively nullify the first decision. But Britain's High Court overturned that gambit, rejecting the government's argument that "the royal prerogative, exercised by ministers in the Queen's name, was immune from scrutiny."

This latest victory for the Chagos islanders means they can return to a group of 65 islands in the Chagos archipelago, except for Diego Garcia itself. Blair's government has one option left -- an appeal to the House of Lords. Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett's office has not said yet if that avenue will be pursued.

May 22, 2007

The Debunking Of The Five-Second Rule

It never ceases to amaze me how science consistently breaks through the barriers of ignorance that we have erected around our most sacred beliefs ... like the five-second rule. You know, the one that says if you drop a piece of food on the floor, you have up to five seconds to pick it up and pop it in your mouth. After that -- to the trash! Every grade school kid knows this rule, for heaven's sake.

A complete myth! Totally untrue! Mere superstition!

A crack team of student researchers at Connecticut College vigorously tested the five-second rule, leaving both wet and dry food on the floor for various lengths of time. And zounds if they didn't discover that you can leave that gooey bit of macaroni and cheese or that apple slice on the floor for up to 30 seconds! Thirty seconds!

And hard food, well, it's unbelievable. Skittles, for instance, can be left for about (dare I write this) FIVE MINUTES before any sign of bacteria is present. (I have Skittles that have been in the back of my minivan for five years -- that's probably too long.)

When I told my colleagues about these findings, they had immediate questions. What about different kinds of floors? What about that really cheap outdoor carpeting that some restaurants use? What about spilled beer? There is immediate need for more research. I have no doubts that a federal grant could be found that would provide all needed funding.

Controversy Emerges Over Military's Body Armor

The U.S. military is hustling to explain to Congress that it already offers its troops the best body armor available after NBC News aired a report that questioned this claim. Military.com reports that the Army's top equipment buyer, Brig. Gen. Mark Brown, will meet with members of Congress and staff to explain why the military believes an armored vest known as "Dragon Skin" is not the best choice. On Monday at a Pentagon briefing, Brown made his case publicly.

Brown appeared at the Pentagon briefing with the actual test articles that had failed to stop armor-piercing rounds, which Army officials claim its current enhanced small arms protective insert plate can withstand ... The Dragon Skin vests tested by the Army in May suffered 13 penetrations in 48 shots, service officials said.

In its investigative report, however, NBC interviewed Jim Magee, a retired Marine colonel who designed the current body armor in use by the military, known as Interceptor. Magee said he felt Dragon Skin was the best available -- "two steps ahead of anything I've ever seen." Other people interviewed for the show claimed that officers at lower levels tried to sabotage the use of Dragon Skin because it was not Army developed and would threaten their funding and programs.

NBC also reported that the CIA had approved Dragon Skin for its elite operatives and that select soldiers assigned to protect generals and VIPs in Iraq and Afghanistan wore Dragon Skin.

The Army has decided to launch "an aggressive campaign" to counter the claims of NBC and the company that makes Dragon Skin, Pinnacle Armor, so I doubt we've heard the last of this one. The discussion boards at Military.com are already filled with comments pro and con.

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't, Al Hurra

If you want to know why the U.S.-backed Al Hurra Arabic satellite TV network will never reach the levels of audience penetration that its competitors, like Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya, have reached, it's illustrated rather neatly in this piece from Thursday's New York Times.

Executives from the cable channel were chastised by both Democrats and Republicans for airing the views of leaders of the militant Islamist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Washington-based politicians saw this as a no-no. One problem is that none of the top executives who run Al Hurra, which is based in Virginia, actually speak Arabic, so they have to rely on the Arabic-speaking staff to tell them if a program or interview is OK.

Congress has a perfectly understandable position -- it funds the program, it gets to call the tune. But it's also why Al Hurra will struggle to overcome the perception that it is little more than an American propaganda outlet in Iraq. This piece by Courtney Radsch at Arabisto gives a good overview of the difficulty of Al Hurra's position.

Joaquin F. Blaya, a Hurra executive, did point out that it didn't make much sense for a station designed to promote democracy and free speech not to practice it. But this being America, where you can air different viewpoints, one exists, of course -- Joel Mowbray presents it at Power Line.

1:37 PM ET | 05-22-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

China Heads for Moon, Eyes Mars

If you really want to mark the point when you enter the big time as a country, don't pay any attention to the fact that you produce almost every toy American children play with, or that you manufacture ingredients for much of the pet food we Americans buy (even if many of us don't know that until it starts poisoning the pets), or that there are shoe stores around the world that only carry products manufactured within your borders.

No, if you're China, and you've achieved all the economic milestones mentioned above, and you've already got the other marker of the big-time club -- the bomb -- there is only one direction you can go to show you belong in the top echelon -- straight up.

On Sunday, China National Space Agency chief Sun Laiyan announced that his country would launch its first lunar probe later this year. Sci-Tech Today reports that the orbiter, known as Chang'e, will "collect information about the moon, including data about the availability of 14 usable elements on the moon's surface, the thickness of the moon's surface, and analysis of lunar microwaves." It will also take 3-D pictures of the moon. (China, which already put a man in orbit in 2005, plans a space walk in 2008.)

But the Shanghai Daily reported today that it's not just the moon that China is eying. China is also developing its first Mars orbiter and plans to launch it in 2009 using a Russian rocket. China currently does not have a rocket powerful enough to reach Mars but plans to develop one -- codenamed Long March V -- within the next 10 years. China also is building its own Cape Canaveral on Hainan Island in the South China Sea.

My friend, former Christian Science Monitor Ideas editor Jim Bencivenga, who is an astute an observer of China's role in the world as anyone I know, has been telling me for years that the 21st century will belong to the Chinese. I'm becoming more inclined to agree with him.

Jack Bauer ... er, Kiefer Sutherland's Family Tree

So yet another season of "24" ends on a dramatic note. Generally, the buzz about the last episode is that it saved an otherwise ho-hum season. (Here's a synopsis of the last show -- don't read it if you've TiVoed the episode and want to watch it first.)

Personally, if the superb Kiefer Sutherland weren't playing Jack Bauer, I doubt I would pay attention to the show. His acting talent is not surprising, however, considering his family lineage. His dad, Donald, is another well-known TV and movie actor and his mother, Shirley Douglas, is one of Canada's best stage actors. But the relative I admire the most had no acting experience: his grandfather, Tommy Douglas.

In a nationwide contest held in November 2004 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, in which 1.2 million people voted, Douglas was named the greatest Canadian who had ever lived. Among other things, he is known as the father of universal health care in Canada.

For me, his finest moment came when he literally stood alone against the entire Canadian political establishment during the so-called October Crisis of 1970. A Quebecois terrorist group, known as the FLQ, kidnapped two men and killed one of them. Then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared martial law under the War Measures Act and suspended civil liberties.

Only one major Canadian politician refused to support the draconian War Measures Act -- Douglas. As the CBC notes, "The move was devastating to his popularity at the time, but he would be heralded years later for sticking by his principles of civil liberty."

So while the grandson plays a hero, you could say that the grandfather was the real McCoy.

May 21, 2007

Bolton, BBC Interviewer Spar On Air

Boy, the BBC sure had to deal with some heated situations last week.

There was the whole dust-up between the BBC and the Church of Scientology. And John Bolton, the man who used to be America's top diplomat at the United Nations, had a rather interesting exchange with a BBC presenter late last week.

It seems that Bolton didn't like it when John Humphrys, the host of the BBC's flagship "Today" radio program, asked if the Bush administration was a "busted flush" after the failures in Iraq, Agence France-Presse reports.

"You're absolutely wrong ... The people who express the point of view that you just expressed I think were largely anti-American beforehand anyway," said the ex-ambassador.

When Humphrys suggested that billionaire philanthropist George Soros might take that view, Bolton shot back: "Are you kidding me? This is a man of the extreme left."

"I'm sure you would find a great deal in common with him as would many others on the continent," he added, referring to widespread anti-American sentiment in Europe.

The BBC man defended himself, saying he was impartial but just asking questions as a devil's advocate and adding: "Maybe they don't do it like that in the United States."

Bolton: "I know, you're a superior Brit, aren't you?"

During the interview, Bolton also denied that he was a neoconservative, but he did say he felt the "neocon adventure" was very much alive.

Earlier in the week, Bolton basically said it's time to stop fooling around with Iran. He said economic sanctions with "pain" need to be the next step taken, then an attempt to overthrow the ruling regime, and if that doesn't work, military force would be necessary.

The World Unloads On Wolfowitz

As panelist Adam Felber commented this weekend on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is among the last people you would picture losing his job over a sex scandal -- in this case a big raise and a promotion for his girlfriend, also a World Bank employee. But a trip over to Watching America illustrates just the level of enmity Wolfowitz engenders around the world. (Watching America, by the way, is a great Web site that tracks the opinions of the U.S. in the world's media.)

Raul Sohr, in a piece entitled "The Intolerable Wolfowitz" for La Nacion in Chile, argues Wolfowitz lost credibility for his hypocritical stance on corruption, nepotism and favoritism. He criticized poor nations for these practices, Sohr writes, and then proceeded to fill bank positions with people he knew from Washington, even before the episode with his girlfriend.

Thomas Devry, the New York correspondent for France's La Liberation writes that Wolfowitz arrived at the bank -- an institution famous for being unmanageable -- with a reputation of being a bad manager. Soon, bank employees, even those who believed he deserved a fair chance, turned against him for several reasons, including a belief that he was using the post as a means to extend the Bush administration's policies in Iraq and the Middle East.

An editorial in de Volkskrant of the Netherlands argues that the moment it became clear that Wolfowitz had practiced cronyism, he became the wrong person to "read the riot act to African leaders when they can't or won't control corruption in their governments." But the Dutch paper also agreed with some of Wolfowitz's supporters that he is the victim of an internal power struggle. When he gave his opponents something to use, they went after him full bore.

So, the paper argues, it's time to appoint the best person to the job, rather than limit it to an American.

It's high time to do what several other organizations devoted to development have been doing for years: Abolish the practice whereby the President of the World Bank must by definition be an America, and the leader of its sister organization the International Monetary Fund must be a European. Instead, recruit the best man (or woman of course) irrespective of nationality. A complete depoliticization of the office would of course be a fantasy, but between the current situation and an entirely merit-based appointment procedure, exists a world of possibilities.

It's A Dog's Life ... We Should All Be So Lucky

Remember when being a dog meant being a dog? Dogs chased a stick, a cat or the mailman. They peed on fire hydrants. They ate, they slept. They licked their... well, never mind. Pretty basic stuff.

Not anymore. Living a dog's life has taken on a whole new high-maintenance meaning, according to these stories.

The New York Daily News reports that pet owners in the Big Apple are getting (I find it hard to write this) testicular implants for their dogs "that look and feel like the real thing." I'll have to take their word on that.

"We did it so Truman could still walk proudly down the street," says Penny Glazier, a Manhattan restaurateur, of her 8-year-old bullmastiff. "We felt it would be good for him psychologically," she adds.

Apparently, this "replacement" therapy is becoming increasingly popular in New York. No doubt.

After the implants are ready, you and your dog can go for something less, er, surgical. Like pet yoga. NPR reported Friday on yoga classes in Seattle that encourage dog owners to bring their pets to the workouts in order to enhance the human-animal bond.

After a hard workout, there's nothing like a good massage. And Fido can have one of those now, too.

According to this AP story (written by my editor, Erica Ryan, before she came to NPR to labor under my cranky moods and bad spelling), advocates for pet massage say "it can help pets relax, recover more quickly from injury or surgery, improve performance in competition and be more comfortable if they have chronic conditions." In Utah, you have to be able to do human massage before they even let you touch a dog.

Let me be honest here. I love my dog, Reggie. She is the best dog I've ever had. I don't mind spending hours playing or combing out her old fur or having her sleep on my feet at night. But when it comes to a massage, I would actually prefer if she could give one to me, thanks. I think I need it more.

Key Leaders Leave Iraq to Handle Health Problems

As if the U.S. wasn't having enough problems getting the Iraqi parliament to move on key issues, like deciding on oil rights and revenues, the effort just got a lot harder. Two of Iraq's top leaders are out of the country dealing with health problems.

Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of Iraq's largest Shia party, is undergoing cancer treatment in Iran. Al Jazeera reports that al-Hakim flew to the U.S. on Wednesday after a U.S.-run hospital in Baghdad "detected signs of cancer in one of his lungs." The hospital he visited in Texas confirmed the preliminary diagnosis.

Al-Hakim began chemotherapy Sunday in Iran, rather than the U.S., because he wanted to be close to his family. This move also reflects his close ties to the regime there. He could be gone several months or longer, "thus robbing Iraq from a key political player who has been a major partner in US efforts to build a democratic system regardless of his ties to Iran," Al Jazeera reports.

Meanwhile, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani arrived in the U.S. on Sunday, "tired and battling obesity," according to the Gulf Daily News of Bahrain. Talabani's office denied he had any health problems other than his obesity, which he plans to get help with in the U.S. In February, he went to Jordan for treatment of extreme exhaustion and dehydration.

Talabani is expected to be in the U.S. about three weeks.

9:29 AM ET | 05-21-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

May 18, 2007

Reopen The Kennedy Files ... Again?

Sigh. I'm not sure how I feel about this. It would be nice if we knew for sure, I suppose. It would make Oliver Stone happy. And it would put the assassination in an entirely different light.

So here we go (deep breath) ...

The Washington Post is reporting that new tests done on the bullets from the batch Lee Harvey Oswald is believed to have used when he shot President John F. Kennedy indicate that there (ready for it?) may have been more than one gunman who shot Kennedy.

The "evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed," concludes a new article in the Annals of Applied Statistics written by former FBI lab metallurgist William A. Tobin and Texas A&M University researchers Cliff Spiegelman and William D. James.

While the researchers, who used new scientific methods to test the bullets, were careful to say they don't know if there was a second gunman, they didn't rule out that possibility either. Tobin was largely responsible for the FBI admitting in 2003 that its methods of matching bullets to crime suspects through their lead content was flawed. Tobin now believes the five bullet fragments found after Kennedy was shot need to be reexamined.

Divers Find Treasure Estimated at $500 Million

Sci-Tech Today reports that deep-sea explorers say they have found what could be the richest shipwreck in history. While they aren't sure about the origins of the ship in question, they are sure about its treasure -- an estimated $500 million worth of silver and coins. While the company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, is staying mum about where it was found, court records hint that it may be from a 400-year-old ship off the English coast.

[Odyssey co-chairman Greg Stemm] wouldn't say if the loot was taken from the same wreck site near the English Channel that Odyssey recently petitioned a federal court for permission to salvage.

In seeking exclusive rights to that site, an Odyssey attorney told a federal judge last fall that the company likely had found the remains of a 17th-century merchant vessel that sank with valuable cargo aboard, about 40 miles off the southwestern tip of England. A judge signed an order granting those rights last month.

The Debate Over the GOP Debate

I sure wouldn't want to be Ron Paul these days. The GOP congressman came under the full glare of the media spotlight this week after he was accused of saying America invited the Sept. 11 attacks at Tuesday's GOP debate in South Carolina. But now some people are questioning that interpretation of his remarks.

Media Matters looks at how Paul's comments about the role U.S. foreign policy plays in the Middle East were questioned by Fox News co-moderator Wendell Goler and then, it says, "distorted" by fellow candidate Rudy Giuliani.

Paul first said that terrorists had attacked the U.S. because "we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East." Goler then asked if he meant that the U.S. "invited" the attack. Paul responded, "I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it." Giuliani then called Paul's remarks "an extraordinary statement ... that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq."

During a post-debate interview, Fox News host Sean Hannity asked Paul: "Are you suggesting the United States of America caused the attack on 9-11?" Paul replied: "No, I think that's a cop-out." Hannity then asked: "Are you suggesting that our policies are causing the hatred of people that would cause them to want to kill us?" Paul responded: "I think it contributes significantly to it, and this is exactly what our CIA tells us."

The 9/11 Commission, in fact, also made the same point.

Media Matters particularly singles out CNN's American Morning program on May 16 for perpetuating the idea that Paul said America invited the attacks and not mentioning the clarifications he made about his remarks.

Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic's Daily Dish argues that the reaction to Paul's comments, "that he's cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs," shows the intellectual fear gripping the GOP about discussing the war on terror.

Navy Vet Alleges Chaplains Tried to Convert Him

There have been a lot of stories written in the past couple of years about the influence of fundamentalist Christianity within the U.S. military. Allegations of improper religious activities at the U.S. Air Force Academy and other incidents have highlighted these tensions.

Now the Des Moines Register reports that a Jewish Navy veteran claims that hospital chaplains at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City repeatedly tried to convert him to Christianity during several visits over a two-year period.

David Miller, who spent four years in the Navy, outlined his complaints recently at a news conference in Des Moines, where he described the VA facility as "an institution permeated by government sponsorship of fundamentalist Christianity and unconstitutional discrimination against Jews."

Over the past two years, Miller said, he has been asked over and over by the Iowa City VA medical center's staff within its offices, clinics and wards, "You mean you don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah?" and "Is it just Orthodox Jews who deny Jesus?" He said one staffer told him, "I don't understand; how can you not believe in Jesus; he's the Messiah of the Jews, too, you know."

The hospital's administration said that it's standard practice nationwide to conduct a spiritual assessment when patients are admitted to the hospital. They also said they would look into Miller's complaints. But Michael Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and an attorney who worked in the White House under President Ronald Reagan, said he is preparing to sue the Department of Veterans Affairs over Miller's treatment.

Victory for Child Care Providers in New York

In a move that could have national ramifications, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer last week signed an executive order giving the right to unionize to New York City's 28,000 home child care providers and thousands more throughout the state.

Tula Connell writes at FireDogLake that this is only the first step for the child care providers.

Lots of people think workers don't join unions because they don't want to. The nation's flawed federal labor laws are a big reason standing in workers' way. But this example illustrates yet another reason why U.S. workers are hampered from easily forming unions. New York's day care workers, like home care workers in California and Illinois, and others across the nation, can't just automatically form unions.

The day care workers, who, on average, are paid less than $19,000 a year and have no pensions, health insurance or paid sick days, first needed a law that gave them an employer -- in this case the state's Office of Children and Family Services -- before they could join a union and negotiate a contract. The New York United Federation of Teachers/AFT (UFT/AFT) will work with the day care workers, and AFSCME's Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) will reach out to the home care workers.

The New York Times reports that New York becomes the seventh state to give home-based child care providers the right to unionize, but Spitzer's approval could give union organizers momentum to target other states.

Not everybody was happy with the development. E.J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, wrote in the New York Post said that "with a stroke of his pen," Spitzer had undermined any effort to control the budget in the state. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the new legislation may result in fewer child care spots -- perhaps as many as 15,000 fewer spots, according to the Times -- because of the added costs to the city.

May 17, 2007

Chatham House Report: Iraq On Verge Of Collapse

Iraq is on the "verge of becoming a failed state," according to a report issued today by The Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, also known as Chatham House. Al Jazeera reports that the study suggests that, despite the recent surge of troops in Baghdad, U.S. forces have only managed to push insurgents to nearby cities, and that they cannot create the conditions where various groups can resolve differences with each other.

Gareth Stansfield, author of the report, Accepting Realities in Iraq, also writes that there is not one civil war in Iraq, but many. And he writes that each of Iraq's three main neighboring states -- Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabia -- have reasons of their own to see the current instability in Iraq continue.

Syndicated columnist David Ignatius, writing from Baghdad, also concludes that time to reconcile the different factions in Iraq is quickly running out.

Meanwhile, Agence France-Presse interviews an Iraqi tribal leader who says "the key to saving Iraq from the scourge of Al-Qaeda is to subject captured fighters to the swift and deadly rule of tribal justice."

"I always tell the Americans 'Why detain the enemy? Leave him to me, don't detain him,'" he chuckled during an interview with AFP in a Baghdad hotel.
"We have our own tribal legal system and this is constant and cannot be changed. Murderers must be killed under tribal law and unless we use this force against terrorism, terrorism will continue to rise."

Debate Over Media Coverage of Knoxville Murders

I don't normally do the crime beat, but this story is stirring a lot of debate in the blogosphere, particularly with conservatives.

In January, a Knoxville, Tenn., couple was carjacked and kidnapped, then raped and murdered. Several men and a woman have been charged in the case. This YouTube video looks at the couple's lives.

WVLT in Knoxville reported that the defendants were in court this morning to have their trial dates set. Earlier, prosecutors dropped federal carjacking charges so they could focus on first-degree murder charges.

The reason this story is stirring so much chatter in the blogopshere is the races of the victims and the defendants. The victims were white. The defendants are black. This fact alone has greatly raised tensions in the Knoxville area, according to the WVLT report. Several white supremacist and racially focused groups have accused the media and police of covering up what they believe was a racially motivated crime and are planning to hold protests.

But conservative bloggers, such as Michelle Malkin, believe that this case shows that the mainstream media is willing to cover white-on-black crime, particularly when it fits what she calls "a useful politically correct agenda." But when the crime is black-on-white and doesn't fit any of these agendas, she says "it's not a useful crime" and so goes unreported by the MSM. Imagine, she asks, if two black people had been murdered in this way and several white people were charged. Would the media cover the story differently?

The Snopes.com Urban Legend Reference site, however, says that while many of the reported details of the couple's deaths are gruesome, some of them have been questioned. And Snopes.com notes that the media didn't hesitate to cover the O.J. Simpson trial, in which a black man was accused of killing two white people.

Four Votes Away From Another Gay Marriage Debate

Four votes. That's all that seems to stand between the United States and what would likely be another drawn-out debate on gay marriage, similar to the one proceeding the 2004 election. Needless to say, the Democrats don't want that debate to take place, while the Republicans can't wait to have it.

The Boston Globe reports that pro-gay marriage forces in Massachusetts believe they are only four votes -- maybe only three votes -- away from preventing a constitutional amendment against gay marriage from being placed on the statewide ballot in 2008. According to the rules of the Legislature, the amendment must be approved twice by at least 25 percent of the members of the lower house. The pro-amendment forces triumphed last time, getting about eight votes above the 25 percent level. But since that vote, several pro-amendment legislators were defeated in 2006, and the pro-gay rights Deval Patrick was elected governor, replacing the recently anti-gay rights Gov. Mitt Romney.

National Democrats have gotten into the act, the Globe reports. They are fearful that if the amendment is placed on the ballot, it will reignite the gay marriage issue and galvanize conservative voters. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been making phone calls to state Democratic leaders, and Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean has offered to help lobby legislators. Pro-gay marriage advocates have also launched a $750,000 media campaign.

NPR reported this morning that slightly more than 50 percent of residents support gay marriage. The number has risen each year since it was legalized by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 2004. But neither side feels that the poll numbers can be trusted because, on an issue of this importance, people may say one thing and then vote differently.

1:28 PM ET | 05-17-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Birds and Bees Are in Big Trouble

Seriously. West Nile virus has swept through entire bird species, particularly on the Eastern Seaboard. According to one scientific study, more than one-third of all American crows have died. In the Baltimore-Washington area, The Associated Press reports, the death toll is at 90 percent. I'm not the biggest crow fan in the world, but even I was stunned by that number.

Meanwhile, honeybees are disappearing by the millions. Scientists have a name for this: Colony Collapse Disorder, but they don't know what causes it. Insects like bees pollinate one-third of all foods grown in America. But one potential clue exists -- organic bee growers, who do not use pesticides, say they haven't seen colony collapse.

This Morning Edition report from earlier this month looks at some of the causes of colony collapse, including new pathogens, disruptive human communications or even the possibility of a "bee rapture" event.

11:15 AM ET | 05-17-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Bush's Ratings Low, But Congress' Even Lower

President Bush's ratings are so low, it would appear more Americans believe in the existence of space aliens than support the president.

But George Bush is not the only one swimming in the shallow end of the ratings pool. The latest Gallup poll shows that while the president has an approval rating of 33 percent, the Democratic-controlled Congress clocks in at 29 percent. That's just a little bit higher than the number of Americans who said in another poll that they believe aliens have actually visited the Earth.

However, Congress' 29 percent is still 4 percentage points higher than the GOP-controlled Congress was rated last year at the same time.

According to the May 10-13, 2007, Gallup Poll, 29% of Americans approve and 64% disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job. Congressional approval is down 4 percentage points since last month, and is 3 points lower than the 32% average measured during the first five months of the year. The high point for the congressional approval rating so far this year was the 37% approval measured in February. Although ratings are quite low, Americans have been more positive in their assessments of Congress this year than last year, when an average of just 25% approved of Congress.

More Democrats than Republicans think Congress is doing a good job (surprise) but even then it's only 37 percent of Democrats.

As for President Bush, well, he hasn't been above a 40 percent approval rating since Lindy flew solo across the Atlantic ... or at least it seems that long.

May 16, 2007

Nobel Laureate to Defend U.S.-Iranian Scholar

Iranian Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi has announced that she will defend U.S.-Iranian scholar Haleh Esfandiari, who has been accused of "acting against national security" in Iran. Ebadi and two other lawyers from her Human Rights Defenders Center have sent a letter to Iranian authorities asking for the right to meet with their new client.

Esfandiari, who works for the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, was arrested and imprisoned May 8 after not being allowed to leave Iran for several months. Her supporters believe that accusations that she is an Israeli spy are an effort by the mullah-led regime to silence another independent voice.

Esfandiari's supporters also have started a letter-writing campaign at FreeHaleh.com to call for her release from Iran's Evin prison.

Esfandiari's arrest appears to be just the latest in a campaign against leading intellectuals by the Iranian government.

5:21 PM ET | 05-16-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Wolfowitz Getting Ready to Resign?

The Associated Press is reporting that World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is negotiating an agreement over the terms of his resignation, according to an official familiar with the talks. Bloomberg is also reporting that two bank officials are saying that the Bush administration and World Bank directors are negotiating Wolfowitz's departure.

4:27 PM ET | 05-16-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Green Zone Residents, Iraqi Academics in Constant Fear

Some Green Zone residents in Iraq apparently are as mad as hell and have decided not to take it anymore. So three unnamed State Department employees in Baghdad sat down with a reporter from McClatchy and aired their complaints about the security -- or the lack thereof -- in the Green Zone.

The zone has long been considered the safest part of the country because of the overwhelming U.S. military presence centered behind its walls in Baghdad, but the three U.S. embassy employees said they are increasingly angry over the lack of protection for those inside the zone. Bulletproof vests and helmets must be worn at all times -- except, apparently, when high-level visitors come from Washington, they say, to create the impression that the situation is safer than it really is.

But it doesn't always work. Just last week, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe told reporters that the situation in the Green Zone was "infinitely worse" than her visit there last year.

It's not just residents of the Green Zone concerned about their safety. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the university system in Iraq has almost been destroyed and, "Hundreds of professors and students have been killed or kidnapped, hundreds more have fled, and those who remain face daily threats of violence."

At the University of Baghdad alone, 78 professors have been killed.

To John Agresto, senior adviser to the higher-education ministry in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, it is clear why academics are targets. "University professors are usually more secular than the general population, more open-minded, interested in things other than religious proselytizing, devoted to academic interest more than religious causes," he says. "Their secular nature is what is getting them targeted."

Iraqi officials estimate that at least 30 percent of all professors, doctors, pharmacists and engineers who lived in Iraq prior to the U.S.-led invasion have now fled the country, the Chronicle reports.

Scientologists, BBC Reporter Square Off On YouTube

Video of a BBC reporter losing his temper with a Church of Scientology official while investigating the church's operations for BBC-TV's "Panorama" has been turned into what the reporter calls an "attack video" against him by the church. The video, which shows reporter John Sweeney screaming at a church official, has been widely disseminated by Scientology officials over the Internet, along with voiceover comments.

It's a pretty amazing display, and as one colleague said to me, it's really inexcusable -- reporters shouldn't lose their cool like that. (And YouTube being what it is, here is a parody of Sweeney's outburst, involving a man and his banana.)

But the BBC has shot back with a much longer version that provides more context to Sweeney's explosion. The Beeb has also put online the entire film Sweeney made for "Panorama."

In a posting on the BBC Web site, Sweeney talks about some of the harassment he claims occurred while he was researching the project.

It should be noted that the Church of Scientology has a well-documented history of hiring private investigators to probe (and some would say harass and intimidate) reporters writing about the organization. Church officials say they are just vigorously defending their constitutional rights.

In 1998, the Boston Herald reported that Scientology officials admitted they had hired a private investigator to find what the paper calls "derogatory information" on a Herald reporter who had done a series on the church. The Herald article lists several other situations dating back to the '80s where reporters were harassed or intimidated by Scientology members. (Here is a link to the story in the Herald archives, which are fee-based. The complete article, however, has also been posted at this anti-Scientology Web site.) These online tips for reporters on how to interview Scientology spokesmen and -women caution that they will try to make interviewers lose their tempers.

One of the focuses of Sweeney's piece is the church's attempts to keep its secret documents off the Internet, such as the story of "a tyrant named Xenu (pronounced Zee-new)" who 75 million years ago "ruled the Galactic Confederation, an alliance of 76 planets, including Earth, then called Teegeeack." Despite the church's attempts, the documents are widely available online.

(Tom's Note: I just wanted to add, since several comments below mentioned it, that the Church has prepared a longer response to the Panorama film. You can find it here.)

Miami Has Country's Worst Drivers ... Really?

I think there needs to be a recount. On Monday, AutoVantage, a Connecticut-based automobile membership, released its annual list of the cities with the rudest drivers in the country, and for some reason, Miami emerged the winner -- if that's the right word to use.

Miami is worse than Boston? I've been fortunate enough to travel across the U.S. in my job, and I've seen a lot of bad drivers (although, truth be told, I've never been to Miami). Other drivers didn't even come close to the moronic nitwits that stalk the roads of the greater Boston area. Bad driving, along with being as rude and boorish as humanly possible, seems to be seen as a civic duty.

Every morning over coffee, my friend, Jim Bencivenga, and I would regale each other with stories of near misses during that morning's drive to work at the Christian Science Monitor in the Back Bay. I don't recall a single session where we did not have at least two stories to tell each.

But as I said, I haven't been to Miami. If it's worse than Boston (which only came in third place in the survey, behind New York -- sorry, but I find drivers in New York way better than Boston), then heaven help the residents.

The city with the best drivers? Portland, Ore. Maybe all that rain cools off drivers' tempers.

May 15, 2007

Somebody Pull That Galaxy Over For Speeding

One of the things I've learned as a parent is not to tell my kids about the future of our solar system -- you know, that the sun will burn out and swallow all the planets in several billion years and all that. When one of your kids is 5 years old, they can translate billions of years into tomorrow morning. Kinda scary.

So I definitely won't tell them that our Milky Way galaxy will collide with the nearby Andromeda galaxy two billion years sooner than expected, according to a report in news@nature.com. Worse, the scientists exploring this future phenomenon using computer simulations say there is a chance Andromeda will steal our sun! Scoundrels! Rapscallions!

Scientists have long known the two galaxies were headed for a crash -- they are headed toward each other at a speed of 120 kilometers a second. (Do you feel like we're moving that fast? No wonder I feel dizzy.) But we are still 2 million light years apart, so we've got eons to get ready. Now they believe there is a chance that humans will still be on the Earth when the two galaxies actually start to mingle with each other. Although in 2 billion years, all humans will look like Ziggy Stardust ... just kidding.

Over a period of half a million years, the two galaxies will pass through each other, with individual stars passing through the gaps (the chances that two stars might collide are very slim). Many of the stars will be gravitationally perturbed by the collision -- some may even be ripped from one Galaxy and take up residence in the other.

The galaxies will brush by each other again in 3.5 billion years, and then, in 5 billion years, turn into a big blob of galaxy, which the scientists have named "Milkomeda."

Milkomeda? Sounds like a 24-hour cable channel about all things bovine.

Still, who knew our galaxy was so troublesome? Meteors that barely miss the Earth. Suns burning out. Now it might be ripped away. You would think if life was going to develop anywhere in the universe, it could have picked a quieter neighborhood.

Pentagon Targets Military Lawyer Who Released Detainee Data

Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish writes today on how the Pentagon has gone after its own military lawyers "who have stood up to the illegal and sometimes criminal detainee policies of the Bush administration" in the war on terror. He suggests reading Scott Horton's piece Monday in Harper's Magazine on the government's prosecution of Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz, currently underway in Norfolk, Va.

Diaz, Horton writes, is being prosecuted for sending a list of the detainees at Guantanamo -- inside a Valentine -- to the New York Center for Constitutional Rights in January 2005. The Pentagon under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld wanted to keep the list secret. But as Horton points out, the administration had responsibilities under U.S. and international law to disclose the list.

So the names of the detainees were required to be disclosed. Their non-disclosure was a criminal act. A federal court compelled their disclosure. And now a Guantanamo JAG is being prosecuted for disclosing the names, with a claim that his action was "with intent to benefit a foreign nation." What is the matter with this picture?

In February, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift wrote a piece for Esquire magazine in which he explained why he "sued my commander in chief and the secretary of defense on behalf of a Guantanamo Bay detainee named Salim Hamdan." Swift's action successfully challenged the Bush administration's use of military tribunals.

NPR reported last October that Swift was forced to resign under Navy rules of "up or out" after he was passed over for promotion. Swift said at the time that he didn't think he was being forced to retire in retribution for suing the Bush administration.

Finally, the Blog of Legal Times reports the Department of Justice today argued in front of a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for even more restriction on lawyers' ability to talk to their clients at Guantanamo: "The government's proposed rules would mean the search of legal mail, limits on attorneys' initial meeting with detainees and prohibitions on what these lawyers could say to their clients."

4:37 PM ET | 05-15-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Reinventing the Religious Right

It was not the best of times. It may have been the worst of times. After the 2006 mid-term elections, it was a rough time to be a conservative. The Republican Party had lost control of both the House and the Senate. Several key conservative ballot initiatives had gone down in defeat. The president's rating was staggeringly low in the public opinion polls. And none of the presidential candidates on the horizon excited the conservative base.

This week, The Washington Times is running a three-part series on how social conservatives in America are trying to reinvent themselves and their political organizations. No one connected with either major political party believes for a moment that the conservative movement is dead -- far from it. But as the Times series suggests, the movement is in disarray.

This may be even more the case now that the Rev. Jerry Falwell, a longtime leader of the Christian right, has died suddenly. Falwell, a dynamic leader and organizer, will not be easily replaced.

Today's Times piece focuses on the anti-abortion movement, which is trying to regroup after significant defeats in 2006. Monday's piece looked at the state of what conservatives call "traditional values." One of the most interesting questions asked in the article concerned the religious conservative movement's "one-party" strategy.

More than a few conservatives are now wondering if this decision was a mistake, and that perhaps it's time for the traditional values movement to disentangle itself from the Republican Party and instead "play the parties off each other," as George Mason University professor Mark J. Rozell puts it, in order to achieve more of the movement's goals. (Wednesday, the paper will look at the movement's efforts to woo women voters.)

One last thought. Liberty University, which was founded by Falwell, is to hold its commencement ceremonies Saturday. The featured speaker is Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House. Gingrich has been broadly hinting that he will launch a late bid for the Republican nomination for president. Could it be that history has just presented Gingrich with the moment to catapult himself into the leadership of the Christian conservative movement?

3:22 PM ET | 05-15-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

The Rev. Jerry Falwell Dies

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, a longtime leader of the Christian right, died today. Falwell, a dynamic leader and organizer, was found without a heartbeat in his office around 10:45 this morning. There is no word yet on who will replace him as the head of Liberty University or of the Moral Majority Coalition.

Papers Tell Different Stories on Wolfowitz

One advantage of the explosion of news on the Internet is that you don't have to rely on only one or two sources to get the entire picture behind a story. Take, for instance, the news this morning that World Bank investigators sent a report to the institution's governing body that was highly critical of the way current bank President Paul Wolfowitz arranged for his girlfriend (who also works at the bank) to get a promotion and a pay increase.

European papers focused largely on the report's most negative aspects. For instance, the Guardian story zeros in on a "four-letter tirade" that Wolfowitz apparently launched when it appeared that his actions would be made public. The quotes used by the Guardian include several references to the "f-bomb," as we say stateside. The article reported that he sounded "more like a cast member of the Sopranos than an international leader."

The more conservative Daily Telegraph avoids the colorful language in the Guardian piece, but also focuses on the negative consequences of the investigator's report for Wolfowitz. The German magazine Der Spiegel took a similiar tack.

Then with a click of the mouse, take a look at the same story as told by The Washington Post. While it focuses on the investigator's report in the top two paragraphs, the majority of the article is made up of Wolfowitz's rebuttal of the issues raised by the investigators. The New York Times also covers this angle of the story. Neither American paper mentions the swearing tirade so prominently featured in the Guardian version.

When you read the pieces in the European media, you are left with the impression that Wolfowitz has disgraced the bank and without a doubt deserves to be fired. But when you read the Post piece, you can get the opposite impression -- that the former deputy defense secretary was someone who was just trying to handle a difficult situation in as delicate a manner as he could. The split in newspaper coverage also reflects the split among policy makers about Wolfowitz. Europeans and others want him to go, while the Bush administration and many American politicians want him to stay.

None of the stories is "wrong," but they illustrate how editors can choose a particular angle to emphasize -- normally an angle that reflects local thinking. Thanks to online media, we can now read several takes on a story before we make up our own minds about an issue, rather than having an editor in a single newsroom decide what the story is for us.

Bloomberg's Friends Tell Media He's Probably Running for President

Friends of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg tell the The Washington Times that he is very close to launching a third-party campaign for president and that he would be willing to spend $1 billion of his own money. If the report is correct, it would roil the entire 2008 election. Former Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner compares a Bloomberg campaign to "H. Ross Perot on steroids."

With a billion dollars at his disposal, Bloomberg could hire an army of workers to gather the signatures needed in each state to get himself placed on their ballots. Since it's his money, he could also spend as much of it as he liked on advertising.

Bloomberg himself told the media Monday that he's not running for any higher office -- not governor, senator or president. But Joe Gandelman of the Moderate Voice blog writes that while the mayor continues to publicly deny a run for president, observers note that he still seems to be sending out feelers to gauge interest. And Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska has all but gotten down on his knees and begged Bloomberg to run, because a lot of people think Hagel would be the ideal running mate for Bloomberg.

There's buzz and there's buzz. But this is BUZZ - because if it happens these aren't two political unknowns, or people whose faces are all too familiar on the national Presidential election stage (Ralph Nader) or people thinking of entering the primaries who are faces some Americans would like to forget (Newt Gingrich).

Truthdig notes that Hagel added fuel to this fire with his appearance on the Sunday talks shows, where he voiced his strong disapproval of affairs in the Republican Party.

Some people probably think that because Bloomberg is a Republican, he would only take away votes from the GOP candidate in the general election. But that's not necessarily the case. Bloomberg, a fiscal conservative but a social liberal, would likely do very well in both New York and California -- key states for Democrats to win if they wish to recapture the presidency. He would be a particular problem for New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton if she wins the Democratic nomination.

So if current frontrunners Clinton and Rudy Giuliani held their leads and won their parties' presidential primaries (always a long shot, to be sure), and Bloomberg ran as an independent, you would have three candidates from the Empire State running for president. Talk about being in a New York state of mind.

May 14, 2007

Spies Like Us

When I was growing up in the Great White North, one of the things that drove me crazy was hearing people suggest that Canada was always about five years behind whatever they were doing in the U.S. Now that I've been living and working in the U.S. for almost two decades, I'm afraid I can see what people were talking about.

Take these stories from the Toronto Star, one of Canada's main newspapers.

Apparently, more than 14,000 Canadians applied last year to join the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Canada's spy agency. Only 100 were accepted. I guess it's good that so many people applied, but it has been almost six years since the Sept. 11 attacks and all that ... so it seems rather late for a spike in interest. (To its credit, CSIS gets high marks from many in the Muslim Canadian community for improved relations since Sept. 11, and 45 percent of intelligence officers are women. Very Canadian.)

Then again, I did notice that the Star also reported that Canada will start its own no-fly list in June. (Again, one is inclined to point out that, well, it has been six years...) A lawyer says it appears that Canadian airlines have been using the U.S. list. (Shh, don't tell anybody ... Canadians hate to give the U.S. credit for anything that Canada does.)

So I guess this means that Maher Arar, the Canadian who was detained by U.S. officials in New York in 2002 and sent to Syria where he was tortured before his release, won't have to worry. The U.S. has refused to take Arar off its no-fly list, even though a long and expensive Canadian judicial investigation completely cleared him of all terrorist connections. Until he was cleared by the investigation late last year, Arar still had to go through extra security in Canada ... because, his lawyer believes, officials were using that list from the country no Canadian wants to publicly acknowledge borrowing from.

6:09 PM ET | 05-14-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Pentagon Drops YouTube, MySpace from Its Networks

The Department of Defense has decided to ban several popular social networking and video-sharing sites, including YouTube and MySpace, from its computers around the world. In a memo, General B.B. Bell named the two above sites and 11 others as being blocked by the Pentagon starting today.

The military says it is concerned that personal use of the sites on its computers is stealing bandwidth and hampering operations. The move means that military personnel overseas will lose key contact points with their families and friends back in the U.S. Soldiers may still access these sites via private ISPs, but that may be a little difficult to do in war zones, of course.

The British site The Register writes that closing down these access points to the Internet could actually do the Pentagon more harm than good.

Nonetheless, many analysts have seen this as at best a foolish gag on some of the most [pro-US] positive reporters from the Southwest Asian frontlines. Military bloggers and uploaders overall tend to be quite on-message from the DoD point of view, and now this support for the cause will be largely stifled. Others, of course, interpret the blocks as a straightforward case of censorship.

This move has, of course, drawn lots of attention in the blogosphere. Aaron Freeman and Sharon Rosenzweig at Incisity point out that U.S. troops in Iraq are supposed to be fighting for, "in addition to oil," freedom. That apparently doesn't count now, they say, adding that the bad guys will still have full Web access. That point is jumped on by The Jawa Report, which suggests that by not blocking videos made by jihadis, YouTube and its parent Google are "willfully providing aid and comfort to America's enemies."

Geico Cavemen Getting Primetime Series?

When I first read about this, I thought of screenwriter William Goldman's main rule about TV and filmmaking: In Hollywood, nobody knows anything.

Apparently, someone at ABC, desperate to pull a rabbit out of his or her programming hat, picked up the pilot in March for a show starring the cavemen from the Geico insurance commercials. Well, the Defamer blog wrote early in May that the first reviews were in, and they weren't pretty. In fact, the pilot was "astoundingly awful," according to this review posted at Ain't It Cool News.

But the reviews didn't matter, because TV Week Blog reported Friday that ABC has picked up "Cavemen" (now, there's an original name) to be a full-fledged show.

OK, I'm willing to go with this. One thing I know about Hollywood is that a successful idea will be copied endless times until it's beaten into the ground. Keeping in mind the "commercial" nature of the origins of this show, here are my ideas for other TV ad-based series:

* A "Pirates of the Caribbean" rip-off starring Cap'n Crunch.

* "CSI: McDonaldland," starring Ronald as a crack crime scene investigator looking into the mysterious deaths of people at McDonald's restaurants.

* A remake of "Green Acres" with Jim Perdue of the chicken company.

* A new duster that will tell the season-long story of the EDS cowboys herding all those cats across the prairies in the Old West.

* An ecology-based comedy starring Bill Nye and the Aflac duck as a globe-hopping scientist and his loveable talking duck sidekick.

Frum's Advice for Top GOP Candidates

Former White House speech writer David Frum has some advice for the top three candidates for the Republican presidential nomination: You each have a national message that would resonate with voters, and you're not using it.

For Mitt Romney: "Quit running as the social conservative you manifestly are not, and run as the superb manager and problem-solver you have proven yourself to be."

For John McCain: "In 2000, you ran as a reformer at a time when most voters paid little attention to government ineffectiveness. Today that problem pervades everything. You were ahead of your time then ... but you could be right on time now."

For Rudy Giuliani: Use the same kind of tough-love approach for America's problems that you used to help New York. As for abortion, say "'I will appoint judges like John Roberts and Sam Alito. I do not want to see abortion outlawed, but I am glad that the national abortion rate has declined by 30% over the past 15 years ..." Then shut up about it.

Over at the conservative Powerline blog, Paul Mirengoff writes that this is all good advice, but he adds that it's important to remember that candidates often don't have much control over their messages in the context of places we are likely to see them, like televised debates.

The good news is that each of these candidates has a good story to tell -- one that should generate broad appeal and differentiate the candidate from President Bush. And I suspect that each candidate is closer to having developed that message than Frum gives them credit for, though none is there yet.

9:57 AM ET | 05-14-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

General's Letter Against Torture

Marty Lederman at the Balkinization blog calls it a "remarkable, powerful letter." He's referring to a letter written last week by Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, to all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen serving under his command. The message in the letter is pretty blunt -- torture and "other expedient methods" of obtaining information from the enemy is just plain wrong and does not obtain the desired results.

Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary. Certainly, extreme physical action can make someone 'talk'; however, what the individual says may be of questionable value. In fact our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual (2-22.3) on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that was published last year shows that the techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees.

Petraeus wrote the letter after last week's Pentagon poll showed that fewer than half of those troops surveyed would report a comrade for illegal actions. Lederman notes that if such a letter had been widely circulated in 2003, many of the incidents that have severely damaged the U.S. image around the world, like Abu Ghraib and the shooting at Haditha, may have been avoided. Lederman had blogged in February 2006 about how the Pentagon under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld had come to adopt what many military lawyers considered "legally indefensible" guidelines about conducting interrogations as official policy.

Meanwhile, in a report from his fifth trip to Iraq, Guardian photographer Sean Smith, embedded with the U.S. 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, writes that the surge in troop levels is creating some stability, but Smith wonders how long it can last. Smith also writes that the only contact the U.S. soldiers have with local residents is in "stress" situations, which intensifies any contact. He also writes that the Iraqi army "is a fiction."

There are Iraqi soldiers alongside the Americans, but they owe their allegiance to a unit commander who is usually someone known to them previously. They are small bands or gangs of soldiers, not a national force.

9:49 AM ET | 05-14-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

May 11, 2007

The Folks Shaping Cyberspace

Are you one of the 8 percent of Americans shaping cyberspace?

A new study presented this week by the Pew Internet and American Life Project showed that this 8 percent (which the study called "omnivores") "have the most information gadgets and services, which they use voraciously to participate in cyberspace and express themselves online and do a range of Web 2.0 activities such as blogging or managing their own Web pages."

Well, I've always known I'm a tech omnivore. (You should come to my attic and see the old gadgets lying around: Apple Newtons, Aplio Internet phone connectors, etc.) Only problem is that the report says most omnivores are in their 20s. I, er, ah, am not in my 20s anymore. I'm just an old...er, omnivore.

But if you want to see if you belong here, or fall into one of the nine other groupings of online users, you can take the 52-question Pew survey yourself, care of the Trendsspotting blog, operated by Taly Weiss, a social psychologist who runs a market research firm in Israel.

5:24 PM ET | 05-11-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Charges Dropped Against 'Hunger Force' Defendants

Remember Boston's great "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" scare of winter '07? I was living in Boston at the time. I remember the traffic jams that resulted.

Well, today all charges were dropped against the two men who planted the light panels (first thought to be bombs) that were intended to promote the Cartoon Network show. When Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens first appeared in court, they treated the entire process as a joke, which outraged almost everyone in town. They quickly changed their ways, and at their subsequent court appearances they were models of decorum. But before charges were dropped, the men did several dozen hours of community service and issued apologies for their actions.

There was a lot of fallout from the stunt. Turner Broadcasting agreed to pay Boston $2 million to cover the cost of responding to what it thought was a terrorist situation, and the head of Cartoon Network resigned over the controversy. Not such a funny stunt after all.

4:57 PM ET | 05-11-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

A Controversial Move at the UN

Normally, I am a rather enthusiastic supporter of the United Nations. (I'm Canadian -- it's genetic.) But sometimes members do, well, such questionable things that it leaves you shaking your head in bewilderment.

The Daily Telegraph reports that the regime of Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe and one of the world's most controversial leaders, has been nominated by other African nations for the leadership of a UN body charged with "protecting the environment and promoting development." Other countries, including the U.S., have said they will try to block the move, but if the nomination is approved, Francis Nhema, Zimbabwe's environment and tourism minister, will lead the body that is charged with making sure signature nations keep the pledges made at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

That could be a bit of a problem, because, as the Telegraph reports:

Zimbabwe's economy is collapsing, with inflation of 2,200 per cent - the highest in the world. Households can expect just four hours of electricity a day. This has encouraged deforestation, with large areas being stripped of wood for light and heating. Mr Nhema, 48, benefited from Mr Mugabe's wholesale seizure of white-owned land. The minister, who was educated at Strathclyde University, was handed Nyamanda farm near Karoi, a once thriving enterprise producing tobacco and maize. Most of its 2,500 acres are now lying idle.

Mr Nhema is also in charge of Zimbabwe's national parks, where wildlife has been decimated by poaching.

If Zimbabwe is allowed to assume the post, it's likely that it will take its place in right-wing infamy along with the election of Libya in 2003 as the chair of the former Human Rights Commission or the near-election of Venezuela to the UN Security Council. U.S. conservatives and GOP politicians have long argued that the UN allows authoritarian or dictatorial regimes to head committees for which their political practices at home make them vastly unsuited.

For instance, Ed Morrissey over at Captain's Quarters writes that the UN seems to be headed for "a career in comedy." The nation that has taken a thriving agricultural tradition, he writes, and "destroyed it in one generation" could be appointed to lead the world in discussion about how to sustain human populations without destroying the environment.

However, the Telegraph notes that the U.S. and Britain are determined to block the move. Both countries would be happy, they say, with another African nation appointed to head the committee.

1:32 PM ET | 05-11-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Atheists Resurgent

In all the brouhaha that developed over the Rev. Al Sharpton's questionable comments about Mormons during his debate Monday with atheist and author Christopher Hitchens at the New York Public Library, the media and the public glossed over the actual topic of the debate: God Is Not Great (also the name of Hitchens' book).

It was one more example of how atheism has reentered the public discourse. While there have always been atheists (and some pretty famous ones at that), in the late 20th century it became a rather impolite subject to discuss when guests dropped by or when standing around the water cooler at work. ("Why no, Joe, I don't believe in a monotheistic deity. But how about them Red Sox, eh?")

But atheists have been coming out of the woodwork so fast recently it's hard to beat them off with a stick. And in a rather aggressive way, largely, they say, as a response to the rise of religious extremism around the world. British scientist Richard Dawkins led this latest charge. His book, The God Delusion, is a bestseller. He made a TV series about it for Channel Four in Britain. He's been on almost every TV and radio network in the U.S. as well, including NPR, calling belief in God silly.

Sam Harris has been the other big engine. His books, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation, called belief in a god extremely destructive. Newsweek recently featured a debate between Harris and well-known evangelist pastor Rick Warren about the existence of God.

Web sites and blogs like The Panda's Thumb (which challenges claims made by the intelligent design community), Positive Atheism and videos posted on YouTube have carried the argument to the Internet.

So just how many atheists are there in the U.S.? The number seems fluid at best. A church-based survey last year said the number of atheists had fallen by 10 million since 1990, but some bloggers argue the number of atheists is regularly undercounted because people are reluctant to say they are atheists because of the stigma against them in the U.S. (A March 2006 survey by the University of Minnesota of 2,000 U.S. adults rated atheists below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other minority groups in "sharing their vision of American society.")

It's Military Spouse Appreciation Day

That's right. Today is the day that military spouses get their much-deserved due.

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan proclaimed that the Friday before Mother's Day (which is Sunday) would be set aside as a day to recognize the many contributions and personal sacrifices that military spouses make every day. And these days, that means women and men. SpouseBuzz writes that special ceremonies have been planned at U.S. military installations all over the world to mark the occasion.

And just a side note: Military spouse blogging is a cottage industry as near as I can make out. There are lots of spouses using blogs to share tips and stories with, and show support for, their peers. And share the frustrations as well.

I've become a fan of the blog Homefront Six, written by an Army wife. Thursday, she wrote about how she scraped the side of her car. It sounds mundane, I know, but it's written in such a funny, personal manner that it just draws you in. Like when she toyed with the idea of packing her 3-year-old in a box and shipping him to Dad in Iraq. As the father of four, can I identify with that one.

May 10, 2007

Killing Civilians in Afghanistan

The issue of the U.S. military killing civilians in its battles against the Taliban in Afghanistan is starting to gather steam once again. Recently, Afghan President Hamid Karzai blasted the U.S. for not being more vigilant and said that his people "can no longer accept casualties the way they occur."

In early March, insurgents ambushed a convoy of U.S. troops in Jalalabad. As the troops fled, they fired on civilians and their cars, killing 19 people, an act that one U.S. commander said Tuesday left him feeling "deeply, deeply ashamed and terribly sorry." (At the time of the incident, U.S. troops seized photo and video footage from journalists covering the aftermath.)

Later in the month, the U.S. military killed 13 civilians in a bombing raid. And the Belfast Telegraph reports that Afghan authorities say 21 more civilians were killed in a raid in the village of Soro, near Sangin in Helmand province, on the same day the U.S. commander was making his above apology for the March 4 incident. The U.S. military denied the reports.

A spokesman for the US forces, Major William Mitchell, declared that the troops had killed a "significant" number of insurgents in firefights and the subsequent bombing.

"We don't have any reports of civilian casualties" he said. "There are enemy casualties - I think the number is significant."

One problem with this statement is that it's the same thing the U.S. military says every time one of these incidents occurs, and then it's often forced to eat crow after it turns out that innocent people were killed. The Economist reports that there have been five incidents in total since March where Western forces have been accused of killing civilians.

But the U.S. military isn't the only one who may be killing civilians. Human Rights Watch finds that civilian deaths from insurgent attacks in Afghanistan have increased dramatically over the past 15 months, according to a Voice of America report. The Human Rights Watch report says that many of the anti-government forces are deliberately ignoring internationally agreed upon laws of war and protection of civilians' rights.

Kidnapped Reporter Named Broadcaster of the Year

Paul Brannan of the BBC has sent out a notice to the Online News Association's International Committee, telling us that kidnapped Beeb reporter Alan Johnston was named Broadcaster of the Year at the London Press Awards last night. The Press Gazette notes that Johnston had actually been nominated for the award, based on his three years' worth of work covering the Gaza Strip, long before he was kidnapped in Gaza by Palestinian militants on March 13.

BBC director-general Mark Thompson, who accepted the award on Johnston's behalf, said: "Alan stayed there [Gaza] so long, and stayed after so many Western correspondents had left, because he wanted to tell the story of Gaza and to tell it not from a studio in London or by voicing over pictures taken by an agency or freelance thousands of miles away, but on the ground and among the people of Gaza."

Paul added in his note that Thompson also paid tribute to Johnston's family "who have shown extraordinary strength and courage over these last few weeks...The real prize will be Alan's safe return."

3:22 PM ET | 05-10-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

A Digital Noah's Ark

It will be called the "Encyclopedia of Life."

The Guardian reports that over the next 10 years researchers will gather "every scrap of information" available on the planet's 1.8 million known species of animals, plants and other organisms. And once scientists and researchers gather this information, it will be available on the Internet entirely for free.

"Bringing this critical mass of information together, and for people to have it at their fingertips wherever they are in the world, will create a fantastic resource for understanding our ecosystems," said Jim Edwards, executive director of the project. "This will be an enormously powerful tool for professional scientists, the general public, educators, school kids, and citizen scientists."

The project has been launched by a consortium including the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, the Field Museum in Chicago and Harvard University. The Natural History Museum in London and Royal Botanic Garden at Kew are to make vast collections of historic records available through the encyclopedia.

The project will also be "open source" -- like Wikipedia, birders, amateur naturalists, school children and others will be able to contribute to the project in a special section. Unlike Wikipedia, however, all the articles in the main section will be reviewed and approved by scientists before they are published.

Although the pages will only be in English, countries like China and India are already investigating ways to translate the articles into their languages.

You will be able to read the Encyclopedia of Life at eol.org.

Could Smaller Companies Help Better Equip Troops?

Ward Carroll's DefenseTech.com blog offers an interesting take on the problems associated with procurement bottlenecks for the military. At a time when these bottlenecks are growing and research dollars are shrinking, there is a new trend: Smaller companies that can develop needed military equipment and move it where it is needed much faster are springing up.

These smaller companies would act as middlemen, especially on smaller projects -- "low hanging fruit" as it is referred to in the blog -- that many believe the Department of Defense procurement system has trouble dealing with. Owners of these smaller companies believe they could produce the needed materials in months rather than years.

Defense experts like Edward "Otto" Pernotto have the potential to make a difference because they understand how to exploit the system in effective ways. Otto recently launched Excalibur R&D, LLC, which he calls a "small business focused on providing rapid, innovative, and collaborative national security solutions."
"We cannot continue to throw money at huge military programs that in many ways are breaking the bank of this country," Otto said during a discussion with DT at the recent Milblogging conference in DC. "We need to do things smarter and quicker."

Carroll admits that individuals like Pernotto may be "tilting at windmills" when working against the huge bureaucracy of the Pentagon and fighting the big companies that eat so much of its budget, but "Those who really care about the heath of America's forces aren't waiting around for the machine to fix itself."

Church and State Are Separate for a Reason

It seems that the issue of Mitt Romney's Mormon faith just won't go away.

Al Sharpton made some questionable remarks about Mormons in his debate about God and religion Monday with author and atheist Christopher Hitchens at the New York Public Library. (Here is a recording of the debate.). Tuesday, Sharpton said he didn't mean to insult Mormons (who he had basically said don't really believe in God). But when the heat wouldn't go away, Sharpton tried, as he often does, to shift the argument.

Wednesday night on CNN, he challenged Romney "to say whether he believed in the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the past, when blacks were not considered equals." Romney condemned Sharpton's remarks as bigoted.

The entire debacle was made worse Wednesday night when Republican strategist Ralph Reed bobbed and weaved when CNN's Anderson Cooper asked him if he thought Mormons were Christians. (Reed had originally come on to condemn Sharpton's comments.) Although he didn't say no, Reed, an evangelical Christian, equivocated rather than answer the question directly.

Last time I remember checking, there is a specific injunction in the Constitution against any religious test for any public office in the United States. The most intelligent comment on this issue came from a woman interviewed for the Rocky Mountain News piece above.

Local resident Mary Ann Baago said [Romney] won her vote, and she criticized the media and political analysts who continually raise the religion issue.

"Don't look at his religion," Baago said. "The first election I voted in was for John F. Kennedy. People said, 'Don't vote for him. He's a Catholic. The pope will run the country.'"

10:45 AM ET | 05-10-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

May 9, 2007

You Can't Print That on a Soda Bottle

A Las Vegas-based beverage company has changed the name of a new product because of pressure from the Food and Drug Administration. Redux Beverages LLC, maker of the Cocaine Energy Drink, said its drink -- which contains lots of caffeine but no cocaine -- will get a new name, but the company will continue to fight to use "Cocaine" as a retail name.

"Obviously, we were forced to stop shipping the drink as 'Cocaine' for now, but we're not done fighting for our rights," said Jamey Kirby, founder of Redux, who added that a new name and label would be offered in the coming weeks.
"We've received tens of thousands of e-mails and phone calls from consumers expressing outrage and disbelief that the government can ban a perfectly safe product for no reason other than it has a racy name."

Kirby, rather tongue-in-cheek, noted that his company was trying to reach Yves Saint Laurent to warn him that his well-known perfume, Opium, might be in trouble.

So if you can't use a word like cocaine, will the FDA or some other government organization soon send out notices to any company whose name includes snow, horse, blow or any of the other drug terms you might find here?

6:00 PM ET | 05- 9-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

The Zen of Branding

We all know what brands are -- they surround us. They're on the TV, in ads, on the sides of buildings, on our underwear for heaven's sakes. Authors make millions writing about the importance of them, and companies constantly preach to employees about "protecting the band." (Years ago, I met a guy who traveled the country for Coca-Cola, visiting restaurants to make sure that when someone ordered a Coke, they weren't given a Pepsi or an RC Cola -- "It's all about branding," he told me.)

But seldom have I seen the concept of branding explained as eloquently or usefully as in this posting I found on the "Presentation Zen" site. Written by Garr Reynolds, it argues that real branding is not a logo, but actually the service a company provides.

Organizations, then, should worry less about advertising and spend more effort in making insanely great products and services that are worth talking about. That is, they should show us (prove to us) how great they are rather than just telling us how great they are through expensive media buys, and placing their identity graphics in every conceivable place, including PowerPoint slides.

Reynolds also looks at how the shows featuring Bill O'Reilly on Fox News and Paula Zahn on CNN use logos and branding to accentuate the host and take the focus away from the guest.

3:36 PM ET | 05- 9-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

When "Homegrown Terrorism" Is Not Exactly Grown at Home

Before I came to NPR, I covered terrorism and security for the Christian Science Monitor for several years. During that time, I learned a few things about the way the administration and law enforcement deal with the war on terror.

First, don't assume that because charges have been made that a conviction will result. The FBI's record at getting convictions on these high-profile cases is spotty at best. Here's a piece that I wrote in March 2006 that highlights cases where the government said it was terrorism but it wasn't. (Remember Capt. James Yee?)

Second, the language used by government prosecutors (and the media) in describing these cases is frequently incorrect. For instance, in the case of the six men accused of planning an attack on Ford Dix, N.J., I've heard the words "homegrown terrorism" thrown around a lot.

Only one problem with that description: None of these men is homegrown. All are foreign born. In fact, three are illegal aliens.

In Britain, when the phrase "homegrown terrorism" is used, it refers to young men or women born in Britain who turn to terrorism. For instance, this piece written by Munira Mirza last August for Spiked-online.com talks about the idea of "homegrown terrorism" as a British-born-and-bred phenomenon. Canada's Haroon Siddiqui offers a good description as well.

The difference is significant. In Britain's case it implies that a strong -- and much talked about -- disconnect exists between young British-born Muslims and the larger society. When you use "homegrown" in the way it's being used in the Fort Dix case, it implies that the same kind of problem exits in the U.S., which I think is a questionable assumption. I would argue that one reason there have been so few terrorist plots in the United States since the Sept. 11 attacks is that young American-born Muslims are more integrated into society than their British counterparts are across the Atlantic.

1:46 PM ET | 05- 9-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

CSI: Alexandria, Va.

I may not have TV anymore (see my post Tuesday about babies and television), but who needs it when I can experience my very own "CSI" episode in real life?

Yesterday, my wife and I were moving my belongings from the house in Alexandria, Va., where I had been staying to my family's new home in Falls Church. As we walked out the door, my wife spotted someone in our minivan with her purse in his hands.

My wife screamed at him, and I dropped everything I was carrying and chased him. I followed him for several blocks, but he was younger and faster. I did get a good look at him and the direction he was headed. Apparently, he jumped a fence into a backyard, because the owner of the house saw him, watched him start to change his clothes and called the police.

With the information from my wife, the neighbor, and me, the Alexandria police were able to find the thief, my wife's purse, her belongings and all her credit cards. Happy ending.

And then came the fun part -- watching how they actually put the case together. The CSI guy came (that's what he is actually called) and took pictures of the scene, dusted for fingerprints, put on gloves and asked a lot of questions.

At one point, they spotted my wife's driver's license down a grate near the purse. No one could figure out how to get the bolted grate open. Then, one officer disappeared into a nearby building and came back with two curtain poles lashed to a flag pole. Another officer literally stuck a piece of gum on the end, lowered the pole, jammed the gum on the card and lifted out the ID. The other officers started calling the woman who created the contraption "MacGyver."

I hadn't been involved in anything like this in years, and I had a certain expectation about what might happen, based on what I had seen on TV. But everyone involved was professional, friendly, courteous, answered every question I had and treated me like an adult. (Although I did get a pretty stern lecture from one senior officer about the wisdom, or lack thereof, in chasing a suspect.)

1:30 PM ET | 05- 9-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Web Video, Photos Show Fire in Los Angeles Park

The Los Angeles Fire Department is battling a huge blaze in the city's Griffith Park.

Here is a Boing Boing posting from regular Day to Day contributor Xeni Jardin that provides an hour-by-hour description of the fire's progression last night, along with photos and videos. Also, here are some shots of the fire taken by LA resident David Deusner and posted on the Picasa Web Albums site, along with an entire page of fire photos from the flickr.com site.

YouTube has more than 20 videos, including this one shot yesterday afternoon -- you'll find links to other videos on the righthand side of the page. (As one comment to the posting reads, "I get home from work; Griffith Park is on fire. On YouTube, one guy on the street with a camcorder (if not a tripod) gives me a better sense of where the fire is than all the TV stations and their endless, repetitious helicopter shots. Welcome to the 21st Century.")

The Los Angeles Daily News reports that several possible causes of the fire are under investigation.

Finally, here is a link to the last major Griffith Park fire, which occurred on Oct. 3, 1933, and killed 29 people.

9:34 AM ET | 05- 9-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

May 8, 2007

Giuliani's Elephant in the Corner

It's the elephant in the corner of Rudy Giuliani's GOP presidential nomination bid. Only instead of ignoring it, everybody sees it, points at it, installs spotlights illuminating it. The elephant in this case is the former New York mayor's position on abortion.

Giuliani says he hates abortion but supports a woman's right to choose in many cases. This makes many Republicans nervous about their front-runner. So when Giuliani spoke with right-wing radio talk show host Laura Ingraham this morning, she worked him over about these views, according to Jonathan Martin at Politico and Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online.

At the end, Giuliani asked to talk about the war on terror next time.

It's a tough obstacle for Giuliani to negotiate. But give credit where credit is due. Unlike fellow GOP candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who once strongly supported a woman's right to choose but now says he doesn't (he chalks it up to a well-timed change of heart), Giuliani has, for now, refused to change a long-held position.

3:54 PM ET | 05- 8-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Mom, Pass My Rattle and the TV Guide

As I was going through the ritual of making sure my water was running, my phone service activated and my electricity turned on, I was asked a question by the woman helping me work my way down the list of new house to-dos: Would you like cable TV?

I paused. In Boston, I had digital cable, On Demand, 3 million channels, you name it. I thought a long five seconds. No, I said, I don't want cable. I don't want TV in my house. On the surface, I did it for my four children, who were turning into zombies despite my efforts to restrict their viewing time.

I wondered if I had made the right decision, and then I saw this Toronto Globe and Mail piece on a University of Washington study that shows children as young as 3 months are watching TV. (No word on if they can reach the phone to vote for their favorite "American Idol" contestant.) By the time they are 2, 90 percent of them are watching "Teletubbies," or "Sesame Street" or "Dora the Explorer." Now, a U.S. company wants to launch a 24-hour channel for babies: BabyFirstTV.

On the Internet, no one can hear you scream.

Then a few hours ago, I saw this piece on CBS: 14-year-olds who watch three or more hours of TV a day are "far more likely to have a negative attitude toward school, skip homework and to have trouble paying attention than kids who watch one hour or less a day. In turn, kids in that group are less likely to go to college." So I'm feeling much better about my decision now.

Want to know the real reason I got rid of TV? For me. I was one of those parents who just turned on the darn thing whenever I was busy and the kids were trying to get my attention. Only they got hooked, and whenever I did want to do something, they just wanted to watch TV. Now, we'll all have to make different decisions about how to use our time.

We're a Little Fuzzy on This Whole Benchmarks Thing

If it appears that Pentagon and administration officials start to mumble a lot and look at the ceiling or down at their shoes whenever they talk about benchmarks for Iraq, that could be because they want it that way. The Christian Science Monitor reports that "The Defense Department has allowed the public's understanding of the benchmarks to remain murky, offering up little in the way of specifics when it comes to how the surge will actually be assessed come September."

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, particularly Democrats, want to define benchmarks with specific dates and "measureables." But the military and White House, judging by their responses to questions about benchmarks, seem to be trying to keep them as vague as possible.

Military experts see keeping benchmarks broad as a way for President Bush to portray the current surge operation as a victory. The Monitor reports:

All of this suggests that the administration is not prepared to dole out any tough love to the Iraqi government anytime soon, says Paul Eaton, a retired Army two-star general who most recently led the US command in Iraq that trained Iraqi forces. Mr. Eaton has been very critical of the administration, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and the way in which President Bush has executed the war. He believes the US won't significantly withdraw forces until Mr. Bush leaves office in January 2009.

"This undisciplined government cannot hope to provide discipline to another government and that is the basis of our problem," Eaton says. "They will not impose discipline."

12:51 PM ET | 05- 8-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

YouTube Hates Conservatives?

Apparently, Republican White House veterans Charlie Gerow and Jeff Lord believe that the incredibly popular Internet video site YouTube is biased against people of the conservative persuasion. In particular, they say YouTube took down a video made by controversial conservative writer Michelle Malkin.

So, as the Washington Times reports, they've started their own YouTube called QubeTV, a place where conservatives who catch Democrats in their versions of former GOP Sen. George Allen's "macaca" moment can post their videos.

Both Mr. Gerow and Mr. Lord, who served as aides during the Reagan administration, say QubeTV is necessary because of what they view as an anti-conservative bias by the administrators of YouTube.

"We saw a need for a social-networking site for the center-right," Mr. Gerow said of the site, at www.Qubetv.tv.

The conservative Jawa Report, however, says it's not just a bias against right-wingers at YouTube. More conservatives hate YouTube because of its "utter failure to stop the vilest anti-American, pro-terrorist cyber-jihadis from using YouTube to spread their message of hatred." All that and a bag of chips, as we used to say in Nova Scotia.

This posting from the left-of-center Daily Kos ("Because reality has a well-known liberal bias") doubts that conservatives can leave YouTube completely behind. "But of course, we all know that they'll also put their fantastic creation on YouTube, because that's where the audience is." Responding to the perceived bias, the post takes more of a "raised eyebrow at a questionable statement" stance.

A more interesting conservative project in my view is the Majority Accountability Project which, according to the Times piece above, will serve as an "online clearinghouse of information on the House majority." The site has a pretty obvious bias, of course, so read its postings with a grain of salt -- that doesn't mean, however, that you won't find good information there.

Roger's Back with the Yankees

On Sunday afternoon, as my family and I drove from our old home in the Boston area to our new abode near D.C., I happened to pick up the New York Yankees game on my radio as we motored down the New Jersey Turnpike. As a longtime Red Sox fan, hearing the voice of Yankees broadcaster John Sterling was a little like listening to Tokyo Rose -- you wanted to listen, but you felt wrong doing it.

Then suddenly, the radio exploded. Roger was back! Roger Clemens, that is. Appearing deus ex machina-like in the box of owner George Steinbrenner, Roger told the drooling masses at Yankee Stadium that he was coming back to pitch for the team. You would have thought Jesus had appeared descending on a cloud the way Sterling's broadcast partner Suzyn Waldman was screaming. Later, I heard a WCBS announcer say that the Yankees could expect a return to the World Series now.

Ah, no.

Coming from Boston, I'm quite used to fans making wildly unjustified assumptions about the effect one player can have on an entire team's season. Until 2004, Red Sox fans were doing it almost every year. It's weird to see it happening to New York fans now. Oh, how the times have changed.

Clemens is a good pitcher. He will make the Yankees a better team, absolutely. But the problems that are plaguing the team go way beyond anything one player can solve. Pitching is still the thing that the Yankees need the most. True, they've got Mike Mussina, Andy Pettitte and Clemens now, along with the truly talented Chien-Ming Wang and the potentially great Phil Hughes, once he gets back from injury. But those first three pitchers are no longer spring chickens, and baseball is a marathon, not a sprint.

This is one reason why Clemens asked for all the special provisions -- like not traveling with the team -- that have actually generated a little bit of controversy even before the Rocket steps on the mound, which will probably happen in late May or early June. Clemens also has a prorated $28 million contract. An ESPN announcer calculated that to be about $7,500 a pitch. (I knew I should have learned to throw a slider.)

As for the Red Sox, well, they would have taken Clemens, too. You can never have enough pitching, as they say. Curt Shilling, always saying what's on his mind, said that the Sox don't really need Clemens. He's taken lots of grief for that comment, but I find myself in agreement with him. If there is one thing the Sox do have, it's pitching.

May 7, 2007

Journalists Die in Iraq Attack, Cameroon Plane Crash

I have to be honest about something. When I hear that a journalist has been killed in the line of duty, I always feel a bit queasy for two reasons: It hits closer to home when it's somebody in your line of work -- you wonder if you know or have worked with the person. Or worse, if it's a friend. Then, however, I also get an uncomfortable feeling when I draw focus to the journalist's story when he or she is not the only one killed at the time. This is especially true when we focus on the Westerners killed and gloss over other victims like so much driftwood.

In Anthony Mitchell's case, his story is certainly worth telling. Mitchell was an Associated Press reporter well-known for his work in Africa.

Mitchell made global headlines last month with his in-depth investigation into the illegal detention and transfer of terror suspects from Kenya to Somalia and eventually into Ethiopian prisons. His work forced U.S. and Ethiopian officials to acknowledge a program that until then had led to the secret detention of dozens of people, including women and children.

Human rights groups praised the story, which won an internal AP award for breaking news, but it was stridently criticized by the Ethiopian government as coming from an "ivory tower" where the war on terror was not understood. It was not the first time Mitchell's stories angered Ethiopian authorities.

Still, Mitchell was only one of 114 people from more than 20 nations killed when a Kenyan airliner crashed in the Cameroon jungle over the weekend. Many families, most of them African, are mourning their losses today.

In Iraq, six U.S. soldiers and an embedded reporter were killed Sunday by an IED explosion in the province of Diyala, northeast of Baghdad. The Russian news agency Itar-Tass reports the reporter killed was Russian news photographer Dmitry Chebotayev, who had worked with several news outlets.

But they were not the only ones killed in Iraq Sunday. Here is a report from McClatchy on others in Iraq who also died Sunday.

Dhiya Abu Mohammed ran to check on his son when he heard the booms of two car bombs resonate near his house in the Shiite neighborhood of Bayaa. Pools of blood covered the pavement in the marketplace and outside a bus station. Fruits, vegetables and body parts covered the road, and Abu Mohammed wept as he rushed to help the wounded into pickup trucks.

In one minibus, a mother and her two daughters were dead, the children still clutching their teddy bears. Sprawled on the road was a bleeding pregnant woman, shrapnel piercing her belly.

Chavez Has a Problem with Brain Power

Give a man a boatload of fish, and you feed him for a day ... or a few. But most of it will rot before he can make use of it. Give the man a computer, and he'll find a buyer for the fish, then organize an entire fishing operation for his village, order new boats, start a wiki where other fishers can share tips on the best fishing spots, and order tickets to Paris for a vacation from Travelocity.

Or something like that. The point being that if you're going to use your raw product efficiently, you need brain power and technology. The author of the libertarian Coyote Blog makes this point about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his recent decision to nationalize several more oil fields. While I find the accompanying critique of socialism a little simplistic and not entirely accurate, his point that it's all well and good to have lots of oil, but you need brains and technology to get it out of the ground, is a very real problem for Chavez. From last Thursday's Jamaica Gleaner:

While the state takeover was planned well ahead of time, the oil companies remain locked in a behind-the-scenes struggle with the government. Chavez says the state is taking a minimum 60 per cent stake in the Orinoco operations, but he is urging foreign companies to stay and help develop the fields. They have until June 26 to negotiate the terms.
The companies have leverage with Chavez because experts agree that Venezuela's state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, cannot transform the Orinoco's tar-like crude into marketable oil without their investment and experience.

With all the media attention that Chavez generates with his state takeovers and blunt comments about U.S. President George Bush, these kinds of details often get lost in the world's reaction. Chavez is not going to be able to make his Simon Bolivar-like agenda for Latin and South America a reality without a lot of help from the very people he says he despises.

12:11 PM ET | 05- 7-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

You Want Me to Take Off My Clothes and Do What?

Imagine asking someone to take off his or her clothes ... and not being arrested, sued or slapped. Now imagine convincing 20,000 people to take off their clothes in a public square for the sake of art.

Well, American artist Spencer Tunick, who has made a career out of asking large groups of people around the world to disrobe, would have been happy if only 7,000 people had come. But the final number of people who came to Mexico City's main square, the Zocalo, surprised even him. You can find several of the pictures he took here at the Los Angeles Times (no naughty bits, as Monty Python would say, or it's just too far away to see).

"Nudity is part of human life," said Liliana Velasco, 30, an anthropologist. "Being naked is being in the moment, and being naked in the Zocalo gives everyone a chance to celebrate our culture." ...
A few shouted for Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera to join them. Tunick had promised while negotiating for city permission that he would not include the cathedral in any of the photographs.

I find myself left with the same overwhelming question, however, that I've had when Tunick has done this in the past. Where the heck does everybody put their clothes while they are standing around naked? Do people just come to the photo shoot naked? I mean, is there a big pile of stuff? Imagine trying to find your shoes in that jumble. I only have six people in my house and I struggle each morning to find mine.

May 4, 2007

Petition Started for Egyptian Bloggers

On Thursday, we talked about the Egyptian government's arrest of bloggers representing both liberal and Islamist groups. Now, we see that Reporters Without Borders has an online petition for supporters to sign, asking the Egyptian government to release both liberal blogger Abdel Kareem Nabil Suleiman, better known by the pen name Kareem Amer, and Muslim Brotherhood blogger Abdel Moneim Mahmoud.

If you're interested in finding out more about the issue, visit here.

You don't want to be Dirk Nowitzki today

You could make a good case for Dirk Nowitzki being the Alex Rodriguez of basketball. Like the Yankees' slugger, the big German center for the Dallas Mavericks is an amazingly talented player. He will, in all likelihood, be the NBA's Most Valuable Player this year.

But none of that matters after Thursday's first-round loss to the Golden State Warriors, which eliminated the Mavericks (favored by almost everyone to win this year's championship) from this year's playoffs. One can only imagine what it was like to be in the company of the Mavs' overly excitable owner, Mark Cuban, last night -- there haven't been any new postings at his BlogMaverick site in a few days.

The Warriors are a good team and have always given the Mavs a hard time. But this loss is monumental in scale. The Mavs won 67 games during the regular season out of a possible 82. They dominated the league. The last time I can remember an upset of this size was 1971, when hockey's Big Bad Boston Bruins, led by Bobby Orr and Phil Esposito, broke every regular season scoring record there was, and then were ousted in the first round by the Montreal Canadiens.

And it will pour down on Nowitzki like a typhoon in the rain forest. And he knows it. There are posts all over MySpace, and on fan blogs that are saying that he basically stunk the place up and needs to go. And when NBA commissioner David Stern announces in about 10 days that the league's MVP is ... Dirk Nowitzki, people are going to demand the right to change their vote. Ouch.

Over at the True Hoop blog at ESPN, Henry Abbott offers a more nuanced assessment.

Dirk Nowitzki is what those people want. He's just as nice as people can be. He's honest. He does great, selfless things far from the limelight. And I am not one of those people who buys the notion that you can't be both nice off the court and a top competitor.
But Dirk Nowitzki, I fear, is about to be emasculated for, essentially, being a good person without a reliable way to beat long defenders who are much faster than him.

Like Rodriguez, Nowitzki is a guy you want to root for, you want to succeed. I hope it happens for him someday. I think it's probably a good thing he spends the off-seasons in Germany.

The slow-motion Supremes

Here's a statistic that made me look twice. The number of signed opinions reached by the U.S. Supreme Court so far this term -- 71 -- is the fewest since 1866, according to a calculation by the folks over at SCOTUSblog.

Now that is a long time ago.

And according to two interesting postings at the blog, which looks daily at the workings of the Supreme Court, it seems next year might be even slower. That, author David Stras writes, is amazing when you consider the "extremely large caseloads in the lower courts."

Stras examines a specific problem created by this low workload -- put in laymen's terms, during certain times of the year, the Supremes realize that they haven't booked enough cases to hear, and so rush a larger number of cases to be heard in a relatively expedited timeframe. This, Stras argues, creates a problem, "... arguably leading to less thorough presentations by counsel. For small firms and solo practitioners especially, an expedited briefing schedule can be crushing in terms of workload."

Stras based his article on work done by Tom Goldstein, also at SCOTUSBlog: "Analysis: The State of the Court -- May 2007 -- Part I." The articles are a bit long (they are written by lawyers, after all), but are still very readable. And they are fascinating looks at how the court deals, or doesn't deal, with deciding which cases to hear.

1:36 PM ET | 05- 4-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

A kinder, gentler nation again?

A new survey by the Pew Research Center shows a surge in support for America's neediest citizens. Also, support for government programs to help the poor has returned to levels not seen since the late '80s and early '90s, before the movement to curb welfare began. But what's most surprising about the surge in support is where a lot of it is coming from: political conservatives, Southern whites and older Americans.

In 1993, just a little more than a quarter of self-described conservatives agreed with the statement "The government should help more needy people even if it means going deeper into debt." According to Pew's research, the number of conservatives who now agree with that statement is 48 percent.

At the same time, the proportion of Americans who sympathize with the plight of the nation's poor also has increased since 1994, rising in virtual lockstep with changing views on the need to expand the social safety net. Whites in particular seem to have had a change of heart -- though that sentiment still fails to extend to a clear majority of whites: Today, 49% of whites say that the poor "have it hard," up from just 35% in 1994. The share of whites who say the poor "have it easy" because of government assistance programs has meanwhile dropped from 56% to 37%.
Taken together, these changes have pushed support for government assistance to the disadvantaged up to where it stood in the late 1980s, well before Republicans won control of Congress in 1994.

The Street Theater Athens blog (written by several residents of Athens, Ga.) also points to the fact that 73 percent of Americans now believe that under the Republican economic plan, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

USA Today Washington bureau chief Susan Page writes that this shift may be another factor that plays into the hands of the Democrats for the 2008 elections, along with other issues like the Iraq war, fatigue about the war on terror, etc.

But looked at from the other direction, it could also explain why Rudy Giuliani is doing so well in early Republican presidential polls. It would seem that Republicans are more open to a centrist (by GOP standards) candidate who would favor broader support for these kinds of aid programs.

There are still, of course, lots of conservatives who would view expanding aid programs with a real jaundiced-eye, not wanting to return to what they consider the nanny state. Witness today's posting in RedState that lists what it considers the tax-hiking activities of several of the Democratic governors either elected or re-elected in 2006.

11:24 AM ET | 05- 4-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Review of threats on Web sites, in letters, leads to protection for Obama

While no specific threats were made against Democratic presidential candidate and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, "a bipartisan panel of congressional leaders reviewed threats to Obama on Web sites and in letters before recommending special protection," The Chicago Tribune reports based on several congressional sources familiar with the situation.

The Tribune writes that Obama's team is reported to have initially resisted the offer of Secret Service protection for fear it would hinder his interaction with the large crowds that have gathered for his campaign appearances. Obama reportedly gave the OK, however, after friends and family expressed concern about his safety. Former GOP Secretary of State Colin Powell, for instance, cited his family's concerns about assassination when he decided not to run for president in 2000.

Obama had employed private guards. But two weeks ago, [Democratic Sen. Dick Durban of Illinois] told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada about the size of the crowds he had seen on the campaign trail with Obama. Durbin said he also showed Reid some unspecified material that added to his concern. He declined to characterize the material. Reid brought the concerns to the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service and a special congressional committee that reviews the need for special protection.
A congressional aide said the request for Secret Service protection was unanimously backed by Republican and Democratic congressional leaders. The aide said Reid made a vigorous argument for the detail when the advisory group met.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is the only other presidential candidate who receives Secret Service protection, a legacy of her role as first lady during her husband's presidency.

(A late edition to above: A friend e-mailed and pointed out that the recent mugging of former Senator Carol Moseley Braun in the same neighborhood that Obama lives in might also have played a small role in the decision to accept secret service protection.)

11:03 AM ET | 05- 4-2007 | permalink | e-mail post | trackbacks (0)

Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl ...

... but the Beatles were wrong, she doesn't change much day to day. And that may be part of the reason why Queen Elizabeth is not attracting the big crowds she did in her first few trips to the United States. (Witness the comments in NBC journalist Jim Long's postings on Twitter). I think this new lack of interest can be chalked up to overexposure in the 24/7 media universe - although, as this article from the Hampton Roads Daily Press points out, she may be more popular in the U.S. than in her native England.

H.R.H. (Her Royal Highness) and her husband, Prince Phillip, took a carriage ride Thursday through Colonial Williamsburg, Va., to mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of the first British settlement in what was then the "New World." Saturday, she's at Churchill Downs to watch the running of the Kentucky Derby, and then on to D.C. for some chow with President Bush, then home on Tuesday.

Several decades ago, the queen made a now well-known decision to open up the royal family more to the media. She understood that the institution of the British monarchy was in danger of becoming an anachronism in the late 20th century. In many ways, that decision has indeed kept the royal family in business.

But it's a double-edged sword. I'm not sure when the queen made this important decision in the '60s (really starting when she very publicly invested her son Charles as the Prince of Wales in 1969) if she envisioned the kind of pop-culture dominated, 24/7 media world that we now live in. (This was captured perfectly in the recent film "The Queen" about H.R.H.'s struggles with how to deal with the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in a car accident in 1996.)

So once upon a time, a visit from the queen was something special, as was a story about the inner workings of the royal family. These days, however, there is a veritible publishing industry centered around the monarchy, made up of books written by former employees, those who had relationships with members of the family, historians, gossip columnists, etc. They can hardly sneeze without it being reported by the British or world press. And this has drained much of that all-important sense of "specialness" from the royals. Now they just seem like another group of celebrities.

I've been fortunate enough to see or meet the queen five or six times over the years, as she frequently visited my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, in Canada. (I'm still a Canadian citizen, so technically, I'm still her subject). The hair is a little grayer, the hats look slightly different. But otherwise, she really is pretty much the same as the first time I saw her 35 years ago.

Student shooting in Keene, New Hampshire

Associated Press Radio reports that a student at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire, shot and wounded his roommate and then killed himself early Friday morning.

The shooting occurred on the last day of finals and two days before graduation. Many students had already left campus and others were unaware of the shooting Friday morning.
Police identified the dead student as Michael Dyke, 20, of Orford.

The wounded roommate, Jason Lillibridge, 20, of Connecticut, had a single gunshot wound to the buttocks. He was taken to Cheshire Medical Center where he was in fair condition, police said.

Dyke shot and killed himself as the police entered the apartment to investigate the report of a shooting. An autopsy is planned.

We'll have more updates today when details are available.

May 3, 2007

A Paris Hilton post

I promised myself when I started this job I would never, ever blog about Paris Hilton. They could stick hot pokers in my eyes, pull out my fingernails, make me watch an entire season of "The View" re-runs. I would not crack.

Crack. I didn't even make it past the blog's first day.

But this is just too good to pass up. The Associated Press is reporting that prosecutors in Los Angeles want Hilton jailed for 45 days for violating terms of her probation for an alcohol-related reckless driving conviction.

In documents filed Monday in Superior Court, prosecutors said they also want Hilton to stay away from alcohol for 90 days and wear a monitoring device that will chart whether she complies. And they are seeking to have her license suspended for an additional four months.

Oh, this is too good to be true -- she would have to wear a monitoring device to make sure she doesn't go clubbing. (What will Lindsay do? Maybe this is why Britney went back to performing.)

I realize we're looking at a certain amount of Schadenfreude here, but I don't care. This woman has taken up WAY more than her allotted 15 minutes of fame.

Is free speech only for those you agree with?

The Christian Science Monitor is looking at an issue that's starting to attract a lot of attention in the blogosphere -- the arrest of Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a popular blogger in Egypt. Mahmoud is just one of a number of bloggers from across the Egyptian political spectrum arrested by the government of Hosni Mubarak.

More attention to the case came after questions about equal treatment of bloggers were raised by Marc Lynch at Abu Aardvark in mid-April, and then picked up by Ethan Zuckerman in My heart's in Accra. In a post about "selective outrage," Lynch questioned why he hadn't seen Western bloggers and media pay as much attention to Islamist bloggers like Moneim who were arrested as to imprisoned liberal bloggers. "The issue," Lynch wrote, "is the persecution of youthful bloggers for their free expression of ideas and political activism" regardless of their political beliefs.

As Zuckerman points out, Moneim was active in the past supporting the rights, and protesting the arrests of, bloggers much more liberal than he is. He writes that the Muslim Brotherhood blogger has appeared with a liberal blogger "to highlight the problems of police brutality against activists in Egypt, and the two share a deep passion for the way technology can help enable social change." (A point also made in this minute-long YouTube video.)

Their point is that when Western bloggers only support activists whose views line up with their views, it reinforces the belief in the Arab world that democracy is only meant for the people who agree with a Western view of freedom.

Gary McGath, however, writes at The Blog of M'gath that Zuckerman misses the point. "There's no hypocrisy in agreeing that all bloggers have rights, but being selective about which ones deserve attention," he writes.

Here is more information on the campaign by bloggers in the Middle East, and increasingly in the West, to free Abdel Moneim Mahmoud.

Love to hear what you folks think about this one.

Obama gets Secret Service protection

The Associated Press is reporting that Democratic Sen. Barack Obama will receive Secret Service protection. It's the earliest ever that a presidential candidate has been given this security.

Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff authorized Obama's protection after consultations with the congressional advisory committee. Zahren would not provide details of what led to the extra security, but said, "I'm not aware it was based on any threat."

More details as we get them.

Guns and conservative positions

I enjoy reading Ed Morrissey over at Captain's Quarters. I find he's a thoughtful, interesting champion of conservative positions. (There are too many bloggers, conservative or liberal, who write like they are screaming at you all the time. After a while your ears just start to bleed.)

Anyway, as you may have heard, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (in response to the shootings in a "gun-free zone" at Virginia Tech) says he wants to allow people to carry concealed guns everywhere in Texas. And I do mean everywhere: schools, courthouses, supermarkets, hospitals, movie theaters, churches, Little League baseball games, bar mitzvahs, the bathroom, etc. Perry argues that this is the only way that you can ensure that people can be protected at all times from someone like Seung-hui Cho trying to take them out.

What a minute, Morrissey argues. While he's a big believer in gun rights, the captain (as he is called) thinks the governor has gone a little too far on this one.

This would make sense for state property. After all, the government of Texas owns it, and can set the rules as it sees fit. That would have applied to Virginia Tech as well, a public university, whose state created the gun-free zone that failed to deter Seung-hui Cho, the mass murderer who killed 32 unarmed people. If the people of Texas want to allow licensed carriers onto their public property with their firearms, more power to them.
However, the state of Texas does not have the right to impose that on private property owners. A bar, restaurant, church, or private school should be allowed to determine whether they want to allow guns on their own property. Churches, for instance, might have a religious objection to the use of firearms. Perry advocates the same argument that activists for smoking bans use -- that private businesses are a public accommodation, and that the safety of the public overrules the wishes of the property owners.

Morrissey gave his posting the title "An Unconservative Stand." But I don't know. One could argue his position is more like the true conservative one than Perry's. Perry's feels like more government intervention. Lots of folks disagree, however, as is evident from the lively debate in the comment section that follows Morrissey's original posting. Worth a read.

Can someone explain French politics to me, please?

This weekend's French presidential election keeps getting more interesting. But it's not the two main challengers who are pumping up the volume. It's the two guys who lost in the first round: the ultra-conservative Jean-Marie Le Pen and centrist François Bayrou. The two are stirring things up a few days before Sunday's vote, and it looks like it means trouble for conservative Nicolas Sarkozy, who won the first round of voting a couple of weeks ago.

First, Le Pen announced that he wanted his supporters to boycott Sunday's elections. Le Pen believes neither candidate deserves the backing of the 10.4 percent of French voters who supported him in the initial round. Well, based on Le Pen's far-right positions, none of these folks were going to vote for Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal, even with a gun to their têtes, so it's really a whack at Sarkozy.

And then Bayrou (who attracted a sizeable 18 percent first-round vote) announced that while he wasn't going to back any candidate, he would not vote for Sarkozy because his conservative positions would be bad for France's "social fabric."

Don't two negatives make a positive? He's not supporting anyone, but he's also not voting for Sarkozy ... which would seem to say to me, with only two candidates running, he will vote for Royal. Do politicians really think people don't notice this stuff?

Anyway, as Michael Stickings wrote over at The Moderate Voice, the Le Pen announcement was trouble enough for Sarkozy. Now, with Bayrou's non-support/support of Royal, he might be in real trouble. It all means that Sunday's vote will be a real squeaker.

No religion with your stamps

This story sort of sneaked into the news, then out again last week, but I wanted to bring it back because of the church-state issues it raises.

Last week in Hartford, Conn., U.S. District Judge Dominic J. Squatrito ruled that God and stamps do not mix in a case that involved a church-run post office. Squatrito also told the Postal Service that the 5,200 facilities run by contractors "cannot promote religion through pamphlets, displays or any other materials." And he wants the Postal Service to monitor these contractors to make sure they play by the rules.

The Associated Press reports that the suit was originally brought by Bertram Cooper, a Jewish Navy veteran of World War II and the Korean War. In 2003, he sued the Postal Service and the Full Gospel Interdenominational Church, which operates the Sincerely Yours Inc. post office on Main Street in downtown Manchester.

As the Hartford Courant reports:

The religious displays "put the church's beliefs front and center, out for the public to see, endorsing the church's form of Christianity and seeking outsiders to join the church in its mission," U.S. District Court Judge Dominic J. Squatrito wrote in a decision handed down last week. The displays "violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment," [he] wrote.

Squatrito said there was nothing wrong with the store exhibiting religious displays -- but that it can't do that while it is carrying out its duties under contract with the Postal Service. While the Postal Service deal allows contractors to conduct their own businesses along with postal offerings, they have to be clearly separated from each other. Squatrito said the two were too intertwined at Sincerely Yours.

The Postal Service has argued that it was obvious from signs in Sincerely Yours that the store wasn't an official post office and that no postal employees worked there, so the church running the store wasn't doing anything wrong. Officials at the Postal Service and with the church said they are considering an appeal.

Hmm. I talked with some reporters who cover church-state issues and they tell me that this will be a tough one for the Postal Service to win. That could mean a bit of an upheaval for those 5,200 contractors, depending on how closely they mash up their stamps with their regular businesses. We'll keep an eye on this one to see where it goes.

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