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Wow - I never thought I'd live to see marsupial justice in an American venue...

Opening arguments get underway in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, against Salim Ahmed Hamdan -- Osama bin Laden's driver -- in what is the first U.S. war crimes trial since World War II. But Hamdan faces a lifetime behind bars if convicted or acquitted. He's deemed an enemy combatant, which the Bush administration says means he can be held indefinitely.

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:09 /Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Wow. At least he gets the fact that TR was a conservative: in fact, he orchestrated the The Triumph of Conservatism, and altered the American political landscape in ways we're still uncovering. McCain has adopted a very dangerous role model indeed.

In an interview, Senator John McCain called for a government that is frugal but more active than many conservatives might prefer.

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 06:47 /Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

I've blogged about this for years - how can anyone still pretend we have a "free market" when government (at all levels) is constantly skewing the rules and stacking the deck?

The poop is hitting the fan over tax breaks given to ratings giant Nielsen Co., which pocketed millions in Florida jobs-creation tax concessions but has turned around and dismissed hundreds of local workers after inking a $1.2B outsourcing deal with Tata Consultancy Services of Mumbai. Lou Dobbs is on the case. Lou may go even more ballistic once he sees the Nielsen-Tata pact, which assures Nielsen that OT worries are a thing of the past ('there shall be no additional charge for overtime work'), allows Nielsen to have unsatisfactory Tata hires replaced within 4 weeks of starting with no charge for the original or re-performed work, gives Nielsen up to 6 man-weeks of free labor when a Tata worker is replaced, and allows Nielsen to make 'any TCS Resource' disappear with no more than 5 days notice if their presence 'is not in the best interests of Nielsen.' Nielsen execs have launched a PR counter-attack, pledging not to bully 85 year-old ladies in future layoffs. In a Letter to the Citizens, Nielsen CEO David L. Calhoun explained that Tata won a 'rigorous competition' to get the job, failing to mention that Tata was also tapped by Nielsen EVP Mitchell Habib in his CIO roles at both GE and Citigroup.

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 07:03 /Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Well, this shouldn't be too tough, seeing as how we'll almost certainly run out of fossil fuels long before then ...

Leading industrial nations have endorsed halving world emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050, edging forward in the battle against global warming but stopping short of tough, nearer-term targets.

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:30 /Politics | 1 writeback | permanent link

It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government.
  -- Thomas Paine

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:19 /Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Throw them druggies in jail! We can't have people increasing their feelings of happiness and well being, now can we?

In a follow-up to research showing that psilocybin, a substance contained in "sacred mushrooms," produces substantial spiritual effects, a Johns Hopkins team reports that those beneficial effects appear to last more than a year.

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:29 /Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Pretty transparent attempt at creating a state controlled cartel.

In some shocking news out of Texas, PC repair will now require a PI License. Surely this stands to have a substantial impact on small repair shops around the state if upheld. Never fear, however, as the first counter-suit has already been filed.

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:26 /Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

The most amazing thing about this story is that the impersonator still hasn't been charged with any crime!

A man who pretended to be a federal agent has stirred a legal and political controversy in a small Missouri town.

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 06:16 /Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Wasn't Obama a professor of Constitutional law at one point? He should know better ...

AP - Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans that would expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and — in a move sure to cause controversy — support their ability to hire and fire based on faith.

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:39 /Politics | 3 writebacks | permanent link

I do not understand the proposed free trade agreement with Columbia - what, exactly, is there to agree on?

Right now, we impose no duties or tariffs on Columbian goods entering the US, but Columbia does impose tariffs on US goods entering Columbia. The "agreement" would end that and let our goods in duty free. The government even has a ticker up on an export website showing the amount of tariff we've been charged since the agreement was signed (but not yet ratified).

What's the need for an "agreement"? If they're charging us tariffs on our imports, why don't we simply charge a reciprocal tariff on theirs? If they collect a dollar for every bushel of wheat we send them, why don't we collect a dollar for every bushel of coffee they send us? Is this "free trade"? Why have we put up with it?

It seems to me that if Columbia wants free trade with the US, and they allegedly do, then all they have to do is remove their tariffs. No "agreement" required.

AP - McCain was to arrive in Cartagena, Colombia, on Tuesday and meet with President Alvaro Uribe and several cabinet ministers. McCain also is a strong supporter of a proposed free-trade agreement with Colombia that is stalled in Congress.

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 06:32 /Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

We have our problems, China has theirs. And in a lot of ways, theirs are potentially worse.

The one-child policy was instituted in an attempt to hamper the wild growth of the Chinese population. But, in the process of plugging one hole, the government may have left another open. The coming boom in restless young men promises to overhaul Chinese society in some potentially scary ways.

(link) [The New Republic]

via MyAppleMenu:Reader

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 07:50 /Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

In one of the worst decisions it ever handed down, the Dred Scott case in 1856, the Supreme Court nonetheless provided a rather clear enumeration of the rights that citizens possess. It's not just the right to bear arms that's being eroded as this passage from the opinion shows:

More especially, it cannot be believed that the large slaveholding States regarded them as included in the word citizens, or would have consented to a Constitution which might compel them to receive them in that character from another State. For if they were so received, and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the operation of the special laws and from the police regulations which they considered to be necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.

The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling embraced the view that the Second Amendment protects the personal right to own a gun, and seemed certain to usher in litigation around the U.S.

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:37 /Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

I wonder how much the judge in the tobacco case raked in...???

AP - Richard "Dickie" Scruggs, a prominent attorney who took on tobacco, asbestos and insurance companies, was scheduled to be sentenced Friday for his role in a high-profile judicial bribery case.

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:28 /Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

Ya don't say? Is "Samuel Bodman" just an alias for that infamous superhero, Captain Obvious?

Oil prices are hitting record highs because production has not kept pace with increasing demands, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told reporters Saturday.

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 14:01 /Politics | 0 writebacks | permanent link

My friend James over at within the crainium posted a link to an interesting article at the New York Times by Donald MacNeil taking on the doom and gloom "End of the World" thinkers and arguing that we are approaching an economic "singularity" that will, somehow, save us from ourselves and obviate the problems caused by the depletion of fossil fuels and overpopulation. Exactly what this singularity is and how it will work he doesn't say, and indeed he cannot say, because if he could it wouldn't be a singularity, but his optimism almost wells through the page like a newly struck Saudi oil gusher.

Unfortunately, his article (and the articles he links in support of his premise) are filled with so much fiction and misunderstanding of history as to make the whole premise untenable. Let's take a closer look, shall we?

He starts off with a straw man, trotting out Thomas Malthus and his early 19th century arguments on population and agriculture, and essentially saying "See, this fellow was wrong two hundred years ago when he predicted gloom and doom, therefore those who predict the same today are wrong as well." Malthus was wrong, and discredited, for failing to see the rise of the Industrial Revolution, therefore anyone who predicts disaster today must be failing to see the rise of ... what? Who knows?

Funny thing - I haven't read the name "Malthus" in any of the reading I've done of late on "Peak Oil", even on the most doom laden sites. Perhaps I've merely missed it, but that doesn't make the argument any less specious: should I be pessimistic about the future because so many utopian visions have been disproven? The fact that some person or group was wrong in the past when pontificating about a general premise does not mean that all persons/groups holding forth today on the same topic are necessarily wrong (or right). It's a footnote, not an argument.

Following his trip down memory lane to the early ninetheenth century, Mr. MacNeil proceeds to trot out another modern bogeyman: animal agriculture. This is a subject I know a little bit about:

The whole world has never come close to outpacing its ability to produce food. Right now, there is enough grain grown on earth to feed 10 billion vegetarians, said Joel E. Cohen, professor of populations at Rockefeller University and the author of “How Many People Can the Earth Support?” But much of it is being fed to cattle, the S.U.V.’s of the protein world, which are in turn guzzled by the world’s wealthy.

There are a number of problems with this: first off, it's only in the US and other "modern" agricultural economies that cattle are fed grain - in the rest of the world they graze over non-productive land eating the grasses and weeds that can grow there. The reason we feed cattle grain here is speed - it takes much less time to finish a bovine for slaughter on corn than it does on grass - about half the time, in fact.

Secondly, even vegetarians require protein, and cereal grains aren't exactly a good source of that particular nutrient. Which means more beans and other legumes, which are considerably more intensive to grow that the cereals (which are grasses). Which cuts down on the amount of possible production.

But the most egregious error is one of economics - no body can serious dispute that we can't grow enough to feed the current population - obviously, the current population is being fed (albeit many at a subsistence level). The real problem is distribution. And that requires energy. Lots of it.

In fact, the whole "Green Revolution" requires energy - a subject that Mr. MacNeil's article seems to be studiously avoiding. The fertilizers, tractors, reapers and technology that made the productive explosion in agriculture possible absolutely depend on cheap energy, and in the case of fertilizers, oil. As if to underscore his ignorance of this basic fact, the word "energy" never appears in MacNeil's article at all!

In another article from the Times, this one by John Tierney, also linked by James (in fact, it was the leader link in his blog post), MacNeil's piece is treated as gospel, and then the real fun begins. We're off to the Singularity.

This is Ray Kurzweil's vision, a future in which no one dies, because everyone is uploaded to a computer. Douglas R. Hofstadter, author of the AI classic Godel, Escher, Bach has described Kurzweil’s work as “if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can't possibly figure out what's good or bad. It's an intimate mixture of rubbish and good ideas, and it's very hard to disentangle the two."

Exactly what this "singularity"has to do with economics is not made clear. In fact, Tierney ignores energy as well, and the other article he cites only mentions it once:

The population of smart machines would explode even faster than the economy. So even though total wealth would increase very rapidly, wealth per machine would fall rapidly. If these smart machines are considered “people,” then most people would be machines, and per-person wealth and wages would quickly fall to machine-subsistence levels, which would be far below human-subsistence levels. Salaries would probably be just high enough to cover the rent on a tiny body, a few cubic centimeters of space, the odd spare part, a few watts of energy and heat dumping, and a Net connection.

This is the ostrich approach to peak oil and fossil fuel depletion: if we pretend it doesn't exist, perhaps it'll just go away and we can have all the energy we need to build our immortal machines. And these are the guys who think Malthus was nuts? I want some of whatever they've been smoking.

This whole "everything will come up roses because the human race is so incredibly inventive" strikes me as nothing more than the other side of the "we're all doomed because the human race is so greedy and stupid" coin. If you want a realistic picture, try standing the coin on edge: yes, we're inventive, but our inventiveness has never saved us from major dislocations and disruptions. Yes, we're greedy and arrogant, but that's never stopped us from being humane and compassionate.

The world will not end in twenty years time. But we're not going to dematerialize into uploaded bliss ninnys either. And a little more realism would go a long way towards making the transitions we're going to have to make as painless as possible.

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 08:52 /Politics | 1 writeback | permanent link