Tuesday April 27
Full Attention
Just days after being indicted on a second set of charges for child molestation, Michael Jackson fired high-profile criminal defense attorney Mark Geragos, saying "it is imperative that I have the full attention of those who are representing me."
Well, it's also imperative that lawyers have clients who know what's going on, who don't give psychotic interviews to the press, and who don't sleep with adolescent kids in their beds. But no one can control these super celebrities. They live in another world. For this, Jacko is going to pay a real price, soon.
Posted by glenn at Out Damn Spot
The atmospheric storms on the planet Jupiter are changing over time, so that the giant gas planet is beginning to lose its spots. While the biggest anticyclone, known as the "Great Red Spot" has not yet been affected, scientists now believe it's only a matter of time. Holy Gallileo!
Monday April 26
A Giant Mess
On Saturday the New York Giants orchestrated a real coup in the NFL draft -- one of "the strangest events in NFL draft history" -- trading up for Eli Manning of Mississippi, rated as perhaps the best quarterback prospect to come out of college in the past decade. Then today they told Kerri Collins to take a hike. [Newsday.com].
Collins led the Giants as far as they could go with him, which, it ought to be remembered, was as far as the franchise had been in a long, long time. He is the only QB to have taken all the snaps for any NFL team over three+ seasons and produced some of the best passing stats in the Giants history. (Collins is second on the team's career list in completions (1,447) and third in attempts (2,473) and passing yards (16,875). He is fifth with 81 touchdown passes. He led the Giants to the 2000 NFC Championship, to the team's first SuperBowl in more than 10 years, and a 2002 NFC Wild Card Playoff slot. He started 67 consecutive games, two shy of Fran Tarkenton's team record, before an ankle injury forced him to miss the final three games of the 2003 season.)
With this record, Collins deserves better than he's gotten from the Giants. And Eli needs a year or two of seasoning, like any rookie QB, before he can possibly take the reins. As good as the bold move for Manning was, releasing Collins is a bad omen.
Now the real problem is the salary cap. As Mark Maske explains in the Washington Post:
So watch out, Giant fans, it looks like a rocky start to 2004 already.
Saturday April 24
JPEGs and Laches
Yesterday a small computer company said that it holds a patent on the JPEG compression format used widely for Web-based images. Forgent Networks, which acquired Compression Labs in 1997, sued 31 major computer manuacturers for patent infringement, claiming they all violate a 1987 patent issued to Compression.
This is absurd. Neither Forgent nor Compression invented the JPEG image compression format. The technology (short for Joint Photographic Experts Group, the group which developed it) is in the public domain and is one of two standards for Web graphics. Having waited seven years -- and a full 17 years after the patent was issued -- before asserting any claim of infringement, it seems ludicrous that Forgent should be able to step in at the last moment to muck everything up.
Under U.S. law, the equitable doctrine of laches holds that rights can be waived if not asserted promptly. (Defined as "neglecting to do what should or could have been done to assert a claim or right for an unreasonable and unjustified time causing disadvantage to another.") Simply put, if you "sit on your rights," you lose them. It' also possible that the Federal Trade Commission may find that Compression misled the Intenet task force that originally standardized JPEG by not revealing its patent claims, which could force open licensing as a remedy for anticompeitive patent misuse in the standards process.
But of course, it will probably turn out to be less expensive for Apple, Adobe, Dell and the other defendants to settle than to take this case to its logical conclusion. Sony has already paid $16 million in licensing fees. So little Forgent will profit handsomely from an old patent they inadvertently discovered lying around, and everyone who uses the Web will pay a little more as a result.
Friday April 23
Photos of Coffins
A Pentagon contractor who captured the somber moment when flag-draped coffins of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq were loaded onto a military transport plane, for the final trip home, has been fired for taking the photographs. U.S. Sanitizes Stain of Death [Toronto Star].
It's bad enough that the government wants Americans to bear the burden of war -- just out of sight, by banning photos of returning bodies -- but to cap it all off DoD released more than 300 coffin photos in a Freedom of Information Act case. So since the photos are already in the public domain, why is Rumsfeld going ape over this one photographer?
Wednesday April 21
The End of Males?
Last year I blogged about the incredible shrinking Y chromosome. Now genetic researchers have created a female mouse with the genetic material from two mothers. But Mr. Big from Sex and the City, I think, proves that males are needed more than ever...perhaps just not for reproduction any more.
Tuesday April 20
Cell Phone Holding Tank
What a great and simple idea. At Baltimore-Washington Airport, just north of where I live, officials have put together a 50-acre parking lot where motorists can await wireless calls from arrivng passengers. This avoids driving in circles around the airport or wasting time and money on leaving one's car. BWI 'Cell Phone Lot' to Untangle Traffic.
Now all we need is a similar holding lot for all the terrorists, the TSA inspectors, the federal air marshals and the rude flight attendants, and we would be all set. Not!
Conning London
Kevin Spacey, who in my opinion is absolutely one of the best actors of the last decade, has recanted his claim of being mugged in a London park, admitting he was conned by a teenager into giving up his wireless phone. [SunTimes.com].
So Kevin, what in heaven's name are you doing walking a dog at 4:30 a.m. in Kensington Park? And how can you injure yourself by "tripping over Mini, [your] Jack Russell terrier"? Even the London tabloids are being somewhat restrained in lambasting this incredible story, saying that visting Kensington in the wee hours is a "slightly eccentric thing to do." Others point out that Spacey, who won Oscars for his work in The Usual Suspects and American Beauty, has always denied rumours that he is gay.
Frankly, I don't care either way. Just get your butt back to bed until the sun comes up, Kevin, and no more cavorting with the London pigeons in the middle of the night.
Wednesday April 14
Last Man Standing
There have been a lot of political entries in this blog over the past few weeks. And I wrote well before President Bush's news conference last night that someone should stand up and acccept responsibility, Bay of Pigs style, for 9/11 preparation and the failure of pre-Iraq war intelligence.
Yet lest you think I am only a leftie liberal-type, read some of my posts from a year ago concluding that the American military can and should kick ass in Iraq. Things change, but the Vietnam analogy some have used is way, way premature and not helpful. Witness the cartoon below (click to enlarge).
Tuesday April 13
No News Conference
The president who has held fewer news conferences than any other president in the modern era goes on TV tonight to defend his Administration's handling of the Iraq reconstruction and the 9/11 attacks. Bush to Address Media Amid Iraq, Terrorism Scrutiny [CNN.com]. High stakes politics here.
Monday April 12
Imminence Defined
Imminence is everything in American politics. President Bush dismissed the August 2001 PDB from his ranch in Crawford, Texas today because "[t]here was nothing there that said, you know, 'There's an imminent attack.'" [CNN.com]. Likewise, six weeks ago CIA director George Tenet defended his agency against charges that its intelligence on Iraqi WMDs was faulty by saying that the CIA never concluded the threat from Saddam Hussein was "imminent."
Of course, most people assume that imminent, as used in these quotes, means "immediate." But the dictionary says that the word has a secondary meaning, namely "full of danger; threatening; menacing; perilous." Both Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein surely meet that definition. So any way one cuts it, the sad fact is that politicians are playing word games with the security of America.
Nothing new there, unfortunately.
Take That, Monkey!
In the feel-good story of the season, golfer Phil Mickelson shot a 31 on the back nine at Augusta National and sank a 20-foot birdie putt on the last hole to win the Masters. Leftie Mickelson had become almost a caricature of himself over the past few seasons, marked by 10 years of exasperatingly close -- but never winning -- finishes in golf's major championships. But yesterday the smile on his face never wavered and it was a look of peace, presence and confidence which he brought with him down the 18th fairway, along with five birdies in the last seven holes. Ernie Ells, who has won three majors and whose two magnificent eagles paced the afternoon, properly said that "Phil deserved this one. He won it. He didn't lose it like some of his other ones."
Way to go, Phil. Yours truly has never been a fan, but even I was cheering for you yesterday.
Sunday April 11
The Fact Sheet
It's interesting that after refusing for two years to release the PDB from August 2001 warning that Osama bin Laden was "determined to attack in the U.S.," the White House yesterday made the document public along with a "fact sheet" -- "a written rebuttal twice as long as the document itself." It's clear, as President Bush and Condi Rice insist, that the brieifing memo does not present a "specific threat" about flying aircraft into the World Trade Center. But it does provide a serious warning that Al Qaeda was already operating in the United States and in Summer 2001 was engaged in suspicious activities suggesting preparations for highjackings.
What I don't understand, frankly, is why the Administration so often takes radical, unsupportable positions from which it is forced to backslide so quickly. Just last Thursday Rice said the PDB was "historical" only. That's simply not true. Now the Republic members of the 9/11 Commission are forced to argue that the PDB was not a "smoking gun" for the Al Qaeda attacks. That's also correct, but it's a far cry different from the spin of just days ago.
This is the kind of disinformation that led to the infamous "credibility gap" which doomed the presidency of Lyndon Johnson in 1968. How could we have come from "mission accomplished" to the quagmire of Falujah in just one year? If you talk straight to the American people they will understand and support their government. If you dissemble, they will make you pay the consequences. The Bushies need to decide if they will trust their own citizenry with the truth.
Friday April 9
The Real Political Risk
Well, Condi got rave reviews in the press, which reflects the fact that television is a medium in which how you look is more important than what you say. But the real political risk of the 9/11 Commission was unrecognized, and is far greater than the "rebut Dick Clarke" objective Rice appears to have achieved.
As Spencer Ackerman writes for the New Republic:
You can see this in arch-Republican Fred Fielding's observation to Rice that he did not see that the so-called "strutural" reforms the Bush Administration has accomplished to date -- principally the Department of Homeland Security -- are anywhere near enough. So even if the 9/11 Commission does not concude that Bush was asleep at the switch, he's got a lot of exposure here.
Shock Jocks
The post-Janet Jackson, pseudo-moralistic FCC is now fining Clear Channel Communications some $500,000 for carrying the Howard Stern show, on grounds of indecency. Clear Channel Appeases Radical Right [morons.org]. This is such crap. We're not talking even George Carlin's "Seven Dirty Words" here, which in the late 1970s was the basis on which the Supreme Court upheld indecency regulation in broadcasting, grounded in fear of exposure to children.
But today, with hundreds of cable and radio channels, kids are all hooked on Nickelodeon and all a listener has to do is use the remote to never be offended.
There's no reason today even for public airwaves to be regulated to the lowest (or highest) common demoninator of decency. If you don't like Howard Stern -- and I personally can't stand his schtick -- don't tune in!!
Thursday April 8
Battle Stations
Another observation about Condoleezza Rice's performance today. All the media outlets quoted her scripted line that Al Qaeda was at war with America before 9/11, but "we were not at war with them." No one seems to have noticed that, in defending President Bush's refusal to hold what Dick Clarke called a "principals" meeting (Cabinet secretaries and department heads) on terrorism, Rice contradicted herself, saying "the president of the United States had us at battle stations" prior to 9/11.
And the president of the United States had us at battle stations during this period of time. He expected his secretary of state to be locking down embassies. He expected his secretary of defense to be providing force protection. . . . He expected his FBI director to be tasking his agents and getting people out there. But I think we've created a kind of false impression -- or a not quite correct impression -- of how one does this in the threat period.
(Check out the full transcript yourself and see.)
If we weren't at war, something everyone knows is true, how could the White House have been at "battle stations" in Summer 2001? You can't have it both ways, Condi. Either there was no "actionable intelligence" of "specific threats" -- thus justifing no increased security steps -- or the country was on high alert and sent to battle stations. But if the latter is true, it means the "threat spike" in May-July was serious and specific enough to act. Problem is, nothing was done. As one 9/11 Commission member pointed out today, the White House issued such a vague "alert" that the heads of FAA, Transportation and the FBI didn't even know about it before the World Trade Centers went down!!
Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S.
That's the title of a provocative memo to President Bush from the CIA on August 6, 2001. National Security Advisor Condi Rice testified today that this "PDB" (President's Daily Briefing) "was not a "specific threat" to the United States, but rather an historical document only.
I don't believe that. If there was nothing embarassing about this document, the Bush Administration would not be opposed to declassifying it so the public can know what the president knew. Let's see. Numerous young, well-funded arabs taking flight training for commercial airliners; "sleeper" Al Qaeda cells operating in the United States; a "huge spike" in intelligence "chatter" in Summer 2001 indicating that something "extraordinary" was being planned by bin Laden; and the well-known "millennium plot," folied at the last minute, to blow up Los Angeles International Airport.
This was not a failure of intelligence, it was a failure of imagination and commitment. Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich -- really strange bedfellows -- collectively warned in early 2001 that "a direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely." No one in the White House cared. Yes, Al Qaeda was innovative in its use of commercial aircraft as missiles. But we pay these folks in government to think big thoughts, and all they could imagine was star wars, nuclear proliferation and assaults on U.S. embassies -- all stuff based on past patterns.
Rice's rationale for not acting before 9/11 is that the president was "tired of swatting flies." But as former Sen. Bob Kerrey asked, what flies had he swatted before 9/11? "We only swatted a fly once on the 20th of August 1998. We didn't swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he be tired?" Clinton at least tried to kill bin Laden with cruise missiles. Bush had done nothing, not a single swat.
Wednesday April 7
Rush Limbaugh and the ACLU
So Rush Limbaugh -- fighting a legal and poltical battle against Florida prosecutors investigating him for money laundering and doctor shopping in connection with his addiction to painkillers -- argues to an appellate court today that the government's seizure of his medial records violates his 4th Amendment constitutional right to privacy. And liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union are taking his side. (You can watch the hearing on his Web site, too.)
Thank goodness for those card-carrying ACLU pinkos when you need them, huh, Rush? Roy Black, Limbaugh's lawyer, says these are not strange bedfellows because the case is not political. Oh, but it is, it is. We've got the most prominent conservative media pundit relying on those he and his right-wing colleagues have lambasted repeatedly in the past to defend his own rights. It's entirely political; just that politics looks a little different when you are staring at a set of handcuffs and criminal prosecution. As the ACLU itself boasts, it:
Yeah, this is not a political case!! Right.
Dissent and Regime Change
A top U.S. general in Iraq vowed on Wednesday to "destroy" a Shiite militia led by wanted radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr that has launched a wave of attacks against coalition forces in southern cities. "We will attack to destroy the al-Mahdi Army," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters. "Those attacks will be deliberate, precise and they will be successful." [USAToday.com].
This could be a very serious escalation of the occupation resistance and a terrible long-term blunder. How is it possible to foster democracy in Iraq if the U.S. "destroys" dissenters, especially those who oppose the occupation itself? This is the kind of stuff that gives guerrillas the political advantage. And since insurgents don't need to defeat the occupiers in order to win, how America responds to al-Sadr may well dictate whether we get out of Iraq as scheduled on June 30 and whether the whole thing turns into the sort of quagmire that some have predicted.
Now Rush Limbaugh replies that
Calling an indigenous resistance to foreign occupation -- which is what al-Sadr, a leading Shia cleric, represents -- "terrorists of the world" is precisely the problem. We're lumping all Muslims together and fomenting the very sort of hatred that began so long ago with America's installation by coup d'etat, and long support for, the brutal dictatorship of the Shah of Iran. That blunder, termed by Business Week "regime change that backfired," launched the Iranian revolution of 1979, defeated Jimmy Carter and undermined American international prestige for a decade or more. We're still suffering the consequences.
George Will actually got it right.
So America is the new Napoleonic empire? That's not what I want our country to be, and certainly not how Jefferson, Wilson, Roosevelt (T.R. or Franklin) or even Ronald Reagan believed the U.S. should lead the world.
Tuesday April 6
Flush the Ducts
This is just too good to resist. According to a recent research study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, frequent ejaculation helps to decrease a man's chances of developing prostate cancer. [MSNBC.com]. So if your woman isn't giving you any......now there's a health reason for whacking off.
Of course, other stories pointed out that "on average, the men overall had four to seven ejaculations a month." And you thought men were obsessed with sex? That's a pittance. We're talking basically once a week, like church. Let's get with it, boys!!
Screw Pravda
Pravda.ru, the old Soviet mouthpiece, is running an online story titled Exposing Bush the Liar, the Mass Murderer, the War Criminal. There, Timothy Barncoft-Hinchey (a Brit) writes that in Iraq, George Bush "hijacked [his] country, democracy and the world on a murderous ecstasy of assassination and destruction, just because of corporate greed."
What a fertile imagination. While it is true that the Bush Administration has given many Iraqi reconstruction contracts to supportive companies like Haliburton, there's no evidence at all that America started the War in Iraq as a commercial enterprise. Indeed, note that the old Islamist complaint that the West really wants to nationalize arabic oil wealth has proven totally false! And as far as a "mass murderer," come on, whatever the level of civilian casualties, not even the Iraqis are saying that the U.S. has intentionally targeted large civilian populations or committed genocide.
The American political right labels Democrats all the time as soft on defense and not willing to "stand up for America." Well, on these scurrilous Pravda charges, all Americans should agree that we all hang together. The United States may sometimes do bad things internationally, but it does not and has not engaged in anything like the crimes against humanity that Saddam Hussein launched against his own people. Pravda's complaints sound like Adolph Hitler charging that America ran the concentration camps. Something only psychopaths could seriously believe.
Monday April 5
Clinton Mastery
Look, I think Bill Clinton was bascially an unprincipled opportunist, but as a pure politican he exhibited a mastery of connecting with people and articulating basic themes that was unequaled in the 1990s. A great recent example is his speech last month at the Democratic Unity Dinner in Washington, praising John Kerry.
So now they say, you all can't vote for John Kerry. He's too liberal and he won't stand up for America. Well this is what I have to say about their cartoon charges. First of all, how do you define liberal? All I know is when I tried to reform the welfare system we tried to cut the roles by more than 50 percent. We had the lowest welfare roles in over 30 years and John Kerry voted for it, and spoke for it, and stood for it.
John McCain voted against several defense budgets when Al and I were in the White House. No one ever accused John McCain of compromising the security of America. Get off my back. That's another one of those bogus ads that they can't wait to run because they don't want people to think.
Now, here's what I know about John Kerry. In the Vietnam era which marked us all, most young men, including the President, the Vice President, and me, most of us should've gone to Vietnam and didn't go. And John Kerry said, send me.
Then when it was all over and it was time to heal up and normalize relations with Vietnam, if would could get an accounting, a full accounting of all of our POWs and MIAs and we needed somebody who's been there to stand up and take a leadership role, John Kerry said, send me.
I don't know whether Kerry ever really said "send me," but this is compelling political stuff. Too bad that the current Democratic presidential nominee can't hold a candle to Clinton on that score.
Prosecutorial Leverage Unchecked
As if it were not bad enough that United States proescutors have repeatedly tried to extend U.S. law extraterritorially to online casinos operating offshore, now it appears they are going after American businesses, like Google and Yahoo!, that sell ads to these foreign entities. Web Engines Plan to End Online Ads for Gambling [nytimes.com]. The theory is that, by accepting advertising money, the Internet search providers are "aiding and abetting" gambling.
But then how to distinguish folks who are really assisting a criminal enterprise from those who are just selling ordinary products? Should the company that sells computers, office supplies or toilet paper to offshore casinos also be deemed to "aid" allegedly unlawful gambling? When there's no rational way to draw such lines, all that is left is the naked exercise of power. The U.S. Constitution used to have something to say about that.
Sunday April 4
The Slow Grind of the Law
Reacting to Sun's $1.6 billion settlement of its antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, some observers believe that Silicon Valley has given up trying to constraing pedatory conduct by Gates & Co. "After two decades of inflamed criticism, many here in the technology sector have come to accept the slowly acquired reality that the legal system can do little to resolve their quarrel with Microsoft," summarizes John Markoff in the New York Times. More on point is this commentary by Alan Saracevic in the San Francisco Chronicle: "Don't kid yourself. These compassionate overtures from Microsoft are signs of benevolent dictatorship. The boys up in Redmond have won the war. Now they're helping the Germans rebuild Berlin."
Mark these words. We haven't seen the end of Microsoft's antitrust battles. It took the government 50 years and three antitrust lawsuits to constrain the power of -- and finally dismantle -- the Bell System. Yes, the law moves slowly. But like the Mounties, they always get their man in the end.
Hey Einstein!
I've been reading The Fabric of the Cosmos, by Brian Greene, an excellent overview of the advances made in modern theoretical physics over the past 50 years. All of which actually started earlier, when Einstein proved that gravity travels at the speed of light by warping the spacetime continuum, debunking Newton. (Both of whom had autism, interestingly.)
And thus my amazement at a story in today's BBC News about a long-delayed gravity probe to be deployed by NASA with the caption: "Einstein's theories about space have not been proved." Now, if that's not bad enough -- experiments decades ago proved Einstein right by measuring warping of light by the sun during solar eclipses -- but the story ran right next to a sidebar that listed other BBC articles about Einstein. And the most recent one, titled "Einstein Proved Right on Gravity," reports that "The speed of gravity has been measured for the first time, revealing that it does indeed travel at the speed of light. It means that Einstein's General Theory of Relativity has passed yet another test with flying colours."
This is far worse than an inability to master fact checking, it's plain idiotic. A writer at least has to have a basic understanding of the subject in order to write an intelligent story. The lesson must be never to accept scientific stories in the general media. But since we get political, international and business news from these same, highly respected but plainly disfunctional journalistic yo-yos, perish the thought how they are probably screwing that up blood well too.
Saturday April 3
Right Principles
Left and right are political labels used more often to demean character than to illuminate public policy. Take this cogent insight from Lee at Right Thinking From the Left Coast.
You can agree with Lee, as I do, without being a right-wing conservative. Sadly, the lack of principles in American politics today transcends the blue-red divide. They're all a bunch of hacks.
Oddly Inept
The Bush Administration's handling of the bipartisan Commission investigating the 9/11 tragedy grows worse -- and more strangely self-destructive -- with each passing day. Following its earlier attempts to withhold documents from the panel and then to deny its members vital testimony, it has now been reported that President Bush's staff has been withholding thousands of pages of Clinton Administration papers as well.
Why the Bush team would care about protecting Bill Clinton's views on terrorism is mysterious. Unless, of course, the Bushies were indeed asleep at the switch during the first nine months of 2001. After all, Donald Rumsfeld was actually on Capitol Hill on Sept. 9, threatening a veto of a $600 million diversion from star wars to counter-terrorism.
This latest distressing episode followed the White House's pattern of resisting the Commission in private and then, once the dispute becomes public, as with National Security Advisor Condi Rice, reluctantly giving up. At a time when the American people desperately need reassurance that the government was functional (at the very least), Bush clenched his jaw, threw Rice to the lions and walked away without taking responsibility.
As Bill Press observed yesterday, this is "one of the biggest screw-ups in White House history."
It's bizzare almost beyond belief.
Friday April 2
Quagmire
We are mired in a savage mess in Iraq, and no one knows how to get out of it. No End in Sight [nytimes.com].
Thursday April 1
P2P Lawful In Canada
According to Toronto's The Globe and Mail, a federal court up north has ruled that peer-to-peer file sharing is lawful. "The mere fact of placing a copy on a shared directory in a computer where that copy can be accessed via a P2P service does not amount to distribution," concluded Justice Konrad von Finckenstein. Hey, this is a better reason than the Vietnam War to move to Canada, eh?