Posts from — July 2005

[™ Kevin Drum]

I Need a Bigger Lap

Don’t get pushy, Pipsqueak!

[Edit: Dot is just barely tolerating Ringo, and Ringo hasn’t learned all of the signals that prevent fights.]

Friday Ark

That should tell anyone who cares what Roberts thinks of voting rights and states rights: they are fine as long as they help the Republican Party.

I get a queasy feeling when I hear Southern law enforcement officers talk about “outside agitators”, but that’s what we had in Florida during the 2000 vote. A hoard of lawyers who abused the court system with suits that they didn’t actually have the standing to bring. These weren’t Florida lawyers, they were “outside agitators” brought in with promises of jobs which they have received from the Bush administration.

“Scotty” Has Beamed Up

Best known for his role as Commander Montgomery Scott, Engineering Officer of the Starship Enterprise in the original Star Trek television series, the Canadian-born actor with a talent for accents was a regular at fan conventions.

Apollo 11

Launched: 16 July 1969 UT 13:32:00 (08:32:00 CDT)
Landed on Moon: 20 July 1969 UT 20:17:40 (15:17:40 CDT)
Landing Site: Mare Tranquillitatis – Sea of Tranquility (0.67 N, 23.47 E)
Returned to Earth: 24 July 1969 UT 16:50:35 (11:50:35 CDT)

Commander:
Neil A. Armstrong

Pilot: Columbia Command Module
Michael Collins, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Pilot: Eagle Lunar Module
Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin, Jr., Colonel, USAF

After graduation he acted as a clerk for two Federal judges, including Justice Rehnquist, for a total of two years. He has been a justice of the Court of Appeals for two years, and that’s it. Being a lawyer is not being a judge. Being a Supreme Court justice is a position with no oversight. Every justice is a free agent. It is the nation’s highest court.

Why appoint a man who is still a rookie Appeals Court justice to the Supreme Court? There are plenty of experienced Appeals Court justices who could be ready to go from day one, so why select someone who is so inexperienced?

Pundits talk about his great resumé, but it is lacking in judicial experience. He has argued cases before the Supreme Court, but that doesn’t mean that he is qualified to be a judge.

I realize that Bush sees the need to re-stock the Supreme Court with white guys from the Ivy League, but there are certainly a number of experienced judges in lower Federal courts who attended the Ivy League and are white, Christian males.

I would be less than totally surprised to find out that Mr. Roberts is a member of Opus Dei, as is Justice Scalia.

A bit earlier the publisher of a local weekly had gone ballistic over comments on a forum hosted by SKB and started making threats, including exposure. That story was picked up by the local newspaper and the damage was done.

Being a small business owner and liberal in an extremely “conservative area”, no doubt things reached the point were the avocation, blogging, was having an effect on the vocation, writing business software.

It may seem odd to some, and others would counsel staying for the fight, but when you have to meet a payroll and make payments, the risk becomes too great. When you are dealing with people who will harm national security to attack a perceived political opponent, you must deal with the reality. There are people and businesses who will boycott others that do not share their political views. Both sides do this and it is part of today’s fractured world.

If you have never seen his pictures of birds in flight, you have missed a rare pleasure. Bubba will be missed.

For those who have discovered my Potter Pages: I didn’t update to include the death of Sirius Black until this weekend. Sorry, no spoilers from me.

I finished taking down the last two large trees that were damaged, a live oak and a camphor tree, but I need to look for broken limbs and small trees that were bent over by the wind. There was a lot of “salt burn”, trees and bushes damaged by the salt water carried in the winds coming off the Gulf. This may kill other trees, but I think the problem may have been reduced this time by the rains that we have had since the hurricane.

Gasoline is still hard to locate, and it may be a while before you can take it for granted. Many people have seen the oil platform that was “listing” in the Gulf, but it was being moved and was not a producing oil rig. The problem is the down time at the Gulf Coast refinery for TS Cindy and then Dennis, complicated by the barges being hauled inland to protect them. The tank farms are below normal capacity and the truck transport has been disrupted. The price has jumped $.20/gallon due to the storms and the demand of the Summer season.

In those stores that have reopened, the hours have been reduced and the shelves haven’t been re-stocked, so some items are in short supply. There have been price increases, but they probably don’t reach the “gouging” level. Many of the increases have been accomplished by not running any sales, and selling things for the “manufacturer’s suggested retail price”.

The most important classified information there is in the intelligence community, the information that everyone wants to protect and to discover is covered under the phrase: “sources and methods”. The last things you want the “enemy” to know are “how you are gathering data, and the people providing that data”. The “enemy” already knows what the data is, it’s their data after all, but they don’t know that you have it.

The government is required to protect its sources. There are laws in place to prosecute people who reveal those sources. There are people in prison for the remainder of their lives for revealing sources. As Culture Ghost points out: there is no difference between what Aldrich Ames did, and what Karl Rove did. Both revealed the identity of sources and have damaged the ability of the United States to defend itself. Ames did it for money and Rove did it for revenge and power, but they both damaged the US intelligence community.

This isn’t about politics; this is about national security. This isn’t a dirty tricks investigation; this is an espionage investigation. If reporters want to have their “right” to protect sources considered, they might consider not becoming involved in a conspiracy to commit espionage against the United States. If they can’t tell the difference, they might want to consider a career change.

[™ Kevin Drum]

Dinner

You’d think he would come up with something new!

[Edit: This was the dinner crowd Thursday. A couple of the regulars were at the secondary station. It takes time for them to resume their normal routine.]

Friday Ark

I was attempting to leave a note of condolence for her loss of her pet when I found out I was banned. If you aren’t banned and drop by, tell her I’m sorry about her loss. The little guy had been sick lately and was relatively old, but it hurts to lose a friend even when you know it’s coming.

With temperatures in the 90s and 100% humidity, people are experiencing heat-related illnesses while cleaning up or living in homes without power.

FEMA still hasn’t changed it’s totally absurd rules about registration, requiring people to call an 800 number or applying through a web site before going to a local office, just like last time. A HINT, YOU TWITS! IF WE HAD WORKING PHONES OR COMPUTERS, WE PROBABLY WOULDN’T NEED YOUR SORRY BUTTS!

To save money, the power company is now requiring homeowners to clear branches from around power lines. A HINT, YOU TWITS! YOU’RE THE ONES WITH THE BUCKET TRUCKS AND EXPERIENCE WITH HIGH VOLTAGE LINES! THE TREE COMPANIES DON’T HAVE ANY EXPERIENCE BECAUSE YOU ALWAYS REQUIRED THEM TO CALL YOU WHEN POWER LINES WERE INVOLVED!

For Ivan the Operation Blue Roof program was in force and qualified people had their roofs covered with blue plastic tarps by crews working for the Corps of Engineers. This time they will be handing out a couple of tarps to people who qualify and go to a distribution center. No word on what people who are poor enough to qualify, and too poor to own a car are supposed to do, nor what people who aren’t able to put the tarps on the roof by themselves are supposed to do.

FEMA will only pick up 75% of the government costs for this storm, while they picked up 90% of the costs of Ivan, which was before the election. They still haven’t given a clear explanation of what costs they will cover, and they haven’t provided a time line during which the costs will be covered.

We are having thunderstorms roll though, so work is slower than Ivan where we had a month of no rain and lower temperatures.

La Fête Nationale
Bastille Day

Thank you for the help with the Revolution.

Happy Birthday Sashochka.

Some background.

You need a front, usually an international business. Business is useful, because most international businesses function in a remarkably similar fashion to covert operations – they bribe people, seek information, hide funding sources, use postal boxes and rented offices to avoid taxes and get business.

The front needs a “legitimate” contact, someone who can be researched and identified. Someone with minor celebrity, such as being the wife of an ambassador, is just about perfect. Someone like that could be checked by intelligence services and ignored.

These front operations need to actually function like the businesses they claim to be, so they will actually pursue business and fulfill contracts to prove they are real. Some percentage of the employees don’t know they are working for a covert front, and are totally separate from the espionage function.

If the cover on the front is blown, say someone tells the world that the ambassador’s wife is actually an employee for the CIA , there is a problem for everyone associated with the front, not just those who were part of the espionage operation. Counterintelligence people don’t like being fooled, so everyone will be hauled in and considered guilty. There is rarely any effort to allow those people to prove their innocence.

The Plame case isn’t about just one woman, it is about everyone who worked for her covert operation. Dozens of people have been put in danger because of this revelation, not simply one upper-middle-class Washington suburbanite. Most of those in trouble were not involved in espionage; they are simply “collateral damage” in a nasty little personal feud.

For all those people with their talking points: it doesn’t make much difference to the innocent people affected whether Karl Rove intended to harm them, or knowingly harmed them, or simply, recklessly harmed them, they are suffering, and some may have been executed. This is why it is supposed to be difficult to get a security clearance: leaks get people killed.