Posts from — January 2006

He would appear to be serious about mounting a filibuster, and realizes he has to be on the scene to gain support.

As a number of people have found out, no one at airports has a sense of humor when you bring up weapons. As a local man found out, mentioning anthrax in jest can cost you your job and result in criminal charges being filed, even though he had a very valid reason to be sarcastic.

The right wing has a long record of advocating violence against people, and then pretending it was a joke when they are confronted.

This sort of behavior isn’t acceptable, even if you are a Republican.

January 28, 1986

Commander:
Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Pilot:
Michael J. Smith, Commander, USN

Mission Specialist:
Judith A. Resnik
Ronald E. McNair
Ellison S. Onizuka, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Payload Specialist:
Gregory B. Jarvis
Sharon Christa McAuliffe

January 27, 1967

Virgil “Gus” Ivan Grissom, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Edward Higgins White, II, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Roger Bruce Chaffee, Lieutenant Commander, USN

This is the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz by the Soviet Army in World War II. While remembering the camps, don’t lose sight of the fact that in addition to the Jews of Europe, the Roma [Gypsies], homosexuals, the disabled, and Slavs were sent to die in the camps. It is a reality that those who hate rarely confine their spite to a single group. Once hate is accepted as “normal” by a society, it spreads to include almost everyone who is in any way different from the haters.

This is also the birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, so all was not dark on this January day.

For a fascinating view of their works visit the British Library.

™ ^{[Kevin Drum]}

Scooter

How about some more?

[Editor: Scooter is the same age as Ringo and lives under my house. When I go out to feed the “herd”, he “scoots” around my feet.]

Friday Ark

Alito has a nice resumé, but he is totally around the bend on some of his ideas. People should understand that he doesn’t really believe in the right of privacy. He thinks the government should get involved in a lot of areas that are none of its business.

The man thinks that a Presidential signing statement has the relevance of legislative history in interpreting the law. He advocated the expanded use of signing statements to alter the meaning of the laws Congress passes. In the same vein, he believes in the Unitary Executive Theory which gives unchecked power to the President.

Republicans should be just as worried as Democrats about Alito. Have they forgotten what Bill Clinton did with the line item veto power? The Supreme Court saved the Republicans on that one, or Clinton would have eliminated all of their special projects.

The Harriet Miers nomination proved that Republicans don’t actually believe that every candidate deserves an “up or down” vote. There is no need to acquiesce to a Presidential nomination that could result is a major shift of power away from the Congress to the President.

Alito believes that the President is more important than the other branches, corporations are more important than people, and the government is more important than people. Are Senators really prepared for this radical a shift in the power structure? Alito isn’t a conservative; he’s a radical.

Rumsfeld says, no, they are combat-hardened and tougher than ever. He has apparently missed the part about all of the company commanders exiting, the two year time limit on the Reserve approaching, the low recruitment numbers, the busted equipment that isn’t being repaired or replaced. All Rumsfeld can remember is two seeming victories two years ago, and forgets what has happened since.

See, Donald came in with a plan to remake the military according to his ideal, and no matter what happens, he continues with his plan. It’s always amazing to watch a full-bore obsessive-compulsive at work, their ability to ignore the world around them.

The Pentagon has been patching holes with the National Guard and Reserve. They have been borrowing personnel and materiel from those forces without any plan to replace what is used.

The period following 9-11 would have been the ideal time to expand the military, but Rumsfeld had his plan, and there could be no alteration permitted.

While India probably wasn’t going to back the US in the move against Iran before Mulford shot his mouth off, now the government is being backed into a corner: if it wanted to back the US, it can’t without major political consequences.

I think Mulford was correct in believing that the US Congress would probably stop the US-India agreement if they didn’t back action against Iran, but you say that in private, not in public. That’s how diplomacy works – good news in public, bad news in private.

The Iranians have elected a man whose campaign slogan would seem to have been “I hate Bush more than any other candidate”, although he seems to agree with Bush on preemptive wars and building nuclear weapons.

Then, in spite of promises as uniters, the Iraqi elections don’t seem to hold out much that is good for Sunnis or other minorities. The winning parties all seem to be based on ethnic or religious divisions.

And now, those tricksie Palestinian voters, tired of all of the corruption of the ruling Fatah Party, which didn’t much like the US, and replaced it with Hamas, which pretty much hates the US, and Israel.

Len at Dark Bilious Vapors excerpts an article with even more examples.

Saying you’re not going to deal with terrorists in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is a bit of a dilemma. People forget that most of the prime ministers of Israel have been members of groups that performed acts of “terrorism” under the British mandate.

It’s nice to know that his salary is like so many other CEOs: the more you pay the less you get.

Now it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, because all of the local stores stop stocking heaters before Christmas. The inventory fairies have determined that no one on the Gulf Coast will buy a heater after Christmas so there’s no need to have them in stock. I found a replacement for the heater and it was marked down 50% for clearance.

This was the replacement model for the heater that died: same manufacturer, very similar model number, same BTU output and controls. How lucky could I get?

So, I turned off the gas, disconnected everything, stopped the bleeding, applied antiseptic and bandages, removed the heater from the wall, and was ready to clean threads, apply pipe compound and put the new in, except….

The studs in the wall of a house are usually spaced 16 inches apart. That’s a given. Everyone who has to install anything learns about that early in the process. If you are going to put anything heavy on the wall, you want to locate the studs so that you are screwing into wood and not playing games with various schemes for fastening things to sheetrock.

Both the old and new heaters are 20″ wide, which is good for fastening a mounting bracket to two studs, which is exactly how the old bracket is mounted. The bracket for the new model is only 14″ wide, which means that one end has to be fastened to sheetrock. Fortunately before I headed out to get the hardware for that job, I looked at the gas connection. The old heater had a 1/2″ connection, but the new one uses a 3/8″ connection, so I added that to my list.

I finally got the thing installed and working at about 8pm. Blogger was down so I couldn’t have posted anyway. The swelling has gone down in my knuckles, so I can type.

I should have been able to disconnect the gas, take the old unit off the wall, put the new unit up, and re-connect, but they have to “improve” the product. The new color scheme is nice, but it’s going to need a new cover, as it’s taller than before. Changing the mounting bracket and inlet size makes no sense. I realize the old one lasted a decade, and the new one is supposed to be more efficient, which is nice with the high cost of natural gas, but I still haven’t been able to install my new heavy duty electric line, and I have to do some yard work.

[grumble, grumble, grumble….]

Via djhlights at Exit Stage Left I arrived at a Glenn Greenwald post about the Bush administration rejecting a Senate bill to amend the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act in 2002 to permit a “reasonable suspicion” vice “probable cause” test for eavesdropping warrants.

So when General Michael V. Hayden starts talking about how legal what he started at NSA is, and the problems of the FISA requirements, he doesn’t bring up the fact that Congress attempted to give the administration more power, but the Justice Department discouraged the move as being of questionable constitutionality.

To paraphrase: they did it, before they were against it, before they were for it.

Full disclosure: When Hayden was a lieutenant he was assigned to Strategic Air Command headquarters. I was a Staff Sergeant at the time stationed at Offutt AFB and regularly gave classified briefings at SAC HQ, which he probably attended. As he was only a lieutenant and not on flying status I would haven’t even recognized his existence. At SAC HQ there was nothing lower than a lieutenant.

There is no evidence of his having any criminal procedure training, which is obvious from his use of the term “reasonable belief”, rather than the term of art, “reasonable suspicion”. You can’t be believable in any discussion of warrants if you don’t have “reasonable suspicion” and “probable cause” burned into your brain. The ability to find the razor’s edge of the boundary any particular judge has between those two is the key to obtaining warrants.

I would be interested in hearing exactly how he believes “hot pursuit” applies to a warrant. “Hot pursuit” is normally “incidental to an arrest” and they haven’t arrested anyone. I would think that Osama’s continuing recording career makes it rather obvious that they are not really interested in catching anyone.

On a more pleasant note, one of my favorite Texans, Molly Ivins, is now included on the CNN site, and she wonders what the reaction would be if “President” Hillary had tried warrant-less wiretaps, among other things.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson said Tuesday he’ll vote against Judge Samuel Alito Jr.’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying he believes the jurist would “tilt the scales of justice in favor of big government over the average person.”

The Big Government threat being used against a Republican appointee is an unexpected touch that should be talked up. A dictatorship is the ultimate in Big Government, and that’s what the Unitary Executive Theory really advocates.

Of course, the junior senior, Rove sockpuppet Mel Martinez, will do as he is told and vote for Alito.

The CBC has an analysis of the possible methods the Conservatives will be using to govern. I wouldn’t wait with baited breath for any sweeping changes in policies because the Conservatives will need total party discipline and 31 extra votes to pass anything.

The Conservatives won 124 seats, the Liberals – 103, Bloc Québécois – 51, the New Democratic Party – 29, and one independent won a seat in Quebec. The sole independent candidate who won a seat was André Arthur, a Quebec shock jock whose mouth cost his station its license.

For a listing of all of the registered parties in our northern neighbors drop by this site, and for a Canadian view of what happened read the CBC commentary on the “urban-rural” and East-West splits.

This election can be summarized as people annoyed with the arrogance of the previous leadership of the Liberal Party who were passing out public money to friends, the current leader having the endearing personality of an accountant, and some campaign ads that provided fodder for Canadian political satire shows. People weren’t voting for the Conservatives, they voting against the incumbent government.

There may be another election in a year if the Conservatives can’t come up with a working coalition. Unlike the US, the Canadians can remove governments whenever they get annoying.