I know nothing about any of the Tahitian players other than the fact that the only full time professional in the squad is Marama Vahirua. So if it’s underdogs you’re looking to pull for, now is your chance.
Archives for June 2013
Like the legend of the phoenix
Personally, I’m glad that Edward Snowden leaked all that stuff, and I don’t think he’s a Chinese spy or a traitor. Anyway, he’s certainly amusing:
“Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn’t I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.”
Remember though, Daniel Ellsberg was never given a phoenix!
PSA / Open Thread
Southern Beale had a bad experience with Costco “Kirkland Signature” brand of flea and tick control with her cats, and wants you all to know about it. Please be a wise participant in Free Market capitalism and avoid that product voluntarily, lest the invisible hand reach out and snatch a bunch of hair from your cat’s body.
Judge Edith Jones to Be Investigated for Alleged Racist Remarks
Chief Justice John Roberts is apparently not amused by the alleged racist antics of Judge Edith Jones, who sits on the extraordinarily conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, located in Texas. Roberts has ordered the Judicial Council of the District of Columbia Circuit to review a Complaint of Judicial Misconduct filed by several civil rights organizations related to disparaging comments Jones allegedly made about ethnic minorities and people with disabilities.
It is rare that a judicial misconduct complaint of this nature is made public. According to Lise Olsen of the Houston Chronicle, this is one of only a handful of times that a federal circuit judge has been the subject of a public judicial misconduct complaint. Usually such matters are secret under federal law.
Given the jaw-dropping comments alleged in the complaint, however, coupled with the recent public outcry surrounding those comments, it’s no surprise that this matter will be aired publicly rather than behind closed doors.
According to the complaint, Jones delivered a lecture entitled “Federal Death Penalty Review” at the University of Pennsylvania on February 20, where she allegedly made a host of racist and ableist comments. Jones claimed that certain “racial groups like African-Americans and Hispanics are predisposed to crime” and are “prone to commit acts of violence” and be involved in more violent and “heinous” crimes than people of other ethnicities. She also allegedly said that Mexicans would prefer to be on death row in the United States than serving prison terms in their native country.
In addition, Jones expressed her affinity for the death penalty and her disgust at death penalty opponents, allegedly stating that capital-defendants’ claims of racism, innocence, arbitrariness, and violations of international law and treaties are “red herrings” wielded by death penalty opponents. She also allegedly accused defendants who raise claims of “mental retardation” of abusing the system. According to Jones, the very fact that purportedly “mentally retarded” defendants were convicted of a capital crime is sufficient to prove that they are not “mentally retarded.”
Jones is also alleged to have claimed that the death penalty provides a public service to death row inmates because defendants “make peace with God” only in the moment before imminent execution.
The complaint also references an infamous incident during which Jones loudly slammed her hand on the bench during her colleague Judge James L. Dennis’ questioning of counsel during oral argument, disrespectfully asked Judge Dennis if he “wanted to leave” the courtroom during the argument, and told Judge Dennis that she wanted him to “shut up.” (Audio of that incident can be found here.)
While shocking to some, those familiar with Edith Jones’ antics expect this sort of behavior from her. When she’s not ordering her colleagues on the bench to “shut up,” she is writing some of the most virulently anti-woman decisions of any federal court judge in the country.
[read the full post at RH Reality Check]
Judge Edith Jones to Be Investigated for Alleged Racist RemarksPost + Comments (70)
Potemkin Villages for You and Me
In case you haven’t seen it, when you’re reading stories about today’s G8 meeting in Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, be sure you’ve read about their efforts to fix the place up by applying window stickers to empty storefronts.
Spy vs Spy
After reading the news that the US and the UK spied on other attendees at the G20 summit in London, my main reaction was that Blackberry has some explaining to do:
• Setting up internet cafes where they used an email interception programme and key-logging software to spy on delegates’ use of computers;
• Penetrating the security on delegates’ BlackBerrys to monitor their email messages and phone calls;
• Supplying 45 analysts with a live round-the-clock summary of who was phoning who at the summit;
• Targeting the Turkish finance minister and possibly 15 others in his party;
• Receiving reports from an NSA attempt to eavesdrop on the Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev, as his phone calls passed through satellite links to Moscow.
Either Blackberry is insecure or they handed over encryption keys to the US or UK spy services. Since they’ve given encryption keys to other governments, my guess is the latter.
This is all from the Snowden documents, so my guess is that we’ve seen about all that Snowden has leaked, because countries spying on other countries when they’re in town for a conference is dog-bites-man territory.
In other news, the NSA has claimed in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee that they have stopped terrorist plots in the US and 20 other countries, but have not released any details on which plots.
The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear…
(John Deering via GoComics.com)
… And let’s hope it’s not President Sanctorum saying that in 2018. From the Washington Post, “State Photo-ID Databases Become Troves for Police“:
The faces of more than 120 million people are in searchable photo databases that state officials assembled to prevent driver’s-license fraud but that increasingly are used by police to identify suspects, accomplices and even innocent bystanders in a wide range of criminal investigations.
The facial databases have grown rapidly in recent years and generally operate with few legal safeguards beyond the requirement that searches are conducted for “law enforcement purposes.” Amid rising concern about the National Security Agency’s high-tech surveillance aimed at foreigners, it is these state-level facial-recognition programs that more typically involve American citizens…
[L]aw enforcement use of such facial searches is blurring the traditional boundaries between criminal and non-criminal databases, putting images of people never arrested in what amount to perpetual digital lineups. The most advanced systems allow police to run searches from laptop computers in their patrol cars and offer access to the FBI and other federal authorities…The Supreme Court’s approval this month of DNA collection during arrests coincides with rising use of that technology as well, with suspects in some cases submitting to tests that put their genetic details in official databases, even if they are never convicted of a crime.
Facial-recognition systems are more pervasive and can be deployed remotely, without subjects knowing that their faces have been captured. Today’s driver’s-license databases, which also include millions of images of people who get non-driver ID cards to open bank accounts or board airplanes, typically were made available for police searches with little public notice…
The <em>Innocent</em> Have Nothing to Fear…Post + Comments (53)