Open Threads

A hundred things are keeping me away from the computer today.

Gary Farber passed on a warning about signing away your work for syndication too readily. It is always cool when a publication wants to run your stuff (note to major periodicals – my email address is at the upper right) but make sure that you don’t sign away your rights.

I wanted to write more about government monitoring of journalists’ phone records but time hasn’t yet permitted. In the meantime Kevin Drum has useful commentary here and here. To sum up, the FBI uses PATRIOT Act-enhanced National Security Letters to secretly collect the confidential records of basically anybody they feel like, without the need to seek a judge’s authorization. Targets don’t have to have anything to do with national security or terrorism (making the NSL acronym somewhat of a misnomer) and don’t have to be the actual target of an investigation. In other words if the FBI wants your records it can have them, without having to give any reason and independent of that annoying oversight stuff. Don’t you feel safer?

Bush defenders will triumphantly announce that the whole thing may be legal and therefore perfectly ok. How do I know? Call me psychic. Folks who do so will demonstrate once again that conservatism is long since dead and buried.

In other news, my crystal ball predicts that Ronald Ramon will make the Mountaineers look like a high-school squad.

Chat about whatever.

Open ThreadPost + Comments (500)

Blow off some steam.

Open ThreadPost + Comments (15)

Christy Smith reports that David Shuster reports that Foggo has just stepped down from the #3 post at CIA. Unlike Goss, whose resignation remains somewhat of a mystery, Foggo’s resignation probably comes from the San Diego investigators preparing to indict him:

Friday, people with knowledge of the continuing Cunningham inquiry said the CIA official, Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, is under federal criminal investigation in connection with awarding agency contracts.

…Mr. Foggo has been a close friend since junior high school with Poway, Calif., defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes. The criminal investigation centers on whether Mr. Foggo used his postings at the CIA to improperly steer contracts to Mr. Wilkes’s companies.

Mr. Wilkes earlier this year was implicated in the charges filed against Mr. Cunningham, as an unindicted co-conspirator who allegedly had paid about $630,000 in bribes to Mr. Cunningham for help in obtaining federal contracts.

No charges have been filed against Mr. Wilkes, although federal prosecutors in San Diego are working to build a case against him, as well as Mr. Foggo, people with knowledge of the investigation said.

The FBI and federal prosecutors also are investigating evidence that Mr. Wilkes had given gifts to Mr. Foggo and paid for various services for him while Mr. Foggo was in a position to help him gain particular CIA contracts.

Let me repeat a simple point that I never get tired of making. People who want increased power to intrude into citizens’ privacy and at the same time want to increasingly escape supervision of their own ought to raise all kinds of alarm bells. When you know that they have abused the levers of government then it is simply time to clean house, full stop. If government genuinely needs increased power over its citizens in order to fight whatever global struggle that it is we’re fighting then it is that much more important that we install leaders who can handle it responsibly.

Removing Goss is a step in the right direction, assuming that he got caught up in the Foggo/MZM bribery shenanigans, but it means nothing if the general atmosphere of laissez-faire authoriatarianism goes on unabated. At this point about the only thing that will significantly change that is a thorough turnover of Congress.

Foggo OutPost + Comments (21)

Question – do any neuroscientists read this blog? I have an idea for a short series of posts but I don’t want to embarrass myself in front of professionals.

Also, the latest casualty of global warming appears to be the Pacific trade winds.

[S]ince the mid-1800s, the Walker current had weakened by 3.5% and was expected to fall by 10% by the year 2100. Any drop in the strength of winds has a larger effect on ocean currents, and calculations show that the flow of the ocean has dropped by 7.5% because of the slacking trade wind. The study appears in the journal Nature today.

The weakening of the Walker current is one of the most consistent predictions of climate change models. “One of the most robust predictions of climate change is that this Walker circulation should slow down, so we wanted to test that prediction to see how good the models are. Right now they are the only thing we have to guide us into the future,” said Dr Vecchi.

Chat about whatever.

Open ThreadPost + Comments (202)

Alright- I confess. I did not watch any news for a few days, and have been wrapped up with end of the semester stuff. Wht happened with Stephen Colbert- someone throw the links in the commens so I can find out what happened.

*** Update ***

Alright- I watched it. My only complaint would be that Colbert wasn’t as funny as he could be- I normally think he is funnier. I don’t know why some people are describing the audience as stone-faced, though. From what I saw people were laughing. I also can recognize how some people think it was in appropriate for Colbert to do what he did- it is supposed to be a light-hearted event. Were I Colbert and asked to do the roast, and knew I would not be able to play along with the way it has been done in the past, I would have turned down the invite. That is just a question of tact, and I wouldn’t want to try to humiliate anyone. Except maybe Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

I don’t think the claims that the MSM are avoiding this make any sense- this event usually is good for about a day’s worth of filler clips every year, and that is about it. I remember some brouhaha with Don Imus several years back, and that was ‘scandalous’ for about 48 hours, tops.

As with everything in the blogosphere, it seems, this is much ado about little to nothing, and probably says more about the people commenting about the event than the event itself.

Stephen ColbertPost + Comments (179)

Would you describe Republican government as more of a disaster from a deontological or a consequentialist perspective? Discuss.

BTW, apologies for tardy beer blogging. Friday was unexpectedly ridiculous and I am still catching up.

Saturday ThreadPost + Comments (238)