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Thursday, June 24, 2004 |
Unstable Rules (www.washingtonpost.com). WHEN HILLARY Clinton wanted to keep secret the proceedings of her health care task force in 1993, the courts drew an important legal line. If people who were not government employees were effectively acting as members of the group, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit wrote, federal law required certain disclosures. What's more, groups suing the task force to get access to its proceedings were entitled to discovery to find out what role those outside figures were actually playing. Yesterday the Supreme Court decided the case of Vice President Cheney's energy policy task force -- a case most famous for Justice Antonin Scalia's duck hunt but one that deals with the same law as the health care task force litigation a decade ago. The court said, in essence, that the White House is owed more deference than the D.C. Circuit showed it in either case; without quite saying so, it seemed to instruct the lower court to review its precedent. By . [washingtonpost.com - Opinion]
10:43:56 PM Permalink
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Remarks by the Vice President at a Rally for Bush-Cheney '04
What's really funny is <a
href="http://billmon.org/archives/001581.html">Limbaugh's
reaction</a> to the news that the Vice President says
"fuck":<br>
<br>
<div style="margin-left: 40px;">What's the big deal? My drug
dealer says f--- every third word he uses. Why I've heard worse things
at a Madonna concert!<br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
10:32:54 PM Permalink
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Occupation force may grow by 25,000. "The U.S. Central Command has informally asked Army planners for up to five more brigades -- about 25,000 troops -- to augment the American force of 138,000 soldiers and Marines now in Iraq, military officers and Pentagon officials said. Some officers said any increase might well be lower, perhaps involving 10,000 troops that would be a mix of active-duty and National Guard units. ... It is uncertain whether a formal request for more troops has been... [Rational Review News Digest]
I've heard Bush say several times that if the Army needs more troops it'll get them. But do you really think the Army will "formally" ask for more troops?
8:03:09 PM Permalink
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Michael Moore Responses
Slate has two great pieces on Fahrenheit 9/11. First, Christopher
Hitchens writes a superb rant agains the movie, UnFarenheit 9/11,
which does a pretty good job of summing up the problems with the thing,
not limited to Moore's dishonesty.
To describe this film as dishonest and
demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of
respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to
run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the
excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing
would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral
frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also
a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a
demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.
The strangeness of those first two sentences (which is nicely limned on
Language Log)
actually help make this rant fascinating. There's a lot of truth to
what Hitchens says, though as an unrepentant hawk about this war, his
point of view isn't necessarily convincing. (It's Hitchens' various
pieces over the past year and a half that have made me examine, and
question my own point of view at times).
But David Edelstein gets some good licks, too, in support (albeit
somewhat half-hearted) of Moore. He makes his best argument when he
puts it in the context of the kind of lies we've heard from the right
for the last dozen (or more) years:
Fahrenheit 9/11 must be viewed in the
context of the Iraq occupation and the torrent of misleading claims
that got us there. It must be viewed in the context of Rush Limbaugh
repeating the charge that Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster murdered in
Fort Marcy Park, or laughing off the exposure of Valerie Plame when,
had this been a Democratic administration, he'd be calling every day
for the traitor's head. It must be viewed in the context of Ann Coulter
calling for the execution of people who disagree with her. It must be
viewed in the context of another new documentary, the superb The
Hunting of the President, that documents—irrefutably—the lengths to
which the right went to destroy Bill Clinton. Moore might be a
demagogue, but never—not even during Watergate—has a U.S.
administration left itself so open to this kind of savaging.
Of course the same folks that are savaging Moore now were silent when
Clinton was accused of murder and are silent about the bimbos who want
to, as Edelstein put it, execute those who don't agree with them. And
one bunch of lies doesn't give license to another bunch of lies (or
else the Wall Street Journal and the right, who seems to think that
Clinton's lie about Monica Lewinsky excuses this administrations
multitude of lies). But it is nice to see, after so many years of
seemingly milquetoast liberalism, someone standing up and speaking to
this crowd in a language they understand.
It's
clear that the right is really afraid of this movie -- and that's all
the more reason to go see it.
8:00:34 PM Permalink
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Limbaughing liars
. Rush Limbaugh, on his June 17 broadcast:
The [9-11 Commission] report said that Mohamed Atta did meet with an Iraqi Intelligence Agency, or agent, in Prague on April 9th of 2001. We've known this for a long time.
9/11 commission, in its "Statement 16": [Orcinus]
3:58:22 PM Permalink
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Dick Advice. CNN is reporting that on the floor of the Senate yesterday, Dick Cheney told Sen. Pat Leahy, "Go fuck yourself." We agree! Go fuck yourself -- while it's still legal! UPDATE: Speaking of sodomy. . . Wonkette operatives tell us... [Wonkette]
2:35:12 PM Permalink
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CMP Dopes
Ha, I used to work for CMP, and ended up having a pretty low opinion of
them. But I never would have thought they were stupid enough to turn
away links from Google!
What's really funny, is that if you had asked me yesterday if they were
even still in business, I don't know if I would have said yes.
12:28:44 PM Permalink
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They're Coming for your VCR. "Ban the Technology" advocates could score a major coup with the bipartisan-backed Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (IICA). It's aimed at banning peer-to-peer file sharing networks, but it could also make mp3 players, VCR's, even walkmans (walkmen?) illegal.
Under existing law, companies are not liable for "vicarious copyright infringement" performed by their users, said Mike Godwin, a lawyer at the advocacy group Public Knowledge. That legal doctrine permits Sony to sell VCRs, TiVo to sell digital TV recorders and Apple Computer to sell iPods, even though some fraction of their customers use them for copyright infringement.
If the IICA were to become law, "let's say that you're selling an MP3 player and it turns out that the MP3 player can be used to move copyrighted material around really easily," Godwin said. "People start buying your MP3 player. Do you want a world where courts can say, 'Hey buddy, you're liable for copyright infringement?'"
Critics of the IICA have suggested that it also might have the effect of overturning the Supreme Court's 1984 decision in the Sony v. Universal City Studios case, often referred to as the "Betamax" lawsuit. In that 5-4 opinion, the majority said VCRs were legal to sell, because they were "capable of substantial noninfringing uses." But the majority stressed that Congress had the power to enact a law that would lead to a different outcome. [Hit & Run]
12:18:53 PM Permalink
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War Vet Defaced Library Books?. ALBANY, New York (Reuters) - A decorated World War II veteran has been charged with second-degree criminal mischief for crossing out curse words in hundreds of books at a New York library and replacing them with religious inscriptions. [Reuters: Oddly Enough]
What in the world does the fact that this nutcase is a "decorated World War II veteran" have to do with it? Why not "licensed driver" or "religious nutcase?"
9:37:15 AM Permalink
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Jeff Jarvis on the "indecent indecency bill" passed by the Senate: "Religious fundamentalists...just dealt a deadly blow to free speech in America with legislators, cynical hypocrites, as their henchmen and media standing idly by, the short-sighted quislings." [EdCone.com]
9:27:00 AM Permalink
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Bruce Humphries has a nice recap of Bruce Sterling's Second Friday Long Now Foundation talk a couple weeks ago. I enjoyed the talk, as I have all the Long Now talks (and, come to think of it, all Bruce Sterling talks).
9:24:14 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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