…more than the non-fundamentalists who were raised by them.
Looking through the archives of Religion Related Injuries (definitely worth a look), I found Islamica News, a Muslim Onion. Recent headlines include: “Liberal Muslims Eagerly Flock Back To Sinful Ways”, “Man Blames Everything on Jews” and “Muslims Form New Bloc Vote Organization: ‘Get Backstabbed 2004′”.
Hilarious stuff. Highly Recommended.
It’s been said that if any computer system were to become sentient, Google would be the first.
I wonder if that has happened. And if Google News is trying to tell us something through its selection of an image to accompany this headline:
From LawMeme (entry of 1/29 17:51), the following news:
I simply don’t undersand this level of incompetence. Diebold makes ATMs. Are ATMs this insecure? And if not, then why are Diebold’s voting machiness less secure than their cash machines?
Via Volokh, an article from the American Enterprise Institute suggesting that white-collar outsourcing is not a bad thing:
I am inclined to agree with the argument. As the article points out, we went through this same argument with manufacturing outsourcing in the early 90’s. The US economy didn’t fall apart; quite the opposite.
The real issue, however, is that the process of economic rearrangement that occurs in response to outsourcing also tends to redistribute wealth from labor to capital. (Sorry for the crude Marxist terms, but they’re actually quite apt in this case.) So the government’s response needs to be, not protectionism, but rather redistributionism.
From Intel Dump:
According to the Rumsfeld plan, Iraq was supposed to be a quick war, using nowhere near the full strength of the US Armed Forces, and proving that we can throw our weight around without major effort.
This neocon fantasy was disproven almost immediately, of course, and it’s good to see that Rumsfeld is finally (sort of) admitting that.
Josh Marshall aptly sums up the state of the Dean campaign:
I’d like to believe otherwise, but once it came out that the Dean campaign was short on funds, what else does it have?
After Iowa, some pundits were saying that even if Dean didn’t do very well in NH or on Super Tuesday, he still had the funds and organization to stay in the fight for a long time. Well, he doesn’t have the funds, and based on his firing of Joe Trippi, he doesn’t seem to be too happy with his organization, either.
I’d like to believe that I’m wrong–and I certainly hope that Dean doesn’t give up–but things don’t look good.
Michael Kinsley interviews a hypothetical Lieberman in a couple of weeksQ: But nobody’s voting for you, Governor. At what point do you say, “They’ve heard my message and they just don’t like it”?
A: How can they not like it? I mean, let’s get real here. It’s a message of hope and a message of change. It’s a message with every cliché that’s worked for every winning candidate of both parties. How can it not be working for me? I mean, let me ask you that. Why isn’t it working? Why, why?
Apologies for the downtime. My domain name expired on a Friday evening. I couldn’t do anything about it until Monday, because my registrar had no staff in the office over the weekend. Then I called on Monday to renew the domain, but the registrar forgot to actuallly process the renewal. So I called them this morning, and they finally took care of it.
As you can imagine, I’m planning to change registrars. (Stay away from your-site.com!)
Via LawMeme, an essay by Adam Mossoff arguing (against Lessig and other Creative Commons proponents) that copyright is naturally a property right.
The essay is fascinating, well-argued, informative, and wrong.
The key issue is that intellectual property, unlike tangible property, is not exclusive. If I decide to park my car in your garage, I’m preventing you from using it. We can’t both be parked in the same garage at the same time. (Assuming it’s a one-car garage.) On the other hand, if you own a CD, and I burn a copy of it, there’s nothing to prevent us from both listening to the same music at the same time.
Now, there’s good reason to give creators (authors, musicians, etc.) limited copyright protection: without it, it would be difficult for them to make a living, and thus we’d all be worse off because there’d be less creative productions in the world. But this monopoly is a privilege, given for practical reasons, and not an inherent right.
And indeed, that’s exactly what the Constitution says:
If copyright were a property right, it would be indefinite. The only justification for restricting it to “limited Times” is the fact that it is a privilege, not a right.
Mossoff tries a couple of lines of attack against this argument. First, he suggests that property needn’t be exclusive:
This, however, is utterly irrelevant. The rationale for fish and game rights is that fish and game–despite being self-reproducing–are still limited. You can’t photocopy a fish, or send a fish by e-mail. Comparing fishing rights to copyrights is like comparing, well, salmon to SMTP.
Mossoff’s second argument is the Lockean proposition that one owns one’s creative work because it is the fruit of one’s labor:
But this argument begs the question, what does it mean to own something intangible? There is no inherent definition, precisely because of the non-exclusionary nature of intangible property.
I agree with Mossoff that fairness–and even the rights to enjoy the fruits of one’s labor–dictates that we find some way of ensuring that artists are compensated for their work. Copyright, understood as a limited and regulatable grant of privilege, is an excellent means to that end. But an inherent property right in intangible creations is simply a meaningless–but dangerous–contradiction.
(P.S. If anyone reading this is not familiar with Creative Commons, copyleft, and the like, this NYT Magazine article is an excellent intro.)
LawMeme (no permalinks, but the entry’s timestamped 1/27 midnight) reports on Peter Jackson’s liberal attitude towards copyright:
In fact, he hopes that some fan will be encouraged to try, and would like to see how it turns out.
Pretty remarkable, actually, considering that such a work would actually be a ‘derivative work’ and hence violative of copyright.
Of course, New Line is unlikely to allow anything like that. But Jackson still deserves kudos for his open-mindedness.
Well, I’m probably still the only one who can see this blog, but I’ve just got to post about this.
The NH results are in; with 81% of precints reporting, it’s Kerry 38%, Dean 26%, Clark 13%, Edwards 12%, Lieberman 9%.
What I thought was most revealing was this remark in the Washington Post’s report:
Now what would convince those voters who made up their minds in the last week? Is it anything about Kerry? I doubt it, since Kerry spent plenty of time campaigning in NH before.
What seems to have catapulted Kerry into first place in NH is, quite simply, his win in Iowa.
And thus the expectations game takes over again.
That’s what Dean said in his interview yesterday.
Think again, Howard…
(Of the ones I’ve hard so far, Pretty Fly for a Dean Guy and Dean’s Going to Kokomo are my faves.)
Another great insight from Legal Fiction, which is fast becoming my favorite blog.
Discussing the Republican tactic in the South and Midwest of mocking Northeastern liberals (e.g. the Club for Growth ad), which he dubs “Yankophobia”, Legal Fiction says:
Sadly, southern politics provide a very clear example of what I’m talking about. Throughout the history of the South, poor whites and blacks always had more in common with each other (in terms of economic self-interest) than with the aristocratic, white leaders. These leaders maintained their power by dividing the potential coalition through the use of race.
…
Today (though in a more subtle way), Yankophobia is working in the same way. And the reason why Yankophobia is so necessary, and the reason why some conservatives are so passionate about stirring up resentment toward the northeastern “latte-drinkers,” is because the latte-drinkers advocate policies that are in the economic self-interest of America’s working classes.
Right on the mark.
Well, I watched Nightline’s excerpts from the Democratic debate. (I couldn’t get the full debate because I don’t have cable. Watching the whole thing on a tinny cspan.org stream is just painful.) A few highlights:
Most Supercilious Moderator: Peter Jennings asking Al Sharpton about the Federal Reserve. This provided the funniest moment of the night, as Sharpton struggled to produce an intelligent response on a subject about which he obviously knew nothing whatsoever. It wasn’t really a fair question, however, considering that monetary policy is not an issue in this race; so it’s pretty obvious that Jennings asked it solely to humiliate Sharpton.
Lowest Moment: Again, that goes to Peter Jennings, for his repeated efforts to get Lieberman to go negative on the other candidates. Bravo to the Senator for not taking the bait.
Most Specific Answer: Clark, when asked what he would do on the Patriot Act. He suggested temporarily suspending the search-and-seizure provisions, and calling John Ashcroft to testify before Congress about how they’d been used.
Most Skeletal-looking Candidate: Kerry, who was a collection of grays, with no color to be seen. All the candidates except for Dean and Sharpton looked rather pale, however; either the makeup or the lighting crew should be fired. (Or both.)
This was the first time I’d watched Edwards; he seemed very glib and lightweight. I don’t think he’d do well against Bush’s gravitas. Kerry’s a skeleton, Clark has no credibility, and Lieberman is practically a Republican. I really don’t know who I’d vote for if Dean were to drop out. I guess it would be a toss-up between Kerry and Edwards, since my issues with them are of image rather than substance.
I just watched Diane Sawyer’s interview with Howard and Judy Dean. (Note: the link transcript has some parts that were cut from the broadcast version.)
Unsurprisingly, Sawyer spent several minutes on Dean’s Iowa speech, and I thought he did a great job of handling that. He acknowledged that it was over the top, and wasn’t Presidential, but he also pointed out that he was talking to 3500 disappointed young people, and had a responsibility to make them feel good. He looked self-assured and comfortable in his own skin, even when Sawyer kept asking questions about his temper.
The next segment of the interview was focused on Judy Dean, and I really think this was a low point for Sawyer. She kept interrogating them about Judy’s non-participation in the campaign. You’d think that as a career woman, Sawyer would understand! Finally, Dean stepped up and turned the tables:
Again, though, they both handled the interrogation very well. Judy is definitely shy… there were several times when she mumbled and it wasn’t clear what she was saying. She has a very expressive face, however, and it was clear that she couldn’t lie. The Deans actually make a very cute couple.
Towards the end, Sawyer finally started touching on substantial issues–middle-class taxes and Saddam Hussein–and Dean was actually a lot weaker there than on the personal questions; he stuttered and stumbled around before he could find an answer. On taxes, he conspicuously failed to deny that he was going to propose a middle-class tax cut; he just said that his aides shouldn’t have been talking about it. On Hussein, he floundered a bit before he could finally get to a stock answer about 500 casualties in Iraq and fighter planes escorting commercial flights. If Sawyer had pressed him half as hard as she did on the personal questions, he would have been toast.
All in all, however, I think that most of the interview showed Dean really comfortable with himself, and the Deans very comfortable as a couple, and I think that the net effect will be good.
Yep, that’s right… not Iraq, Iran. According to German prosecutors, a former Iranian intelligence agent has come forward to testify regarding the alleged involvement of Abdelghani Mzoudi–currently on trial in Hamburg–with the al-Qaeda cell led by 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta.
The whole thing sounds pretty screwy, but it’s certainly a story to keep a watch on.
There’ve been allegations made that the US’ interrogation tactics when dealing with terrorists captured abroad is to threaten to turn them over to the authorities of Syria, Jordan, or Egypt, who are known to use torture in interrogation.
This new allegation, however, goes beyond that. According to a
As far as I’m aware, this is the first allegation that the United States has done this to a citizen of another Western nation, captured on US soil.
The only hole I see in the story is that, if it were true, why would Syria release him? If the account is confirmed, however, it would be a blatant instance of shoving aside civil rights in pursuit of the war against terror.
Arar has filed suit in Federal Court.
According to Reuters, Kevin Bacon’s latest, currently being screened at Sundance, is a film about a pedophile. (With the slightly disturbing title ‘Woodsman’.)
Throughout “Woodsman,” Walter’s sexual obsession and his attempts to overcome it are tested… Ultimately, what audiences get from “The Woodsman” is not a movie about a pedophile, which is too simplistic. Rather, “The Woodsman” tells audiences what creates the disease and how keeping it in the dark ultimately does society a disservice, the film’s makers said.
If the movie purports to show ‘what creates the disease’, I’m slightly skeptical… no one really knows. But it would certainly be interesting to see.
I give it a snowball’s chance of making it to theaters. But hopefully it will be available on video.
Excellent overview in TNR of how Kerry’s liberal record could hurt him in the general election.
Kerry has voted in favor of disability payments for addicts (albeit requiring they they get treatment); against the death penalty, even for terrorists; against mandatory minimum sentences for dealers who sold drugs to minors; in favor or raising gas taxes; against work requirements for welfare; etc.
Kerry generally had a good reason for his vote; most of his positions are ones I agree with. And he’s changed some of his more unpopular positions before running for President. Unfortunately a record that liberal–no matter how principled–is not an asset in the current political climate.
Personally, however, it does make me respect Kerry more.
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This is not the site of journalist and author Daniel Glick. His website is at danielglick.net
Sick Transit: A directionless train of thought. Sic transit cogitationes Danis.