Buy a bracelet

And never fly again

How the hell does this happen?

Woman Dies After Airport Arrest

Officers handcuffed her and took her to the holding room, where she kept screaming, authorities said. Hill said officers checked on her when she stopped screaming and found her unresponsive.

Hill said it appears Gotbaum may have tried to get out of her handcuffs, became tangled in the process and the cuffs ended up around her neck.

Does that sound even remotely physically possible?

Friedman repents

And admits 9/11 made him stupid:

9/11 has made us stupid. I honor, and weep for, all those murdered on that day. But our reaction to 9/11 — mine included — has knocked America completely out of balance, and it is time to get things right again.

Although I wish he wouldn't use "us".

New Immigration Test

How would you do?

1. How many amendments does the Constitution have?
2. What stops one branch of government from becoming too powerful?
3. The House of Representatives has how many voting members?
4. There are four amendments to the Constitution about who can vote. Describe one of them.
5. What are two rights only for United States citizens?
6. The Federalist Papers supported the passage of the U.S. Constitution. Name one of the writers.
7. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803?
8. Who was President during World War I?
9. Name one U.S. territory.
10. Why does the flag have 13 stripes?

I would have had to study...

Burma

Rangoon: army mutiny reported

this could be huge

Reports from Rangoon suggest soldiers are mutinying. It is unclear the numbers involved. Reports cite heavy shooting in the former Burmese capital.

The organisation Helfen ohne Grenzen (Help without Frontiers) is reporting that "Soldiers from the 66th LID (Light Infantry Divison) have turned their weapons against other government troops and possibly police in North Okkalappa township in Rangoon and are defending the protesters. At present unsure how many soldiers involved."

Soldiers in Mandalay, where unrest has spread to as we reported this morning, are also reported to have refused orders to act against protesters.

Some reports claim that many soldiers remained in their barracks. More recent reports now maintain that soldiers from the 99th LID now being sent there to confront them.

Growing numbers of protestors are gathering in Rangoon, with 10,000 reported at the Traders Hotel and 50,000 at the Thein Gyi market. The police are reported to have turned water cannons against crowds at Sule Pagoda.

Many phone lines into the Burmese state have now been cut, mobile networks have been disabled and the national internet service provider has been taken off-line.

Myanmar

9 Killed in 2nd day of Burma crackdown

How quaint

Judge Rules Key Portion of Patriot Act Unconstitutional

Lieberman's Bomb Iran Bill, Part II

Webb is right on this one. It was a bad play by Clinton and Obama on policy merits, but the safe bet politically.

Myanmar Protests Turn Bloody

Violent Crackdown Launched in Myanmar

Video stuff here.

Police wiki lets you write the law

It's said the powerful write their own laws, but now everyone can.

Due to a new wiki launched by New Zealand police, members of the public can now contribute to the drafting of the new policing act.

The wiki is here.

It will be interesting to see how this goes. I imagine the first round will be a bit chaotic. However, after some experimentation I'm sure the appropriate ground rules can be laid to have effective citizen participation...

War with Iran for Fun and Profit

Burma junta faces monks' challenge

Monks have been protesting in Burma, adding to the rare public defiance seen in recent weeks. The BBC's Andrew Harding has just returned from the country and explains why the monks' involvement will make the military government nervous.

...

What no-one knows yet is how much of a threat the monks now pose to a military government which has held power in Burma since 1962.

Could this be the start of what a United Nations official here, speaking on condition of anonymity, described as "a perfect storm" or will it simply fizzle out in the months ahead?

Burma's military rulers want to avoid confrontation with the clergy

"The monks have the potential to add an exponential factor," said the UN official.

"We are looking at the emergence of trends that could make this impossible for [the generals] to handle. It's got the makings of a major disaster."

"It is an unstable time," agreed the veteran democracy activist U Win Naing.

"Unless the government is willing to compromise... then there could be chaos. So far the government has done nothing to ease the situation. All they do is try to oppress protests... rather than come up with solutions to solve problems for the poor."

Much now depends on how the military handles these protests - how much tact the generals can muster.

"Are we seeing just a blip," asked the UN official, "or will this force the authorities to define a hardline stance?"

Hillary: I will vote against funding this war

Unfrigginbelivable

Charge: Desperate To Curry Favor With Bush, CBS Execs Tried Not To Run Abu Ghraib Story

But yet, totally believable. So much for counting on having a big scoop and ratings. Its better to be in with the administration. Our democracy is really hurting.

Yeah! Lets celebrate our differences!

Calls for a Breakup Grow Ever Louder in Belgium

I feel bad for people like this. Praying on hate and difference is a really lonely activity.

Naomi Wolf: Fascist America

...in 10 easy steps

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

Times have changed

Watch the video: San Diego Mayor supports gay marriage

This guy had a serious epiphany:

In the end, I couldn't look them in the face and tell them that their relationship, their very lives, were any less meaningful than the marriage that I share with my wife, Veronica.

San Diego is a fairly conservative city, too.

I didn't know this

Now you need 60 votes in the Senate

Apparently the Democrats agreed to a new Senate rule that requires bills to gain a 60-vote filibuster-proof majority to move forward. WTF?

So the GOP is filibustering without having to do the filibustering. What is going on? Can anyone explain?

GOP Filibusters

This sh*t drives me crazy. The GOP is filibustering at 3xs the normal rate, and the press reports the bills being "blocked in the Senate". When the Dems were filibustering all you ever friggin heard was "we want an up or down vote" and that the Democrats were filibustering. Now? The word filibuster doesn't even show up. Classic IOKIYAR. So, the question is, why aren't the Democrats screaming for an up or down vote? Seems the obvious tactic.

My answer? The Dems don't really want it to come to that. They are too scared. They want to be seen as opposing the war, but they don't have the guts to really defund the war.

The whole thing is weak.

Dwell Time Amendment

It should be called, the Support the Troops Amendment.

Editorials and Opinion and TimesSelect

No free again. That didn't last too long.

I.B.M. to Offer Office Software Free in Challenge to Microsoft’s Line

I.B.M. Lotus Symphony

Looks like they've teamed up with SUN and Google. This could be a good thing.

TPMtv: A Chat with Juan Cole

Lucid dreaming

Definitely the cats meow

Going the way of the dodo

Could 2008 be the year that Democrats finally admit an old sweetheart is never coming back, and stop pandering to the white male voter?

WOC

The money says the surge isn't working

George Carlin

Endless war

and so it goes...

Poser

Two weeks

until thesis submission date...

and in the meantime:

Small and cheap is beautiful

Low Technologies, High Aims

Lieberman is a nut

Really, he scares me.

IPhone hacked

Finally, you can unlock your iPhone from AT&T's network using easily available online tools, without having to do any work on the hardware, for free (free as in no money, nada, zip).

The iPhone Dev Team has done it -- the crew of far-flung, IRC-addled teens and oldsters who for 74 days have been hacking away at Apple's AT&T-locked phone are now offering a full suite of software and a guide with which to do the deed. This isn't Lincoln's proclamation, but in certain circles it's huge. It's the only software-only iPhone hack that won't cost you a red dime to use, and it changes everything.

Conspiracy theory time - I'm sure that Apple helped this process somehow. They love the fact that it is free - now more people can buy... Oh and look, it happened around the same time they cut the price. Nice.

Costs and benefits

LA Times editorial: Another $100 billion for Iraq?

Iraq is too important to lose, so we've got to keep on trying, no matter the cost, and though it's not clear when we will succeed.

This is the essence of the two-day report to Congress by Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. The general and the ambassador freely admitted that the situation in Iraq is frustrating, that U.S. military might cannot force Iraqis into the political reconciliation that is the only basis for real stability, and that it's impossible to predict when Iraqis will be able to run their country themselves. Nevertheless, they argued, the consequences of U.S. troops departing could be so horrific -- Iraq turning into an Al Qaeda haven plagued by ethnic cleansing and preyed upon by Iran -- that the only prudent course is to keep at least 130,000 soldiers in Iraq at least until July.

President Bush is expected to accept this recommendation in a speech Thursday. Despite Democratic protests, it's unlikely that this toothless Congress will stop him from continuing the de facto occupation of Iraq for the remainder of his term. We fear this is a grave mistake that will compound the colossal error of invading Iraq in the first place -- although we fervently hope that Petraeus, Crocker and the courageous people they lead will somehow manage to prove us wrong.

The president will ask the nation to pay for the next 11 months in Iraq with billions of dollars and hundreds of lives. We think this sacrifice will be in vain, because only Iraqis can heal their national wounds. And so we ask instead: What else could the United States do with a guesstimated $100 billion to reduce the strength and the appeal of Islamist terrorist groups worldwide?

That money may be needed to defend Afghanistan against the resurgent Taliban, or to track Al Qaeda elsewhere. But does our creative country have no better ideas for winning Muslim friends and thwarting terrorists? How about spending $20 billion on anti-poverty and education programs in Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan, to give the population a reason to fight the Taliban? Or distributing $20 billion in emergency support to impoverished Iraqi families? Wouldn't $10 billion help repatriate the 2 million Iraqi refugees abroad and resettle the 2 million inside Iraq who have fled sectarian violence? Would $10 billion for child-health programs in Islamic nations help demonstrate that Americans are not, in fact, at war with Muslims? Certainly another $10 billion could pay for more than 55,000 bright students (from anywhere in the world) to spend four years studying Arabic, Islamic thought and counter-terrorism at the University of California. And heck, that would still leave $30 billion to beef up domestic and international law enforcement, intelligence and homeland security.

Is staying the failing course in Iraq truly the only prudent course of action?

SNAFU

For Iraqis, General’s Report Offers Bitter Truth

I've never heard of this guy

Petraeus Report: A Prebuttal

The neurobiology of politics

Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain - Los Angeles Times

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

The results show "there are two cognitive styles -- a liberal style and a conservative style," said UCLA neurologist Dr. Marco Iacoboni, who was not connected to the latest research.

So this gets even more interesting when you consider the plasticity of the brain. I bet there are ways to train someone into either of the two directions. My question is, how can we train the majority of people to be more open-minded and flexible?

Beaker

Krugman

Time to Take a Stand

Here’s what will definitely happen when Gen. David Petraeus testifies before Congress next week: he’ll assert that the surge has reduced violence in Iraq — as long as you don’t count Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, Iraqis killed by car bombs and people shot in the front of the head.

Here’s what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe. They won’t ask hard questions out of fear that someone might accuse them of attacking the military. After the testimony, they’ll desperately try to get Republicans to agree to a resolution that politely asks President Bush to maybe, possibly, withdraw some troops, if he feels like it.

There are five things I hope Democrats in Congress will remember.

First, no independent assessment has concluded that violence in Iraq is down. On the contrary, estimates based on morgue, hospital and police records suggest that the daily number of civilian deaths is almost twice its average pace from last year. And a recent assessment by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found no decline in the average number of daily attacks.

So how can the military be claiming otherwise? Apparently, the Pentagon has a double super secret formula that it uses to distinguish sectarian killings (bad) from other deaths (not important); according to press reports, all deaths from car bombs are excluded, and one intelligence analyst told The Washington Post that “if a bullet went through the back of the head, it’s sectarian. If it went through the front, it’s criminal.” So the number of dead is down, as long as you only count certain kinds of dead people.

Oh, and by the way: Baghdad is undergoing ethnic cleansing, with Shiite militias driving Sunnis out of much of the city. And guess what? When a Sunni enclave is eliminated and the death toll in that district falls because there’s nobody left to kill, that counts as progress by the Pentagon’s metric.

Second, Gen. Petraeus has a history of making wildly overoptimistic assessments of progress in Iraq that happen to be convenient for his political masters.

I’ve written before about the op-ed article Gen. Petraeus published six weeks before the 2004 election, claiming “tangible progress” in Iraq. Specifically, he declared that “Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt,” that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward” and that “there has been progress in the effort to enable Iraqis to shoulder more of the load for their own security.” A year later, he declared that “there has been enormous progress with the Iraqi security forces.”

But now two more years have passed, and the independent commission of retired military officers appointed by Congress to assess Iraqi security forces has recommended that the national police force, which is riddled with corruption and sectarian influence, be disbanded, while Iraqi military forces “will be unable to fulfill their essential security responsibilities independently over the next 12-18 months.”

Third, any plan that depends on the White House recognizing reality is an idle fantasy. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, on Tuesday Mr. Bush told Australia’s deputy prime minister that “we’re kicking ass” in Iraq. Enough said.

Fourth, the lesson of the past six years is that Republicans will accuse Democrats of being unpatriotic no matter what the Democrats do. Democrats gave Mr. Bush everything he wanted in 2002; their reward was an ad attacking Max Cleland, who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam, that featured images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Finally, the public hates this war and wants to see it ended. Voters are exasperated with the Democrats, not because they think Congressional leaders are too liberal, but because they don’t see Congress doing anything to stop the war.

In light of all this, you have to wonder what Democrats, who according to The New York Times are considering a compromise that sets a “goal” for withdrawal rather than a timetable, are thinking. All such a compromise would accomplish would be to give Republicans who like to sound moderate — but who always vote with the Bush administration when it matters — political cover.

And six or seven months from now it will be the same thing all over again. Mr. Bush will stage another photo op at Camp Cupcake, the Marine nickname for the giant air base he never left on his recent visit to Iraq. The administration will move the goal posts again, and the military will come up with new ways to cook the books and claim success.

One thing is for sure: like 2004, 2008 will be a “khaki election” in which Republicans insist that a vote for the Democrats is a vote against the troops. The only question is whether they can also, once again, claim that the Democrats are flip-floppers who can’t make up their minds.

The problem with losing credibility

Just 39% Believe Iraq Report Will Honestly Present Petraeus Views; 35% Say It Will Not

It makes long-term policy difficult. Well, unless you have an opposition party with no spine.

APEC The Chaser Prank George W Bush Hotel

Ron Paul on the Web

Red State Update

Snap

Countdown Special Comment: You have no remaining credibility about Iraq, sir.

Olbermann is (rightly) pissed.

OOh the goodness.

Clowns KKKick KKK ass!

Read the whole story. It gave me happy chills.

See, that wasn't so hard