Fox propoganda

How Fox News covers the NIE — or in this case, doesn’t

Praise Cats - Shined On Me

Subprime

We love the world in so many ways

Besides not respecting the borders and laws of other countries (see post below), we also manage to spread the joy in so many ways: U.S. Credit Crisis Adds to Gloom in Arctic Norway

And these are our allies!!

I guess we rule the world

US says it has right to kidnap British citizens

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.
...
He said that if a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US court could rule that the abduction was illegal and free him: “If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse — it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.”

Mr Justice Ouseley, a second judge, challenged Jones to be “honest about [his] position”.

Jones replied: “That is United States law.”

He cited the case of Humberto Alvarez Machain, a suspect who was abducted by the US government at his medical office in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1990. He was flown by Drug Enforcement Administration agents to Texas for criminal prosecution.

Although there was an extradition treaty in place between America and Mexico at the time — as there currently is between the United States and Britain — the Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that the Mexican had no legal remedy because of his abduction.

Somebody made a nice comment:

Cool, an infinite loop of kidnappings: The US kidnaps someone in England, breaking English law. So the UK should go to the US and kidnap the parties responsible, for prosecution in England. So the US goes to England and kidnaps the English kidnappers for prosecution in the US. So the English go to America and kidnap... ad infinitum.

I suspect that's why extradition treaties were established in the first place.

Jonathan Hendry, Cambridge, Massachusetts

CNN/YouTube GOP Debate

Which one is the cartoon?

Foes Use Obama's Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him

In his speeches and often on the Internet, the part of Sen. Barack Obama's biography that gets the most attention is not his race but his connections to the Muslim world.

Since declaring his candidacy for president in February, Obama, a member of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, has had to address assertions that he is a Muslim or that he had received training in Islam in Indonesia, where he lived from ages 6 to 10. While his father was an atheist and his mother did not practice religion, Obama's stepfather did occasionally attend services at a mosque there.

Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a "Muslim plant" in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.

In campaign appearances, Obama regularly mentions his time living and attending school in Indonesia, and the fact that his paternal grandfather, a Kenyan farmer, was a Muslim. Obama invokes these facts as part of his case that he is prepared to handle foreign policy, despite having been in the Senate for only three years, and that he would literally bring a new face to parts of the world where the United States is not popular.

The republican base

How they reacted to the republican debate

I attended Frank Luntz's dial group of 30 undecided--or sort of undecided--Republicans in St. Petersburg, Florida, last night...and it was a fairly astonishing evening.
...

In the next segment--the debate between Romney and Mike Huckabee over Huckabee's college scholarships for the deserving children of illegal immigrants--I noticed something really distressing: When Huckabee said, "After all, these are children of God," the dials plummeted. And that happened time and again through the evening: Any time any candidate proposed doing anything nice for anyone poor, the dials plummeted (30s). These Republicans were hard.

But there was worse to come: When John McCain started talking about torture--specifically, about waterboarding--the dials plummeted again. Lower even than for the illegal Children of God. Down to the low 20s, which, given the natural averaging of a focus group, is about as low as you can go. Afterwards, Luntz asked the group why they seemed to be in favor of torture. "I don't have any problem pouring water on the face of a man who killed 3000 Americans on 9/11," said John Shevlin, a retired federal law enforcement officer. The group applauded, appallingly.

I just can't relate to these people. Helping people bad, torture good. Oh what a wonderful world.

So who won? Romney walked in with 8 members of the group leaning his way and left with 14. The group thought he looked and sounded like a leader. Fred Thompson went from 3 supporters to 7--and I noticed a clever trick he used: he started almost every answer with a joke and the dials would go up and stay up as he meandered through his nondescript answers.

Giuliani lost. He came in with 12 supporters and left with 6. People thought he came off as too much of a ...New Yorker. McCain had one lonely supporter going in and coming out--but the group was just crazy livid about his stands on immigration and torture.

Mirth Day

The idea of a consumer-led environmental movement has pollution-belching multi-nationals rolling in the aisles — and the joke is on you.

Psychology: Trust Your Gut

According to a new book, most people think too much before they make important decisions

Trouble still ahead

Rising Rates to Worsen Subprime Mess

Kindle

I have been waiting for something like this, the Kindle from Amazon. They say it reads quite easily, as if it were ink on a page. I think after a few iterations it will be a must for me - apparently it isn't that easy to put your own stuff on it. But it does come with free internet access through the mobile phone network. This could potentially be a great technology for 'developing' countries (even better than the 100$ laptops, if you ask me) if they made it more adaptable to different content styles, made notation possible (or easier), and brought the cost down a bit, or course. But something like this - I can't imagine that it stays $399 for long. We'll see good e-readers for $50 soon, I'm hoping.

More details here

Give This Man a Pulitzer

A GQ feature on Josh Marshall from TPM

Interesting to see how they have used technology to take advantage of distributed cognition and knowledge to improve reporting.

Democracy

Georgia Police Turns Sonic Blaster on Demonstrators

Highfalutin journalism

Karl Rove Hired As Newsweek Contributor To ‘Balance’ Markos

Is Musharraf history?

U.S. Is Looking Past Musharraf in Case He Falls

I love fox

Pro-gressives

Its a good idea to start positive branding - and I like the choice of issues. It helps make clear what the loony libruls stand for.

Unravelling the sceptics

What do "climate sceptics" believe?

Climate scepticism: The top 10

Sub-Saharan African

growth rates catching up with rest of world

"Over the past decade, Africa has recorded an average growth rate of 5.4 percent which is at par with the rest of the world," said Obiageli Ezekwesili, World Bank vice-president for Africa.

"The ability to support, sustain and in fact diversify the sources of these growth indicators would be critical not to Africa's capacity to meet (UN poverty targets) but also to becoming an exciting investment destination for global capital."

The continent's overall economic performance was helped in large part by the rise in revenue from oil exporters such as Equatorial Guinea which saw Gross Domestic Product grow by 30.8 percent between 1996 and 2005, while Angola saw a rise of 8.5 percent during the same period.
...
While resource-rich countries were benefitting from a rise in global prices, countries that were not blessed with big reserves were also peforming well.

"Leading the way are the oil and mineral exporters, thanks to high prices," said Page. "But 18 non-mineral economies, with 36 percent of sub-Saharan people, have also been doing well."

Despotism

Happiness and social policy

All They Are Saying Is Give Happiness a Chance

Someday, this will catch on.

Whats the worst that can happen?

ICTs in Africa

Africa, Mostly Offline, Struggles to Get on the Internet

Four years ago, the firm Terracom signed a contract with the Rwandan government to provide 300 schools with internet access. Rwandan officials had planned on equipping schools with the internet as a way to modernize the rural economy. But as of mid-July, only one third of the schools had been connected. That rate is better than that for Africa as a whole, with only 4 percent of the continent connected, most in the very northern and southern regions. A major problem is lack of infrastructure, a result of ongoing conflict destroying communication networks and requiring that lines be routed through England or the US. Officials criticize Terracom for being more interested in tapping into the lucrative cell-phone market. According to Ron Nixon, the dispute is “emblematic of what can happen when good intentions run into the technical, political and business realities of Africa.”

Stiglitz

The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush

The Next Steps For Burma

The international community, including ASEAN, must press for a contact group and a truth commission

Western nations have tightened economic sanctions and ASEAN has expressed "revulsion" at Myanmar's repression of non-violent protests. Concrete actions must now follow the outrage. UN efforts to encourage talks on the country's constitution and renew humanitarian poverty relief, while positive, do not go far enough, argues Amitav Acharya, professor of global governance. Such steps alone would fail to achieve the fundamental goal of fostering political openness, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners. He suggests new institutions that could reduce violence as well as overcome the reluctance of Burma's neighbors to pressure the junta: First, a contact group of pertinent and prominent countries should engage in continuous dialogue with the regime, pushing greater freedom for the Burmese people. Second, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission should be organized, offering incentives for military officers in Myanmar to break with the junta and refrain from attacking their own people. The international community holds mechanisms for moving beyond the rhetoric to create a more peaceful and democratic Burma.

Bummer for us

Fulfillment Elusive for Young Altruists In the Crowded Field of Public Interest

Mirror neurons, Altruism, Neuroscience

New proof of 'mirror neurons': explains why we experience the grief and joy of others, and maybe why humans are altruistic.

Ramachandran goes further, explaining that mirror neurons help us understand the evolution of the self, the mysterious narrator that provides continuity in each of our life stories. The self, which Ramachandran calls the Holy Grail of neuroscience, may be an evolutionary innovation adopted not first to give each person a conscious foreman, but as a way to model others. In this theory, the self started as a kind of little program -- fed with data from the mirror system -- for understanding other people, a kind of algorithm for generating a mini-you in me. Once it evolved, this program swung around and began to apply its algorithmic investigations also to its host, the brain in which it resided. Self-consciousness was born.

"It was almost certainly a two-way street," Ramachandran adds, "with self-awareness and other-awareness enriching each other in an auto-catalytic cascade that culminated in the fully human sense of self. You say you are being 'self-conscious' when you really mean being conscious of someone else being conscious of you."

...

Dennett agrees that it is rash to draw profound conclusions about the role of mirror neurons so soon. "Some mirror neuron enthusiasts are saying that these are some kind of magic bullet, a giant leap by evolution that made language and empathy possible. I think that is much too strong."

Ramachandran and Dennett, who are friends, disagree on this point. Ramachandran thinks that mirror neurons will indeed bring about a revolution in the way we see the brain and the way we see ourselves and our relationship to one another. "Mirror neurons will do for psychology what the discovery of DNA did for biology," he wrote several years ago.

The other last resort of scoundrals

Kentucky GOP Pushing Anti-Gay Message In Final Days Of Gov Race

Going into the home stretch in in the Kentucky gubernatorial election, the Republicans appear to have brought out one last card: Paranoia against gays.

The state GOP is now sending a robo-call throughout the state featuring none other than Pat Boone, warning that as a Christian he is concerned that Democratic nominee Steve Beshear, who has been way ahead in the polls, will work for "every homosexual cause."

"Now do you want a governor who'd like Kentucky to be another San Francisco?" Boone asks. "Please re-elect Ernie Fletcher."

With all of the Republican officials being arrested for soliciting gay sex, I wonder if this attack really still works. It must poll well in Kentucky, or I guess they wouldn't do it.

Krugman

Fearing Fear Itself

Sometimes I think that Krugman reads some liberal blogs, takes the logical and good ideas, then turns them into his column. Anyway, its mostly a good thing.

Keepon

If this thing doesn't cheer you up, then nothing can.

A different Department of Education...

this one is hell-bent on making sure that poor kids don't get an education

a computer glitch prevents renewal of a 40-yr old program that gets poor kids into college.

Stephen Colbert campaigns in South Carolina

Relativity

I wonder what focus group this plays well with...

best comment:
"One man's shocking of the genitals is another man's electrolysis?"

and apparently she's Canadian and a bit out of her mind.

How the heck does this girl get on CNN?

ghoulish!!

i just learned how to do this. 19 structural mri scans of myself are averaged, and then the outer surface is rendered. my cheeks look squished because of the padding in the machine.

A good idea

Gun cameras

This is the perfect example of using technology to make the public sector more transparent - and given the one-to-one nature of the public sector performance in this area to the civil servant - direct accountability measures are possible. Me likey this one.

even scarier...

Hell House

Iran the new Hitler

Podhoretz v. Zakaria



This dude is whacked. That is his argument? This should be easy to rebut. Anyone for the war against Iran is the new Bush/Cheney and anyone against it is everyone who was right about the Iraq war.

Too soon?

Or you can just go with the ... the US spends 57 x's more than the nations of Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria combines. Threat? Puuhleease.

Climbing Kilimanjaro

Tom Bissell’s account of his painful and exhausting climb to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro

Select a candidate 2008

select a candidate

Last call

UN issues 'final wake-up call' on population and environment

Time to ditch Kyoto

Climate policy after 2012, when the Kyoto treaty expires, needs a radical rethink. More of the same won't do, argue Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner.

The Kyoto Protocol is a symbolically important expression of governments' concern about climate change. But as an instrument for achieving emissions reductions, it has failed¹. It has produced no demonstrable reductions in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth. And it pays no more than token attention to the needs of societies to adapt to existing climate change. The impending United Nations Climate Change Conference being held in Bali in December — to decide international policy after 2012 — needs to radically rethink climate policy.

Kyoto's supporters often blame non-signatory governments, especially the United States and Australia, for its woes. But the Kyoto Protocol was always the wrong tool for the nature of the job. Kyoto was constructed by quickly borrowing from past treaty regimes dealing with stratospheric ozone depletion, acid rain from sulphur emissions and nuclear weapons. Drawing on these plausible but partial analogies, Kyoto's architects assumed that climate change would be best attacked directly through global emissions controls, treating tonnes of carbon dioxide like stockpiles of nuclear weapons to be reduced via mutually verifiable targets and timetables. Unfortunately, this borrowing simply failed to accommodate the complexity of the climate-change issue.

Kyoto has failed in several ways, not just in its lack of success in slowing global warming, but also because it has stifled discussion of alternative policy approaches that could both combat climate change and adapt to its unavoidable consequences. As Kyoto became a litmus test of political correctness, those who were concerned about climate change, but sceptical of the top-down approach adopted by the protocol were sternly admonished that "Kyoto is the only game in town". We are anxious that the same mistake is not repeated in the current round of negotiations.

...

Climate change is not amenable to an elegant solution because it is not a discrete problem. It is better understood as a symptom of a particular development path and its globally interlaced supply-system of fossil energy. Together they form a complex nexus of mutually reinforcing, intertwined patterns of human behaviour, physical materials and the resulting technology. It is impossible to change such complex systems in desired ways by focusing on just one thing.

Social scientists understand how path-dependent systems arise; but no one has yet determined how to deliberately unlock them. When change does occur it is usually initiated by quite unexpected factors. When single-shot solutions such as Kyoto are attempted, they often produce quite unintended, often negative consequences. The many loopholes that have enabled profiteers to make money from the Clean Development Mechanism, without materially affecting emissions, are examples. Therefore, there can be no silver bullet — in this case the top-down creation of a global carbon market — to bring about the desired end.

They then go on to propose 5 central elements of any future climate change policy.

FRONTLINE

Showdown with iran

Colbert for prez

Comedian Colbert Reaches Double Digits As Third-Party Candidate

Hillary Clinton (D) vs. Rudy Giuliani (R) vs. Stephen Colbert (I)
Hillary Clinton (D)	45%
Rudy Giuliani (R)	35%
Stephen Colbert (I)	13%

Hillary Clinton (D) vs. Fred Thompson (R) vs. Stephen Colbert (I)
Hillary Clinton (D)	46%
Fred Thompson (R)	34%
Stephen Colbert (I)	12%

Just for the heck of it

Burma

More on the Netherlands new drug policies

Holland Clamps Down on Drugs

Fear and facts

Zakaria debunks the current conservative madness... Stalin, Mao And … Ahmadinejad?

At a meeting with reporters last week, President Bush said that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." These were not the barbs of some neoconservative crank or sidelined politician looking for publicity. This was the president of the United States, invoking the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon.

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

Random stuff

Five Easy Ways to Go Organic - Especially important if you are raising a child.

Medical myths: Strange, but true...

and it looks like we might be entering into the global warming positive feedback loops before we thought... 'Carbon sinks' lose ability to soak up emissions. That is bad news.

and finally, 4 out of 5 certified military people think Cheney is whacked. And not in a good way.

Justice

SR.com: Gonzales could be prosecuted, McKay says

The U.S. Inspector General may recommend criminal prosecution of departed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the conclusion of an investigation, possibly as early as next month, the fired former U.S. attorney for Western Washington told a Spokane audience Friday.

Drawing the line on FISA

Meeting Resistance

A movie about the Iraqi resistance - Trailer here

Moving towards a more participatory democracy

10 Questions

I need to write a paper that coins a new term, "collaborative democracy" or "wiki-ocracy" or something.

Stephen Colbert to Run for President

Only in South Carolina and will run as a Republican and a Democrat

Rudy rudy rudy!

Just doing their part to maintain the status quo

Revealed: the man behind court attack on Gore film is a fuel and mining magnate

Bangkok

Frontline

Cheney's law on Tuesday, October 16, 2007 on PBS

The ‘Good Germans’ Among Us

Frank Rich catches on

The Right Brain vs Left Brain test

Go here
I originally saw the dancer spinning clockwise, but I figured out a way to get it to switch directions. Its a bit freaky, because seeing it spin one way it is impossible to imagine it can be seen as spinning the other way... and yet...

Netherlands declares...

Netherlands declares it will outlaw the sale of psychedelic mushrooms

Sanchez

Getting dirty

WASHINGTON, Oct. 12 — In a sweeping indictment of the four-year effort in Iraq, the former top commander of American forces there called the Bush administration’s handling of the war “incompetent” and said the result was “a nightmare with no end in sight.”

Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who retired in 2006 after being replaced in Iraq after the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, blamed the Bush administration for a “catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan” and denounced the current addition of American forces as a “desperate” move that would not achieve long-term stability.

“After more than four years of fighting, America continues its desperate struggle in Iraq without any concerted effort to devise a strategy that will achieve victory in that war-torn country or in the greater conflict against extremism,” General Sanchez said at a gathering of military reporters and editors in Arlington, Va.
...
General Sanchez, who is said to be considering writing a book, promised further public statements criticizing officials by name.

Today's entertainment

Krugman

No longer behind the select wall: Sliming Graeme Frost

Gore wins Nobel peace prize

Jointly with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Lynne Cheney went on the Daily Show

and they had a revealing discussion.

I was glad Jon mentioned the anthrax attacks - that has disappeared down the memory hole.

Gonzales Lawyers Up

I love it when lawyers hire lawyers

My favorite take on this is that the Dept. of Justice should just apply 'enhanced interrogation' techniques on him and get right to the bottom of this.

Apparently we are against feeding people

Who knew? There are city ordinances limiting peoples' ability to feed the homeless.

Fortunately, someone indicted on that charge in Orlando was found not guilty

So cute...

Settlers of catan board game online

Settlers of catan board game in flash

JSettlers

Sea3D - this one looks like the best...

On Democracy

Why?

How Bush Thinks (Yes, Thinks)

Well, ok... I meant to write Baboons

Burma

Smuggled out video

the Ascent to a Ph.D.

at least one person i know has finished the climb

That Chris Matthews interview

Here it is...Funny how Chris Matthews calls it the worst interview ever - Jon isn't kissing his *ss so therefore it isn't a good one. But really, Jon is telling it like it is, and playing hardball can hurt.

The party of fiscal responsibility

GOP Is Losing Grip On Core Business Vote

This trend has been going on for a while. It seems an especially advantageous time for the democrats to beat the we are fiscally responsible drum for a while - kick the GOP when they are down.

Self-silencing and other detrimental argumentation techniques

Marital Spats, Taken to Heart

In men, keeping quiet during a fight didn’t have any measurable effect on health. But women who didn’t speak their minds in those fights were four times as likely to die during the 10-year study period as women who always told their husbands how they felt, according to the July report in Psychosomatic Medicine. Whether the woman reported being in a happy marriage or an unhappy marriage didn’t change her risk. The tendency to bottle up feelings during a fight is known as self-silencing. For men, it may simply be a calculated but harmless decision to keep the peace. But when women stay quiet, it takes a surprising physical toll.
...
For women, whether a husband’s arguing style was warm or hostile had the biggest effect on her heart health. Dr. Smith notes that in a fight about money, for instance, one man said, “Did you pass elementary school math?” But another said, “Bless you, you are not so good with the checkbook, but you’re good at other things.” In both exchanges, the husband was criticizing his wife’s money management skills, but the second comment was infused with a level of warmth. In the study, a warm style of arguing by either spouse lowered the wife’s risk of heart disease.

But arguing style affected men and women differently. The level of warmth or hostility had no effect on a man’s heart health. For a man, heart risk increased if disagreements with his wife involved a battle for control. And it didn’t matter whether he or his wife was the one making the controlling comments. An example of a controlling argument style showed up in one video of a man arguing with his wife about money. “You really should just listen to me on this,” he told her.

Chris Matthews on the daily show

Go and watch the interview. Hilarious.

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.