[RED/GLARE]

Go to dKos!

2007-07-15T03:02:00.000-04:00

Lately I've been posting only on Daily Kos. Try http://redglare.dailykos.com

What's YOUR Terror Score?!?

2006-12-03T10:02:00.000-05:00

We all have credit ratings that follow us around like digital shadows. Now, starting this Monday, Dec. 4, every time you leave or enter the United States by air, land, or sea, your own government’s computers will officially judge the probability that you are a terrorist, make that judgement widely available, and keep your terror score on file for 40 years. By assigning you a computer-generated risk assessment based upon your travel pattern, your companions, your method of payment and even the kind of food you eat -- among other, as yet unknown tidbits of data -- the U.S. Department of Homeland security thinks it can make you safer.

“When some unknown government computer, using unknown sources of information, tags you as a ‘security risk’ and begins circulating that label around the government, you will have no meaningful way of finding out why you were given that label, let alone challenging its validity,” says Barry Steinhardt, Director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project. ”

Feel safer?

Never heard of the Automated Tracking System? That is by design. The information was just published in the Federal Register last week. Care to comment to the government about this new system? It’s too late! The system officially goes into effect Monday, although they’ve unofficially been doing it since 2002. By the way, they’ve attempted this Big Brother tracking sh*t before...

“The government tried to institute the CAPPS II program of ‘risk assessments’ on passengers several years ago, and a huge uproar rightly followed, and the Congress was forced to intervene,” says Steinhardt. “We are stunned to learn that DHS is now implementing an even more far-reaching program with virtually no opportunity for the public to evaluate or comment on it.”

Or, remember Total Information Awareness? It’s baaaack -- and it goes into effect tomorrow!

To some privacy advocates, the ATS project seemed a resurrection of the Defense Department program known as Total Information Awareness. In that program, federal officials sought to data mine the consumer and banking records of millions of Americans to discern patterns that might point to certain individuals as possible terrorists.

This freshly uncovered travesty has barely been mentioned in the press or blogosphere. It is because this is a Pearl Harbor style sneak attack on our civil liberties by the Orwellian Bu$hCo cabal. Now, aren’t you glad we have those Democrats in charge of Congress? What are they doing about it? So far, nothing! It’s time to hit the phones, friends...

Did Russia Commit Act of War on UK?

2006-11-30T17:42:00.000-05:00

When the secret intelligence service of a foreign nation contaminates several aircraft of your national, flag-carrying airline with a radioactive particle, it could be construed as an act of war. Further, it looks like agents of Russia, acting on Vlad “The Poisoner” Putin’s behalf, put the lives of thousands of British nationals at risk, all in the effort to assassinate Alexander Litvinenko, a naturalized British citizen and ex-KGB agent. Furthermore, there are 12 locations where polonium is being detected around London. It is a lot like a low-level dirty bomb attack.
Now, we in the USA can’t say a LOT here. We can’t moralize too much, since we routinely kidnap foreign nationals abroad, transport them to secret prisons, torture them, and hold them indefinitely with no access to lawyers. But at least we don’t contaminate and dent the economics of those countries in the process. We’re in, we’re out.

But the Russians caused “collateral damage” on this one...

The British Airways planes involved made an estimated 221 flights to 10 locations from Oct. 25 to Nov. 29, carrying some 33,000 passengers.

Here, it looks like you have some numbskull KGB agent pulling a James Bond-like whack on Litvenenko. You know, the overly elaborate kind of killing that ultimately allows the victim to escape (e.g., the death laser that takes a half hour to actually reach your crotch).

What ever happened to just popping a cap in somebody’s ass?

In this case, Litvenenko had time level a deathbed “J’Accuse!” at Putin. And increasingly it looks like the polonium trail leads back to Moscow. If I were Scotland Yard, I’d be interested in testing the Russian embassy in London, since radioactive polonium there would be a smoking (glow-in-the-dark?) gun.

Now it looks as though perhaps the Ruskies poisoned Former Russian prime minister Yegor Gaidar in Ireland as well.

I know our dear leader Dubya looked into Pootie Poot’s soul and all and saw he was a man of Jesus, or whatever, and I think it’s true that they are birds of a feather. But Vlad the Poisoner better be much more careful about what he does. I mean, this really could be read as an act of war. What if the anthrax attacks here had been traced to a foreign country?

Remember, Mother Russia, the British have nuclear materials as well.

Rummy on Torture: "Get-R-Done!"

2006-11-26T08:25:00.000-05:00

It's no surprise that Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, approved the inhuman torture techniques employed by U.S. Intelligence operatives at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison. For any American who loves this country and the human rights it has represented for more than two hundred years, our dark hours under the Bush regime have brought a litany of such disheartening shocks to the conscience – torture, spying without warrant, the end of habeas corpus, etc. What is a surprise is that Rumsfeld was willing to put pen to paper to approve methods that prima facie violate the Geneva Convention. Today, Reuters reports Rummy OK'd prisoner treatment which broke the law and ignored most basic human morality.

Former U.S. Army Brigadier General Janis Karpinski told Spain's El Pais newspaper she had seen a letter apparently signed by Rumsfeld which allowed civilian contractors to use techniques such as sleep deprivation during interrogation.

Karpinski, who ran the prison until early 2004, said she saw a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld detailing the use of harsh interrogation methods.

"The handwritten signature was above his printed name and in the same handwriting in the margin was written: "Make sure this is accomplished"," she told Saturday's El Pais.

It's really saddening that we must turn to Germany to prosecute Rumsfeld for war crimes. Is there no forum in the United States where Rummy can be charged with breaking the laws of the land? In Gen. Karpinski, we have a witness, in the Abu Ghraib photos, we have documentary evidence of war crimes. Now, it appears there is also a smoking gun memo, complete with Rummy’s John Hancock and “Get-R-Done” notation, which should convince any jury or deliberative body (Yo Democrats!) that Bush’s SecDef should rot in the brig.

According to Karpinski, who ran Abu Ghraib...

"The methods consisted of making prisoners stand for long periods, sleep deprivation ... playing music at full volume, having to sit in uncomfortably ... Rumsfeld authorized these specific techniques."

The Geneva Convention says prisoners of war should suffer "no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion" to secure information.

"Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind," the document states.

If we Americans cannot deal with our own war criminal, but must look to Germany for justice, then all is lost. What jurisdiction in the United States, what court, what laws, are most appropriate to bring war criminal Rumsfeld to justice? This is an American problem and it requires an American solution.

I'm With Feingold: U.S. Out by July 1!

2006-11-20T16:31:00.000-05:00

I’m still in mourning over Senator Russ Feingold’s decision not to run for the White House in 2008. The Unites States sorely needs a person of Feingold’s integrity and sense of principle in the Oval Office to make amends to the world and begin the cleanup of the disastrous mess left behind by the Toxic Texan, whom I expect to promptly flee to exile in Paraguay when his term ends.

Nonetheless, Senator Feingold remains a beacon of reason and hope for progressives everywhere, and I don’t think enough has been made of his simple, intelligent proposal to extract our country from the morass that is the Iraq War. The plan can be summed up in two words: let’s leave.

U.S. Senator Russ Feingold today introduced legislation requiring U.S. forces to redeploy from Iraq by July 1, 2007.

Is Feingold’s plan tantamount to “Cut ‘n’ Run?” Nope. It’s the only way to get the Iraqi government to stand on its own two feet. And we’ll continue to train Iraqi forces.

The legislation, which builds on an amendment Feingold authored earlier this year, would allow for a minimal number of U.S. forces to remain in Iraq for targeted counter-terrorism activities, training of Iraqi security forces, and the protection of U.S. infrastructure and personnel.

"Redeploying our troops will pressure the Iraqi government to get its political house in order while allowing us to re-focus on global terrorist organizations and trouble spots that threaten our national security,” Feingold said. “It simply doesn't make sense to continue devoting so much of our resources to one country while ignoring the growing threats we face around the world.”

Meantime, the United States can focus on what should have been job #1 all along: capturing or killing Usama bin Laden, the guy who attacked us on 9/11/01.

In September, Feingold also introduced a resolution addressing the need to strengthen our efforts in Afghanistan so as to prevent that country from again becoming a key staging ground for terrorists.

Presidential candidate or not, Senator Feingold’s plan deserves our attention, consideration and support. The troops deserve to be released from the impossible mission they’ve been asked to carry out, and directed to a more important one: fighting the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And the Iraqis deserve the reduction in violence and increase in self-sufficiency and independence a US withdrawal would bring about. The only losers would be the neocon GOP war agenda and the military industrial complex...and for them we’ll shed no tears.

The bill is S.4049
Title: A bill to provide for the redeployment of United States forces from Iraq by July 1, 2007.
Sponsor: Sen Feingold, Russell D. [WI] (introduced 11/14/2006) Cosponsors (1) Sen. Barbara Boxer [Calif.]
Latest Major Action: 11/14/2006 Referred to Senate committee. Status: Read twice and referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations.

Thanks S.R. Sidarth!

2006-11-08T16:28:00.000-05:00

You are a great American, S.R. Sidarth! I believe it may be your deed in videotaping the "macaca moment" of that vile clown, George Allen, that won the Senate for the Democratic Party in 2006. Thanks for your volunteerism, political involvement and willingness to subject yourself to the hateful abuse of a has-been racist politician. Your deeds tipped the scale, your little video had the political impact of a sledgehammer. I hope you remain active in politics and consider running for office yourself one day -- judging by your patience and tolerant demeanor you would make an excellent politician, perhaps a Virginia Senator one day. (Maybe loose the faux hawk haircut prior to campaigning!)

Your country will be better off for years to come due to your work in bringing down Allen and winning the Senate. You may have even helped to shorten a war! Sincerely, thank you!

Sidarth is a senior at the University of Virginia. Send e-mail to sr.sidarth@ gmail.com.

The Piscopo Push Call

2006-11-06T16:20:00.000-05:00

Well Kean, Jr. has finally brought out the BIG guns (i.e., a guy with arms 62-inches around)! According to Northern NJ-based web site Baristanet robocalls are now featuring lame-brained comic/bodybuilder Joe Piscopo in New Jersey...

Hi, It's Joe Piscopo. Yes, it's really me Joe Piscopo...[as if there are people who want to impersonate him...]
I'm reaching out to all my Italian-American friends to ask them to vote for a good friend of the Italian-American comunity, Tom Kean.

At the end of the call...

Paid for by the Filangieri Society for Justice and Good Government.

Additionally, the site says that mailers are being sent out accusing Menendez of "betraying" Garden State right-wing justice Sam Alito.

Here's what it said (feel free to read in your best Tony Soprano)...

New Jerseyans Are Supposed To Take Care of Their Own
Bob Menendez Betrayed Sam Alito

The mailer, from a Monmouth Beach-organization called the Filangieri Society for Justice and Good Government, states that 20% of New Jerseyans are Italian-American and that Menendez opposed every major Italian-American organization in New Jersey.

All this Italian-American rah-rah stuff from a campaign that insulted the entire Italian American community here recently by exploiting an Italian American stereotype in a TV adM, portraying a mafioso somehow connected to Menedez. What a joke.

Kean, Jr.? Fuggedaboutit.

Screwing the Troops

2006-11-02T16:14:00.000-05:00

That's what the Bush Administration is doing on a daily basis - screwing our servicemen and servicewomen by marooning them in Iraq, saddling them with an impossible mission, and under-equipping them at the same time. It's a total f*cking outrage! Below, see the email that proves it.

While evil neocons and their MSM minions make a big stink over John Kerry and his verbal slip -- cynically hoping to get the troops and the wingnuts riled at Democrats over nothing in the week before an election -- the real insult to our troops is this: parents and coworkers of soldiers must donate clothes, food and items as basic as soap and Advil so that our forces will be adequately equipped. Recently, at my workplace, the following e-mail was circulated...

As some of you may be aware, [redacted]'s son, Pvt. [redacted], has just been deployed to Kuwait and is due to leave for Iraq within the next couple of weeks. At a recent meeting, second tour soldiers in [redacted]'s unit discussed how certain items are greatly needed for our troops in Iraq. [redacted] is proud to assist in coordinating this Holiday collection drive. If you would like to donate a much needed item, please see the attached spreadsheet.

Let's put a smile on those faces that are bravely serving our country. Please bring your donations to [redacted] in Human Resources by Thursday, November 30th. The care package will be sent to our soldiers on Friday, December 1st. Thanks for your help.

Here are the contents of the spreadsheet of items needed by our troops...

Support for the Global War on Terrorism

List of Items Needed in Iraq

Ciprocol Lozenges
Flannel Pajamas (Bottoms Only-various sizes)
Car Fresheners
Hard Candy (Any kind)
Cough Drops
Flannel Sheets
Scented Candles
Food: Anything (no Pork)
Tylenol
Shower Curtains
Hand Warmers
Koolade (Powder)
Advil
T-shirts (plain)
Newspapers (artilces from the states)
Gatorade (Powder)
Hand Sanitizer
Any type of Civilian Clothes
Ice Tea (Powder)
Sun Block (Highest SPF)
Comics
Coffee (instant)
Shampoo
Phone Cards
Cookies
Hand Cream
Any kind of Snack
Eye Wash
Chap stick
Wet Wipes (anything w/100% Aloe)
Deodorant
Febreze (Any style)
100% Aloe (Anything)
Soap

It's a straight up crime that our tax money is not providing these basics to those serving our country. It's also an argument against those huge tax cuts for millionaries. Meantime, we're supposed to get hot and bothered over John Kerry insulting our troops? Yeah, right. The real insult is here, friends, in this list.

Those wishing to donate stuff may check out a web site like this.

Botched Kerry

2006-11-01T16:06:00.000-05:00

John Kerry's apology today was the right thing to do politically, since the right wing noise machine had successfully goosed the MSM into making a stupid gaffe the story of the century, just a week prior to a national election. Like it was the goddamned October Surprise or something.

But this whole thing about Kerry has got me pissed. I was protesting in the streets in the lead up to the Iraq War, before the invasion. I remember watching Colin Powell at the UN and laughing out loud at the trumped up charges. Especially those cartoon-y renderings of mobile chemical weapon labs. So were you, probably. How is it that you and I KNEW IT WAS ALL B*LLSHIT, and yet Senators like John Kerry say they were duped. Did they not have access to the Internet, to newspapers, to the TV news? As mawkishly patriotic as all of our national media was, we could see through the BS to perceive a war of naked aggression. And our Senators could NOT?

Sure Kerry now says he made a mistake in voting to Bushwhack Iraq. I believe the truth is that Kerry's mistakes were political in nature ... in that he thought Bush's war on Iraq would go well. Not poorly. It was not a matter of being duped by faulty intelligence. It was a matter of having too much faith in BushCo's capacity to run a competent invasion.

So I accept John Kerry's apology. He's being unfairly pilloried, like Howard Dean was, for nothing really. An awkward moment, a little mistake. It's not like it cost 3,000 troops their lives and sullied our national reputation, like Bush's mistake. It's not like he lost New Orleans, like Bush did.

It's not even like he shot a man in the face, like Cheney did. But you'd think Kerry's gaffe was far worse than these examples from the coverage it's getting.

I liked Kerry's fire-breathing response to the chickenhawks who have been lambasting him. Doughy Limbaugh. That's good.

Yet, I think if we're going to revive a failed presidential candidate and ask him to speak for the party, to act as a standard bearer, and possibly to run for the Oval Office again, let's make it Al Gore.

Or let's look for new blood...like Obama.

Or let's get behind a real progressive with a conscience and honest compassion...like my favorite Senator...Russ Feingold.

Kerry is a decent man who served his country. But he didn't fight back against the Swift Boaters, didn't challenge the Ohio vote. I think he is among the richest men in government. And he makes ...gaffes. Kerry is not worthy of a second chance. Let's move on.

Screw the Cardinals!

2006-10-25T15:08:00.000-04:00

One of the things I enjoy most deeply about popular American culture is baseball. Now, I hate it when politics gets injected needlessly into the national pastime, like when the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown banned Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon from speaking because they opposed the ruinous invasion of Iraq. (By the way, baseball was NOT invented in Cooperstown so screw the hall of fame too, which is pretty lame anyway if you've ever been there). Or, like when the Red Sox' idiot pitcher Curt Schilling was a shill for Bush after the Sox won it all in 2004 in the lead up to the presidential election. By the way, the Red Sox were redeemed because the team owners and GM came out for Kerry in that same election, which wouldn't have been necessary were it not for the right wing Sox pitcher.

Now, the Cardinals' millionaire starting pitcher for game four of the World Series, a fool with a fastball named Jeff Suppan, is in a new advertisement against stem cell research in Missouri.

The ad also features the football Cardinals' dumbass quarterback Kurt Warner. The ad is intended to counter the great ad by Parkinson's Disease-afflicted actor Michael J. Fox in support of Missouri Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill. So basically, the Card's ace Suppon is siding with the Repug Senator Talent, George Bush, Rush Limbaugh and the other assorted characters of death and blight whose ideology opposes curing disease.

So, I say: Screw the Cardinals! I hope that they lose big time, tonight and in the series. I hope Suppan gets shelled. My beloved Royals whipped the Cards in 1985, and it was great. Another team I root for, the Red Sox, made them look bad in 2004, and I enjoyed that a lot too.

Now it is time for the Detroit Tigers to get their asses in gear and send this right-wing baseball team home with no trophy. All in their right minds, with the exception of those near St. Louis and voting for McCaskill, should be rooting against cure-hater Suppan and the Cardinals. Through bad Karma shall they lose.

A note: the Cardinals were the vehicle by which steroids-addled cheater Mark McGwire hit 70 homers in 1998, and then had the temerity to embrace the family of Roger Maris, who'd set the record fair and square in 1961. As I said: screw the Cardinals!

Googlebombing GOP Losers

2006-10-24T16:05:00.000-04:00

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

--AZ-01: Rick Renzi

--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth

--CA-04: John Doolittle

--CA-11: Richard Pombo

--CA-50: Brian Bilbray

--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave

--CO-05: Doug Lamborn

--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell

--CT-04: Christopher Shays

--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan

--FL-16: Joe Negron

--FL-22: Clay Shaw

--ID-01: Bill Sali

--IL-06: Peter Roskam

--IL-10: Mark Kirk

--IL-14: Dennis Hastert

--IN-02: Chris Chocola

--IN-08: John Hostettler

--IA-01: Mike Whalen

--KS-02: Jim Ryun

--KY-03: Anne Northup

--KY-04: Geoff Davis

--MD-Sen: Michael Steele

--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht

--MN-06: Michele Bachmann

--MO-Sen: Jim Talent

--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns

--NV-03: Jon Porter

--NH-02: Charlie Bass

--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson

--NM-01: Heather Wilson

--NY-03: Peter King

--NY-20: John Sweeney

--NY-26: Tom Reynolds

--NY-29: Randy Kuhl

--NC-08: Robin Hayes

--NC-11: Charles Taylor

--OH-01: Steve Chabot

--OH-02: Jean Schmidt

--OH-15: Deborah Pryce

--OH-18: Joy Padgett

--PA-04: Melissa Hart

--PA-07: Curt Weldon

--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick

--PA-10: Don Sherwood

--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee

--TN-Sen: Bob Corker

--VA-Sen: George Allen

--VA-10: Frank Wolf

--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick

--WA-08: Dave Reichert

Cole Dead Just Fodder for GOP Slime Cannon

2006-10-18T11:47:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, The Washington Post's Dan Foomkin provided excellent insight into the deep cynicism of the Bush/Repug party's use of sailors who died in service to America.

The White House issued a solemn statement Thursday commemorating the sixth anniversary of the al Qaeda attack on the USS Cole.

The White House has been citing the Cole a lot lately, as part of its narrative that President Clinton, who was in charge back then, was asleep at the switch when it came to terrorism.

I went back to see what the White House statement was like on the fifth anniversary of the attack on the Cole. But there wasn't one!

And there wasn't one on the fourth, the third, the second or the first, either.

This is nothing new. In fact, military genius Bush was using the Cole dead for his own political cockamamy back in 2000, as a candidate. On Oct. 12, 2000, hours after the attack on the USS Cole, Bush was asked about the bombing. His response?

"Today, we lost sailors because of what looks like to be a terrorist attack. Terror is the enemy. Uncertainty is what the world is going to be about, and the next president must be able to address uncertainty. And that's why I want our nation to develop an antiballistic missile system that will have the capacity to bring certainty into this uncertain world."

Wow, that missile shield would have really helped a lot on 9/11! Oh, and by the way, what did the Bush junta do about those evil al Qeda-types after is was defitnitively determined that they had carried out the murderous attack upon the Cole? As this article in The Washington Post explains, they didn't do much...

But after concluding that bin Laden's group had carried out the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole - a conclusion stated without hedge in a Feb. 9 briefing for Vice President Cheney - the new administration did not choose to order armed forces into action.

But neocon GOP cynics don't allow their own inaction to stop them from issuing a faux solemn press release commemorating the SIXTH anniversary of the attack, in hopes that the people you can fool "all of the time," as Lincoln put it, will buy into their uber-selling point that Repugs are strong and Dems are weak on terror.

That such BS passes for leadership shames our great nation.

WashTimes: Out with the Liar, In with the Adulterer!

2006-10-03T23:27:00.000-04:00

About those Republican family values: Today, the Moonie-owned archconservative Washington Times calls for the ouster of Dennis Hastert as the Speaker of the House. The paper blames Hastert for looking the other way while a child predator preyed on vulnerable underage pages in the halls of Congress. Then, the Speaker lied about it.

On Friday, Mr. Hastert dissembled, to put it charitably, before conceding that he, too, learned about the e-mail messages sometime earlier this year.

But what is amazing is with whom they want to replace Hastert the Liar...
While I applaud the Washington Times for standing against the GOP's leaders, who are hell-bent on protecting Hastert et al, despite the growing pile of evidence showing they enabled a pedophile, I can't help but laugh at this...

A special, one-day congressional session should elect a successor. We nominate Rep. Henry Hyde, also of Illinois, the chairman of the House International Relations Committee whose approaching retirement ensures that he has no dog in this fight. He has a long and principled career, and is respected on both sides of the aisle.

It is just me, or does anybody else remember that Henry Hyde is an adulterer? I find it simply breathtaking that the party of so-called family values cannot look within its own ranks to find one solitary soul capable of leadership who does not suffer the taint of corruption, pedophilia, addiction, criminal indictment or adultery.

But then again, in this sense, perhaps Hyde would make the perfect Republican leader.

Card Wanted Lieberman to Run Iraq Fiasco

2006-10-02T11:48:00.000-04:00

Joementum is such a loyal supporter of Bush's Iraq War that former Bush chief of staff Andrew Card considered him as a replacement for Donald Rumsfeld after the 2004 election, according to Bob Woodward's new book.

Now, Lieberman has zero military experience.

He has never even run a large organization, aside from a few crappy political campaigns.

My question for Connecticut voters: except for blindly unwavering loyalty to a failed Iraq/Middle East policy (U.S. deaths confirmed by DoD as of 10/2: 2708), and personal fealty to a failed U.S. president (see "The Kiss"), why would BushCo consider putting Joe Lieberman (a.k.a. to Rethugs as "Loserman") in charge of the U.S. military?

Introducing Thai-Coup Poetry!

2006-09-19T11:40:00.000-04:00

Thai-coup poetry follows a 5-7-5 syllabic pattern, is recorded in less than seventeen syllables in three lines, and usually has a middle line longer than the others, sometimes with a reference to the death of democracy.

Prime minister gone

Now freedom can be undone

Tanks rolled on Bangkok

It’s the anthrax, stupid

2006-09-14T10:02:00.000-04:00

It seems a big campaign theme on the part of the neocon/Bush/GOP cabal going into the November elections will be something along the lines of “we have not had another terrorist attack since 9/11, so our policies in Iraq and at home are working.” It was most recently uncorked by Dick Cheney himself on Meet the Press last weekend:

VICE PRES. CHENEY: Well, Tim, I think we’ve done a pretty good job of securing the nation against terrorists. You know, we’re here on the fifth anniversary, and there has not been another attack on the United States. And that’s not an accident, because we’ve done a hell of a job here at home, in terms of homeland security, in terms of the terrorist surveillance program we’ve put in place, in terms of the financial tracking program we put in place, and because of our detainee policy, where we, in fact, were able to interrogate captured terrorists to get the kind of intelligence that has allowed us to disrupt...

This assertion, however, is hogwash. Democrats should not be afraid to call it a lie, in fact. Although Bush & Co. would love to sweep it under the rug of history, most Americans do in fact remember the series of anthrax attacks upon the Congress, the media and the postal service employees who delivered the poison letters. Mr. Cheney forgets — but we shouldn’t — that these attacks upon America occurred after 9/11.

Despite the ad nauseam lies of this radical Administration, the anthrax attacks did happen. Today, they remain unsolved. Like with Usama bin Laden, the trail has gone stone cold. And, friends, this is not a record of strength combating terrorism or protecting the American people. Indeed, it is a record of weakness and incompetence.

My 9/11

2006-09-11T09:19:00.000-04:00

I was temping as the assistant (basically a secretary) to a professor at Harvard Law School, when another secretary got a call from her sister about WTC. The only TV set was in the office of Lawrence Tribe, who, coincidentally, had been Al Gore's lawyer before the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore. Professor Tribe wasn't there, however.

We watched the coverage from Tribe's office -- a few assistants, students and professors. What I remember best is that Tribe had an inflatable punching-bag style novelty doll of Edvard Munch's "The Scream" right behind the TV set, where the towers were burning. It was something like this...

And although it was meant as a novelty, It was very haunting and to this day I'll always associate Munch's "The Scream" with the burning towers.

I left HLS about an hour later and went home and made my wife come home from work. We gassed up the car, and were basically ready to head out of Boston for a few days. We stayed put, however, and simply got back into the flow of life with the rest of the country.

I wonder: would 9/11 have happened if Professor Tribe had WON the case of Bush v. Gore in 2000?

What I Did On Summer Vacation

2006-07-16T12:39:00.000-04:00

As World War III broke out I was on vacation in Rehoboth Beach, Del., a beach resort with a mile-long boardwalk, putt-putt golf, and dozens of stores specializing in bad-taste tee shirts, henna tattoos, salt water taffy and $100 sunglasses. I go every year with my wife's family.

Last year was the year of bad changes down in Rehoboth Beach. For instance, they tore down the Hobo Beach Motel. This was a big deal.

My wife's grandfather, now in his mid 90s, began taking my wife's family to the Hobo Beach Motel in the early 1950s. It was a 50-room beachfront property with private decks in back, looking out onto the Atlantic. There were no in-room phones, but the breakfast buffet was decent and each room was supplied with a flyswatter.

However, due to the real estate bubble, the latest owner of the Hobo Beach Motel sold the land off in small segments that each commanded about half a million dollars. They took the wrecking ball to the old beach hotel to make way for multimillionaires and McMansions.
So last year, following the demolition, my wife's grandfather booked the family for the next-closest hotel, about 40 yards down the beach. But when we pulled up to the parking lot of the new place for our 2005 vacation, the empty lot that used to be the Hobo Beach Hotel bummed us all out.

Worse, the city had re-engineered the beach itself, dredging up tons of sand from the seafloor and spraying it upon the oceanfront beach to compensate for storm erosion. The result was a lousy beach, with sharp rocks everywhere and a vast no-man's land between the seaside hotels and the water itself. Riding waves on a boogie board, rafting, or swimming, one risked being raked over the artificially dredged shell fragments that seemed to collect where the water met the land.

But the blue crabs were as delicious as ever, the Sunrise Café's coffee was still made fresh at 6a.m., and the newest members of the family -- my one-year-old and a cousin's four-year-old -- needed indoctrination in the family ritual. Lead by our nonagenarian sponsor of the annual vacation, we planned to keep coming back to Rehoboth Beach in spite of the unwelcome changes.
For this year's trip, my wife and I rented a car here in Brooklyn, but on the way to the beach, as we merged onto I-95 in Philadelphia, the rental car stalled. A light reading "OIL PRESSURE LOW" started flashing. I made it to an off ramp and hit the hazard lights. The first guy to pass, a white dude in a pickup truck, stopped to offer help, and told me, "This is a really bad place to break down, man."

He gestured at my two-year-old in her car seat and my pregnant wife, who was on the cell phone outside the car calling for assistance from family members in another car on I-95. "I'd keep my family locked in that car, it's a bad neighborhood," he warned, then drove off.
It kind of freaked me out, so I got my wife back in the car and nervously locked us in. But as we looked around we saw that where we were stranded was your basic working class African American neighborhood. In fact, the next dozen or so cars that drove up the off ramp had black drivers, all of whom stopped to offer us help. I realized that the neighborhood was perfectly safe for us, but that the car was in a dangerous spot traffic-wise.

Our help arrived and we pushed the crappy Mercury Sable (that we rented at Speedy, by the way) to a parking lot, rented another car (a nice Toyota Camry) and had the first car towed away, where I hope it gets crushed and remade into soda cans.

Finally we arrived in Rehoboth Beach. The good news: The rocks out on the beach from 2005 have settled due to wind and the pounding waves (and mechanical grooming), and this year the beach is as sandy as it was before the dredging. We've decided that the new hotel, the Atlantic View, is better than the Hobo Beach ever was. There are phones in the rooms and a big, enclosed deck where our two-year-old could play safely.

But I was surprised to see that nobody has built anything on those half-million dollar lots where the Hobo Beach hotel used to be. Maybe they can't get flood insurance for coastal McMansions in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. After all, look what happened to Trent Lott's place.

We kept CNN on in our room as much as we could stand it, watching conflict widen between Israel, the Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and Iranians. Slathered in sunblock, we'd come in from the beach, where we were digging big holes near the water, to "Breaking News" about kidnappings, Katuysha rocket strikes upon Israel and Israel's overreaction. It's really obvious that Israel was looking for an excuse to fight. And the quick involvement of Iran in this thing is scary - a clear result of our stupid Iraq invasion and the subsequent expansion of Iranian influences in the whole region.

Back on the beach there was another family that set up nearby to our family several days in a row, since they were also staying at the hotel. It was a father, mother and two sons. The father and boys all had matching mullet/rattail-like hair that they'd braided in the same way. They were like a little tribe. And the first day at the beach they built this ambitious sandcastle barrier around their towels and beach chairs. They had ramparts and moats and towers and turrets, as well as an American flag planted in the highest tower. Their sand defenses eventually ringed their place on the beach, and attracted lots of attention from everyone strolling on the beach.
I was kind of jealous of their sand fortress. But I realized their effort was futile.

It made me think about how defenseless we really are from danger and change -- like the Hobo Beach Motel, their castle would be knocked down in due time. The new Rehoboth beach will erode again. And wars will destroy everything eventually. So what's the point of locking doors in fear?

Independence Day

2006-07-04T13:36:00.000-04:00

Whew! I’m relieved to have this blog, as most of my posts over at DailyKos were recently wiped out. Whether it was on purpose due to a change in policy at dKos, or a mistake, I do not know. But this is now the one place to get all of my blog posts. I delcare my independence!

I will start putting more exclusive stuff here, too, so as not to make this a clone of my dKos page. I think I should establish a “best of …” list of my favorite blog entries, so newcomers don’t have to read through the whole blog history to find highlights.

Anyway, thanks for coming here! Happy Fourth of July! Let’s keep America clean!

Anthropomorphic America

2006-06-16T11:35:00.000-04:00

I've been pondering the power of that term "heartland." Since I was raised in Kansas -- a.k.a "The Heart of America" -- I like to agree that the national spirit resides in the middle of the map. But I detest the way the GOP and Fox News use this term "heartland" to infer that the conservative and backwards values of many of that State's residents somehow reflect the true national soul. Kansas has long been home to radicals and rebels too (think John Brown). And, besides, I believe if we are truly to discern the inner life of America, we need to look beyond simply the Heart of America. For a national self-inventory, we need a more complete approach to our national anatomy.

So let's consider the map of the REST of United States as if it were a human body.

Did you know our country is a dude? Clearly, this is not difficult to imagine, since we have a natural point of anatomical reference in the peninsula of Florida - it acts and looks like the national d*ck. And both the humid climate and libidinous culture there verify this phallic assignation. Why, within this concept, the Florida Keys could even be droplets of pee. Take that Cuba!

Moving up along the Eastern Coast, past the pubes of Georgia and the treasure trail of the Carolinas, we arrive at Washington, D.C., the belly button of America. Yes, the capitol is the national omphalos that we ponder and worry about. It's also the place where lint and other schmutz collects in the form of politicians. It needs to be cleaned out periodically or it becomes infected. Hopefully we will clean out our national navel in 2006, with that giant Q-Tip known as the election.

Pennsylvania - you're the nation's brawny chest -- the proud home of the Declaration of Independence. Philly and Pittsburg are the nipples.

Further on up the American torso, we arrive at New York. Did you know that the "Big Apple" is also the nation's Adam's Apple, throat and mouth? It is from here that our national voice is projected -- where the nation's media outlets are headquartered and where, with all that talking, our business deals are struck. Naturally, all New Yorkers are Big Mouths.

On 9/11, our two front teeth were knocked out.

Farther north, we have Boston and New England. With the concentration of colleges here, including most of the Ivy League, it's simple to see that this region is the nation's brain. This is also the site of the Pilgrims and first American colonies, and therefore the origin of our national consciousness, or ego. Notice how the brains behind the American experiment always vote Democratic?

Let's go west now. Since Chicago bills itself as "The City of Big Shoulders" it's not a stretch to call this city, along with the surrounding rust belt of Midwestern states like Ohio and Michigan, the broad back of the nation. Once the proud home to American manufacturing, our shoulders slump now, a bit defeated.

More westerly still, we have the Dakotas and Montana - our national lungs where windy wide-open plains and open spaces allow us to breathe deeply and relax.

As was stated, Kansas is the Heart of America.

Then we hit the Rocky Mountain region - the spine of the United States, where rugged individualism rules the culture. High peaks, like so many vertebrae, line up vertically, north to south. Without this mountain chain, the nation would have appalling posture! We'd look like some hunched-over country prone to invasion and takeover, like Somalia, but way, way bigger.

Out West -Look! America has a huge fat ass, of course - and it's called California. It's warm and cushy and full of mudslides. San Francisco can be the tailbone.

That makes Los Angeles the national anus. It is from L.A. after all that American culture is digested and expelled out in the form of crappy television and movies and music. It is our national assh*le that produced Gigli, Ace Venutra II: When Nature Calls and Judge Dredd. Need I say more?

In fact, assholes are everywhere in L.A., looking to make it big in the motion picture industry, so that they can produce yet more crap.

Let's continue our tour of the nation's nether regions -- Arizona and New Mexico being the national taint. Of course, with the presence here of the vagina-like Grand Canyon, there is an argument to be made that the United States is some sort of freaky hermaphrodite. Eeewww!

That makes Texas and Louisiana the American balls. I feel this is so because it is from Texas, the left ball, that we derive that disastrous machismo, like so much testosterone, that has led us into wars and overconfidence. This is where Bush comes from, after all. But also LBJ, who started Vietnam.

Louisiana, and New Orleans specifically, is the other family jewel. It is the libidinous, humid source of our national sex drive - and the red-light source of jazz music and good times rolling. It is our better ball.

Let's face it: by this important anatomical analysis, Hurricane Katrina was a kick to the national nuts.

Lastly, let me assert that Canada is America's hat and Mexico is some kind of prosthetic leg - I haven't quite figured it out. South America is a clubbed foot of enormous proportion. We should see a doctor about it.

So, fellow progressive Americans, whether you live in the American headland, heartland, spineland, mouthland or taintland, let's not let the Republicans monopolize the rhetorical possibilities of Anthropomorphic America.

He/she/it is ours to claim and promote as well!

The Incredible Shrinking Freedom Tower

2006-06-15T09:33:00.000-04:00

Democrats should be on this like white on rice ...

The head of the Port Authority hinted yesterday that the planned 1,776-foot Freedom Tower will be scaled back if enough government tenants don't commit to moving in.

[...]
"If those resources are not sufficient to build it, then obviously our commitment to build it has to be modified," Coscia said.

He added, "The only thing the Port Authority has not committed to doing is spending whatever it takes to build the Freedom Tower."

In response to the attacks of 9/11/01 the Republican leadership has launched two wars and stripped away Americans' civil liberties such as due process, probable cause, habeas corpus, whistleblower protection, freedom to assemble, freedom of the press and freedom of speech.

But there's still just a gaping hole in the ground at the World Trade Center site, almost five years after the attack that brought down those massive towers.

Plans for a 1,776-foot-tall "Freedom Tower" have been drawn up and redrawn many times. The reasons for the redesigns first centered on architectural and political rivalries.

When a butt ugly compromise of a tower was finally unveiled, the NYPD took one look at the plans, which involved situating the tower mere yards from the heavily trafficked West St., and declared the tower would be a perilous security risk.

That's right, the Republican powers that be in New York (Pataki/Bloomberg) came up with a dainty, unprotected building with glass facades and hoped to build it within 10 feet of a busy road - a truck bomber's dream. This, for a structure that will surely top the al Qaeda's target list if it is ever built.

A tougher tower was designed. It was even slightly less heinous looking. On Monday, at last blasting began at Ground Zero as workers prepared the foundation of that tower.

But on Tuesday came word from Coscia that nobody, not even the United States government, wanted to lease space there. Therefore, the project could be scaled back into something smaller, something less symbolic, something less than was promised ....

It seems almost as if the Freedom Tower is shrinking at the same rate as our Freedom as Americans.

I really hope Democrats can summon the gumption to hold press conferences in front of the hole in the ground that Ground Zero will of course still be later this year and in 2008. What a symbol of the GOP's failure!

Same goes for unprotected chemical plants, unsafe ports and nuclear facilities and wide open borders to the north and south. Let's have photo-ops at those places. The GOP is weak on security and strong on starting needless wars waged on falsehood. Let's make it clear.

As a resident of New York, where the GOP/Feds refuse to spend the equivalent of one day's cost of the Iraq War for our annual security budget, I think it's time for real security. In the subway, you cannot understand the PA announcements. On the streets, you cannot find a cop.

And at Ground Zero, you cannot find a Freedom Tower.

Marine Pens "Funny" Song About Killing Iraqi Family

2006-06-15T05:31:00.000-04:00

We're creating monsters in Iraq. Or, perhaps we raised them here and sent them there. According to Stars and Stripes ...

A Marine Corps corporal seen in a video singing about killing members of an Iraqi family says the song was only a joke and not tied in any way to allegations that Marines killed as many as two dozen unarmed civilians in Haditha last year.

This Marine's song is called "Hadji Girl." First off, my brother served in Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain Division, so I'm aware that the term "Hadji," used by U.S. military personnel in-theater to describe any Muslim, is totally racist. It's the equivalent of the term "gook" used in Vietnam.

The song tells the story of a Marine who falls in love with an Iraqi girl and is taken to meet her family. The girl's family shoots her and then attacks the Marine, who uses her younger sister as a shield and watches blood spray from her head.

He then sings about blowing the father and brother "to eternity."

After Haditha and Abu Ghraib and that recent re-education on morals and values given to our troops in Iraq, one would hope that our soldiers could refrain from taking such celebratory pleasure in killing and humiliating Iraqis.

But not only did this Marine think that the killing of an Iraqi family was a great topic for commemoration in song, his Marine buddies loved the tune and "pushed him on stage with his guitar. Someone taped the performance and posted it on the Internet."

Great! So rather than shaming this Marine or telling him to get counseling, the songwriter is celebrated and encouraged by his fellow Marines. Can you imagine a high school senior performing such a song in a music class or a talent show? He would be suspended or expelled and the police would be called in fear of a Columbine-style attack! But in the U.S. military, such song craft is hailed and promoted. That's the way to win Iraqi hearts and minds, guys!

The one cosolation may be that the Marine seems contrite, now that he is under investigation, or under the glare of the media, or outed as someone who celebrates the death of "Hadjis."

"I will never perform this song again, and I will remove all video and text in relation to this that I have control of," said Belile, 23, who is assigned to the Marine Light/Attack Helicopter Squadron 167 based at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.

He's only 23, so maybe this was a byproduct of immaturity under stress and exposed to questionable American military values.

Let's hope we never have to hear this song. Let's hope there men and women of goodwill left in our military after this Iraq War ends in, what ... ten years, fifteen years? And let's hope Iraqis can forgive us someday, for our invasion and "Shock and Awe," for allowing the looting, for our torturing, for our indiscriminate killing, for the white phosphorous, for Haditha and for this Marine's song and the mindset in our military that found it enjoyable.

Notes on Protective Headgear

2006-06-13T20:41:00.000-04:00

Pennsylvania's stupid law that does not require motorcycle riders to wear helmets very likely today cost the Super Bowl-champion Pittsburg Steelers their star quarterback, Ben Roethlisberger, who was riding his hog without head protection and was involved in a wreck. What a dumb way to loose your career, if not your life. In fact, Ben Roethlisberger had been warned about the dangers ...

Asked why he doesn't wear a helmet -- something he wouldn't think about doing on a football field -- Roethlisberger pointed out Pennsylvania's 35-year-old state law requiring helmets to be worn was amended two years ago.

"Obviously Pennsylvania doesn't think people need to (wear a helmet)," he said. "There's a law you've got to wear it in football."

I've always been on the fence about motorcycles. On the one hand, they're obnoxiously loud and the people who ride them often have a Cowboy Complex whereby they don't feel good unless they are ripping by you at 100+ m.p.h. or revving their hog in the middle of the night outside your house.

On the other hand, motorcycles get pretty great mileage, so they're much less evil than, say, cars or SUVs despite their annoying quality.

But common sense dictates you should wear a helmet at a minimum when out riding, just as you should wear your seatbelt in a car. Now, I realize bikers are busy lobbying state legislatures to revoke helmet laws in the name of personal freedom. After all, who wants Big Government (unless you live in New Orleans)? But often laws are on the books for good reason: You should wear your helmet on motorcycle; you should not drink and drive; you should not possess fully automatic weaponry; you should not possess heroin; you should have to support your kids financially.

Maybe, now, Pennsylvania will reevaluate the price of so-called personal freedom. Or at least maybe the Steelers will reevaluate how they structure their contracts...

Many NFL contracts prohibit engaging in dangerous activities, but Roethlisberger's deal apparently doesn't specifically ban motorcycle riding.

[Steelers coach] Cowher didn't criticize Roethlisberger's riding, but is visibly uneasy with it.

"I certainly don't condone that," Cowher said. "It (playing pro football) is a very small time in your life and you've got to be very careful -- you can see it documented with Kellen Winslow in Cleveland. There are choices and consequences ... not just in riding motorcycles, but where you go and who you associate with. You have control over them but once you make your decision, they control you."

What I Learned from Tank Man and the Heroes of Tiananmen

2006-06-04T08:11:00.000-04:00

It was 17 years ago today, June 4, that armed forces of the People's Republic of China rolled into Tiananmen Square and opened fire upon thousands of student protestors, who had audaciously constructed a paper-mache replica of the Statue of Liberty in the center of square.

It was the formative political moment of my life - I was 19 years old, living in Massachusetts, taking summer classes. I remember the pride I felt as an American when the committed young college students - most of whom were my age then - put up Lady Liberty as their symbol of democratic unity, and to honor our Ideals (the ones enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution).

I remember more vividly the horror I felt seeing those tanks roll into the nighttime square on video, the crackle of gunfire everywhere, the shaky images of student running while holding lifeless bodies, the grotesquerie of dead kids on the ground, reminiscent of a large scale Kent State (which I had learned about as a kid from my mother, who was once a hippie anti-Vietnam protestor).

Most clearly from that June 4 summer I remember, with his shopping bags full of courage, facing down a menacing column of Chinese tanks. Refusing Death's intimidation, unaware his resolve was to be broadcast around the world - a symbol of Democracy as inextinguishable as the Statue of Liberty's torch.

According to Wikipedia the attack by the Government upon these students and intellectuals left "between 400 and 800 civilians dead, and between 7,000 and 10,000 injured. An initial report from local hospitals put the number at around 2,000 dead."

I remember the shock I felt watching a government oppress its own citizenry like that, and the gratitude I felt to be and American where, even though George H.W. Bush was president, our leadership would never intimidate or attack its own people to preserve its own power.

Then, after early condemnations of the attack from the Bush I administration, I recall that Brent Scowcroft was sent to secretly deal with Deng and open diplomatic channels for the normalization of trade relations between the U.S. and China. I remember hearing the argument that we could affect democracy in China through trade and business contact.

But I was shocked we would want to do business with dictators whose actions went against their peoples' best interest. If we the United States, the planet's richest and freest country, could not afford to boycott killers and repressors of Democracy, what country in the world could?

Next, as the Chinese Democracy Movement, or "June 4 Movement," was squelched, with its leaders and participants either executed, put into prisons or deported, and their supporters purged from government and the media, I remember Bill Clinton campaigning against Bush I and his business-as-usual policy towards the Chinese Communist Leadership.

I supported Bill Clinton as a volunteer, worked at Madison Square Garden during the 1992 Democratic National Convention, and then voted for the man. I even attended his Inauguration and stood with the crowds in the freezing cold.

It must have been just weeks after taking office that Clinton reversed himself, in a total betrayal of his campaign rhetoric, and announced he supported Most Favored Nation (MFN) status for the People's Republic of China. Right then and there, I knew Clinton had sold me out, since China was my most important issue.

Clinton offered the same reasoning: our business ties to China would enable more Democracy in China. We'd influence them to be more like us.

But those dead Chinese kids in the Square were my age!

Next, I remember a decade of U.S. manufacturing jobs going to China. Jobs that here offered high salary, vacations, health care, a pension, went to China and became subsistence wage jobs carried out in sweatshops and conditions that would make the most callus Gilded Age Robber Barron blush.

U.S. companies lead by the Gap and Nike and today by Wal-Mart were only too happy to exploit the advantages of Chinese Police State. (I would only learn later that Hillary Clinton had been on the Wal-Mart Board of Directors for an extended time during that evil company's most spectacular growth period).

Meantime, our manufacturing base was depleted while our political fortunes -- and our Democratic heritage -- went into steep decline as the tech-obsessed, sex-scandal ridden Clinton Years ended and, in 2001 We the People were saddled with George W. Bush.

Next came September 11, 2001.

Under Bush, we've abandoned whole sections of the U.S. Constitution, like those regarding checks and balances, due process and the rule of law, and ignored the Rights given to the People under the First and Fourth Amendments. We've invaded countries without an honest cause; established a worldwide archipelago of secret prisons; tortured and kidnapped so-called "Enemy Combatants;" declared U.S. citizens "Enemy Combatants;" wiretapped the American citizenry; and have accepted the niceties of the "Free Speech Zone" and an elitist government that conducts the People's business in secret. Oh yeah, and we quietly accepted fixed elections in 2000 and 2004.

In China, our Internet corporations actively work with the authorities to censor and suppress dissident thought. They will do the same here, I bet. In China, they have a press that is indistinguishable from state propaganda. Here, in the United States, the mainstream press reads more and more like it was scrubbed by Karl Rove.

It seems to me that through trade and through acceptance of our political differences, we've become more like China that China has become like the U.S.

We're more like the repressive police state that killed it's own people on June 4, 1989, than China is like the democracy we were on that same date. It's not hard at all to imagine this Government or its successor killing American democracy protestors in some great city square.

Who knows what Bush and Bloomberg and the NYPD would have done if thousands of protestors at the 2004 GOP convention had defied them and gathered upon Central Park's Great Lawn?

What's worse: we have a lack of Tank Men in the United States.

There was Cindy Sheehan down in Crawford. There's Russ Feingold in the Senate (the only one to vote against the Patriot Act in 2001). There was that "Go F**k yourself, Mr. Cheney!" guy on the Gulf Coast. There was Steven Colbert at the White House Correspondent's dinner.

But we need more. We need many, many more Tank Men. How dow we find them? From where do they come? New Orleans? Iraq's killing fields? From among the 9/11 families? I don't know.

Let's all mourn for those killed and maimed this day Seventeen Years ago. Let's mourn for the dead and fight for the living in China, in the United States, and everywhere. Friends, we have common cause.

And let's pray for more Tank Men.

They Know Where You Surfed the 'Net Last Summer!

2006-06-02T11:06:00.000-04:00

This N.Y. Times story blew me away this morning, and I've seen no mention online, so here goes...

The Justice Department is asking Internet companies to keep records on the Web-surfing activities of their customers to aid law enforcement, and may propose legislation to force them to do so.

The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales held a meeting in Washington last Friday where they offered a general proposal on record-keeping to a group of senior executives ... from America Online, Microsoft, Google, Verizon and Comcast.

Apparently, Gonzales kicked off this confab by showing a bunch of child porn to the assembled Internet execs! Only in Bush's America!

Yes, indeed, to set the mood, the man behind the torture memo wanted to show these corporate reps that if they were anti-spying, they were pro-child-porn. What better way to make this captive audience squirm than by a display of illegal child porn? ("A Clockwork Orange" comes to mind, doesn't it?):

An executive of one Internet provider that was represented at the first meeting said Mr. Gonzales began the discussion by showing slides of child pornography from the Internet. But later, one participant asked Mr. Mueller why he was interested in the Internet records. The executive said Mr. Mueller's reply was, "We want this for terrorism."

Hmmm...a shifting rationale for spying on Americans, whom the Justice Dept. seemingly thinks of as a collection of pedophile terrorists. Maybe that's why they don't count our votes in national elections, at least not the ones cast for Democrats.

Anyway, what records do Gonzales and Mueller want to keep on Americans?

While initial proposals were vague, executives from companies that attended the meeting said they gathered that the department was interested in records that would allow them to identify which individuals visited certain Web sites and possibly conducted searches using certain terms.

It also wants the Internet companies to retain records about whom their users exchange e-mail with, but not the contents of e-mail messages, the executives said. The executives spoke on the condition that they not be identified because they did not want to offend the Justice Department.

Get that? They want a record of your surfing history (don't bother clearing it on your browser), terms you've searched on search engines and your e-mails. I wonder if Microsoft has a way of recording what you write in MS Word docs, or on Excel spreadsheets, because I'm sure that stuff must not fall under the Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted searches.

One civil libertarian attended the meeting, incredible as it may sound. His take on this sh*t?

They also talked of their value in investigating other crimes like intellectual property theft and fraud, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, who attended the session.

"It was clear that they would go beyond kiddie porn and terrorism and use it for general law enforcement," Mr. Rotenberg said.

[...]

"This is a sharp departure from current practice," he said. "Data retention is an open-ended obligation to retain all information on all customers for all purposes, and from a traditional Fourth Amendment perspective, that really turns things upside down."

Friends, Rotenberg's group EPIC has a web page full of good tools for maintaining your electronic privacy. If you haven't considered the need for surfing with a cloak or some privacy protection (ditto for e-mails) this diary should be your wake up call.

Here's the EPIC page of privacy tools.

To bad we need to worry about this stuff. The U.S. Constitution is dead! Long live the Constitution!