Three weeks in jail for possession of flour

A Bryn Mawr freshman, Janet Lee, was arrested at the Philadelphia airport in 2003 as she was going through screening to fly home to California for Christmas. Her checked luggage contained three condoms filled with white powder, and field tests showed that the white powder contained opium and cocaine. She insisted that the powder was flour, and that the condoms were stress reliever toys, to be squeezed during exams.

As it turned out, the field tests were wrong or falsified. Had she not obtained sufficient legal help which led to a retest of the powder, she faced 20 years in prison on drug charges.

She now has a lawsuit against city police in Philadelphia which seeks to answer the question of why the field tests came back positive for drugs.

(More comment at The Agitator.)

The Gospel of Judas

The long-lost "Gospel of Judas," believed to have been written in Greek in the second century C.E., will be published next year. It was apparently recovered sometime prior to 1983, when a copy was offered for sale. Rodolphe Kasser of the University of Geneva announced in 2004 that he would be publishing a translation in 2005, but it looks like it will be out in the first half of next year. National Geographic will be doing a story on it for Easter.

This gospel was in the possession of a Swiss foundation for decades, and are a Coptic translation that probably dates to the fourth or fifth century. Characters in this gospel include Judas, Jesus, Satan, and Allogenes ("the stranger"), who appears in a number of gnostic documents found at Nag Hammadi.

FISA Court: Rubber Stamp?

In a New York Times op-ed defending the president's warrantless wiretapping of international calls and emails, former Justice Department attorneys (under GHWB and Reagan) David Rivkin and Lee Casey write:

Furthermore, the FISA court is not a rubber stamp and may well decline to issue warrants even when wartime necessity compels surveillance.

It's not? Let's take a closer look (stats from EPIC by way of Talking Points Memo). The FISA court, established in 1978, had received 18,761 requests for warrants as of the end of 2004. How many were rejected? Four or five (sources disagree). Of the four which were definitely rejected (all from 2003), all four were partially approved upon reconsideration. And how many have been modified by the court from the original requests?

1978-1999: 0 (?)
2000: 1
2001: 2
2002: 2 (but the modifications were later reversed)
2003: 79 (of 1727 requests)
2004: 94 (of 1758 requests)

It looks to me like the FISA court was a rubber stamp at least until 2003, and quite arguably still is.

Rivkin and Casey go on to argue that Congress has no authority to regulate how the President exercises his wartime authority:

The Constitution designates the president as commander in chief, and Congress can no more direct his exercise of that authority than he can direct Congress in the execution of its constitutional duties.

Say what? Have they not read Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly gives Congress authority to regulate many aspects of military and wartime activity? I've italicized a key passage:

Congress shall have the power ...

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;

To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;

To provide and maintain a navy;

To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;

To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

... And

To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

Rivkin and Casey argue that the executive branch is given the power to collect intelligence information from foreign sources as it sees fit--but where in the Constitution is any such power granted to the executive branch? Their only citation is to Article II, Section 2:

The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States

but there's no specific authority there about intelligence collection. They go on to argue that the President has the authority not only in virtue of this piece of the Constitution, but from

the specific Congressional authorization "to use all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks "in order to prevent any future attacks of international terrorism against the United States."

But Congress is still limited by the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights still applies (or is supposed to, anyway) to every U.S. citizen.

One more abominably bad argument from Rivkin and Casey is that the Bush administration was warranted in bypassing the FISA court for reasons of efficiency and expedience:

Although the administration could have sought such warrants, it chose not to for good reasons. The procedures under the surveillance act are streamlined, but nevertheless involve a number of bureaucratic steps.

They don't bother to tell us what any of these "good reasons" are! Since the FISA court allows retroactive approvals (go ahead and tap, then get approval later), there is no issue of urgency as an argument against getting the approvals. The only reason I can see is to avoid any accountability.

Arguments that the FISA Court itself gave approval to being bypassed in 2002 are based on a misreading of a ruling by the FISA appeals court.

Enjoy Every Sandwich has a nice collection of Bush administration quotes and relevant law regarding wiretapping.

Another "Bush drunk" video

Another video making the rounds... (hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list).
(The previous one that was circulating was a 1992 wedding party video, which is up at Google Video.)

(Yes, the current one is a joke.)

Mohammed the Prophet Answers Your Emails

Just saw this cartoon at This Blog Is Full of Crap. Let's see, depicting Mohammed, depicting Mohammed in hell, putting words in Mohammed's mouth. I don't think Muslims will be very happy about this, considering their unreasonable reaction to cartoons of Mohammed in Denmark (previously referred to in my posting on the "Sexy Bin Laden").

Mel Gibson on evolution, women, and political conspiracy theory

This is from a Mel Gibson interview with Playboy magazine in the July 1995 issue. I haven't verified it myself, though I've found consistent excerpts (though they could all have an identical bogus source). The positions taken are quite plausibly attributed to Gibson, though I'm surprised at his foul mouth.

On evolution:

PLAYBOY: Do you believe in Darwin's theory of evolution or that God created man in his image?

GIBSON: The latter.

PLAYBOY: So you can't accept that we descended from monkeys and apes?

GIBSON: No, I think it's bullshit. If it isn't, why are they still around? How come apes aren't people yet? It's a nice theory, but I can't swallow it. There's a big credibility gap. The carbon dating thing that tells you how long something's been around, how accurate is that, really? I've got one of Darwin's books at home and some of that stuff is pretty damn funny. Some of his stuff is true, like that the giraffe has a long neck so it can reach the leaves. But I just don't think you can swallow the whole piece.

Why does anyone think his first point is a good argument against evolution? I've never heard anyone argue that Italian-Americans couldn't have come from Italy because there are still Italians there.

And I wonder what book by Darwin he has.

On assorted moral issues:

PLAYBOY: We take it that you're not particularly broad-minded when it comes to issues such as celibacy, abortion, birth control.

GIBSON: People always focus on stuff like that. Those aren't issues. Those
are unquestionable. You don't even argue those points.

PLAYBOY: You don't?

GIBSON: No.

On women:

PLAYBOY: What about allowing women to be priests?

GIBSON: No.

PLAYBOY: Why not?

GIBSON: I'll get kicked around for saying it, but men and women are just different. They're not equal. The same way that you and I are not equal.

PLAYBOY: That's true. You have more money.

GIBSON: You might be more intelligent, or you might have a bigger dick. Whatever it is, nobody's equal. And men and women are not equal. I have tremendous respect for women. I love them. I don't know why they want to step down. Women in my family are the center of things. And good things emanate from them. The guys usually mess up.

PLAYBOY: That's quite a generalization.

GIBSON: Women are just different. Their sensibilities are different.

PLAYBOY: Any examples?

GIBSON: I had a female business partner once. Didn't work.

PLAYBOY: Why not?

GIBSON: She was a cunt.

PLAYBOY: And the feminists dare to put you down!

GIBSON: Feminists don't like me, and I don't like them. I don't get their point. I don't know why feminists have it out for me, but that's their problem, not mine.

Interesting that he thinks a woman being a priest would be "a step down." From many occupations, I'd agree.

Gibson on political conspiracy theory:

PLAYBOY: How do you feel about Bill Clinton?

GIBSON: He's a low-level opportunist. Somebody's telling him what to do.

PLAYBOY: Who?

GIBSON: The guy who's in charge isn't going to be the front man, ever. If I were going to be calling the shots I wouldn't make an appearance. Would you? You'd end up losing your head. It happens all the time. All those monarchs. If he's the leader, he's getting shafted. What's keeping him in there? Why would you stay for that kind of abuse? Except that he has to stay for some reason. He was meant to be the president 30 years ago, if you ask me.

PLAYBOY: He was just 18 then.

GIBSON: Somebody knew then that he would be president now.

PLAYBOY: You really believe that?

GIBSON: I really believe that. He was a Rhodes scholar, right? Just like Bob Hawke. Do you know what a Rhodes scholar is? Cecil Rhodes established the Rhodes scholarship for those young men and women who want to strive for a new world order. Have you heard that before? George Bush? CIA? Really, it's Marxism, but it just doesn't want to call itself that. Karl had the right idea, but he was too forward about saying what it was. Get power but don't admit to it. Do it by stealth. There's a whole trend of Rhodes scholars who will be politicians around the world.

PLAYBOY: This certainly sounds like a paranoid sense of world history. You must be quite an assassination buff.

GIBSON: Oh, fuck. A lot of those guys pulled a boner. There's something to do with the Federal Reserve that Lincoln did, Kennedy did and Reagan tried. I can't remember what it was, my dad told me about it. Everyone who did this particular thing that would have fixed the economy got undone. Anyway, I'll end up dead if I keep talking shit.

(Note added 30 December: I've heard from several people who have now verified the accuracy of these quotations.)

Mencken on Nietzsche

I'm in the middle of reading H.L. Mencken's biography of Nietzsche, and I found this passage, on pages 56-58, to be rather humorous:

Nietzsche never married, but he was by no means a misogynist. ...During all his wanderings he was much petted by the belles of pump room and hotel parlor, not only because he was a mysterious and romantic looking fellow, but also because his philosophy was thought to be blasphemous and indecent, particularly by those who knew nothing about it. But the fair admirers he singled out were either securely married or hopelessly antique. "For me to marry," he soliloquized in 1887, "would probably be sheer assininity."

There are sentimental critics who hold that Nietzsche's utter lack of geniality was due to his lack of a wife. A good woman - alike beautiful and sensible - would have rescued him, they say, from his gloomy fancies. He would have expanded and mellowed in the sunshine of her smiles, and children would have civilized him. The defect in this theory lies in the fact that philosophers do not seem to flourish amid scenes of connubial joy. High thinking, it would appear, presupposes boarding house fare and hall bed-rooms. Spinoza, munching his solitary herring up his desolate backstairs, makes a picture that pains us, perhaps, but it must be admitted that it satisfies our sense of eternal fitness. A married Spinoza, with two sons at college, another managing the family lens business, a daughter busy with her trousseau and a wife growing querulous and fat - the vision, alas, is preposterous, outrageous and impossible! We must think of philosophers as beings alone but not lonesome. A married Schopenhauer or Kant or Nietzsche would be unthinkable.

...Nietzsche himself sought to show, in more than one place, that a man whose whole existence was colored by one woman would inevitably acquire some trace of her feminine outlook, and so lose his own sure vision. The ideal state for a philosopher, indeed, is celibacy tempered by polygamy. [emphasis added]

Now, maybe I keyed in to this passage because it struck a little too close to home - not that I'm any kind of great philosopher, mind you - but the question is this: Is this truly an accurate assessment? Have all the greatest philosophers (and perhaps even artists--Beethoven, for example) been bachelors?

Bush attempts to suppress stories; Doug Bandow taking money from Abramoff

Howard Kurtz writes in yesterday's Washington Post that Bush has been attempting (without success in a few notable recent instances) to suppress stories about CIA prisons and wiretapping.

In the same article, he reports that Doug Bandow accepted payments of as much as $2,000 a story for pieces favorable to lobbyist Jack Abramoff's clients. He has resigned from the Cato Institute in the wake of the story, exposed by Business Week, issuing a statement that "I am fully responsible and I won't play victim ... Obviously, I regret stupidly calling to question my record of activism and writing that extends over 20 years. . . . For that I deeply apologize."

Peter Ferrara of the Institute for Policy Innovation is unapologetic about accepting similar payments; Jonathan Adler of the National Review reports that he was offered similar payments when he worked at a think tank but declined them. It's more evidence that think tank output tends to be generated by starting with paid-for conclusions and generating arguments and selecting evidence to support them--similar to Feith's selection of intelligence information to support the invasion of Iraq. Think tanks supported by particular interests simply aren't a good way of getting objective information.

More examples in Kurtz's piece.

Jeb Bush thinks evolution shouldn't be taught

As quoted in the Miami Herald:

The Watchdog Report asked a follow-up question: Does the governor believe in Darwin's theory of evolution?

Bush said: ``Yeah, but I don't think it should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you. And people have different points of view and they can be discussed at school, but it does not need to be in the curriculum.''

There's no word on whether this opinion is backed by the Mystical Warrior Chang.

It is surprising that he says he believes in it.

Bush's Imperial Presidency

Another nice sum-up from Dispatches from the Culture Wars.