Rick Renzi, J.D. Hayworth make list of most corrupt Congressmen

Rep. Rick Renzi (Republican, Arizona District 1) has made the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington's list of the 20 most corrupt members of Congress. Renzi has engaged in self-dealing, sponsoring legislation that has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to his father's business, ManTech International of Fairfax, VA. His father is an executive vice president at ManTech, which also has offices in Sierra Vista, AZ. A more detailed report on Renzi's ethical lapses may be found here (PDF).

The other Congressmen on the list, with links to more information:

• Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT)
• Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN)
• Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)
• Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO)
• Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA)
• Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA)
• Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)
• Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL)
• Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA)
• Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
• Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA)
• Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV)
• Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)
• Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA)
• Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ)
• Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)
• Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY)
• Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC)
• Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)
• Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA)

Rep. J.D. Hayworth (Republican, Arizona District 5) makes a "dishonorable mention" for his Jack Abramoff connections and payment of $145,212 to his wife through his PAC. Hayworth's report may be found here (PDF).

• Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT)
• Rep. Dennis Hastert (R-IL)
• Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ)
• Rep. John Murtha (D-PA)
• Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA)

Hat tip to Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

ASU student in immigration nightmare

Former Arizona State University student president Yaser Alamoodi, still a student at ASU, was arrested at 6 a.m. on September 6 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. They took him to Eloy (about halfway between Phoenix and Tucson), where he sits in a detention center.

The 29-year-old Tempe resident came to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia in 1996 under a student visa. He describes himself as "extremely secular. I was the president of my university. I have a commitment to everything America stands for, women's rights to civil rights." But because he married a U.S. citizen and they agreed to divorce in August, the divorce process invalidated his pending green card application.

And because his passport and citizenship are from Yemen, the country where his father was born but which he's never been in, that's where he will be deported to. His attorney says he can stay in detention in Eloy and fight the deportation for six months to "years," he can allow himself to be deported to Yemen and try to get a student visa to return to finish his degree, or if his wife stops the divorce process he would be allowed to stay.

Key characteristics of denialism

Pharyngula summarizes and augments a list of characteristics from the Give Up Blog common to those who deny the existence of various things, whether that be the Holocaust, global warming, HIV causing AIDS, the actions of Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001, or other well-established phenomena.

Key features:
1. Conspiracy
2. Selectivity
3. The fake expert
4. Impossible expectations
5. The metaphor
6. The quote mine
7. Appeal to consequences

I recommend reading both the Give Up Blog's original list and descriptions and Pharyngula's extended list.

Greetings from another part of the United States!

Can you identify our approximate location from this sign (extra points for identifying the actual municipality)? It's not San Francisco (which has a Lippard Ave. in the Glen Park neighborhood). The answer will come after we return to Phoenix in a couple days. (And if anyone in SF has a photo of a Lippard Ave. sign, I'd like to have one of those...)

Hotel minibar keys open Diebold voting machines

Ed Felten points out that Diebold voting machines use a standard, commonly used key that is used for things like hotel minibars, office furniture, jukeboxes, and electronic equipment.

UPDATE (January 23, 2007): Diebold helpfully displays a photograph of the key on their website--which is sufficient to make a duplicate that works.

More on Diebold voting machine insecurity

Ed Felten announces the release of his paper and an accompanying video about major security issues with Diebold AccuVote-TS voting machines.

Significant new information in the Cory Maye case

The Covington & Burling defense team has tracked down (via private investigator) the anonymous informant who caused the police raid on the duplex Cory Maye lived in. The account he gave the PI is significantly different than the account he gave officer Ron Jones which prompted the raid, and the informant appears to be an angry bigot.

Cory Maye is a black man in Missouri whose door was kicked in in the middle of the night in a no-knock raid, who killed Officer Jones in the raid. Maye was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death even though the prosecution's account contained inconsistencies, there was no legitimate reason for Maye's apartment in the duplex to be raided, and Maye says he did not know the person breaking into his apartment was a police officer--he thought he was defending himself and his young daughter. There have been many posts on this blog, mostly referring to the excellent work by Radley Balko, who first brought this case to public attention. Wikipedia now has a pretty good entry on Cory Maye, and there is a website, www.mayeisinnocent.com.

Robert Newman's History of Oil

British comic Robert Newman presents a very entertaining and interesting 45-minute performance about oil in the Middle East (at Google Video), including an interpretation of World War I as an invasion of Iraq and a discussion of peak oil.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster appears in smoke

The caption on this U.S. Air Force photo: "The United States Air Force C-17 Globemaster III Military Transport with the 14th Airlift Squadron located at Charleston Air Force Base in
South Carolina has flown away after releasing flares over the Atlantic Ocean. Smoke from the flare salvo reveals a crisp, dramatic, startling, and
beautiful visual of the turbulent air – including two vortices each with an "eye" – created by the C-17 Globemaster III as it flies through the air.
May 16, 2006, Over the Atlantic Ocean Near Charleston, State of South Carolina, USA."

(Hat tip: Jerry Goodenough on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)

Anti-drug ads have the effect of increasing drug use

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) contracted the firm Westat to perform a study on the effectiveness of advertisements designed to discourage drug use among teens. Westat collected data from November 1999 to June 2004, and found that "greater exposure to the campaign was associated with weaker anti-drug norms and increases in the perceptions that others smoke marijuana." Those exposed to the ads in some groups, including 14- to 16-year-olds and white children, had higher rates of first-time drug use than those not exposed to the ads.

The government spent $42.7 million on this study, but the results were not what was wanted, so it ignored them, spending another $220 million on anti-marijuana advertisements in 2005 and 2006. Although the report was delivered to the government in February 2005, NIDA claimed it was delivered in June 2006. The General Accountability Office, in attempting to review the study, met resistance from NIDA and the White House. News of the study and its conclusions became public in August, and the government responded that it was no longer valid because it was old data. More details in Ryan Grim's article at Slate.

The results of this study are quite similar to the results of studies of the federal DARE program, which has also been well-established to have either no measurable effect or be somewhat counter-productive. It continues because it creates the appearance of doing something to address a problem, not because it does anything actually beneficial. It's make-believe federal make-work, yet another theater performance that wastes tax dollars while providing the illusion of benefits.

Hat tip to Jack Kolb on the SKEPTIC list.

UPDATE 19 September 2006: Ed Brayton has picked up this story at his blog.