Kip Hawley is an idiot

Ryan Bird wrote "Kip Hawley is an idiot" on his clear plastic bag of toiletries that he was carrying through a TSA security checkpoint at Milwaukee's General Mitchell International Airport. Kip Hawley is the head of the Transportation Security Administration.

Bird writes:

At the MKE "E" checkpoint I placed my laptop in one bin, and my shoes, cell phone and quart bag in a second bin. The TSA guy who was pushing bags and bins into the X-ray machine took a good hard look, and then as the bag when though the X-ray I think he told the X-ray operator to call for a bag check/explosive swab on my roller bag to slow me down. He went strait to the TSA Supervisor on duty and boy did he come marching over to the checkpoint with fire in his eyes!

He grabbed the baggie as it came out of the X-ray and asked if it was mine. After responding yes, he pointed at my comment and demanded to know "What is this supposed to mean?" "It could me a lot of things, it happens to be an opinion on mine." "You can't write things like this" he said, "You mean my First Amendment right to freedom of speech doesn't apply here?" "Out there (pointing pass the id checkers) not while in here (pointing down) was his response."

At this point I chuckled, just looking at him wondering if he just realized how foolish that comment was, but I think my laugh pushed him over the edge as he got really angry at this point. A Milwaukee County Sheriffs deputy was summoned - I would have left at this point, but he had my quart bag with my toothpaste and hair gel.

When the deputy got over the TSA supervisor showed him the bag and told him what had happened to that point. After he had finished I started to remind him he had left out his statement that my First Amendment rights didn't apply "here" but was cut off by the deputy who demanding my ID. I asked if I was under arrest, and his response was "Right now you are not under arrest, you are being detained." I produced my passport and he walked off with it and called in my name to see if I had any outstanding warrants, etc. The TSA supervisor picked up the phone about 20 feet away and called someone? At this point two more officers were near by and I struck up a conversation with the female officer who was making sure I kept put. I explained to her who Kip Hawley was, why I though he was an idiot, and my surprise that the TSA Supervisor felt my First Amendment rights didn't' apply at the TSA checkpoint. She didn't say much.

After he was assured I didn't have any warrants out the first office came back and I had my first chance to really speak, I explained that I was just expressing my opinion and my writing should be protected my by First Amendment rights. When he didn't respond, I then repeated that the TSA Supervisor stated my First Amendment rights didn't apply at the TSA check point and I asked if he (the deputy) agreed that was the case. He responded by saying "You can't yell fire in a crowed theater, there are limits to your rights.

At this point I chucked again.

I asked how this was even remotely like shouting "Fire" in a crowd, and his answer was "Perhaps your comments made them feel threatened."

At about this point the TSA Supervisor finished up his phone call, and summoned the officer back over. They talked for about 2 minutes, and then both came back over. The officer pulled out his pad and asked for my address and I asked why he needed it. "For the report I have to file since I was summoned here" I started to give it, when I noticed the TSA Supervisor was writing it down as well, so I stopped and asked why he needed it. He said he needed to file an incident report too, and I took the opportunity to ask what the resolution of the incident was, did I do anything wrong? Are you going to ask the officer to arrest me? He said no, I was free to go, but he was going to confiscate my bag. I asked "If I did nothing wrong, why would you take my bag" He pointed to a posted sign that said something about reusing plastic bags (the MKE TSA was providing quart sized zipper bags to pax today) I let him know that I had brought my bag from home and would not be letting him take it. He then asked for permission of photograph it, which I agreed too.

While he walked away to get the camera I finished giving my address to the deputy, and he told my "You're free to go" Total time, about 25 minutes.

Hat tip to Tim Lee at the Technology Liberation Front.

CNN's given coverage to the story. Also see kiphawleyisanidiot.com.

Maricopa County's Trustee Sale Notices

A bit of an update from my post in May where I asked “Is there really a housing bubble?”

Although I wasn’t completely convinced then, I think it’s getting a lot more difficult to question the evidence now.

The graph below chronicles Maricopa County’s Trustee Sale Notices over the past 11 years. The blue line is the monthly count. As you can see, this number is pretty variable from month to month, so I’ve included the orange line, which is a 1-year moving average. Presumably it’s a better indicator of trends.

Here are some descriptive statistics for the numbers in the graph:

Mean	902.382979
Median	799
Mode	746
Standard Deviation	285.972168
Range	1256
Minimum	482
Maximum	1738
Sum	127236
Count	141

Given that the past decade saw the bursting of the tech bubble, I think the mean is being skewed high, and thus the median and the mode are probably better indicators of a “normal” month in Maricopa County.

All the President's Words

Old, but still quite appropriate... narration by Stephen Colbert.

Foley sex scandal may get bigger

One of the pages who received inappropriate messages from Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) worked for Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-Louisiana). Alexander was notified of the problem, and he brought it to the attention of the House leadership (Dennis Hastert and either Tom Delay or Roy Blunt) 10-11 months ago.

And they did nothing about it.

UPDATE September 30, 2006: Alexander notified Rep. John Shimkus (R-Illinois), who says "We ordered Congressman Foley to cease all contact with this former House page to avoid even the appearance of impropriety." Also informed was Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), who blocked a vote yesterday on a resolution from Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi calling for a preliminary investigation into the matter and the Republican leadership's response to it by the House Ethics Committee. Boehner nixed the latter part, and a motion was passed to investigate Foley's conduct but not the Republican leadership's handling of the matter.

It's also now been verified that Dennis Hastert was told about this issue "months ago".

Dirty Politician: Rep. Mark Foley resigns

That was quick. Rep. Mark Foley (R-Florida), whose emails to a former Congressional page asking him for a photograph and his birthday were made public yesterday, has offered his resignation today. It seems there were also a lot of sexually oriented instant messages from "Maf54."

This guy was chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. It looks like he may be prosecuted under laws he helped pass.

The timing of this resignation is such that the Republicans will probably not be able to replace Foley's name on the ballot. (For more details, see here.)

Another dirty Republican politician down, a bunch more to go.

Specter and McCain voted for a bill they believed to be unconstitutional

Both Arlen Specter and John McCain have publicly stated that they thought there were unconstitutional provisions in the Military Commissions Act which they voted for.

That's an admission of acting contrary to their oath of office. Neither of these men is fit to serve.

(A previous post on the Military Commissions Act and Arizona Representatives' votes on it is here.)

More White House involvement in Abramoff corruption

Ken Mehlman arranged for a $16 million contract to be granted to the Mississippi Choctaw tribe (an Abramoff client) in exchange for their donations to the Republican Party.

Ralph Reed contacted Karl Rove on behalf of Jack Abramoff to kill the nomination of Angela Williams to a post at the Department of the Interior which would have had oversight over Abramoff client the Northern Mariana Islands.

Mehlman, Reed, and Rove belong in jail with Abramoff.

(See also this previous account of Mehlman and Rove ties to Abramoff.)

The ineffectiveness of TRUSTe

The TRUSTe program is supposed to certify that a website has a reasonable privacy policy. But Ben Edelman has cross-referenced TRUSTe certifications with SiteAdvisor ratings, and found that sites with TRUSTe certifications are twice as likely as those without to be listed as "untrustworthy" in SiteAdvisor's database--meaning that they send out spam, distribute spyware, etc.

Edelman calls out four particularly notorious sites that have or have had TRUSTe certification: Direct-Revenue.com, Funwebproducts.com, Maxmoolah.com, and Webhancer.com. All four are heavily involved with spyware. Direct Revenue and Maxmoolah have had their TRUSTe certifications revoked, but should never have been certified in the first place if TRUSTe was doing the validation they should have been doing.

TRUSTe has long been criticized by anti-spammers for giving certifications to organizations that don't deserve them.

Ryan Singel has raised similar questions about TRUSTe's reliability.

White House had more contact with Abramoff than previously disclosed

From TPM Muckraker:

Hundreds of contacts between top White House officials and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates "raise serious questions about the legality and actions" of those officials, according to a draft bipartisan report prepared by the House Government Reform Committee.

The 95-page report, which White House officials reviewed Wednesday evening but has yet to be formally approved by the panel, singled out two of President Bush¹s top lieutenants, Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman, as having been offered expensive meals and exclusive tickets to premier sporting events and concerts by Abramoff and his associates.

In total, the committee was able to document 485 contacts between White House officials and Abramoff and his lobbying team at the firm Greenberg Traurig from January 2001 to March 2004, with 82 of those contacts occuring in Rove's office, including 10 with Rove personally. The panel also said that Abramoff billed his clients nearly $25,000 for meals and drinks with these officials during that period.

UPDATE September 29, 2006: The New York Times has picked up the story with more details, some of which are also reported in TPM Muckraker.

Congress grants president the right to torture, indefinitely detain

Today the Senate, following the House, voted to legalize the right for the government to engage in physical interrogation techniques that most people would consider to be torture and to detain individuals permanently without criminal charges by designating them "unlawful enemy combatants," even if they are U.S. citizens who have never left the country. As Glenn Greenwald puts it, Congress has legalized tyranny.

Both of Arizona's Senators (John McCain and Jon Kyl) voted for the bill, S. 3930.

Arizona's Representatives voted as follows on the detainment bill, H.R. 6166 (the Senate bill is S. 3930):

In favor:

Jeff Flake (R-District 6)
Trent Franks (R-District 2)
J.D. Hayworth (R-District 5)
Jim Kolbe (R-District 8)
Rick Renzi (R-District 1)
John Shadegg (R-District 3)

Against:

Raul Grijalva (D-District 7)
Ed Pastor (D-District 4)

Once again, a completely partisan vote in which the Republicans demonstrate their disregard for this constitutional republic. You can find the complete House vote results here.

UPDATE September 29, 2006: Ed Brayton has more at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

The founders of this country would have found this grounds for revolution.

UPDATE October 1, 2006: I fully expect the courts to overturn this, since the U.S. Constitution allows only two conditions for the temporary suspension of habeas corpus in Article I, Section 9 ("when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it").

It is also worth noting that there is some simplification, above. The designation of "unlawful enemy combatant" (UEC) in the bill is made by "a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense."

Also see Richard Epstein's testimony to the Senate (PDF) urging them to kill this bill, which they disregarded.