Ron Paul is Bill Maher's "New Hero"

Bill Maher criticizes the Republican presidential debate and does an excellent job of re-contextualizing Ron Paul's position on Iraq and doesn't let the idiotic politician he's speaking with continue to misunderstand:

He wasn't saying that we were "asking for it." What he was saying was, "We should listen to our enemies and maybe the reason they're mad at us is because we've been meddling in the middle East." We were in Saudi Arabia. That's what Bin Laden was mad at us for. Now we're in Iraq and we're screwing up that country. Maybe if we listened to them instead of saying, "We're always the good people" we would actually make ourselves safer.

It's nice to see this position finally getting some serious consideration. Better late than never, I suppose--but dammit if the libertarians haven't been saying this crap all along!

Bogus voter fraud complaints from a bogus voter fraud think tank

Salon.com has an interesting article about how the American Center for Voting Rights, which was front-and-center in convicted felon ex-Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH)'s congressional committee hearings on alleged voter fraud, has disappeared.

The Republicans were attempting to crack down on alleged voter fraud in locations that had high Democratic voter turnout, despite the fact that no prosecutable cases of such fraud have turned up. The American Center for Voting Rights was an apparent think tank (which formed right before the hearings started) which offered sound bites and alleged research documenting the putative problem.

Several of the fired U.S. Attorneys were individuals who had refused to go after weak voter fraud cases against Democratic candidates in locations where the Republicans and ACVR were also trying to make it more difficult to vote and reduce Democratic voter turnout.

Check out the Salon.com article.

National Police Week rampage

Last week was National Police Week in Washington, D.C., which prompted D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier to attempt to prevent problems (as reported in the Washington Post):

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier put out fliers yesterday warning officers in town for National Police Week that they must obey city laws covering disorderly conduct, public drunkenness and other "unacceptable behavior."

Lanier ordered the fliers distributed around downtown in hopes of curbing complaints about officers drinking in public, playing loud music and causing other trouble.

This did not, however, prevent some abuses from occurring:

I am actually the citizen, who filmed 48 hours of misconduct out my window during police week.

The visiting officers did not have any problem drinking in public, howling, screaming, yelling and playing bagpipes until 2, 3 and 4 am below our window. They were taking open conatiners of beer into the Irish Channel. They were urinating on the church steps across the street and left behind half empties for the homeless, when they staggered back to the hotels.

I also have video, which has not been released, of DC MPD sitting in their cars, standing by their cars, while these guys started a bagpipe parade at 12:45 AM on Tuesday morning. For them, I have close ups of the car numbers and the officer's faces as much as my camera would allow.

I called a total of 9 times, which I documented with times and which officer answered the phone and sent an email to the Mayor, the City Council Members, Chief Lanier and NBC 4.

Chief Lanier showed up at my door 4 hours later and has thus far, at least tried to show some interest in making positive changes.

In fact, I have been asked to meet with Commander Burke, Commander Groomes, representatives from DCRA (permits), ABRA (Alcohol Regulations) and EMA this week to further address the problem.

I had the video posted on youtube.com. My account was hacked after I received threats from a self identified "DC police Officer" warning me about the size of the "Brotherhood and airing dirty laundry."

I have started trying to get the video back up and should have it put together again by tomorrow.

I ask that if you have specific complaints about National Police Week, you please forward them to me. I have set up an anonymous e-mail to collect those complaints. As of today, I have 57 pages of comments, complaints and threats.

I have not had much support and in fact do fear for my safety. I signed my name to the complaint to the Chief, and am not 100% certain that information will stay confidential.

Any input, help, support or even a few kind words at this point, would be appreciated.

You can look up the videos on youtube.com by searching Inthepubliceye. The e-mail account is a gmail account using the same name.

Here's one of the videos, which shows a number of laws being violated--drinking alcohol/having open containers on the public street, operating a Segway on the street while drinking alcohol, leaving empty bottles on church steps, and so forth.

Clark Adams, RIP

I received the unfortunate news this morning that Clark Adams has died, and that he took his own life.

Clark was a long-time board member of the Internet Infidels (and for many years its public relations director) and a frequent speaker and attendee at atheist, freethought, humanist, and skeptical events. He was a jovial, funny man whose talks about atheism in popular culture were always crowd-pleasers. He was not particular about what label to put on his nonbelief, and was supportive of all groups that promoted rationality and critical thinking, including the "brights"--though he did not care for what he called "religion without the god stuff."

In a recent posting in which he gave his opinion of last month's celebration of 30 years of Humanist chaplaincy at Harvard University, he described himself as a "conference junkie," noting that he attended "upwards of a half dozen atheist, humanist, skeptic and freethought conventions a year." He frequently spoke to freethought and atheist groups on college campuses, and was an active promoter of student freethought groups like the Secular Student Alliance and the Campus Freethought Alliance. He was one of the founders of the Secular Coalition of America and regularly helped organize the annual July gathering at Lake Hypatia, which is where I first met him. The frequency of his speaking schedule can be seen in an April 2006 posting on the Internet Infidels Discussion Boards, which showed him giving six talks in April, June, and July, which included talks on "How to Prevent Your Freethought Group From Looking Like a Funeral" and "Godless Role Models."

Suicide always provokes questions about the cause. Given Clark's activism in support of atheism, I won't be surprised to see opportunistic speculation on the part of some advocates of religion that Clark's atheism was why he killed himself, but there's no evidence to support that.

He attended a performance by his favorite comedian, Doug Stanhope, on Sunday evening, and was found by a friend and his ex-wife in his apartment after the friend did not receive her expected daily call from him. She announced Clark's death on the Internet Infidels Discussion Boards, where his friends have left their condolences.

Clark has left a mark on the world in the lives of people he's met at these conferences, and communicated with online. He's left an extensive record of postings, which he usually closed with "THOUGHTfully Yours, Clark," which includes the story of his deconversion to atheism in the south.

If anyone has a video record of any of his presentations, it would be great to see them made available online.

Clark will be missed.

UPDATE: Cathe Jones has put up a tribute to Clark, with some links to some of his writings. She has put up a more extensive blog entry now, as well.

UPDATE: Friends are also leaving tributes on Clark's MySpace page, and there are blog tributes from Friendly Atheist and Mark Vuletic.

UPDATE (May 24, 2007): The American Humanist Association has issued a tribute to Clark.

UPDATE (May 25, 2007): Information about a memorial service for Clark will be posted at the Las Vegas Freethought Society website. His ashes will likely be scattered at Lake Hypatia at the June 30-July 2 event he was scheduled to emcee.

UPDATE (May 27, 2007): Raul Martinez has put up a story about an amusing experience with Clark a few months ago.

UPDATE (May 31, 2007): There will be a memorial service for Clark from 2-4 p.m. on Sunday, June 3 at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Las Vegas, 3616 E. Lake Mead Blvd. There will also be a memorial service at the Lake Hypatia event mentioned above, at 12 noon on Monday, July 2.

UPDATE (June 7, 2007): Eric Pepke has put up a tribute to Clark.

UPDATE (May 25, 2008): Clark's MySpace account has been deleted, but this story in the Las Vegas Weekly reports what happened after Doug Stanhope heard about Clark's death:

---
A few days later, he receives word that longtime fan Clark Adams killed himself the night after the Tommy Rocker’s performance. Not that it pushes him over the edge; more apparently, it provided a high note upon which to take his leave. In Adams’ MySpace “Heroes” box, he’d included Doug Stanhope under the heading, “People I Admire that I’ve Had the Honor of Meeting.”

There’s a bit on 2002’s Die Laughing: “Life is like animal porn. It’s not for everybody. ... Life is like a movie, if you’ve sat through more than half of it and it’s sucked every second so far, chances are it’s not gonna get great right at the very end and make it all worthwhile. No one should blame you for walking out early.”

And there’s a new entry in Adams’ Comments box from one Doug Stanhope:

I don’t believe in Heaven but I have a strong faith that there is MySpace in the afterlife and we will all be checking our comments.

May your eternity be free of Macy’s gift-card spam.
Run amok, dear sir.

life is like animal porn ...

Even if he’s not the best man for the job of deregulating their lives, Stanhope clearly empathizes with those regular people he speaks for, if not always with. He may be solely in it for him, baby, but whether he’s flitting from Vegas to Bisbee or Edinburgh to the Oval Office, he’s pushing the physical and mental and comedic boundaries for all those Joe Schmoes out there who can’t. No drunken goof about it.

---

At a show in Indianapolis, Stanhope started to talk about Clark Adams (at 4:26), but got distracted and didn't come back to it (at least in the first three of twelve parts on YouTube).

Ahwatukee Pet Idol

The Ahwatukee Foothills News is sponsoring an "Ahwatukee Pet Idol" contest, all proceeds of which will go to the animal rescue group that Kat and I volunteer for, Arizona R.E.S.C.U.E.

Our dog Otto is a contestant and could use your vote...

UPDATE (June 23, 2007): Otto has made it through the first two rounds of cuts and is one of the 25 finalists in the last round of voting.

Bill Maher's eulogy for Jerry Falwell

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

John McCain's f-bomb habit

Someone should tell John McCain that pandering to the religious right and dropping f-bombs don't really go together.

Michelle Malkin slanders Rep. Ron Paul on Fox News

As reported at the Reason blog:

GIBSON: According to a recent Rasmussen Report poll, 35 percent of Democrats think President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks beforehand. The so-called 9/11 Truth Movement has already infected people like Rosie O'Donnell and one in three Democrats, and many other people, Americans evidently, including Congressman Ron Paul. With me now is FOX News contributor and syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin.

So, Michelle, this stuns me. It wouldn't have stunned me had it come up in the Democratic debate, but it's a jaw-dropper to see it in the Republican debate.

MICHELLE MALKIN: It is and it doesn't belong here. And I'm glad that this moment provided great TV for FOX News — it was a very instructive exchange — but Ron Paul really has no business being on stage as a legitimate representative of Republicans, because the 9/11 truth virus is something that infects only a very small proportion of people that would identify themselves as conservative or Republican. And as you say, John, this is far more prevalent, this strain of 9/11 truth virus, on the left, and in much of the mainstream of the Democratic Party as that Rasmussen poll showed.
...
You know, I try not to spend too much time in these cesspools, but it is worth taking a visit to places like, you know, these WTC7 sites and Students and Scholars for Truth, and I note that Ron Paul has basically allied himself with these people. He appears with Students for Truth on campus and he's appeared on radio shows like 9/11 conspiracy nut Alex Jones.

If Ron Paul has ever said anything in support of the "9/11 truth" nutcases, I've not heard of it and would condemn it. He certainly didn't in the debates--rather, he said, correctly, that "blowback" is a significant cause of terrorist attacks against the U.S. and U.S. interests. That doesn't mean that Americans have "invited" attacks, nor that Bush planned 9/11. The fact that conservatives are completely misrepresenting Ron Paul in order to discredit him and avoid addressing his arguments shows their moral and intellectual bankruptcy.

Malkin's claim that Ron Paul has "allied himself" with 9/11 conspiracy theorists and "appears with Students for Truth on campus" is a fabrication--the factoid behind the latter is that a student member of a 9/11 conspiracy group (Justin Martell "Students Scholars for 9/11 Truth") was in the audience at a Ron Paul campus appearance, and asked Paul's opinion about 9/11 (there's video at the Reason blog).

Ron Paul has appeared on Alex Jones' show (to criticize Bush, advocate the gold standard, and oppose plans for a North American Union), and I think that does show a sign of poor judgment on his part--he does have some wacky and wrong-headed ideas.

Malkin has, for once, admitted her mistake:

Last week, on John Gibson's Fox News Channel show, "The Big Story," I was asked to comment on 9/11 conspiracy theorists and Ron Paul. Here's the video. In the segment, I referred to "Students and Scholars for Truth." The accurate name of the group I was referring to is "Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth." (There's a separate group called "Scholars for 9/11 Truth," which I've blogged about previously.) I also stated that Paul appeared on campus with Student Scholars for 9/11 Truth. This is incorrect. The incident I was referring to was an exchange that took place at a campaign house party, not during an on-campus joint appearance, as I mistakenly stated. I regret the errors and am forwarding this post to The Big Story producers so that they can air these corrections if they wish to do so.

Correcting mistakes doesn't seem to be her usual practice, but it should be encouraged when it happens...

Bush's body language

An excellent John Hodgman appearance on The Daily Show.

Here's the context of the final Bush quotation:

I like the idea of people running for office. There's a positive effect when you run for office. Maybe some will run for office and say, vote for me, I look forward to blowing up America. I don't know, I don't know if that will be their platform or not. But it's -- I don't think so. I think people who generally run for office say, vote for me, I'm looking forward to fixing your potholes, or making sure you got bread on the table. And so -- but Hezbollah is on the terrorist list for a reason, and remain on the terrorist list for a reason. Our position has not changed on Hezbollah.

Crazy.

Underground Paris

It looks like underground Paris is even more interesting than underground London:

The Paris underground, often referred to as the catacombs, has been luring curious visitors for centuries. The City of Lights is built atop a vast realm of darkness: enormous gypsum and limestone quarries that were mined beginning in the 12th century for the construction of Notre Dame, the Louvre, and other edifices. Burrowed haphazardly beneath the surface city, these quarries became increasingly unstable over time. When a street collapsed in 1774, Parisian authorities investigated the galleries and reinforced weak areas. As they did, the investigators marked the tunnel walls with the names of the corresponding ground-level streets. These two-century-old signs are still used for navigation.

The freshly mapped underworld would soon have many uses. From 1785 until the 1880s, the quarries received bones from Paris's overflowing cemeteries—the public Les Catacombes museum, housed deep inside a blocked-off section of the quarries, alone contains the bones of some six million citizens. During World War II, the passages were occupied not only by the French resistance but also by Germans, who left their traces in a military installation called the Bunker Allemand. Since then, artists, performers, graffitists, and others have added to the catacombs' multilayered history. "Regardless of where your research takes you, there are always new things to discover about subterranean Paris," says Ingmar Arnold, a Berlin-based underground historian. "Wherever you walk, you can never be sure you're not passing across something mysterious—behind every corner there could be a great secret."

One of these secrets was unexpectedly revealed in September 2004 when the Paris police discovered an illegal cinema beneath the Palais de Chaillot. Patrolling officers had stumbled across the hidden amphitheater, fully equipped for movie screenings. For an illegal setup, it was remarkably sophisticated: Next to a screen and projector sat a bar and restaurant outfitted with several telephones and Internet access. The complex was protected by a closed-circuit-TV security system that set off a recording of barking dogs whenever an intruder passed by.
...
We crawled through a narrow corridor that dripped with mold and entered the heart of this ossuary. There, a central room, filled with stacks of bones, opened onto small tunnels on every side. The entire area was saturated by an ocean of broken skeletons. It was impossible to move without crawling over piles of bones several feet deep—they crackled beneath our weight. In one eerie chamber, a sculpture made of femurs rose from the scattered heaps. Only John and I climbed into that central room; turning off our lights, we crouched on bones in utter darkness, each paying respect in our own way.

The article refers to Carolyn Archer's book Paris Underground, which contains photographs of some of the underground locations. The underground movie theater is described in a 2004 article in The Guardian.