Tough questions for McCain and Obama

Ed Brayton gives a summary of Radley Balko's list of tough questions for the candidates. It's a pity that our mass media is unlikely to ask any of them. (Yet kudos to Fox News for publishing Radley Balko's columns asking them--they seem to be a whole lot better on the web than they are on television.) Brayton quotes the questions for McCain about how serious he is about cutting corporate pork when he personally profits from it (the laws that mandate alcohol be sold through distributors like Hensley & Co, where his wife got her fortune) and how he reconciles his support for the drug war with the fact that his wife was permitted to avoid any criminal penalties for her prescription drug problems. For Obama, he selected as favorites how Obama plans to pay for his proposed civilian national security force, how he reconciles his support for the drug war with his own past use of marijuana and cocaine, and why he supported the farm bill and supports ethanol subsidies.

I think Ed clearly picked out the best questions Balko asked of McCain, but here are a couple other questions for Obama that I particularly liked:

In a speech to Cuban-Americans in Miami, you called the Cuban trade embargo "an important inducement for change," a 180-degree shift from your prior position. The trade embargo has been in place for 46 years. Did denying an entire generation of Cubans access to American goods, culture, and ideas induce any actual change? Wasn't the real effect just to keep Cubans poor and isolated? In communist countries like Vietnam and China, trade with the U.S. has ushered in economic reform, and vastly improved the standard of living. Why wouldn't it be the same if we were to start trading with Cuba?

In addition to the drugs, Cuba, and school voucher issues, you have also changed or revised your position in recent months on the war in Iraq, government eavesdropping and immunity for the telecom companies, and holding employers accountable for hiring illegal immigrants. Under some circumstances, changing or revising one's position can show admirable introspection — the ability to revise prior conceptions with new information. Some of your new positions are more conservative. Some are more liberal. But they do seem to have one thing in common: Should we be concerned that your shifts have been to those positions that give more power and influence to government? Are there any areas where you'd actually roll back the federal government?

Balko asked a question of McCain about the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA, also known as McCain-Feingold), which I think did serious damage to the First Amendment and protects incumbent politicians by prohibiting any corporation (including nonprofits) or by an unincorporated entity using any corporate funds from running ads critical or supportive of a candidate within 30 days of a primary or within 60 days of a general election. I agree McCain should be asked tough questions about his apparent disrespect for political speech, but I didn't particularly care for the specific question Balko came up with.

Expert tells China visitors to encrypt data as U.S. announces policy of laptop seizure

I saw two articles this morning which I think invite comparison. First, Phil Dunkelberger, CEO of PGP Corporation, says people visiting China should take laptops with no data, or encrypt what data they have:

Travelers carrying smart cell phones, blackberries or laptop computers could unwittingly be offering up sensitive personal or business information to officials who monitor state-controlled telecommunications carriers, Dunkelberger said.

He said that without data encryption, executives could have business plans or designs pilfered, while journalists' lists of contacts could be exposed, putting sources at risk.

Dunkelberger said that during unrest in Tibet in March, overseas Tibetan activists found their computer systems under heavy pressure from Chinese security agencies trying to trace digital communications.

"What the Chinese tried to do was infiltrate their security to see who in China the Tibet movement was talking to," he said.

...

Dunkelberger, whose firm serves many multinational corporations operating in China, said, "A lot of places in the world, including China, don't have the same view of personal space and privacy that we do in the United States."

"You've got to suspect that every place you're doing work is being monitored and being watched," he said.

Dunkelberger's advice is good as far as it goes. Of course, PGP Whole Disk Encryption won't help protect data in transit, and while PGP Email will protect the content of email messages, it won't conceal the source and destination. The threat described is one where traffic analysis enough can reveal a lot, and so you'd want to make use of a corporate VPN, some kind of proxy, or a system like TOR if you want to protect information about where your Internet traffic is ultimately going. PGP is a good company that makes great products; my employer uses PGP Whole Disk Encryption and Email products.

The second article, however, casts some doubt on the last part of what Dunkelberger says. It looks like the U.S., where the NSA engages in warrantless wiretapping with the assistance of the large incumbent telecoms (and a spineless Congress gives them immunity for violations of the law), the CIA spies on foreign visitors within the borders of the U.S. in conjunction with the FBI's counterintelligence division, isn't so different from other countries. It's now publicly admitted by DHS that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers have the right to seize laptops and other electronic devices from people entering the U.S. and hang on to them indefinitely in order to search them. Therefore Dunkelberger's advice should be taken by anyone coming into the U.S., as well--use blank laptops or laptops with encryption only. Some companies have begun to only allow employees to have a web browser and a VPN client on their laptops, and keep all data in the corporation, which can completely eliminate this particular governmental risk.

Foolish man attempts to rob liquor store

Kat's trip to work this morning was delayed by road closures due to the aftermath of a foiled attempt to hold up a neighborhood liquor store, Minute Liquors, owned and run by a Bulgarian immigrant couple of our acquaintance. The gunman who chose their store to rob made a slight miscalculation, since the store is directly across 16th St. from a Department of Public Safety facility. The robber came out of the store to face about a dozen officers, who were at the facility preparing for training when they were informed of a robbery in progress across the street. The armed robber was shot in the abdomen and taken to the hospital.

A librarian responds to a parental challenge

A parent complained about Sarah Brannen's book, Uncle Bobby's Wedding, about same-sex marriage, that was in the children's book section in the Douglas County Library system in Colorado. Librarian Jamie Larue wrote an excellent, kind, and thoughtful response to the library patron about why the library is not going to move or remove the book.

FFRF billboards are coming to Phoenix

It's official, the contracts have been signed and paid for--the Freedom From Religion Foundation's billboards will be coming to Phoenix. There will be five of them, all in central Phoenix, and both of the FFRF's designs will be represented. There's the "Imagine No Religion" billboard, pictured here in Denver, and another design that says "Beware of Dogma."

The billboards will appear starting September 1, and I'll post some photos once they're up. The billboard locations will be:

#1103 Cross streets: 3rd Ave & Van Buren. Located on 3rd Ave just north of Van Buren. Best viewing occurs while traveling northbound on 3rd Ave approaching Van Buren. At this intersection look forward and right. The sign is setback from a parking lot which makes for clear viewing and efficient picture taking. The Arizona State Capital, Phoenix City Hall, FOX News, and the Arizona Republic are all within a few blocks.

#1245 Cross streets: 7th St & Coolidge. Located just north of the downtown area on 7th Street. Best viewing occurs while traveling southbound on 7th Ave just south of Camelback Rd but just prior to Coolidge. The sign is on the east side of 7th Street.

#2005 Cross Streets: Jefferson & 13th St. Located just east of the downtown area and Chase Field on Jefferson Street. Best viewing occurs while traveling eastbound on Jefferson just after 13th Street. The sign is on the south side of Jefferson Street.

#2501 Cross Streets: 19th Ave & Fillmore. Located just west of the State Capital area on 19th Ave. Best viewing occurs while traveling northbound on 19th Ave just prior to Fillmore. The sign is on the west side of 19th Ave. This location is within a few blocks of the Capital Complex.

#2911 Cross streets: McDowell & 14th St. Located just northwest of the downtown area on McDowell Rd. Best viewing occurs while traveling eastbound on McDowell just after 14th St. The sign is on the north side of McDowell. The Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center is within a few blocks.

When these billboards have gone up in other locations, they've usually generated some protests and complaints, as well as competing billboards, such as this one in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania which accused atheists of hating America. That misses the whole point--the point is to let nonbelievers know that they are not alone, and to put them in touch with the FFRF and other local groups of people with similar opinions about the supernatural. One can certainly express disagreement with the sentiment (or the likelihood of a world without religion--I think it's unlikely that religion will disappear from the world as long as there are social groups of human beings on it), but a response that claims that atheists hate America or are engaged in persecution is to mistake reality for a caricature like the one depicted in Robby Berry's "Life in Our Anti-Christian America."

Funding for these billboards was a joint project of the FFRF and various Meetup groups led by some folks from the Phoenix Atheists Meetup group, which is now up to 411 members. There are plans for a followup billboard, for which funds are still being raised, which will advertise a website promoting a diverse set of groups of atheists, agnostics, humanists, brights, and freethinkers.

Dr. Jay Gordon's bogus anti-vaccine arguments

Orac at Respectful Insolence critiques Dr. Jay Gordon's argument that breastfeeding and eating less cheese is a better way to prevent communicable diseases than vaccination.

Dubious Documents of American History

At Rational Rant is an excellent three-part critique of a document that's been floating around the Internet which claims to support the case that America was intended by its founders to be a Christian nation. In fact, the document is a mish-mash of fabricated quotations and misinformation. Rational Rant has gone to the trouble of digging up the details and even comparing four different versions of the document.

"Dubious Documents": part one, part two, part three

Randy Pausch's "last lecture"

He actually did give at least one more lecture after this at another university, but this was his last lecture at CMU, given on September 18, 2007 for a series originally titled "The Last Lecture." Pausch was born October 23, 1960 and died today, July 25, 2008. You can read his story at his CMU web page, at least once the traffic dies down.

This lecture is on achieving your childhood dreams, most of which he did, and on enabling the childhood dreams of others. Pausch was the founder of the Alice Project, which is a 3D programming environment for teaching students.

UPDATE (July 26, 2008): I'm getting lots of traffic to this post from people searching for Randy Pausch's name and the word "atheist," apparently from people trying to find out if he was an atheist. His CMU web page thanks his church, so he belonged to one, whatever his religious beliefs may have been. He didn't say anything in his lecture to indicate what they were. As an atheist, it doesn't matter to me so much what he believed, as opposed to how he lived. That is in sharp contrast to several Christian sites which have condemned him for being a nonbeliever (which they don't know to be the case) or for failing to evangelize. These people strike me as angry believers looking for reasons to criticize someone who led a good life. One Christian writer criticized Pausch's talk by attempting to paraphrase it as "I lived a meaningless life following meaningless rules, so should you." The same writer says, "Yes, he lived a nice and successful life, but so what? Who cares? He will be forgotten as were many people before and after him. His impact on the world would soon disappear. Whatever he achieved in research will soon become useless." What nonsense! So what? Those who knew him and worked with him disagree. He will eventually be forgotten, as we all will, but it will always be the case that he did live and he did make a mark on the people around him and his time was not wasted. And he will be no more harmed by his nonexistence after his death than he was by his nonexistence before he was born.

I question the motivation of those who argue critically of those who have lived happy and productive lives, arguing that so much better are the lives of those who live miserable, angry, critical, and destructive lives, just so long as they accept Jesus before they die. Surely the universe they want to believe in is an unjust and immoral one.

Update on CMI-AiG lawsuits

Creation Ministries International has updated its website about its legal battles with Answers in Genesis of Kentucky. The latest addition reports that in April, AiG served CMI with a lawsuit in the United States trying to stop the legal action in Australia--even though one of the two contracts AiG is trying to enforce specifies the law of the Australian state of Victoria as the governing law and forum. CMI will be defending itself in the U.S. against the new action.

Shootings at South Mountain Community College

Kat saw multiple police cars on her way home and now we hear a bunch of helicopter action nearby, and it appears there has been a shooting incident at South Mountain Community College, with three victims and a suspect in custody.

UPDATE (5:08 p.m.): The shooting apparently took place at the campus Technology Center around 4 p.m., and the campus was quickly locked down, but the suspect had already left. The suspect was arrested at around 23rd Ave. and Grove, near his home. The news is reporting four victims admitted to the Maricopa Medical Center, two men aged 17 and 19, one 20-year-old woman, and one possible additional victim not confirmed. At least one male victim was aware and speaking as he was admitted, and the woman spoke with her father, Otis Williams, by cell phone after she was shot.

One news report claims the suspect was known on campus, and that was apparently why he was quickly apprehended.

Students are now being permitted to leave campus. Classes for the rest of today and tomorrow are cancelled.

UPDATE (5:22 p.m.): Apparently the suspect, a black male driving a white truck, drove home where his father persuaded himself to give himself up to police, which he did. Police and fire department officials were on site at the campus within about five minutes after the first reports of a shooting (both police and fire stations are quite close by).

UPDATE (6:04 p.m.): The ages of victims have been changed--the woman, a pharmacy student, from 22 to 20, and the 25-year-old male to 19. The 17-year-old has been identified as Christopher Taylor, by his brother Jay. A student reports that the shooter was one of two men who had been fighting in the computer center. The 19-year-old victim is reported in critical condition, while the other two victims are in stable condition. (Yet CNN reports that the woman was shot in the abdomen while the other two victims were shot in the leg. It describes the males as aged 17 and 25.)

The alleged fourth victim apparently didn't exist, and was incorrectly reported by one of the news reporters on the basis of watching people being brought in to the hospital. Or perhaps there was a 25-year-old shot in the leg and a 19-year-old who received more serious injuries?

UPDATE (8:24 p.m.): CBS News 5 reports that there was a long-running dispute between the shooter and one of the victims, and police say that the shooting was gang-related.

UPDATE (July 25, 2008): The shooter has been identified as 22-year-old Rodney Smith, a former SCC student and known as a regular at the computer lab, who came to campus to pick a fight with 19-year-old Isaac Deshay Smith, who was shot in the leg and was still in critical condition last night. The other two victims caught in the crossfire were 20-year-old Charee Williams, who was shot in the hip, and 17-year-old Christopher Lee Taylor, who was also shot in the leg. Five family members and friends of Rodney Smith were also taken into custody last night for interfering with the investigation and disobeying police officers. The most recent report does not mention gangs, but only a long-standing feud between the two Smiths.

UPDATE (July 26, 2008): Rodney Smith has apologized to his "innocent victims" in court, and it has been reported that Isaac Deshay Smith and two others were involved in a fight last year in which Rodney Smith was punched and kicked while lying on the ground and his jaw broken in two places.