EFF sues the NSA, Bush, Cheney, Addington, etc.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed Jewel v. NSA to try another tactic in stopping unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping of U.S. residents. Their previous lawsuit against AT&T, Hepting v. AT&T, is still in federal court as the EFF argues with the government over whether the telecom immunity law passed by our spineless Congress is itself constitutional or applicable to the case.

Jewel v. NSA names as defendants the National Security Agency, President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and "other individuals who ordered or participated in warrantless domestic surveillance."

Drugs in drinking water are controlled substances

In another amusing unintended consequence of the war on drugs, it turns out that the pharmaceuticals most likely to get disposed of into city water supplies are controlled substances. The restrictions on who has access to over 365 controlled substances are such that they can't be disposed of via normal hazardous waste disposal methods such as incineration, due to the costs of maintaining the controls on contractors who handle and haul away drugs for disposal.

As a result, hospitals and assisted living facilities are dumping drugs like codeine, morphine, oxycodone, diazepam (e.g., Valium) and methylphenidate (e.g., Ritalin) down the drains, behind locked doors with a witness to the disposal for record-keeping purposes.

The DEA is reportedly working out some modified regulations with the assistance of the EPA.

Sarah Palin and the John Birch Society

Orcinus has an interesting article about Sarah Palin, prompted by the finding of a 1995 photograph of Palin at her Wasilla city council desk with an article from the March 1995 issue of the John Birch Society's New American in front of her. Ben Smith at Politico has a more balanced piece on the same subject, which points out that there were lots of copies of that particular article sent out, and that Birchers themselves don't appear to be particularly impressed with Palin.

Government restriction on short sales may have unintended consequences

A lot of my investments are in S&P 500 index funds, which, until the recent dive by financial institutions, included financial stocks as its largest sector of investment (finance is now third after energy and IT). Over the past couple years, I've held shares in the Prudent Bear Fund (BEARX), a mutual fund that uses a strategy of shorting various stocks, purchasing put options, and investing in gold, as well as making some short-term trades of the exchange-traded funds ProShares UltraShort S&P 500 (SDS), which goes up when the S&P 500 goes down, and ProShares UltraShort Financial (SKF), which goes up when the Dow Jones U.S. Financials Index (DJUSFI) goes down.

I had been holding some shares of SKF for a couple weeks with a 30-day limit order to sell at $142, which would give me a nice profit. When it shot up Thursday, I upped my limit, and ended up selling some of my shares at over $150, and closing out my position. The market then reversed, and SKF dropped as low as $110, so I picked up a few more shares at around $117. Friday morning, SKF dropped to $87 and started to climb back up, when all of a sudden it stuck at $93 and no more trades went through. Trading was halted.

The SEC announced a "temporary emergency action" to ban short selling in 799 stocks of financial companies for the next ten business days (until the end of the day on October 2), which may be extended for up to another twenty business days (until the end of the day on October 31, bringing us right up to the election). The UK instituted a similar ban. Because of this ban, trading in SKF was temporarily halted. The SEC seems to be under the illusion that short sellers are responsible for the stocks of financial companies falling, rather than the fact that these companies have been engaging in risky behavior and are now loaded down with bad debt.

But a short time later today, trading in SKF resumed, after ProShares announced that they cannot accept orders to create new shares in the fund, since that would require taking new short positions in financial stocks, but those who hold existing positions are still permitted to trade them.

This effectively turns SKF into a closed-end fund, making SKF shares more scarce than they otherwise would be. When I saw that SKF was again trading, I bought more shares at $90, reasoning that the financial problems are far from fixed, the proposed government action is likely to be full of holes, and with normal routes to short selling closed, more of those who wish to hedge their bets against further drops in the financial sector will turn to other alternatives such as put options (though options markets are likely to be hurt by this ban as well, since the U.S., unlike the UK, didn't make an exception for options market makers) or shares in funds like SKF, the latter of which they will only be able to purchase from existing holders of the fund.

It's a serious mistake to think that short selling is something solely done by vultures trying to destroy companies at risk--it's a defensive measure against catastrophe for those who are mostly holding long-term investment positions.

An Associated Press story on the ban shows that the SEC is starting to recognize that it may cause some unintended problems:

But on Wall Street, professional short-sellers said they were being unfairly targeted by the SEC's prohibition. And some analysts warned of possible negative consequences, maintaining that banning short-selling could actually distort -- not stabilize -- edgy markets.

Indeed, hours after the new ban was announced, some of its details appeared to be a work in progress. The SEC said its staff was recommending exemptions from the ban for trades market professionals make to hedge their investments in stock options or futures.

"I don't think it's going to accomplish what they're after," said Jeff Tjornehoj, senior analyst at fund research firm Lipper Inc. Without short sellers, he said, investors will have a harder time gauging the true value of a stock.

"Most people want to be in a stock for the long run and want to see prices go up. Short sellers are useful for throwing water in their face and saying, `Oh yeah? Think about this,'" Tjornehoj said. As a result, restricting the practice could inflate the value of some stocks, opening the door for a big downward correction later.

"Without offering a flip-side to the price-discovery mechanism, I think there's a pressure built up in stock prices that only gets relieved in a great cataclysm," he said.

Disclosure: I presently hold no shares of BEARX or SDS, but do have a position in SKF. This post does not constitute investment advice.

UPDATE (September 20, 2008): Paul Krugman critiques leaked details of the bailout deal. If accurate, I agree with him that it's a bad deal and I expect to see SKF climb on Monday.

Iraq peace: surge working, or results of ethnic cleansing?

Reuters reports that nighttime satellite photos from Sunni Arab areas of Baghdad show that the lights in those areas began to go out before the U.S. troop surge began in 2007, suggesting that population shift, rather than the surge, may have had greater responsibility for the drop in violence.

Sarah Palin's Yahoo account hacked

Sarah Palin has apparently been using a personal email account for State of Alaska business (perhaps following Republican precedent on how to avoid subpoenas?), and it's been compromised.

Wikileaks has the documents.

UPDATE (September 19, 2008): The screenshots used by the attacker showed that he used ctunnel as his web proxy, and contained enough information to identify his source IP in ctunnel's logs.

As pointed out by commenter Schtacky, it looks like they've identified the culprit, who used some Google research and Yahoo's password recovery feature to change the password on the account to break in.

This shows the problem with choosing "security questions" for password recovery that have answers which are easily publicly available.

I hope that this kid's actions don't sabotage the corruption case against Palin that may have been supported by evidence in her Yahoo email, evidence that is now tainted by the fact that it was compromised (and subsequently deleted).

The Religious Right's Religious Right

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars discusses those right-wing Christians who oppose Sarah Palin because God doesn't want women to hold leadership positions or even vote.

He lays out some choice quotes from Covenant News, the website promoting these extreme views, and observes that this website is the home to contributors such as Gary North and Ron Paul.

Cindy McCain's drug-related crimes

Radley Balko at The Agitator replies to Jennifer Rubin at Commentary about why the Washington Post's coverage of Cindy McCain's addiction to painkillers and commission of crimes to support it is newsworthy.

Balko gives two reasons:

• John and Cindy McCain have touted her addiction an example in overcoming adversity. That presents quite the contrast to McCain’s legislative history as an ardent drug warrior. People accused of crimes similar to those Cindy McCain was accused of committing usually go to prison (even when they’re innocent). Her crimes haven’t been well-reported in the media. And they show how John McCain (who, by the way, is running for president) believes in one set of rules for the friends and family of powerful politicians, and a different set of rules for everyone else.
• While Cindy McCain’s addiction and theft from her children’s charity to support that addiction were lightly covered at the time, there has yet to be much coverage of it at all during this campaign. And one aspect of the case that’s been covered even less is John and Cindy McCain’s attempt to railroad Tom Gosinski, the guy who blew the whistle on Cindy McCain’s theft from her children’s charity. The Post story is one of the first to get his version of what happened.

And Balko concludes:

So here we have a U.S. senator who tried to destroy the guy who blew the whistle on his wife’s crimes, who then used his political power to work out a sweetheart deal with prosecutors to get his wife a slap on the wrist for those crimes (which often send others to prison), and who has then spent his entire career fighting for longer sentences and less leniency for people who commit similar crimes. And he’s now running for president.

The Washington Post story is here. Phoenix's New Times covered the story of Cindy McCain's drug addiction and Tom Gosinski whistle-blowing back in 1994. The New Times story contains much more detail than the Post story, including lies told by Cindy McCain as part of the McCains handling of the unwanted media coverage of the story.

Amy Silverman of New Times, who has covered McCain in detail for many years, has a lengthy recent article about McCain here, which includes stories about McCain such as his sabotaging a hearing of Arizona Gov. Rose Mofford, Barry Goldwater's irritation with McCain, McCain's exploitation of the illness of Mo Udall for publicity, and more.

McCain and Palin lie about factcheck.org

A McCain-Palin ad cites factcheck.org to claim that Obama has made false attacks on Palin--but the attacks haven't come from Obama. McCain and Palin are appealing to factcheck.org's accurate content in order to lie about Obama, and factcheck.org calls them on their dishonesty.

Palin falsely claims Alaska produces 20% of U.S. energy

Sarah Palin said in an interview with Charlie Gibson that Alaska "produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy."

Not true.

Alaska produces 14% of the oil from U.S. wells (not 14% of oil consumed), produces 3.5% of domestically produced U.S. energy, about 2.4% of U.S. energy consumed.

McCain repeated the same falsehood to Gibson, saying "[Palin's] been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply."

(Via factcheck.org.)

If they keep repeating this claim, they are liars. There's already good evidence that they are bullshitters.

Walking with the Dinosaurs

Kat and I went last night to see "Walking with Dinosaurs" at the U.S. Airways Center in Phoenix. It was a visually impressive show--they did a great job on the dinosaurs, which were quite realistic in appearance and movement, with only minor distractions. The smaller dinosaurs were operated by a person inside, whose legs were partially visible since a human's legs don't fit into the shape of the dinosaur's legs. The larger dinosaurs were each mounted on some kind of flat long vehicle that was colored to match the floor, but was still visible.

The music was loud and somewhat bombastic, the kind of stirring movie soundtrack music that can be sometimes irritating--but not as much so as the typical Phoenix Suns intro that regularly happens at the same location. The dinosaurs movements involved very limited interactions with each other--only occasionally so much as touching each other--which made the "battles" more of a suggestion than a depiction. No doubt this was to avoid damaging some expensive dinosaurs.

The production was narrated by an actor playing "Huxley" the paleontologist, who walked around on the floor with the dinosaurs, describing the historical context with the help of video projected onto several screens. The arena itself was encircled by inflatable plant life that "grew" and "died" at the appropriate times. Some lighting and smoke effects also contributed to the atmosphere, for fires, volcanos, and the comet theory of the K-T mass extinction. Some other props included some giant rocks which were also used to represent the continents, and a big ball of dinosaur poop (one of several kid-pleasing elements that I also appreciated).

It was definitely a bit more on the entertainment side of "edutainment" than the education side. Although the script tried to convey the timescales involved, it didn't try very hard--some visual analogies on the video screen might have helped. It explained the difference between fossils of dead animals and trace fossils that show evidence of how they lived, but made no attempt to talk about the geological strata or how we know the enormous ages involved. It didn't, to my mind, do much of anything to try to proactively counter young-earth creationist nonsense about the dinosaurs.

And that was a pity, because as we left the arena, we were confronted by young-earth creationists from the Arizona Origin Science Association handing out copies of Ken Ham's booklet, "What REALLY Happened to the Dinosaurs?" I heard one gentleman come back and ask for another copy, saying "my brother[-in-law?] is an evolutionary biologist, and I want to give him one." I hope that man's relative takes the time to rebut it.

There are some photos and video of "Walking with Dinosaurs" at Brian Switek's Laelaps blog, along with his description of the show.

August's Notices of Trustee's Sales

As Jim pointed out here, Maricopa County saw another record month for pre-foreclosures - though AZ Central's count is different than mine. I can only tell you what I get from the recorder's office (which was 7286).

Candidate charitable contributions

USA Today reports that the Biden family has given $3,690 to charity over the last decade, an average of $369 per year, on "modest" income that has ranged from a low of $210,797 in 1999 to a high of over $320,000 in 2005. Last year, they gave $995 on income of $319,853 (0.3%), their highest giving rate of the decade.

A 2005 study of households with incomes from $200,000 to $500,000 per year shows average charitable giving of $40,746 per year.

John McCain has given $202,000 to charity in the last two years, about 25% of his income--but of course he is married to a very wealthy woman who earned more than $6 million in 2006. Last year he gave $105,467 (half of what he and his wife donated as a couple) on income of $405,409, which would be more impressive if it weren't just an even division of their reported expenses reported without the comparison figure of her income.

The Obamas gave $240,000 to charity last year on income of more than $4.2 million (5.7%). In 2000, they gave $2,350 to charity on income of $240,726 (1%).

Palin's tax data hasn't yet been released. There may be some tax problems lurking in her records.

John McCain's personal charitable giving appears quite generous, but it's somewhat less so considering his wife's much higher separate income and my suspicion that she effectively subsidized his charitable giving as the chief breadwinner and provider. The Obamas were very generous last year, but not so much in 2000. The Bidens, not at all generous. This seems to lend further support to the thesis that conservatives are more generous with their own money than liberals.

My feeling is that most professionals earning six-figure incomes should be able to give 5-10% of their gross income to charitable causes without much trouble. The average figures for those earning $200,000 to $500,000 strike me as just about right.

(UPDATE, 17 May 2021):  The Bidens' 2020 tax returns show much more generous charitable contributions:

The Bidens donated $30,704 to 10 charities last year. The largest gift was $10,000 to the Beau Biden Foundation, a nonprofit focused on child abuse that is named after the president's deceased son.

But that's on $607,336 in income, so it's just over 5%.  Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff gave just under 1.6%:

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, also released their 2020 tax filings. They paid a rate of 36.7% on income of $1,695,225 and contributed $27,006 to charity.

 

Virginia Supreme Court strikes down anti-spam law

Spammer Julian Jaynes now gets off as a result of a bad decision from the Virginia Supreme Court, reversing its own previous decision from six months ago.

The court ruled that the Virginia anti-spam law's prohibition of header falsification constitutes an unconstitutional infringement of the right to anonymous political and religious speech, suggesting that it would have been acceptable of it was limited to commercial speech.

The court's decision was predicated on the assumption that header falsification is a necessary requirement for anonymity, but this is a faulty assumption. All that is needed for anonymity is the omission of identity information that leads back to an individual, not the falsification of headers or identity information. That can be done with remailers, proxies, and anonymously-obtained email accounts, with no header falsification required. I previously made this argument in more detail in response to the arguments given by Jaynes' attorney in the press.

I also disagree with the court's apparent assumption that commercial speech is deserving of less protection than religious or political speech. What makes spam a problem is its unsolicited bulk nature, not its specific content.

Foreclosures hit a record high

CNN reports:

Foreclosures hit another record high in August: 304,000 homes were in default and 91,000 families lost their houses.

More than 770,000 homes have been repossessed by lenders since August 2007, when the credit crunch took hold.

The report from RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosures properties, is the latest in string of bad news for housing.

Foreclosure filings of all kinds, including notices of defaults, notices of auctions and bank repossessions, grew 12% in August over July, and 27% compared with August 2007.

Arizona preforeclosures also set another record in August, according to the Arizona Republic:

...notice of trustee sales, in metropolitan Phoenix hit a new high of 7,271 in August, according to the real-estate-data firm Information Market. Foreclosures in the Valley have been hovering around 4,000 for each of the past few months but are bound to climb if more struggling homeowners don't get help.

So much for seeing July's drop as the start of a trend.

Palin collected per-diem from Alaska while at home

Yahoo reports:

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has charged her state a daily allowance, normally used for official travel, for more than 300 nights spent at her home, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.

An analysis of travel statements filed by the governor, now John McCain's Republican running mate, shows she claimed the per diem allowance on 312 occasions when she was home in Wasilla and that she billed taxpayers $43,490 for travel by her husband and children.

Per diem payments are meant for meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business. State officials told The Post her claims — nearly $17,000 over 19 months — were permitted because her "duty station" is Juneau, the capital, and she was in Wasilla 600 miles away.

Palin spends little time at the governor's mansion in Juneau, especially when the Legislature is out of session, and instead prefers to live in Wasilla and commute to her office in Anchorage.

I think the travel to and from Wasilla is arguably reasonable, depending on frequency, but per diem for meals and incidentals in Wasilla seems as wrong as if she were taking the per diem for meals and incidentals while staying in the governor's mansion.

UPDATE (September 15, 2008): The Palins haven't yet released their tax records, and it may be that she owes taxes on those per diems.

Sex education reduces abortion rates

This doesn't seem terribly surprising, but Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out a New York Times op-ed piece that observes that the U.S. ties with Hungary for most abortions among OECD nations, even though Denmark has the most sexually active teenage girls. Denmark's teenage birthrate is 1/6 of the U.S.'s, and its abortion rate is 1/2 of the U.S.'s. The Netherlands has a teenage birthrate 1/7 of the U.S.'s, and an abortion rate 1/7 of the U.S.'s, and its teenagers start having sex on average two years after U.S. teens. The difference is that Denmark and the Netherlands have comprehensive sex education, while the U.S. has been pushing abstinence-only education that doesn't work, and about half of U.S. states now reject federal funding for abstinence-only sex education for that reason.

Factcheck.org on bogus Palin claims

Factcheck.org has a section up on "Sliming Palin." Check it before forwarding on emails, and reply to the authors who are spreading falsehoods.

Palin didn't cut Alaska's "special needs" education budget by 62% (she tripled it), she didn't ask for any books to be banned, she was never a member of the Alaskan Independence Party (though her husband was), she didn't endorse Patrick Buchanan for president in 2000 (she wore a Buchanan button as a courtesy when Buchanan visited Wasilla, but worked for Steve Forbes' campaign), and she hasn't tried to put creationism in schools.

UPDATE (September 16, 2008): Apparently one of the books that Palin had inquired about how to challenge and remove from the library was a book by a local Palmer, AK pastor named Rev. Howard Bess titled, Pastor, I am Gay. It does appear that there were some particular books that caught her attention which is why she made the inquiry.

UPDATE (September 16, 2008): Philip Munger of Wasilla says that Palin is definitely a young-earth creationist:

In June 1997, both Palin and I had responsibilities at the graduation ceremony of a small group of Wasilla area home schoolers. I directed the Mat-Su College Community Band, which played music, and she gave the commencement address. It was held at her church, the Wasilla Assembly of God.

Palin had recently become Wasilla mayor, beating her earliest mentor, John Stein, the then-incumbent mayor. A large part of her campaign had been to enlist fundamentalist Christian groups, and invoke evangelical buzzwords into her talks and literature.

As the ceremony concluded, I bumped into her in a hall away from other people. I congratulated her on her victory, and took her aside to ask about her faith. Among other things, she declared that she was a young earth creationist, accepting both that the world was about 6,000-plus years old, and that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time.

I asked how she felt about the second coming and the end times. She responded that she fully believed that the signs of Jesus returning soon "during MY lifetime," were obvious. "I can see that, maybe you can't - but it guides me every day."

Surely there must be other witnesses besides Munger to her creationist views who can provide confirmation.

ASU WebDevil article on FFRF billboards

Christina Caldwell has written a thoughtful and positive piece on the FFRF billboards in Phoenix for Arizona State University's student newspaper online.

Post-Mormon billboard in Gilbert

A "You are not alone" billboard promoting a group for people who have left the Mormon religion is up in Mesa, put up by Paul Hahn of www.postmormon.org.

Unlike usual anti-Mormon proselytizing, this group isn't promoting evangelical Christianity--it's religiously neutral, and its website includes comments about Richard Dawkins' "Root of All Evil," the film "Jesus Camp," and a debate between Rev. Al Sharpton and Christopher Hitchens, along with criticisms of Mormonism based on DNA evidence and the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which are good rational reasons not to believe in the religion.

ApostAZ podcast #8

ApostAZ podcast #8 is out:

Episode 008 Atheism and Sam Kinnison!!! in Phoenix- Go to atheists.meetup.com/157 for group events! Discussion of Matthew 10:10's Energeticism. (Matt: you have an open invite to be on the show and discuss it) Basics of Evolutionary Psychology. http://www.mixx.com/s... Billboards and Photos.

This is really #9, and #8 is the "lost" podcast, thanks to the burglary of Brad's home and theft of his computer.

My comments on energeticism may be found at the Phoenix Atheists Meetup Group message board. I've got a copy of Matthew's book but haven't been able to get past the first chapter.

RIP Chester William Anderson

The Arizona Republic has published this obituary:

Chester William Anderson passed away at age 97 on August 19, 2008, following a brief illness. Beloved husband of the late Laurel R. Anderson, he is survived by three children : Kelly (Will) Momsen, Barbara Anderson and Bob (Jannie) Anderson. He was blessed with five grandchildren : Bill (Lara) Momsen, Kirsten (Rob) Carr, Rick Momsen, Laura (David) Meehan and David (Marnie) Momsen. He is further survived by six great-grandchildren. He was born in Burlington, Iowa, to Charles and Hulda Anderson on February 6, 1911 together with siblings Carl Anderson, John Robert Anderson and Mildred Anderson. He graduated from Iowa State University in 1934. After working at Standard Oil of Indiana and Ordnance Steel Foundry, he became Executive Vice-President of Associated Industries of the Quad Cities. After 7 years, his family moved to Milwaukee where he became the President of Management Resources Assoc. of Milwaukee, an organization dedicated to providing information to employers in the area of labor/management. He retired after 26 years and moved to Phoenix in 1980. During his illustrious career, he was Chairman of the Illinois Industrial Council, the Wisconsin Industrial Council and the National Industrial Council's Industrial Relations Group. He was a Founding Board Member of the Council on a Union-Free Environment (Washington DC) and a lifetime member of the Foundation for Economic Education. He was Chairman and Board Member for the Institute for Humane Studies (Arlington, Virginia) and a lifetime Member of the Mont Pelerin Society of Economists, an international society of top economic thinkers. Among his proudest accomplishments was the creation of the Milwaukee Forum, a discussion group of business and professional leaders and educators who met with nationally known speakers on a quarterly basis. In Phoenix, he created the Economics Discussion Group in 1982 which continues to meet to this day. Other than his devotion to family, his greatest love was liberty and promoting the concept through education. With this in mind, memorial gifts to the Institute for Humane Studies (3301 Fairfax Dr., Arlington, VA, 22201) are suggested in lieu of flowers. Memorial at Sunland Memorial Park September 7th at 2 PM.

I met Chet Anderson around 2001 when I joined his Economics Discussion Group, after learning of it at a reception for the Institute for Humane Studies. (I attended several IHS seminars and received IHS fellowships during grad school.) Chet was personally acquainted with many prominent figures in classical liberal and libertarian circles, including F.A. "Baldy" Harper (founder of IHS, on whose board Chet sat), Ludwig von Mises (Chet attended some of his lectures), Milton Friedman, Leonard Read (founder of the Foundation for Economic Education), and Ayn Rand (Chet once had lunch with her).

Chet always seemed positive and optimistic every time I spoke with him, and he remembered and asked about details of my life each time I met him, right up to the last meeting I saw him at a few months ago. His mind seemed clear and sharp even then, though I know he had a stroke in the weeks before he died and was unable to speak to a friend who visited him in the hospital.

At and after today's memorial service, many people spoke of Chet's optimism, his love for ideas and liberty, and his willingness to engage in courteous and patient discussion with anyone. He was an advocate for liberty and freedom who has done much to promote those ideas around the world, and I've gained much from my participation in the group he started 26 years ago.

Dirty Politician: Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY)

Long-time drug warrior politician Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) turns out to be a dirty politician. As Radley Balko of The Agitator puts it:

...the chair of the House Committee that writes our tax laws didn’t know that he’d been given an interest-free loan for a luxury Caribbean Villa, didn’t know that he was getting taxable income off of rentals from said villa, and didn’t know that he had a duty to report and disclose and report the $75,000 in income from said rentals that apparently slipped his notice?

Riiii-iiiight. This would be the same guy who didn’t know how he somehow was able to accumulate four rent-controlled apartments in New York City, and didn’t know about laws against using rent-controlled apartments for purposes other than a primary residence.

Rangel’s either a corrupt liar, or he’s shockingly ignorant of laws a man with his position and responsibilities ought to know about. Either way, he should be stripped of his chairmanship.

I'd go farther than that--any corrupt politician should be removed from office and tossed into prison. It rarely happens, because nearly all of them, along with the leaders in the executive branch, are similarly corrupt.

Ian McShane narrates McCain: Reformed Maverick

The Daily Show has outdone itself with this one.



UPDATE (September 8, 2008): The part about McCain crashing five planes isn't true.

FFRF billboards are up

A group of us from the Phoenix Atheists Meetup had lunch today near one of the billboards and used the occasion for a photo op. This is one of the five billboards, which, contrary to my earlier descriptions, are all of the "Imagine No Religion" design. Too bad, I would have liked to have seen the "Beware of Dogma" design up, as well as the "Keep Religion Out of Politics" slogan. (If I obtain permission, I'll update this photo with one of the group shots, which can be seen at the Phoenix Atheists Meetup site.)

There's some additional coverage in Ed Montini's column at the Arizona Republic.

Cocaine plane was used by CIA

The Gulfstream II jet that crashed in Mexico last year with 3.7 tons of cocaine on board was frequently used by the CIA to fly terror suspects to Guantanamo Bay, and may have also been used for "extraordinary rendition" flights to CIA prisons overseas, as well as for Bush fundraisers. Donna Blue Aircraft, the company the plane was registered to, took down its website yesterday.

(Via The Agitator.)

Bobcats taking over foreclosed homes

See the story at BLDGBLOG. (Thanks for the link, Reed!)

Pundits are more honest when they think they're off the air

Peggy Noonan and Mike Murphy say what they really think about Sarah Palin. Why couldn't they be honest about it on the air?

CNN finally does its job

Campbell Brown at CNN shows what a reporter is supposed to do when questioning the representative of a political candidate--insist that they actually answer the questions asked in a meaningful way. After this interview with McCain representative Tucker Bounds, McCain cancelled an interview with CNN in response to what he viewed as unreasonable behavior.



(Via Juan Cole.)

Sarah Palin, promoter of pork barrel spending

Before Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, the town received no federal funds. As mayor, she hired the Anchorage law firm of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh, to help the town obtain federal funds. The Wasilla account was handled by Steven W. Silver, a partner in the firm and former chief of staff to indicted-for-corruption Sen. Ted Stevens, who helped secure $67 million in federal earmarks for the town of 6,700 residents--$4,000 per person.

(Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

Palin has stood up to corruption, blowing the whistle on unethical behavior by the chairman of the Alaska Republican Party despite taking a lot of heat for it. But she's also gotten into some trouble of her own, and it almost seems that she fell into her anti-corruption role by accident.

A description of Palin from her fellow Wasilla, Alaska resident Anne Kilkenny is well worth reading. (Kilkenny is also quoted regarding Palin in this New York Times story.) For further perspective, here's another close-up view of Palin as she's seen in Alaska.

UPDATE (September 4, 2008): As governor of Alaska, Palin asked for $550 million in earmarks in her first year in office, and for 31 federal earmarks totaling $198 million so far this year. Oink!

John McCain has long been a critic of earmarks. Turns out he has specifically been critical of earmarks requested by Sarah Palin.

Misinformation about Google's Chrome EULA

Adam Frucci at Gizmodo writes:

So, are you enjoying the snappy, clean performance of Google Chrome since downloading yesterday? If so, you might want to take a closer peek at the end user license agreement you didn't pay any attention to when downloading and installing it. Because according to what you agreed to, Google owns everything you publish and create while using Chrome. Ah-whaaa?

This is false. The EULA doesn't transfer ownership of anything. The provision that has everyone upset is the rather broadly worded provision 11.1:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

Note that the very first sentence says that you retain all intellectual property rights. This gives Google the rights to do the things it already does--let other people play YouTube videos you upload, syndicate your Blogger content, store cached versions of your web pages, allow people to see versions of your web pages translated into other languages, display thumbnails of images on your web pages in Google Images search, and so forth. The last sentence appears to limit it solely for the purpose "to display, distribute and promote the Services" and not allow them to, say, use your content in order to compete with you, undermine your intellectual property rights, etc.

An earlier provision in the EULA also makes this explicit:

9.4 Other than the limited license set forth in Section 11, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content that you submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Services, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, you agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that Google has no obligation to do so on your behalf.

So even if 11.1 is a bit too broad, there's this provision to fall back on if you feel your intellectual property rights are being infringed.

Some commenters at Gizmodo said that they didn't agree with this provision and therefore have uninstalled the software, but that's not sufficient to terminate this agreement. Terminating the agreement requires you to give notice to Google in writing and close all of your accounts with them:

13.2 If you want to terminate your legal agreement with Google, you may do so by (a) notifying Google at any time and (b) closing your accounts for all of the Services which you use, where Google has made this option available to you. Your notice should be sent, in writing, to Google’s address which is set out at the beginning of these Terms.

One thing that is clear from these terms is that Google definitely wants to interpose itself between user and content in a manner similar to what Microsoft has done for years with Windows, and in a much stickier way than telecom providers are between user and content. If you have network neutrality concerns about telecom providers or had antitrust concerns about Microsoft's bundling of the Internet Explorer web browser with Windows, you should probably have similar concerns about Google, given the way use of its browser is bundled with an EULA covering all of its services. Shouldn't I be able to discontinue this EULA by getting rid of the browser, and not by terminating all of my accounts with Google? Will there be a lawsuit about unbundling the Google Chrome browser from the rest of its services?

UPDATE: Ars Technica reports that Google says this was an error and they will be correcting the license, which was borrowed from other Google services, apparently without careful review. It also notes that since Chrome is distributed under an open license, users can download the source code and compile it themselves without being bound by the agreement.

The major flaw in the 11.1 language is that it gives Google the right to publish content you merely "display" in the browser, even if it's private content on a local server or restricted content from a secured website. That clearly wasn't their intent, but that's an implication of how it was written.

Palin Christian heritage declaration misquotes, misrepresents

Last year, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin declared "Christian Heritage Week" in Alaska from October 21-27, 2007, with a proclamation that misquoted and misrepresented various Founding Fathers, at least two of whom would have opposed just such a proclamation (Jefferson and Madison).

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars steps through her proclamation and corrects the misinformation.

Palin lies about the bridge to nowhere

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars shows that McCain's VP nominee, Sarah Palin, didn't take long to utter her first falsehood as candidate. Near the beginning of her acceptance speech, she said:

And I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress -- I told Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks," on that bridge to nowhere.

(APPLAUSE)

If our state wanted a bridge, I said we'd build it ourselves.

But in fact, she actually did the opposite. During her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, here's how she answered a question about the bridge when addressing an audience of Alaskans:

5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?

Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now--while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.

She went on to seek other projects not out of a desire for self-reliance and avoiding wasteful federal spending, but because she couldn't get enough federal funding:

"Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it's clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island," Governor Palin added. "Much of the public's attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened."

See the full story and references at Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan's blog reposts this photo that shows Palin's support for the "bridge to nowhere."

UPDATE (September 14, 2008): Some Alaskans are not happy with Palin's claiming that she doesn't support what she told them she supported.

Left-wing conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theorists like to make arguments of the form "A is linked to B, B is linked to C, therefore A and C are in cahoots," where the links between each entity may be extremely tenuous.

P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula, following dogemperor at the DailyKos, maintains that "Sarah Palin's home church is dominionist, with connections to Joel's Army," for which the evidence dogemperor provides is the following:

A look at the home website of Palin's church tends to be revealing. Among other things, a particular Assemblies buzzword associated frequently with Hillsong A/G and New Zealand Assemblies churches shows up ("Destiny", here, is a buzzword for "Joel's Army", and is being preferred even as the phrase "Joel's Army" is getting enough negative spin that even the Assemblies is now having to do some rather massive spin control); cell churches are promoted (of the same sort that are linked to short-term and longterm psychological damage and are among the most coercive tactics ever documented in spiritually abusive groups). The church, like a number of other large Assemblies churches, is the center of a dominionist broadcast TV center whose programming is carried across multiple channels in Alaska.

In a trend that has been recently documented by no less than Southern Poverty Law Center (in its recent report on the Joel's Army movement), the church operates a Seven Project-esque targeted recruitment campaign aiming at teens (this is common across the Assemblies and across "Joel's Army" groups in general; fully a third of the documented national-level front groups operated by the Assemblies target teens).

And...believe you me, Palin's church is definitely "Joel's Army".

But hold on a minute here--the article on "Joel's Army" that Myers initially points readers to is a reasonable article at Alternet that points out that "Joel's Army" is a minority of Pentecostals that has been explicitly rejected by the Assemblies of God:

Not every five-fold ministry is connected to the Joel's Army movement, but the movement has spurred an interest in modern-day apostles and prophets that's troubling to the Assemblies of God, the world's largest Pentecostal church, which has officially disavowed the Joel's Army movement.

In a 2001 position paper, Assemblies of God leaders wrote that they do not recognize modern-day apostles or prophets and worried that "such leaders prefer more authoritarian structures where their own word or decrees are unchallenged." They are right to worry. Joel's Army followers believe that once democratic institutions are overthrown, their hierarchy of apostles and prophets will rule over the earth, with one church per city.

Yet dogemperor's evidence of a link to Joel's Army is:

1. The Juneau Christian Center website uses the word "Destiny." They have a link on the front page labeled "Building for Destiny," which links to a web page that says:

Destiny has begun! The new youth center for children through high school youth is taking shape.

The purpose of The Hub is reach out to youth and parents in Juneau, giving kids a positive place: to grow in safety, build strong relationships, be encouraged to learn in surroundings that match their interests, acquire confidence and prepare for fantastic futures...

The technology in these 21st century centers will encourage kids to enjoy learning in academics, sports, music, art, finances, computers, health, and life skills. From IPOD/study stations and video game terminals to a pool tables and plasma screen TV's there is something of interest for everyone. Oh yes, The Hub also provides a hip cafe serve smoothies, drinks and light food to encourage fellowship.

Sounds pretty scary, doesn't it?

2. The church is "the center of a dominionist broadcast TV center whose programming is carried across multiple channels in Alaska." This links to a page on the Juneau Christian Center website which says:

Pastor's [sic] Mike and Deenie Rose have been the senior Pastors of Juneau Christian Center since 1987. The theme of their ministry is to win the lost and make disciples. Pastor Rose's preaching inspires people to live the abundant life by receiving and using their God given authority, gifts and talents to advance God's Kingdom. Pastor Rose has daily television and radio programs which are broadcast throughout the state of Alaska, and throughout much of the lower 48.

All this says is that he preaches on TV and doesn't know how to use apostrophes. It doesn't say anything at all to support a claim that he's teaching dominionist theology or has any connection to "Joel's Army."

3. The church "operates a Seven Project-esque targeted recruitment campaign aiming at teens (this is common across the Assemblies and across "Joel's Army" groups in general; fully a third of the documented national-level front groups operated by the Assemblies target teens)."

Dogemperor's parenthetical remark undermines his claim that this supports a link to Joel's Army--if this is something common across the Assemblies of God, which rejects the authority of "Joel's Army," then it stands to reason that "Joel's Army" adopted it from the AOG, rather than the reverse. And targeting teens is common for all churches. None of that says anything about the Juneau Christian Center's theology or suggests a connections to "Joel's Army."

This is very weak and poorly reasoned "guilt by association" reasoning of the sort that justifies all sorts of lunatic claims, including fringe Christian arguments about secular humanists trying to take control of the U.S. government.

If Sarah Palin is an advocate of dominionist theology or Christian reconstructionism, I expect a lot better evidence than this to demonstrate it.

UPDATE: The "Secular Apostate," a retired psychophysicist who converted to Roman Catholicism as an adult, criticizes dogemperor's post as a "truthiness parfait." Note carefully what he says about the very term "dominionism"--it didn't used to be synonymous with or a superset of theocracy, theonomy, or Christian reconstructionism, and it appears to be a term applied as such only by its critics, not by those who actually hold any of those positions.

UPDATE: Commenter "raven" at Pharyngula shows clearly that he's applying the term "dominionist" in a very fast and loose fashion. He wrote:

Pretty much all the fundies are Doms. I'd never even heard of xian Dominionists a year or so ago. The difference between reconstructionists and dominionists is...nothing.

To which I replied:

If you're claiming that all fundamentalists are reconstructionists are dominionists, that is nonsense on a par with saying that all atheists are secular humanists are Marxists.

This was apparently sufficient for him to identify me as a dominionist! He responded with this:

Just stating a fact. There might be one or two who lie about it.

You are one, obviously. The tipoff is the raging hatred of everyone especially those coreligionists who differ in minute details of theology. A liberal Dom is one who might let the Jews live if they keep a low profile and all convert to fundie Death Cultism. The other Doms all hate them as blashemous heretics and apostates, of course.

So who is on your "To Kill" list? You all have them. Gays, Catholics, Episcopalians, Democrats, atheists, scientists, MDs, so many people to murder and so little time. The old record is Rushdooney, the founder of modern Dominionism who wanted to kill 297 million of the 300 million US residents alive today. The modern record is the "Nuke 'em all now and let god sort it out" crowd. Sounds like you want to stop that fooling around with armies of religious fanatics with automatic rifles and just go for the quick clean kill.

At this point, P.Z. Myers stepped in and let him know he was drawing some unwarranted inferences.

Raven has supplied a perfect example of the kind of erroneous reasoning that I'm trying to warn against with this post.

UPDATE: After raven learned he was mistaken about my views, rather than recognize that he's gone wrong somewhere and make an effort to learn from his mistake, he simply proclaimed me to be "an idiot" and went off on a rant. It's sad to see that kind of irrationality.

UPDATE: Here are some quotes at the Harper's Magazine blog from sermons of Pastor Mike Rose of Palin's current church and Pastor David Pepper of her previous church. Looks like standard evangelical Christianity, to me--nothing overtly political apart from a statement by Pepper that "I don't care what the ACLU says," though there's some anti-evolution. There's a claim here that Rose has "ties to Hagee's Christians United for Israel," without specifying what those ties are. Pepper, it is stated, "is outspoken on slavery, racism, and the massacres of Native Americans, all of which he terms 'sins' that still cast a long shadow on minority communities." The Harper's blog has links to "many hours of Mike Rose's sermons" and "numerous sermons of David Pepper's," so if there is anything to the dominionist claims, this is the place to look.

UPDATE (September 1, 2008): Although Palin sometimes attends the Juneau Christian Center and considers her home church to be The Church on the Rock in Wassila, both of which are members of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God of America, she does not consider herself to be a Pentecostal, according to Christianity Today, and her profile in the Wall Street Journal identified her as a Lutheran.

Another story, in the Boston Herald, says that Palin's home church is Wasilla Bible Church, headed by Pastor Larry Kroon. This has also been reported by Time magazine. The above claim about The Church on the Rock is a second-hand report by an Associated Press reporter, Eric Gorski, who heard it from Pastor Paul Riley of the Wasilla Assembly of God church, as also reported in the Christianity Today piece. It appears to be false, though no doubt she's visited that and other churches. If Wasilla Bible Church isn't Pentecostal (and it doesn't appear to be), that weakens the allegations of dogemperor even further.

In a Time interview, Palin stated that she attends "A non-denominational Bible church. I was baptized Catholic as a newborn and then my family started going to non-denominational churches throughout our life."

UPDATE (September 7, 2008): Yesterday's New York Times reports on Sarah Palin's church attendance:

One of the musical directors at the church, Adele Morgan, who has known Ms. Palin since the third grade, said the Palins moved to the nondenominational Wasilla Bible Church in 2002, in part because its ministry is less “extreme” than Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God, which practice speaking in tongues and miraculous healings.

I don't think the theocracy/reconstructionism/dominionism charge sticks at all. There are lots of good reasons to oppose Palin as vice president, but the idea that she wants to impose theocracy isn't one of them.

UPDATE (September 26, 2008): Palin's certainly a religious kook, as the video of her being blessed with a protection from witchcraft from a Kenyan minister and her subsequent touting of that blessing as a reason she's been selected for public office demonstrates:

The video shows Palin standing before Bishop Thomas Muthee in the pulpit of
the Wasilla Assembly of God church, holding her hands open as he asked Jesus
Christ to keep her safe from "every form of witchcraft."

"Come on, talk to God about this woman. We declare, save her from Satan!"
Muthee said as two attendants placed their hands on Palin's shoulders. "Make
her way my God. Bring finances her way even for the campaign in the name of
Jesus....Use her to turn this nation the other way around!"

On a visit to the church in June 2008, Palin spoke fondly of the Kenyan
pastor and told a group of young missionaries that Muthee's prayers had
helped her to become governor.

UPDATE (January 1, 2009): dogemperor now argues that Pastor Rick Warren is "connected to" Joel's Army--on the grounds that he once spoke at a 1997 conference of David Yonggi Cho, head of the largest Assemblies of God megachurch in South Korea, and that Cho has argued for Pentecostal revival. Uh, so what are the actual connections between Warren and the "Joel's Army" movement, the New Apostolic Reformation, the Five-fold Ministry, or the "latter rain" movement? What's key to all of these is that they are Pentecostal/charismatic movements that argue that there are new prophets and apostles coming who can perform miracles, signs, and wonders. Rick Warren isn't an advocate of speaking in tongues or performing healing miracles, rather, he relies on modern-day marketing techniques, modern music, and technology. This isn't to say he's not about using Christianity for political influence--he obviously is.

A Christian critique of the "Joel's Army" movement which explains it far better than dogemperor is Jewel Grewe's "Joel's Army." Also worth reading is this AlterNet article by Casey Sanchez of the Southern Poverty Law Center. Some people who really are advocates of the "Joel's Army" movement include Todd Bentley, John Crowder, Paul Cain, Mike Bickle, and Rick Joyner.

Bank set up on Christian principles fails

Integrity Bank of Georgia, set up to run on Christian principles, has failed.

Integrity's employees regularly prayed before meetings or in branch lobbies with customers, while the bank gave 10 percent of its net income to charities.

"We felt if we prayed and obeyed God's word and did what He asked, that He would help us be successful," the bank's founder, Steve Skow, told the Journal-Constitution in 2005.

The executives seem to have done OK, though:

CEO Steve Skow earned $1.8 million that year, while senior lender and executive vice president Doug Ballard earned $847,222. A typical community bank CEO, banking consultants said, earn roughly $300,000 per year.

(Via Pharyngula.)

RNC protesters getting similar treatment as DNC protesters

P.Z. Myers reports on the behavior of police in Minneapolis, which looks similar to Denver.

Barack Obama answers the Sciencedebate 2008 questions

Barack Obama has supplied his answers to the fourteen questions from Sciencedebate 2008.

John McCain has said that he will also be supplying answers.

UPDATE (September 17, 2008): John McCain has also supplied his answers to the Sciencedebate 2008 questions. Click here to see their answers side-by-side.

Are the Republicans fans of Battlestar Galactica?

(Image from here. Hat tip to Dave Palmer on the SKEPTIC mailing list.)

Unintended effects of Helicobacter pylori eradication

Since the Helicobacter pylori bacterium was discovered and proven to be the cause of gastric ulcers, it has been disappearing from the developed world as it's treated with antibiotics. But multiple studies are now showing that there can be negative side-effects from its disappearance, including acid reflux, asthma, and obesity.

H. pylori helps regulate stomach acidity, the byproduct of which is sometimes ulcers. But when it is taken out of the picture, stomach acidity can increase and cause esophageal reflux disease, a disease which has increased to match the decrease in ulcers as H. pylori has been eradicated.

The asthma mechanism is less clear, but may be from H. pylori stimulating immune response. The evidence supporting the link is that U.S. children aged 3-13 who have H. pylori are 60% less likely to have asthma than those who do not.

The obesity connection is also not definitively established, but people without H. pylori produce more grehlin (which makes you feel hungry) than those who have it.

(Via "The twists and turns of fate," about the work of Martin Blaser, a microbiologist at New York University School of Medicine, in The Economist, August 23, 2008, pp. 68-69.)

When t-shirts, coffee tables, and screws are munitions

One of my prized possessions, now in a box in a closet somewhere, is a T-shirt that says on its front "This T-shirt is a munition." Underneath it is some machine-readable barcode that encodes the RSA public-key encryption algorithm expressed in Perl. As the seller of the shirt advertised, "it's machine washable and machine readable."

When I bought and regularly wore that shirt, taking it out of the country was a crime punishable by up to a $1 million fine and 10 years in federal prison. This is because U.S. rules under the International Traffic in Arms Regulation (ITAR), then enforced by the Department of Commerce, ruled that strong encryption qualified as a munition subject to export controls and requiring a special license for export. After the Dan Bernstein case was decided in 1996, computer source code printed in a book (human readable format) was not subject to export controls, but computer source code in a machine readable format, such as on my shirt, still was. So I could wear my other T-shirt with RSA Perl code on it, which had a program in the shape of a dolphin, out of the country, but not the machine readable "This T-shirt is a munition" shirt. The implication was that you could take a copy of Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography out of the country without an export license, but not a disk containing the very same code fragments printed in the book. This website authored by Adam Back, written at the time, proposed some possible motives for government restrictions on cryptography.

What the ITAR regulations on cryptography did for Internet software development was prohibit web browsers and server software from implementing the strong encryption necessary to protect electronic commerce from being exported from the United States. The result was that this development work simply occurred offshore. There were no barriers to importation of the software into the U.S., only to export it out. So the software was developed and sold by companies in places like Canada, Russia, and Estonia, which had no such inane restrictions.

Finally, in 1999, the U.S. wised up and relaxed the ITAR restrictions on encryption, allowing export without a license to most countries (the exceptions being countries with links to state-sponsored terrorism).

But ITAR is still around, and still having the unintended effect of pushing business out of the United States. The current victim is commercial satellite production. In 1999, ITAR authority over satellite technology export was shifted from the Department of Commerce to the Department of State, and since that time the U.S. share of commercial satellite manufacturing has dropped from 83% to 50%. The company Alcatel Alenia Space, now known as Thales Alenia, took steps in the late nineties to eliminate all U.S.-manufactured components from its satellites, with the result that it has subsequently doubled its market share to over 20%. The European Space Agency, Canada's Telesat, and the French company EADS Sodern, that makes satellite control and positioning systems, have all been phasing out their use of U.S.-supplied components. They've done this because dealing with U.S. vendors increases costs (due to regulatory compliance costs) and causes unpredictable delays in the supply of parts.

Nevada's Bigelow Aerospace delivered an aluminum satellite stand to Russia in 2006, which Robert Bigelow described as "indistinguishable from a common coffee table." But because it's associated with a satellite and officially part of a satellite assembly, it is covered by ITAR and had to be guarded by two security guards at all times. Even commodity items like screws and wiring, when part of a satellite, are covered by ITAR regulations.

The purpose of ITAR is to prevent key U.S. technologies with military applications from being leaked out to other countries that might be hostile to the U.S. But the effect of its overly broad application has been to shift the development of that technology to other countries and reduce the ability of U.S. companies to compete in the commercial satellite business.

Congress should look to reform ITAR--when export controls are so badly broken as to have nearly the opposite of the intended effect, they clearly need to be relaxed.

(Satellite and ITAR info via "Earthbound," The Economist, August 23, 2008, pp. 66-67.)

ABC News producer arrested in Denver

Police told ABC News producer Asa Eslocker to move off a public sidewalk, pushed him into the street, and then arrested him after telling him he was trespassing and "impeding the flow of traffic." ABC has video at their site, which shows another police officer who needs to be fired.

Military botnets article

I'm quoted in Peter Buxbaum's "Battling Botnets" article in the August 20, 2008 Military Information Technology. It didn't really fully capture the points I made in the interview, and I don't remember saying the statement at the end about using botnets as an offensive measure as "a nuclear option." I said that nullrouting is a much better method of denial of service for network service providers than flooding attacks, and made a point similar to Schneier's about military attacks on the infrastructure of another nation that the U.S. is at war with--it would be more useful to obtain access to their systems, monitor, and disrupt than to just shut off access completely, but those points weren't reflected in the article.

I've written more about military use of botnets at this blog.

Obama sign stolen

We put a Barack Obama for President sign in front of our house on Sunday; it's already gone today.

A Google search for "Obama sign stolen" shows that thefts of Obama yard signs are occurring all over the place--Midland, TX; Staunton, VA; Springfield, MO; Ivins and St. George, UT; Sartell, MN; Upper Arlington, OH; and so on. A Google search for "McCain sign stolen" shows allegations about McCain stealing a prisoner of war story, Cindy McCain stealing a recipe, and stories of thefts of Obama yard signs--but no reports of stolen McCain signs.

I suppose either our sign was stolen by an unethical Obama supporter for their own use (in which case the stolen sign should be popping up elsewhere), or by an unethical McCain supporter who has no respect for freedom of speech or private property. I suspect it's probably the latter.

UPDATE (November 5, 2008): Here's a story about a university instructor who wrote about his stealing a McCain/Palin sign in Minnesota--he has resigned his visiting professorship at St. Olaf College as a result. Philip Busse is described in the article as a journalist and political activist from Portland, Oregon.

Lori Lipman Brown on the Colbert Report tonight

Lori Lipman Brown, the nonbelievers' lobbyist in Washington D.C., will appear on The Colbert Report tonight. She works for the Secular Coalition of America, an organization whose members include the American Humanist Association, the American Ethical Union, Atheist Alliance International, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the Institute for Humanist Studies, the Internet Infidels, the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, the Secular Students Alliance, and the Society for Humanistic Judaism.

UPDATE: She won't be on tonight--maybe next week?

UPDATE (August 30, 2008): She was on last night's show, which is online.

Rifftrax

Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is behind Rifftrax, a website that allows you to download commentaries to play along with DVDs you watch. One of the commentaries currently available is for Ocean's Eleven and features Mike Nelson and our friend Richard Cheese. Many of the commentaries also feature MST3K writer and the voice of Tom Servo, Kevin Murphy, and MST3K writer and the voice of Crow, Bill Corbett.

Others include Weird Al Yankovic joining Nelson on Jurassic Park, Neil Patrick Harris joining Nelson on Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and commentaries on Alien, Cloverfield, Forbidden Zone, I Am Legend, and the creepy short educational bicycle safety film from 1963, One Got Fat. Josh Fruhlinger, the Comics Cumudgeon, joins Nelson on the Spiderman 2 commentary.

Looks like they charge $2.99 or $3.99 for the feature film commentaries, $0.99 for the shorts, which are all DRM-free.

Check them out at Rifftrax.com.

DHS responds to my FOIA request for my travel dossier

On September 26, 2007, I submitted a request to the Department of Homeland Security requesting copies of information relating to me in the Automated Targeting System (ATS), a system that collects information about individuals who travel internationally. Travelers are then assigned a risk score; passengers who have higher scores are subjected to a higher level of screening, despite the fact that Congress has attached restrictions to its appropriations for passenger screening stating that "None of the funds provided in this or previous appropriations Acts may be utilized to develop or test algorithms assigning risk to passengers whose names are not on government watch lists."

Traveler risk scores are maintained for 40 years and individuals are not allowed to know their scores. The system has come under criticism for sometimes including information such as what books or magazines a passenger is carrying.

I followed the process suggested by The Identity Project, which stated that DHS was supposed to respond within 30 days. It took a little longer than expected--I just received my travel dossier today. It's fifteen pages of fairly cryptic documentation, with frequent short redactions. The redactions are each labeled with the section of 5 USC 552 which provides grounds for exemption from disclosure, (b)(2)(low), (b)(6), and (b)(7)(C). The first of those "exempts from disclosure records that are related to internal matters of a relatively trivial nature, such as internal administrative tracking," and accounts for the majority of the redactions. The other two are for "personnel or medical files and similar files the release of which would cause a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" and "records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes that could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." I have a few of each of that type of redaction.

The documents include most--but not all--of my international air travel, including from as far back as 1984. There appear to be reports from two systems. There are four pages labeled "TECSII - PRIMARY QUERY HISTORY" and "PASSENGER ACTIVITY." TECS II is the Treasury Enforcement Communications System II, the primary database of IBIS, the Interagency Border Inspection System. This report lists a series of records of two lines each. The first line contains my name, date of birth, date and time of the query, the agency making a query, a result column (entirely redacted under (b)(2)), a column labeled "LNE TYP" that appears to use both of the two lines and has codes such as "API," "AIR," and "VEH." Finally on the first line are a completely redacted column labeled "TERM" and single-letter codes under the headings "API" and "DIM." The second line of each record contains airline flight numbers in some cases, and the name of the departure city in one case, a field labeled "DOC:" followed by a blank or my passport number, and, under the heading "LANE," the characters "INSP:" followed by a blank or a redacted field, probably the name of the agent making the query. At the bottom of each page of results are three or four lines that are completely redacted, probably part of a help screen or menu--the output looks like something from an IBM 3270 display terminal.

The other eleven pages of output look like IBM 3270-style output pasted into a single Word document that begins with my name and birthdate. It's divided into several sections, each headed with a date of travel and containing what appears to be passenger name records (PNR) taken directly from SABRE. The redactions in these sections seem to be somewhat haphazard--in one place part of my corporate email address was redacted, in another a different form of my corporate email addresses was not. My American Express card number is present, as is my Hertz #1 Club Gold membership number. It includes complete itineraries for the most recent travel, including hotel booking information (including type of room and bed), airline seat assignment information, and ticket price. There's less information for older travel, which is mostly obscure to me apart from dates and airport codes.

Next I'll have to check out my FBI file...

UPDATE (September 9, 2008): DHS has responded to charges that it is illegal for them to be recording and keeping certain border-crossing records in ATS by moving them to another database, called BCI.

UPDATE (December 31, 2008): DHS is in violation of its obligations to U.S. citizens under the Privacy Act, and to foreign nationals in Europe under the DHS-EU agreement on access to and use of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data. DHS has not been complying with requests for data in the legally required time periods, nor with all of the relevant data. Data has also been illegally copied into other databases. Not surprisingly, the DHS's own internal review claims, even as the evidence contradicts the claim, that it is in compliance with the law.

Edward Hasbrouck has posted about the difference between American and European attitudes towards privacy and surveillance, and notes that at least one European airline, KLM, had never developed processes for complying with the law for passenger requests of records.

UPDATE (July 19, 2014): An editor at Ars Technica has just discovered that his PNR contains full credit card numbers and IP addresses. Not exactly news, at this point...

Simon Singh sued and silenced; Svetlana and Steinberg's speech surmounts suppression

Science writer Simon Singh (author of The Code Book on yesterday's list of science books) is a columnist for The Guardian, for which he wrote a column critical of chiropractic titled "Beware the spinal trap." The British Chiropractic Association sued him for the column, and it was withdrawn from the Guardian's website. Svetlana Pertsovich has posted the offending column from Internet cache on her website in Russia, James Steinberg has posted it at his blog, and I've included it below.

UK libel law is still in need of reform.

Beware the spinal trap
Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all but research suggests chiropractic therapy can be lethal
Simon Singh The Guardian, Saturday April 19 2008
This is Chiropractic Awareness Week. So let’s be aware. How about some awareness that may prevent harm and help you make truly informed choices? First, you might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that, “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.
In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.
You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments.
I can confidently label these treatments as bogus because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.
But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.
In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.
More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.
Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.
Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.”
This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Professor Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.
Bearing all of this in mind, I will leave you with one message for Chiropractic Awareness Week - if spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.
· Simon Singh is the co-author of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial
www.simonsingh.net


UPDATE: The part about chiropractic-induced stroke is of interest to me, as I had once heard of a case of chiropractic manipulation leading to blindness. When I mentioned it at a dinner of skeptics in Tempe, Arizona in 1987 that included James Randi and Jim Lowell of the National Council Against Health Fraud, both of them suggested that this was impossible because the optic nerves don't come anywhere near the spine. But nobody at the table (including me) thought about the possibility of spinal manipulation inducing a stroke causing damage to the visual system. This article from a chiropractic journal discusses cases of visual loss as a result of spinal surgery as a sort of tu quoque defense of chiropractic for similar problems, citing this article:
Myers M, Hamilton S, Bogosian A, Smith C, Wagner T Visual loss as a complication of spine surgery. Spine June 15, 1997;22(12).
So perhaps my remark from 21 years ago is vindicated?
UPDATE (November 4, 2009): Simon Singh gave an overview and update on his case on June 3.

Simon Singh fought against the libel claim despite the state of UK law, and has successfully won the right to appeal in October.


UPDATE (April 16, 2010): Simon Singh won his appeal, and the BCA dropped their suit.