Words Fail Me...

July, 2007, saw 2503 Notices of Trustee's Sales in Maricopa County - yet another record.

Dirty Politician: Ted Stevens

Sen. Ted Stevens' (R-AK) home was raided today by the FBI. All of Alaska's federal legislators are now under investigation for corruption, as are some Alaskan state legislators, such as Ted Stevens' son Ben Stevens, president of the Alaska State Senate.

UPDATE (August 1, 2007): George W. Bush continued his habit of supporting legislators with criminal investigation and ethics problems by hosting a White House dinner in Ted Stevens' honor back on May 23 of this year.

UPDATE (October 28, 2008): Ted Stevens was convicted yesterday on seven charges, making him the fifth sitting Senator to be convicted of a felony.

A marketplace for software vulnerabilities

The July 21, 2007 issue of The Economist has an article about a Swiss company that has opened a market for software vulnerabilities:

Since economics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, a small industry of “security companies” has emerged to exploit the hackers' dilemma. These outfits buy bugs from hackers (euphemistically known as “security researchers”). They then either sell them to software companies affected by the flaws, sometimes with a corrective “patch” as a sweetener, or use them for further “research”, such as looking for more significant—and therefore more lucrative—bugs on their own account. Such firms seek to act as third parties that are trusted by hacker and target alike; the idea is that they know the market and thus know the price it will bear. Often, though, neither side trusts them. Hackers complain that, if they go to such companies to try to ascertain what represents a fair price, the value of their information plummets because too many people now know about it. Software companies, meanwhile, reckon such middlemen are offered only uninteresting information. They suspect, perhaps cynically, that the good stuff is going straight to the black market.Last week, therefore, saw the launch of a service intended to make the whole process of selling bugs more transparent while giving greater rewards to hackers who do the right thing. The company behind it, a Swiss firm called WabiSabiLabi, differs from traditional security companies in that it does not buy or sell information in its own right. Instead, it provides a marketplace for such transactions.

A bug-hunter can use this marketplace in one of three ways. He can offer his discovery in a straightforward auction, with the highest bidder getting exclusive rights. He can sell the bug at a fixed price to as many buyers as want it. Or he can try to sell the bug at a fixed price exclusively to one company, without going through an auction.

WabiSabiLabi brings two things to the process besides providing the marketplace. The first is an attempt to ensure that only legitimate traders can buy and sell information. (It does this by a vetting process similar to the one employed by banks to clamp down on money launderers.) The second is that it inspects the goods beforehand to make certain that they live up to the claims being made about them.

Herman Zampariolo, the head of WabiSabiLabi, says that hundreds of hackers have registered with the company since the marketplace was set up. So far only four bugs have been offered for sale, and the prices offered for them have been modest, perhaps because buyers are waiting to see how the system will work. A further 200 bugs, however, have been submitted and are currently being scrutinised.

Judge awards $101 million to men wrongly imprisoned for 35 years

A federal judge has ordered the U.S. government to pay $101 million to four men who were wrongly imprisoned for more than thirty years on murder convictions when the FBI withheld exculpatory evidence. Two of the four men died in prison. The Department of Justice argued that the federal government had no obligation to share information with state prosecutors even though they knew that the testimony identifying the men as the killers was false.

The judge declared that the DoJ's position was "absurd" and "The FBI's misconduct was clearly the sole cause of this conviction."

The FBI gave bonuses and commendations to its agents who were responsible for these erroneous convictions for the murder of Edward "Teddy" Deegan.

(Via The Agitator, who rightly asks why the FBI agents responsible for this travesty of justice are not themselves in jail.)

UPDATE (July 31, 2007): The Agitator reports on FBI Assistant Director Wayne Murphy's testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on the use and abuse of confidential drug informants, in which Murphy argues that the FBI should not be required to disclose evidence about wrongdoing by confidential informants to state prosecutors in order to prevent murders or to prevent people from being wrongly imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. Apparently the FBI considers the war on drugs so important that it is better to allow people to be murdered or people to be wrongly imprisoned than to jeopardize a drug investigation.

Arizona allows quacks to perform surgery

Orac at Respectful Insolence points out that a recent Arizona death after liposuction was a case of "minor surgery" being performed by a homeopath. And Arizona law permits these quacks to perform "minor surgery."

UPDATE (July 28, 2007): Orac has more on what Arizona allows via its regulation of "homeopathy."

Union hires homeless and unemployed at low wages to protest low wages

Outsourcing the Picket Line

The picketers marching in a circle in front of a downtown Washington office building chanting about low wages do not seem fully focused on their message.
…
Although their placards identify the picketers as being with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, they are not union members.

They’re hired feet, or, as the union calls them, temporary workers, paid $8 an hour to picket. Many were recruited from homeless shelters or transitional houses. Several have recently been released from prison. Others are between jobs.

“It’s about the cash,” said Tina Shaw, 44, who lives in a House of Ruth women’s shelter and has walked the line at various sites. “We’re against low wages, but I’m here for the cash.”

Via Long or Short Capital.

Nice list of questions for Democratic presidential candidates

Many of these, from Radley Balko at The Agitator, are also appropriate for Republicans. A few I especially liked:

A recent study found that over half the country now derives part or all of its income from the federal government. Three of the richest counties in the country are in the D.C. suburbs, a telling indicator of just how bloated with taxpayer dollars Washington has become. The federal government is today pervasive in our day-to-day lives, from cradle to grave, from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep. Do you think these trends are healthy? Looking at the premise of this question, would you agree or disagree federal government is getting too large, too influential, and too pervasive?

Do you think it's appropriate for drug cops to be making medical policy?

What is your philosophical approach to federalism? What issues do you feel are best decided at the national level? What issues should be left to the states? Is there any underlying principle you use in separating one from the other, or would you make such decisions ad hoc?

Do you believe the U.S. military should be deployed for humanitarian missions?

Do you think an atheist could be president? Do you think an atheist should be? Assuming you generally agreed with an atheist on more issues than the alternatives in a given election, would you vote for one?

Name five things you think are none of the federal government's business.

What is your view of the pardon power and executive clemency? Should it be used frequently? Should it be use to show mercy and forgiveness or to correct injustices that slip through the cracks? Neither? Both?

Is there any type of speech you believe should be criminalized?

Do you promise not to claim for yourself any of the executive powers you've criticized the Bush administration for claiming?

What is your position on Kelo vs. New London? Under what circumstances would it be appropriate for a government to seize land from one private party and give it to another?

What federal crimes will you instruct the Justice Department to make a priority during your administration?

Are there any currently private industries that you believe are "too important" to be left to the private sector? Oil and gas? Health care? Google?

America by far and away has the highest prison population in the world. Does this concern you? Are there any federal crimes you feel should be repealed from the books, or devolved to the states?

What's your philosophical approach to risk assessment and the precautionary principle? Do you think government should ban products, treatments, and procedures until they're proven safe, or permit them until they show signs of being unsafe?

Do you think it's a legitimate function of government to protect people from making bad decisions or prevent them from developing bad habits? Even if those habit or decisions don't directly affect anyone else? How far should the government in preventing bad habits and bad decisions? In other words, should the government's role be merely advisory, or should it criminalize things like gambling, pornography, drug use, or trans fats?

Should members of Congress be required to follow all of the laws that they pass?

Should members be required to read each bill before voting on it?

Would you support a sunset provision requiring Congress to revisit and re-pass each law after five years?

The complete list is here.

Chicago PD fights to protect bad cops

One out of every twenty police officers on the Chicago Police Department has received at least ten official written complaints filed against them in the last five years, but the only reason we know is because of a lawsuit. The Chicago PD is still fighting to prevent the release of these bad cops' names--yet average citizens accused of crimes are identified in newspapers. Shouldn't police be held to a higher standard?

More at the Agitator, including links to some specific serious abuses that have come out of the Chicago PD.

Back from the Grand Canyon

I spent most of the last nine days in the Grand Canyon, rafting down the Colorado River on the National Center for Science Education's 2007 trip. I met interesting people and made new friends, ate great food, and saw amazing sights. This was my third trip down the Canyon, but my first in the last two decades (my previous two were in August 1976 and June 1985).


This trip included the presentation of both creationist flood geology and real geology, but there was no contest--when you have hundreds of feet of successive ocean floor beds full of fossils of marine life that has lived and died, and a large variety of completely different kinds of formations that have clearly been deposited in different kinds of events, it's transparently nonsense to claim that it was all laid down in a single year-long flood.

Top photo: Grand Canyon about 25 miles downstream from Lee's Ferry (mile 0); bottom photo: downstream view of river from Nankoweap Canyon (mile 53).

UPDATE (August 7, 2007): Here's a blog post about our trip by a member of the crew.

Ron Paul, Religious Kook

One of the serious problems I have with our democracy is that politicians are a package deal. When one gets elected we celebrate their good ideas, but we have to endure their idiotic ones. I think this could explain the popularity of the "lesser-of-evils" argument people often use to persuade others to vote for their pet candidate of the moment. Arguably, all politicians are idiots - to a greater or lesser degree.

Case in point: Ron Paul. You can love him for his stance on the war in Iraq, but this sort of stuff really makes me wonder about the guy:

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion.

WTF??? Isn't Ron Paul supposedly a constitutionalist?

It's not a big surprise to me to find that the source of the above patent absurdity is an article posted at lewrockwell.com - home of the kookiest of the kooks in the "libertarian" world.

Thanks to the no god zone, which has more to say on this topic.

UPDATE by Jim (October 18, 2007): Dispatches from the Culture Wars has more on Ron Paul's views on religion and government, with lots of data in the comments.

UPDATE by Jim (December 25, 2007): Ron Paul rejects evolution.