Same-sex marriage ban amendment may go to voters again

The Arizona House has passed SB 10242 and sent it on to the Senate. This would put a measure to the voters to amend the Arizona Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. A similar proposal was voted down in 2006, but that measure included a provision that would have prohibited state benefits to domestic partners--this one doesn't.

Unfortunately, I think this has a good chance of passing.

Arizona already bans same-sex marriage by statute, but not in its Constitution.

Bill McCauley, RIP

I was saddened to learn this morning of the death of Bill McCauley, who was my boss when he was Vice President of Operations for GlobalCenter for a year or so around 1999-2000. I last saw him in 2001 at NANOG 21, when he was working for a company called iAsiaWorks, and we chatted briefly. I never knew him well, but when I worked for him he would occasionally chat with me about network security.

Bill had left the technology field to run a food distributorship, Red Rock Foods, and recently opened a coffee shop in Queen Creek called Daily Buzz. Unfortunately, he was having financial troubles, and chose a gruesome and horrible way to end his own life, by backing his car into a storage area at his food distribution business, pouring gasoline behind his car, and setting it on fire. The fire burned him and his dachshund, Millikin, killing his dog and leading to his death in a hospital several hours after firefighters pulled him from his car, mortally injured but still alive.

His death has been reported at the Arizona-Coffee blog where he frequently posted. He apparently left no suicide note. It's very sad that he chose to end his life this way, as well as that of his dog.

Another creationist goes to prison

Turkish creationist "Harun Yahya" (pseudonym for Adnan Oktar) has been sentenced to three years in prison for "creating an illegal organization for personal gain," according to Reuters:

Oktar had been tried with 17 other defendants in an Istanbul court. The verdict and sentence came after a previous trial that began in 2000 after Oktar, along with 50 members of his foundation, was arrested in 1999.

In that court case, Oktar had been charged with using threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with the intent to commit a crime. The charges were dropped but another court picked them up resulting in the latest case.

Oktar planned to appeal the sentence, a BAV [Turkish acronym for Oktar's Science Research Foundation] spokeswoman said. No further details were immediately available.

Oktar, born in 1956, is the driving force behind a richly funded movement based in Turkey that champions creationism, the belief that God literally created the world in six days as told in the Bible and the Koran.

Istanbul-based Oktar, who writes under the pen name Harun Yahya, has created waves in the past few years by sending out thousands of unsolicited texts advocating Islamic creationism to schools in several European countries.

I've heard that many of "Harun Yahya"'s works are contain plagiarized bits of translations of books and articles from the Institute for Creation Research, minus the arguments for a young earth.

Another creationist currently in prison is young-earth creationist Kent Hovind, convicted for tax evasion.

According to Adnan Oktar's Wikipedia page, he was a former student of Edip Yuksel, a promoter of the works of Muslim imam Rashad Khalifa, who was murdered in Tucson, Arizona in 1990 by Islamic radicals. (One Islamic radical allegedly involved was Wadih el-Hage, a former Tucson resident who was Osama bin Laden's secretary in Sudan.) I met Yuksel at the University of Arizona, when he attended some of the same philosophy classes I did, and he gave me some pamphlets which touted Khalifa's claim that the Koran is demonstrably the word of God on the basis of numeric codes (similar to the Bible Codes), specifically involving multiples of 19.

The websites of Edip Yuksel criticizing Oktar are the reason why Wordpress.com is blocked in Turkey, as the result of a legal action by Oktar in that country. Yuksel describes his relationship with Oktar here.

Senior McCain advisor helped arrange Rev. Moon coronation

Charlie Black, a senior advisor to the McCain campaign, lent his name to and helped arrange the bizarre March 23, 2004 event on Capitol Hill in which Rev. Sun Myung Moon was crowned King of America and declared himself to be the Messiah.

Rev. Moon is a very powerful, wealthy man who has been regularly supported at public events by people such as former President George H. W. Bush and evangelical Christians like Tim and Beverly LaHaye (he helped found the Institute for Creation Research through his Christian Heritage College, co-author of Left Behind; she is the head of Concerned Women for America) and Jerry Falwell. Jonathan Wells of the Discovery Institute is a member of Moon's Unification Church, which makes DI another organization where evangelical Christians join hands with members of Moon's cult. Most of these people probably don't agree with Moon's nonsense, but they like his money and aren't above prostituting themselves in order to receive some of it.

UPDATE (May 13, 2008): More on Charlie Black, from FiretheLobbyists.com:

Charlie Black, McCain’s senior counsel and spokesman, began his lobbying career by representing numerous dictators and repressive regimes

• Black’s firm represented the governor of Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos. According to a 1985 report, the firm Black, Manafort & Stone earned $950,000 plus expenses for its work to provide “advice and assistance on matters relating to the media, public relations and public affairs interests.”1

• Black’s firm lobbied on behalf of Mobuto Sese Seko of Zaire, earning $1 million a year for his efforts.2

• Black’s firm lobbied on behalf of Somali dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.3

• Black’s firm represented Nigerian dictator Ibrahim Babangida, earning at least $1 million for his efforts.4

• Black’s firm has represented Equatorial Guinea, an oil-rich state “best known for the outlandish brutality of its rulers.”5

• Black represented Angolan rebel and “classical terrorist” Jonas Savimbi, a job that earned him $600,000.6 “We have to call him Africa’s classical terrorist,” Makau Mutua, a professor of law and Africa specialist told the New York Times. “In the history of the continent, I think he’s unique because of the degree of suffering he caused without showing any remorse.”7

• In recent years his client list has also included the Iraqi National Congress8, Friends of Blackwater9, and the China National Off-Shore Oil Corp.10

• Since 2005, BKSH has received more than $700,000 in fees from foreign entities.11

And Black is only one of several lobbyists for scumbags working on McCain's campaign.

McCain questionable land swap deal

Friday's Washington Post describes an Arizona land swap deal--the largest in Arizona history--pushed through Congress by John McCain which had the effect of transferring valuable federal land to Fred Ruskin's Yavapai Ranch Limited Partnership, that ended up being developed by SunCor Development, owned by McCain supporter Steven A. Betts.

The Post article describes past land swap deals that McCain has also pushed through, which have benefited McCain donors Donald R. Diamond and Carl H. Lindner, Jr.

Probably all just politics as usual.

UPDATE (May 15, 2008): The Arizona Republic finally gets around to covering the story--by reprinting a story from USA Today.

McCain dishonesty

Arianna Huffington has given a list of occasions on which Arizona Sen. John McCain has "issued heartfelt denials of things that were actually true":

* That he had talked with John Kerry about possibly leaving the Republican Party to become his vice presidential running mate in 2004.
* That he had claimed he didn't know much about economics.
* That he had ever asked for a budget earmark for Arizona.
* That he'd ever had a meeting with lobbyist Vicky Iseman.

Back from Seattle

We're back from a week of vacation in Seattle--this was my third time in the city, but my first time with free time to do touristy things. We saw the usual sights--the Space Needle, Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square and the Underground Tour, and we took a Snoqualmie Falls/winery tour and paid a visit to Bainbridge Island. We also saw the Klondike Gold Rush Museum, the Olympic Sculpture Garden, the UPS Waterfall Garden, the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum, and the oddities at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop, including the feejee-mermaid-like objects pictured and a collection of tsantsas (shrunken heads). We also managed to see some local crazies--a 9/11 conspiracy theorist outside Pike Place Market, Lyndon LaRouchies at Westlake Center, a Church of Scientology "free stress test" center, and building housing the Discovery Institute.

And we had plenty of great meals, including a few with friends we haven't seen in a while (or hadn't met before in person). Lots of Thai and Indian food.

We didn't get around to visiting the Seattle Aquarium, the Museum of Flight, the fish ladder at the Ballard Locks, the Roman exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum, or trying a doughnut at Top Pot Doughnuts. Maybe next time for most of those.

Seattle is a fun city, we had great weather almost the entire time, and we were happy to see how dog-friendly it is. I'm sure we'll return.

Ken Miller op-ed on "Expelled"

Brown University biology professor, textbook author, and Catholic Ken Miller has written an op-ed about "Expelled."

Scott Bloch gets raided by the FBI

Bush's head of the Office of Special Counsel at the Department of Justice, Scott Bloch, has had his offices and home raided by the FBI. The FBI raided his offices in D.C. yesterday, seizing computers and shutting off email. Bloch himself was interviewed. It's not clear exactly what prompted the raid, but Bloch has long been under fire for refusing to investigate claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation. There are also allegations that he has retaliated against employees and obstructed investigations.

Bloch also has a tie to the Sternberg case, the crown jewel of "Expelled," in that one of his like-minded appointees, James McVay, a man with no previous experience in employment law, whistleblower law, or federal sector work, took on the Sternberg case and wrote a preliminary report on it despite having no jurisdiction. His preliminary report managed to draw conclusions in contradiction to the actual evidence.

UPDATE: The New York Times also covers the story.

UPDATE (October 27, 2008): Scott Bloch has been fired.

UPDATE (March 30, 2011): Scott Bloch has been sentenced to a month in jail for destroying evidence on his computer.

The superstitions of John McCain

John McCain carries thirty-one cents of lucky change, a lucky compass, and a lucky feather. He won't throw a hat on a bed, or pick up a new lucky coin that's showing tails instead of heads. He won't take a salt shaker passed to him; it has to be set on the table first. He carries a laminated four-leaf clover in his wallet. He wears lucky shoes. He makes use of a magical lizard belonging to his trip director, Lanny Wiles, to help win golf bets and cause the right college sports teams to win.

John McCain is a superstitious nut.