Fables of the reconstruction

QOTD

Fred Clark at Slacktivist:

Intolerance is, necessarily, totalitarian. So when I say I favor freedom -- whether freedom of conscience or of any other sort -- then, yes, what I'm really saying is that I'm all for freedom except for when it comes to people who want to impose totalitarianism. This exception does not, as the JV sophists would have it, negate the claim that "I'm all for freedom." It simply demonstrates that, unlike them, I'm aware of what words like "free" and "tolerant" -- and their opposites -- actually mean.

Get Set For the Great Real Estate Recession of '08

It's going to get bad ... then it's going to get worse.

I hope people realize this means more than just whether they can get the asking price for their house.  The American economy has been running on real estate equity, and a lot of it is drying up. Worse, mortgage payments on - if I am reading that first chart right - $40 to $50 billion (with a b) of principal per month are going to shoot up, drying up more consumer spending, drying up savings and further driving down house values. This doesn't just mean a buyer's market; it means recession.

(Via Duncan Black, Ph.D. economics.)

Street-Level Google Maps

I don't understand the mild freakout that people are having about street-level google maps. They've been perfectly happy with geotagging flickr photos for a while, so what's the difference if - eventually - there is a picture of every foot of every street in every city in the country?

Catch 22: It's The Best There Is

The New New Reality

Nikolas Gvosdev at The Washington Realist posts think-tank views on the U.S. relationship with Europe and the U.K.. In brief:

• Future British Prime ministers will require more cooperation from America, because Bush used Blair and Blair got nothing in return.
• Same goes for Merkel in Germany and Sarkozy in France. They are on America's side so long as America is on their side.
• America better be ready to step up on global warming. The Democrats say they'll act, but are vague. The Republicans need to get with the program.

Sam Brownback: Dangerous Dingbat

Fool:

Man was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the created order. Those aspects of evolutionary theory compatible with this truth are a welcome addition to human knowledge. Aspects of these theories that undermine this truth, however, should be firmly rejected as an atheistic theology posing as science.

Meaning, macroevolution is bunk, never mind the fossils.

Lysenko:

The Party and the Government are showing paternal concern for the strengthening and development of the Michurin trend in our science, for the removal of all obstacles to its further progress. This imposes upon us the duty to work still more extensively and profoundly to arm the State farms and collective farms with an advanced scientific theory. That is what the Soviet people expect of us.

We must effectively place science, theory, at the service of the people, so that crop yields and the productivity of stock-breeding may increase at a still more rapid pace, that labour on State farms and collective farms may be more efficient.

I call upon all Academicians, scientific workers, agronomists, and animal breeders to bend all their efforts and work in close unity with the foremost men and women in socialist farming to achieve these great and noble aims.[applause]

Meaning, a lot of people were about to starve.

Stupidity on the March!

BBC:

A senior Polish official has ordered psychologists to investigate whether the popular BBC TV show Teletubbies promotes a homosexual lifestyle.

The spokesperson for children's rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, singled out Tinky Winky, the purple character with a triangular aerial on his head.

"I noticed he was carrying a woman's handbag," she told a magazine. "At first, I didn't realise he was a boy."

EU officials have criticised Polish government policy towards homosexuals.

Ms Sowinska wants the psychologists to make a recommendation about whether the children's show should be broadcast on public television.

Poland's authorities have recently initiated a series of moves to outlaw the promotion of homosexuality among the nation's children.

Tinky Winky's psychological evaluation is being treated fairly light-heartedly by many people here. One radio station asked its listeners to vote for the most suspicious children's show. Some e-mailed in, saying that Winnie the Pooh had only male friends.

Even Ms Sowinska has backtracked a little, insisting that she does not believe the Teletubbies is a threat to the nation's children. But the evaluation is still going ahead and her office can recommend that the show should be taken off the air.

I've spent a fair amount of time in Poland, and while Poles enjoy a reputation of being tolerant towards eccentrics, I found that toleration ends quite dramatically when the "eccentrics" become too numerous or insistent on being treated with equality. And, of course, Poland is still a fanatically Catholic country.

(Via Samhita at Feministing.)

Memorial Day

Iran Forces U.S. To Come to the Table After 27 Years

From Fred Hiatt's rag:

U.S. and Iranian diplomats met Monday in formal, bilateral talks for the first time in more than a quarter century and agreed in general terms on the advances they would like to see to restore stability to this fractured country, where both have vital interests, the U.S. envoy reported. Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told reporters after the session that his four-hour meeting with Iranian Ambassador Hassan Kazemi Qomi had been business-like and "proceeded positively" and that both sides wanted to move toward a stable, federal Iraq.  ...

The Iranians, Crocker disclosed, have suggested a tri-lateral security mechanism that would include U.S., Iraqi and Iranian efforts. Crocker gave few details about that proposal but said he was referring it to Washington for consideration.

Finally, finally, endgame. Bush has handed the Iranians a huge lever to use over us, and now we're going to start paying the price. Being forced to sit down to negotiate with them to bring peace to Iraq is just the beginning. At every step of the way, the Iranians will demand - and sometimes get - more and more attention from the American diplomatic machine, in the form of such things as "tri-lateral security mechanisms".  I believe that what the Iranians covet above all else is face, respect, prestige, and treating with the U.S. is the way they are trying to get it.

[Crocker] said the meeting focused solely on the situation in Iraq. No other matters were on the agenda, including the contentious issue of Iran's nuclear program or Iran's recent detention of a handful of U.S. citizens.

Crocker also added that the Iranian ambassador proposed a second meeting. The United States will consider that, he said, but the "purpose of this meeting was not to arrange other meetings."

Make no mistake: The Iranians are now more in charge of the agenda of these meetings than the Americans. There is no explicit linkage to the sanctions regime and the nuclear program, but the implicit linkage is very clear. Lift the yoke from our necks, the Iranians are saying, and we will help lift the yoke from yours.  Of course, Ahmadinejad really is paying a political price because of the sanctions, so he's a motivated negotiator. But whether he stays or goes, the basic calculus is the same: America has put itself and its erstwhile client Saudi Arabia in a much worse security position, and Iran has the capability to make that situation better or worse. We will pay to make it better. The only question is how much.

Don't Let the Door Hit You in the Ass

In case you were unaware, or needed a reminder, Dean Esmay is a fucking moron:

No wonder I'm not a leftist anymore. You guys are such fricking hypocrites. Say whatever you want about the pompous, obnoxious Right: at least they're actually consistent, and have the courage of their convictions.

I think Dean's been drinking again.

Russian Gay Rights Protesters Beaten, Arrested

Al-Reuters:

Russian nationalists shouting "death to homosexuals" punched and kicked demonstrators calling for the right to hold a Gay Pride parade in central Moscow on Sunday while riot police detained dozens of gay protesters.

Two European parliamentarians were among those held as they tried to present a petition asking Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, who has called gay marches satanic acts, to lift a ban on the parade.

Nationalists and extreme Russian Orthodox believers held icons and denounced homosexuality as "evil" while a group of thick-set young men turned up with surgeon's masks, which they said would protect them from the "gay disease." ...

"We believe these perverts should not be allowed to march on the streets of Moscow, the third Rome, a holy city for all Russians," said Igor Miroshnichenko, who said he was an Orthodox believer who had come to support the riot police.

"It (homosexuality) is satanic," he said. One man holding a crucifix threatened to beat up any gay person he saw. ...

British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell was knocked to the ground and kicked twice. When he got up he was punched in the face again and taken away by two riot policemen.

"The attitude of President Putin and Mayor Luzhkov is that they will grudgingly tolerate gay people providing they remain in the closet and underground," Tatchell said by telephone. ...

"It is very conspicuous when people are arrested in front of the mayor's office when they were doing nothing other than trying to present a peaceful petition," said Scott Long, a rights activist with Human Rights Watch who observed the events.

"There was no real attempt to separate the two sides and that led to people being beaten up," he said. "I would call on the Russian authorities to protect freedom of assembly, protect freedom of expression and protect demonstrators."

Our allies.

We're a Virus, With Shoes

Shorter PZ Myers:

If you think humans are impressively complex, you're looking at it from the wrong perspective.

"Christ is Our Commander-in-Chief"

We will crush the enemies of Allah! I mean, Jesus!

The Memorial Day weekend "Salute to the Troops" celebration at Stone Mountain Park is sponsored by Task Force Patriot USA, a private group that says its purpose is "sharing the fullness of life in Jesus Christ with all U.S. military, military veterans and families," and whose Web site says "Christ is our Commander-in-Chief."

In recent days, both the Task Force Patriot USA Web site and the newspaper of Robins Air Force Base, Ga., described the celebration as "an official U.S. Air Force 60th Anniversary event." Along with speeches by evangelical ministers, church services and distribution of Bibles, the published schedule promised "hourly flyovers" by Air Force jets, performances by military bands, color guard presentations, a parachute demonstration by the Army's elite Silver Wings jump team from Fort Benning, Ga., and exhibitions of Air Force equipment.

The promotional materials also said that an active-duty B-2 pilot, Air Force Maj. Brian "Jethro" Neal, would give Christian "testimony" during an outdoor worship service punctuated by a special flyover of B-2 "stealth" bombers.

Onward, Christian soldiers!

Have a Miscarriage, Go to Jail

Woman with 20-week pregnancy miscarries and delivers a stillborn fetus at home.

Distraught, unsure of what to do, she reacts irrationally - she puts the remains in the freezer.

The war on pregnant women gets her arrested.

(Previously: Nickeled, Dimed and Screwed.)

Military Fairies

NYTimes.com:

The officer, a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force, felt he had no choice. So he stood up in front of his squad of 30 to 40 people.

“I said, ‘Right, I’ve got something to tell you,’ ” he said. “ ‘I believe that for us to be able to work closely together and have faith in each other, we have to be honest and open and frank. And it has to be a two-way process, and it starts with me baring my soul. You may have heard some rumors, and yes, I have a long-term partner who is a he, not a she.’ ”

Far from causing problems, he said, he found that coming out to his troops actually increased the unit’s strength and cohesion. He had felt uneasy keeping the secret “that their boss was a poof,” as he put it, from people he worked with so closely.

Since the British military began allowing homosexuals to serve in the armed forces in 2000, none of its fears — about harassment, discord, blackmail, bullying or an erosion of unit cohesion or military effectiveness — have come to pass, according to the Ministry of Defense, current and former members of the services and academics specializing in the military. The biggest news about the policy, they say, is that there is no news. It has for the most part become a nonissue.

Thank fucking Satan that some people have some sense.

And now for something completely different:

QOTD

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

I often talk about the flagrant inconsistency of American "pro-life" groups. But, in fairness, they are perfectly consistent about one thing: if they have a choice between reducing abortion rates and regulating female sexuality, they'll take the latter, as reliably as Carrot Top is unfunny.

I'm Glad He Got Shot

A member of my extended family took a bullet through the leg in Iraq, doing serious damage, but he'll live. And they're sending him home. With any luck, he'll convalesce just long enough for the fucking war to end.

It is a weird feeling to be glad that someone took a bullet.

Britain's Proposed Ban on Certain SM-Themed Porn

(Cross-posted from Gloria Brame's blog.)

Last September, Gloria wrote about a proposal for a new law in Britain:

Viewing vile images of rape and sexual torture will become a criminal offence for the first time, it was confirmed today.

Possession of so-called "violent and extreme pornography" will carry up to three years imprisonment.....

It would cover, for example, violence that is - or appears to be - life-threatening or is likely to result in "serious and disabling injury"....

One so-called BDSM group - representing people who engage in bondage, domination and sado-masochism - wrote: "The theory that people should be punished for viewing an image that simply involves the idea of sexuality with violence... shows the proposal being made is to introduce a form of 'thought crime'."

The new offence will apply to England and Wales. Plans are being made to extend it to Northern Ireland and the Scottish Executive will announce its plans separately....

Like Gloria, I found this proposal extremely disturbing. I wanted to find out where things stood today, and found this update from The Spanner Trust, a London-based BDSM advocacy organization:

In November 2006 the UK Government used the Queen's Speech to announce their intention to create a new criminal offence making the possession of "violent and extreme pornography" punishable by up to three years' imprisonment. The Bill has not yet been brought before Parliament, but the Spanner Trust is concerned that the current proposals do not distinguish between real or staged acts, or consensual versus non consensual activities. Images of consensual SM scenes may well be caught up in the ban.

On the 5th March 2007 a member of the Home Office said that the Bill will be introduced "in the Spring" but also that "nothing was imminent". As soon as the Bill is introduced we would like as many people as possible to contact their MP, by letter, email or telephone but preferably by going along to see him or her personally in their surgery in their constituency, and urge them to object to the new proposed law. For more information on the campaign against the proposals please visit www.backlash-uk.org.uk

As misguided laws often do, this one sprang from a criminal case that excited public outrage:

[Graham] Coutts, 36, of Waterloo Street, Hove, East Sussex, allegedly strangled 31-year-old [Jane] Longhurst, a special needs teacher originally from Reading, Berkshire, with a pair of tights in March 2003.

Her death took place just hours after Coutts viewed internet porn sites such as "necrobabes" and "hangingbitches", his trial heard.

Chief executive of the new Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, Jim Gamble, said of today's measures: "Legislation is only truly effective if it develops step by step with technological advances.

"Today starts to answer that need in respect of how the internet can be used to supplement this area of criminality."

Mr. Coutts had his conviction reversed on appeal, and is awaiting retrial, because the original trial did not permit the jury to choose manslaughter, a lesser offense, instead of just murder. Based on my reading of the articles, though, it seems Mr. Coutts did have a necrophilia fetish, and in fact visited Jane Longhurst's corpse several times over a period of weeks before dumping it. All of which has little, if anything, to do with whether S&M porn should be legal, of course.

The British Home Office published a paper (.pdf) that laid out in detail what the ban would cover:

15. In summary, material would need to be:

(a) pornographic
(b) explicit
(c) real or appears to be real act (these would be objective tests for the jury)

16. It would cover:

(i) serious violence*
(ii) intercourse or oral sex with an animal
(iii) sexual interference with a human corpse
*by serious violence we mean appears to be life threatening or likely to result in serious, disabling injury.

The Home Office paper also laid out the objections:

Opposition to the proposals was expressed by a number of sexual freedom organisations (such as the Spanner Trust, Unfettered, the Sexual Freedom Coalition, SM Pride and others), several BDSM-related businesses, anticensorship organisations (e.g. Feminists Against Censorship, Ofwatch, Cyber-Rights & Cyber-Liberties), and some IT-related organisations.

Among the arguments those groups made:

A majority of those responding in detail to the Consultation as individuals opposed the proposals. Many of these referred to BDSM practices, expressing concern that a large number of law-abiding citizens who consensually engaged in such practices in private or in like-minded groups, and who circulated the associated images, would be criminalised by the proposed laws. ...

Most BDSM-affiliated respondents considered that these offences would not only proscribe certain images but would effectively criminalise their sexual lives:

“The theory that people should be punished for viewing an image that simply involves the idea of sexuality with violence (rather than a real instantiation of it) shows the proposal being made is to introduce a form of ‘thought crime’.”

“Criminalising the possession of material relating to a person’s own sexuality amounts to criminalising that sexuality itself by the back door.”

In other words, the kinksters argued, depictions of real violence could be banned, but depictions of fantasy violence was an unwarranted attack on BDSM as a whole.

Arguments for the proposed legislation should sound familiar, since they've been made in the U.S., too:

This imagery provides the cultural backdrop against which the abuse of women is mainstream and endemic. Legislation to strengthen the possibility of prosecution in this area would send out a strong signal of disapproval to the individuals who believe that easy accessibility equals an acceptance of their behaviour.

And:

The director of the Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University reiterated this, pointing to its own research, training and consultancy for almost 20 years, and asserted that:

“Adult pornography in its extreme forms should be considered in the same way that child pornography is – a record of sexual abuse…Our interest has never been in ‘proving’ direct causal links between pornography and specific acts of sexual violence, although there certainly is strong evidence with respect to individual cases, but to suggest that the existence and now virtual ubiquity of pornography creates a cultural context which devalues women’s humanity and dignity…Government is right to argue that it does not need proof that images of torture and degradation are corrupting and may affect behaviour.” (Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit at LMU)

This is pretty unambiguous: The censors don't care if there is any actual evidence of a causal connection between porn and violence against women, they just "know" it causes it. And even worse, the censors say that depictions of S&M are exactly the same ethically as child porn, because they "know" masochism cannot be consensual.

I don't see any further news on the progress of the bill in the British Parliament. As of May 9th, it was still pending to be introduced in the House of Commons. I will try to find out where things stand from backlash. I would appreciate it if anyone in Britain would comment with any news.

The Immigration Bill as Double-Edged Sword

Publius at ObWi:

[W]hatever political support the GOP might win will be more than offset by the hysterical, race-based backlash that will erupt from its nativist, Dobbs/Kaus/Buchanan wing. ... [I]t’s going to be a doozy. ...

This is a Category 5 Hurricane coming people. It’s going to be ugly, it’s going to get racist, and it’s going to be coming almost exclusively from the GOP, the GOP presidential candidates, and Mickey Kaus.

Like any right-thinking person, I hope this results in the scales falling from the eyes of Hispanics about the nativist GOP.

But, you know, Democrats have a fair number of nativists too. Like urban blacks. Like union members. Like the white rural ticket-splitters who vote Democrat for Congress and Republican for President. While I hope this measure has a devastating impact on the Republican party, I don't think the Democrats can be totally comfortable about the effect it will have on them, either.

Update 11:40 a.m.: Allahpundit at Hot Air is down in the mouth:

A huge new population of legalized unskilled workers means not only new Democratic voters but unionization, possibly on a grand enough scale to bring about a reawakening of the labor movement. If so, that’ll encompass unskilled Americans too. Granted, it’ll be a cold comfort to those Americans that the jobs they would have gotten if not for the immigrant labor glut now pay a lot more than they did before ....

But, he concludes gloomily, the increase in Hispanic votes for Democrats will offset any loss in other constituencies. Is he right? No idea; he is a wingnut, if that's any help.

Nutter Fools a Plurality of Philadelphians

At the afterparty for Nutter. A lot of progressives are going to be surprised.

Update 5/16/07: Ow. Damn. Hungover. Did Nutter really win? Fuck. Ow.

Primary Election Day in Philly

Who and what I am going to vote for (although I might change my mind on question 2 before I get to the poll):

My New Gig: Blogging for Dr. Gloria Brame

I am honored and delighted that Dr. Gloria Brame has asked me to join her as a contributor to her blog, Inside the Oversexed Mind of Gloria Brame.  I am also a little starstruck, because Gloria is a hero of mine. From her counseling bio:

As a sex expert (Ph.D. in Human Sexuality, M.P.H. in Human Sexuality), an author ("Different Loving","Come Hither", others), a sex-and-relationships expert (Cosmo, Maxim, GQ, Redbook, dozens of others), I have accumulated thousands of insights into what makes people tick sexually.  I've worked with hundreds of individuals on sex and relationships, first as a peer counselor and, since 2000, as a licensed clinical sexologist (member, American College of Sexologists). As a journalist and author specializing in sex and relationships, I've also fielded thousands of sex questions over the years.

From all that I've learned, I believe that personal happiness cannot come until an individual is at peace with his or her sexual identity. In my practice, I help clients to accept their own sexual truths and teach them to make the best possible life choices for themselves based on what they learn about themselves.

What will I be writing about? From my introductory post on her site:

As a kinky man and a lawyer interested in politics, my posts here on Gloria's blog will mainly focus on the intersection of BDSM and law, politics and culture. I'm a civil-libertarian liberal, which means I believe the government has a large role to play in improving the lives of the people, but that I am critical of any attempt to regulate private morality, or any other exercise of government power that infringes on fundamental civil liberties. That kind of overreaching always ends up being aimed at people who the authoritarians deem deviant, including kinksters, the polyamorous, and gay and lesbian people.  And even if you think politics is boring, well, kinky sex can liven up any subject.

Jerry Falwell Surprised to Find Himself in Hell

Just kidding. There is no hell. But Falwell is dead.

Good riddance.

"We Should Invade Their Countries, Kill Their Leaders and Convert Them to Christianity"

Christianity, the religion of peace.

Stabbed in the Back by the Liberal Hippie Faggots

Harpers.

So, what to do about this narrative? Certainly, pieces like the Harpers magazine one do good work by exposing the way the Big Lie works. But how do you defeat it?

My thought is to set up a countervailing narrative designed not just to rebut the Big Lie, but to turn the conservative self-image on its head and use it against them. Comparing them to the Nazis is a good start, because they are in fact the intellectual inheritors of the Nazis. (It helps, when building a narrative, to have the truth on your side.) The conservative Big Lie works by hooking into deep-seated prejudices in American society - racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia - and harnessing them to the conservative cause.  For example, white conservatives believe blacks are dishonest, and blacks vote for Democrats, so Karl Rove attempted to gin up vote fraud cases that are primarily targeted at black voters. Simple. See how that works?

So what are the countervailing cultural beliefs that liberals can build a narrative on? Americans believe in fairness and equality, they believe in democracy as an organizing principle, they like underdog stories, they believe the rich are greedy and controlling, they believe people should be left along in their private lives, they dislike intolerance and understand that religious intolerance is stifling and motivated by fear. This is a rich field, and liberals have done a half-assed job of exploiting it. The key is to portray conservatives as the villains in almost all cases, to demonize the word "conservative" as effectively as they demonized the word "liberal", to fight fire with fire.

I can hear the objections now. "But not all conservatives are like that!' "Why stoop to their level? We're better than that." "Can't we all just get along?"  No, we fucking can't all get along. If nothing else has been demonstrated clearly, it's that if you compromise with those evil fuckers, they will stab you in the back every time. (An established feature of the Big Lie is that the conservatives accuse liberals of every flaw that conservatives actually have.) The problem with some liberals is that they get the vapors when it comes time to fight. They actually might get some mud on their pure-white hands! Heavens! Which is exactly why the conservative narrative has run roughshod. Time to change all that.

'Bring Your Stupid to Work' Day at the Washington Post

Wow, they're having more cognitive dysfunction than usual at the Post today. First, Bush-deadender and pop-psych bullshit artist Shankar Vedantam says that government officials should not be held accountable for decisions they have made or promises they have broken because it just makes the officials defensive. No, seriously, that's his argument. Instead, he says, officials should be asked tough questions before they make decisions, but after the decisions are made, lay off. A good example, he claims, is the Iraq War.  Ohhhh, now I get it.

Then, Tom Grubisich says that anonymity on the internet is making people shrill and uncivil, and he advocates that websites get everyone's real names and addresses and phone numbers so they can be subpoenaed and sued for slander by Tom Grubisich held accountable for the comments they make.

So, shorter Washington Post op-ed page:

Holding ordinary citizens accountable for their political criticisms is good; holding politicians accountable for their decisions is bad.

Principled Conservatarianism

Shorter demonic-looking rightwing pundit Carol Platt Liebau:

Religion should not encourage people to resist laws that I like.

A Scene From America

Not that long ago:

Virginia adopted a racial law in 1924 that required all citizens to be registered at birth as either white or "colored."

"This law allowed the Commonwealth of Virginia to destroy the documents that proved the existence of these Native American families," Moran said.

A white supremacist who headed the Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics used the law to systematically alter records to identify tribe members as "colored" instead of Indian.

Beliefs don't change that fast. The ideological inheritors of that white supremacist are the ones pushing to end affirmative action and to stop the government from collecting economic data on the basis of race.

Demographic Difference in the View of Iraq

Attaturk, discussing the fact that a majority of people in all age groups except 30-39 year-olds say going to war in Iraq was a mistake:

It seems pretty clear to me that the folks who MAY have to fight worry they will. The people who have fought or remember Vietnam oppose.

(Before you click through, which age group do you think would be most likely to say the war was a mistake? 18-29, 40-49, 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, or 80+? The answer surprised me a lot.)

Not only do the 30-39 year-olds not remember the reality of Vietnam, they were subjected to constant, one-sided propaganda about Vietnam (think Reagan, Red Dawn/Rambo) as well as other war movies where at most, one good person dies, and they were the recipient of the message of the media-savvy invasions of Panama, Grenada and Kuwait. All that marketing did its job, right wing America!  Happy?

(Via The Big Blue Blogger.)

QOTD and Post Title of the Day

Peak Schadenfreude: Major New Reserves Discovered Under Karl Rove’s Fat Ass

He changed it, unfortunately, to "In Karl Rove's Office". My, we get civil when we feel an indictment coming on.

Tim F. also scores the coveted QOTD prize:

It would have been subtler if the White House tacked a target on Gonzo’s back and cried, Duck season! 

Nonconsensual Domination

Dear submissives with a medical fetish, don't do this:

Dental student: I was working on this girl's teeth, and she just... started moving around all weird.
Student's mother: Yeah? Did you prick her or something?
Dental student: No, she was just... um... masturbating. I didn't know what to do so I just waited for her to finish and went to get more supplies. What else was I supposed to do?

--Restaurant, Times Square

Overheard by: Well, what would you do?

The Turkey Baster Method Makes You the Daddy

No good deed:

A Pennsylvania appeals court has ruled that a sperm donor who helped a lesbian couple conceive two children was liable for child support.

One legal expert believes might be the first ruling of its kind.

A Pa. Superior Court panel last week ordered a Dauphin County judge to establish how much Carl Frampton Jr. would have to pay to the birth mother of an eight-year-old boy and a seven-year-old girl.

With a keen sense of timing, Mr. Frampton died, so he is not actually going to have to pay. For those of you in the class who are paying attention, we went over this years ago:

If you donate sperm to someone you know, you're the daddy. If you want an enforceable oral agreement that will protect you from paternity, come in her mouth. There are laws in certain states that allow unknown donation through a sperm bank to relieve you of parental responsibilities (and rights, it works both ways.) But if you jerk off into a cup so your bestest female friend can do the turkey-baster trick, then you better get a good job, my friend, whether you have something in writing or not.

Mohamed Mitty

The washingtonpost.com stirs up a little xenophobia in Cherry Hill.  Could your Muslim neighbor be plotting to slit your throat and rape your wife? Stay tuned for our exclusive report on Action News:

For this bedroom community in the shadow of the Philadelphia skyline, they would become the accused jihadists next door -- their arrest immediately shattering assumptions both here and beyond about who Islamic militants are.

Experts have warned that the next big terrorist threat will come from homegrown extremists, unaffiliated with al Qaeda but harboring resentments fostered by materials easily available from the Internet. ...

They live in a garden-variety subdivision like those on the outskirts of cities from Washington, D.C., to Seattle -- once-homogeneous communities now quickly becoming ethnically and racially mixed. Their children play soccer and video games with the neighbors' kids; they hawked their roofing business at Friday prayers.

Well, goddamn, things were just so much better when the suburbs were homogeneous.  Trying to amp the danger, the reporter unintentionally injects a little comedy:

They were also no strangers to the police. Tatar and the Dukas were habitual offenders, stopped dozens of times a year for speeding, illegal passing and driving without a license. Dritan Duka pleaded guilty in 2000 to possession of drug paraphernalia and Shain Duka to possession of marijuana -- low-level charges that at the time did not trigger immigration background checks.

Only one brother had a driver's license, and only briefly. But they drove anyway and were ticketed regularly by Cherry Hill police -- including four citations in one five-week period for Dritan Duka. The three had their driving privileges suspended -- meaning they could not even apply for a license -- 54 times in less than a decade.

Wow, how devious of them to hide in plain sight like that: They were just pretending to be fuckups, right? I mean, right?

This is why I hate the law on conspiracy. All you need is a provocateur to nudge things along and then offer to supply the illegal means, and if the marks bite, you got them. Except, what have you got? I have no doubt that a suburban federal jury will convict the guys eventually, but I think if the informant had never offered, they would never have gotten their act together enough to try to buy guns:

[In a taped conversation, one of the suspects said] wanted the informer to lead the attack, according to a federal complaint. “I am at your services,” the young man is quoted as telling the informer, who had presented himself as an Egyptian with a military background. ...

The informer, sent to penetrate a loose group of men who liked to talk about jihad and fire guns in the woods, had come to be seen by the suspects as the person who might actually show them how an act of terror could be carried off.

Indeed, over the months that followed, as the targets of the investigation spoke with a sometimes unfocused zeal about waging holy war, the informer, one of two used in the investigation, would tell them that he could get them the sophisticated weapons they wanted. He would accompany them on surveillance missions to military installations, debating the risks, and when the men looked ready to purchase the weapons, it was the informer who seemed to be pushing the idea of buying the deadliest items, startling at least one of the suspects.

And:

Without doubt, in most of the instances described in the complaint, the informer seems to be merely facilitating the menacing plans of the suspects or following along. But on some occasions, the informer appears to have played a slightly more provocative role. ...

The complaint suggests that the informer quickly began to establish a rapport with Mr. Shnewer, apparently one of the group’s leaders. ...

Months elapsed without significant developments. The complaint indicates that in October 2006, seven months after the informer first entered the ranks of the men, it might have been the informer who helped jump-start another suspect, Serdar Tatar, who still had not followed through on his promise to get a map of the base from his father’s pizzeria near Fort Dix. The two men were discussing Fort Dix, the complaint said, when the informer “expressed anger at the United States.”

“You want to make them pay for something that they did,” Mr. Tatar said to the informer, according to the complaint. “O.K., you need maps?”

Soon, Mr. Tatar provided the map, the complaint says.

In November, it was the informer who volunteered that he might have a source who could provide the machine guns and heavier arms the men had long been talking about.

“Shnewer expressed interest,” the complaint says.

Shnewer drove for Lamis Cab in Philly. I don't think I ever recall using Lamis, but maybe..... Anyway:

And when efforts to finally get the more potent weapons seemed close to producing results, the informer presented a list of possible arms that could now be bought. The list included fully automatic machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. But it was the men who scaled back their ambitions.

In fact, one of the suspects, Dritan Duka, seemed taken aback by the informer’s listing of the heavy artillery. Mr. Duka appeared to ask the informer if there was anything more he should know about the informer’s background or intentions, including whether he was religious. Asked why he seemed alarmed, Mr. Duka said to the informer, “There was some stuff on the list that was heavy.” And he added an expletive.

Whew, better not get the heavy stuff, dude. We just want to play pretend jihadi. Here, smoke up with me. Let's watch that video again. Cool.

A comment by "John" over at The Lede:

I actually went to highschool with these guys. As far as I recall, they were not Muslims at the time. The one I remember speaking to, Shane, was an idiot and, by my impression, a pathological lier. He was extremely Americanized, listened to hip-hop, smoked pot, played video games, and told tall tales about the girls he and his brother would date.

It sounds to me like these terrorists, who appeared to not have enough guns to actually perform the act they were plotting, were just a bunch of easily influenced idiots who got themselves caught up in an FBI terrorist investigation.

Yup. Fuckups delivering pizza (or not) and working the building trade, fantasizing about being scary and powerful on the weekend.

Images From the Zoe Strauss Show

More after the jump.

Islamic Radicals Plotted to Kill Soldiers at Dix

At long last, after years of hysteria over guys playing paintball, we get a real, live radical Muslim terrorism plot:

Six men from the former Yugoslavia were arrested on charges they plotted to attack the Fort Dix Army base and "kill as many soldiers as possible," federal authorities said Tuesday.

The suspects were described as "Islamic radicals," said U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Greg Reinert.

They were scheduled to appear in U.S. District Court in Camden later Tuesday to face charges of conspiracy to kill U.S. servicemen, said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in New Jersey. Five of them lived in Cherry Hill, he said.

"They were planning an attack on Fort Dix in which they would kill as many soldiers as possible," Drewniak said.

A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because documents in the case remain sealed, said the attack was stopped in the planning stages.

CNN depicts them as bumblers:

The Newark Star-Ledger reported on its Web site that the men took a videotape of their practice sessions to a store to have it burned to a DVD, and that a store employee contacted the FBI because of the video's contents.

Sources told the Star-Ledger the men were lured to a meeting with an FBI informant posing as an arms dealer.  ...

While authorities are glad to have arrested them, the individuals are "hardly hard core terrorists," one law enforcement source said.

Another source said that while the allegations are "troubling," they are "not the type that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up."

Translating from the cop-speak, these guys were terrorist wannabes who didn't have training; the Mulsim equivalent of the Minutemen vigilantes running around the Southwest.

Porn and Abortion: Two Things That People Don't Think Women Should Have the Right to Do

To elaborate a bit further, here are my comments from this thread at Alas, a Blog, here:

Let me break it down the way I see it. Franke-Ruta sees women making choices that she says cause them distress later. Her proposed solution is to forbid those women from making those choices. Justice Anthony Kennedy, in the Carhart v. Gonzales decisions, sees women making choices that he says cause them distress later. His solution is to forbid those women from making those choices. In both cases, the rationale is based on the idea that women can't inform themselves of the risks and benefits of the decision, that others (pornographers or doctors) will mislead them about those risks and benefits, so the women's consent is not truly informed, so legislatures are right to step in and substitute their judgment for that of the women.

In the abortion context, assuming for the moment that the informed consent criticism were actually valid (when in fact it's a sham), the correct answer would have been legislation requiring proper disclosure. In the porn context,  assuming for the moment that the age-impaired-judgment criticism were actually valid (when in fact it's a sham), the correct answer would have been legislation requiring proper disclosure.

To claim that taking legal rights away from women in the name of protecting them is feminist, and that anyone who wants them to keep their full legal rights is misogynist, turns reality on its head.

And here:

Just to complete my thesis, what I think is going on here is that Franke-Ruta and others are actually trying to address the heteronormative aspects of porn, and restrict the consent of women to make money from porn as an instrument to address the larger societal problem. I think this is clear from Amp's comment:

This is not just about individual rights; it’s about our entire culture.

In other words, common good before individual good. It's not about some spurious negative effect on the women, it's about the environment for all women that women who appear in porn contribute to.

In my view, it is simply unacceptable - morally and legally - to sacrifice the fundamental speech rights of a few in order to achieve some larger societal goal. If you don't like the expression you see in the porn that those women choose to make and sell, then the answer is more and better speech, not to restrict the expression of those you disagree with.

You can easily extend the analogy: Anti-choicers see women's decision to have late-term abortions not just in terms of a woman killing (per their strawman argument) a otherwise healthy, viable fetus, but as a step down a slippery slope toward societal acceptance of infanticide. It's a crazy fear, but they really fear it. And in the anti-choice case, they're also willing to sacrifice the fundamental rights of women to achieve their societal goals.  I am opposed to it when liberals do it and when conservatives do it.

Who Hates Women Doing Porn for Money?

Garance Franke-Ruta's proposal to forbid women (and men, she adds as an afterthought) under 21 from doing softcore or hardcore porn for money has received a respectful hearing. The usual suspects chime in with support. I just can't take it anymore, and wrote this:

Enough of this. The truth is that the proposal is stupid and insulting. To begin with, it’s fatuous to argue that expressive conduct by people who - whatever you say - are adults can be simply stripped of First Amendment protection. (You might as well say, “You can write what you want, but you can’t sell it to TAP until you’re 21.”) If it had been a conservative who had made it, she would have been rightly mocked for her Justice Kennedy-esque parternalistic attitude towards women, as Jon Swift does. It is premised on the notion that young straight women are just fluffy-headed fools when it comes to sex and money. It completely, cluelessly ignores the fact that difficult, low-status jobs such as waiting tables, the military, construction and sex work (a) are the ones at which people with a high school education or less can make a living and (b) they can be pretty degrading and dangerous. (Not to equate them in those regards, just pointing out that being a senior editor at TAP is cushier.) An appalling percentage of women in the Army get sexually assaulted, sometimes after drinking alcohol. They might be more intellectually and emotionally prepared to protect themselves when they’re older. Would it be better if women were forbidden from joining up until they were 21? Or ever? No, because such a proposal is obviously anti-woman and blames the victim. As if Franke-Ruta’s.

But it's not just American liberals who find (certain kinds of) if porn icky even enough to regulate.  Consider Iran's much more straightforward approach:

Tehran, 30 April (AKI) - The culture committee of the Iranian parliament approved on Monday a bill sentencing to death producers of ‘pornography’, videos and films deemed vulgar by the country’s censorship. The draft law will now go to parliament where it is expected to be approved by an ample majority. Amateur porn films have a properous market in Iran and can fetch up to 30 euros each.

The market, tolerated for a long time, became a nationwide issue earlier this year after a porn film of popular television actress, Zohre Mir Ebrahimi, having sex with her partner, was released.

Of course, Franke-Ruta's proposal is the gentle kind of Big Sister, because her intent is for it to "not result in any kind of massive prosecutorial crackdown per se."  (Per se!) But she and the mullahs have something in common: They both seem to exempt the actual women actors from punishment, just the nasty men who pay them to act.

Update 12:15 p.m.: Edited grossly garbled sentence before second quote.

GOP Presidential Debate

I didn't see the debate, but based on the news reports and the reactions of people like John Cole, who are sane but otherwise predisposed to vote Republican, I think the following:

1. John McCain is most likely to be the GOP nominee, whatever the polls say now.
2. If Rudy Giuliani is the nominee, the Democrat will win in a walk.

I'm setting a post up for a year from now from now that will prompt me to update these predictions.

(Wow. We're still 16 months away from the conventions, and we have debates already. Good? Bad?)

Sad and Despicable

This man just can't face the fact that his child died for nothing:

The loss of his daughter hasn’t changed Ronald Soenksen’s thoughts on the war. He said he has supported it and will continue to do so.

“There’s people that want to pull (the troops) all out,” Soenksen said. “Those people should be taken out and hung. It’s a slap in the face to every American.”

Except that would mean hanging a majority of the country. It does fit in nicely with the usual GOP eliminationist rhetoric, though. Mr. Soenksen would have made a good Nazi.

(Via Suze.)

40%/60%

He/she.  What do I win?

(Via NTodd.)

Tightening the Lid on Bad News from Iraq

Army Regulation 530-1 (.pdf), updated 19 April 2007, section 2-1:

All Department of the Army (DA) personnel (active component, reserve component to include U.S. Army Reserve, Army National Guard, and DA civilians), and DOD contractors will ... [c]onsult with their immediate supervisor and their OPSEC Officer for an OPSEC review prior to publishing or posting information in a public forum.

(1) This includes, but is not limited to letters, resumes, articles for publication, electronic mail (e-mail), Web site postings, web log (blog) postings, discussion in Internet information forums, discussion in Internet message boards or other forms of dissemination or documentation.
(2) Supervisors will advise personnel to ensure that sensitive and critical information is not to be disclosed. Each unit or organization’s OPSEC Officer will advise supervisors on means to prevent the disclosure of sensitive and critical information.

Wired focuses on the "death of milblogging" (as if that is the issue). This regulation applies to every written communication, including emails and letters home. Although there is discretion on the part of individual commanders not to censor every communication, in effect all uniformed and civilian Army employees are now subject to court martial or criminal prosecution for telling the truth. I'm not talking about actual "sensitive and critical information" that needs to be withheld for safety; I'm talking about descriptions of what a mess Iraq is.

Local Programming: Zoe Strauss's I-95 Show Sunday, May 6, 1-4 p.m., Front & Mifflin

I've been trying to see one of her shows forever.