The implications and issues behind MySpace's decision to cooperate with law enforcement by identifying registered sex offenders who create MySpace profiles are interesting. My initial, knee-jerk-liberal reaction is that privacy wins out here. There are so many people who are listed on "registered sex offender" lists that have no business being there that wholesale cross-referencing scares me.

But then there's the notion of Social Darwinism. MySpace identifies sex offenders to Texas, and look what happens:

In Texas, a total of seven convicted sex offenders have been taken into custody. Six were registered sex offenders, arrested for parole violation. All six had MySpace profiles, despite the terms of their probation barring them from using the internet.

A seventh man was arrested for failing to register as an offender after his profile turned up on the social networking site.

None of the six men arrested has been charged with any new sexual offences, but between them have convictions ranging from aggravated sexual assault, to molestation of a child, and indecency with a child by exposure. The youngest victim was just four.

Radical Cleric Dobson has already come out against Giuliani, and the rank-and-file fundigelicals have their concerns about Romney:

ROCK HILL, S.C. — Here's the problem with electing a Mormon president, as Jason Thurman sees it: "I don't believe he would be guided by God."

Thurman, 26, is tidying the annotated Bibles in the Shepherd's Fold bookstore. Over by the rack of Christian CDs, his co-worker Marty Thomas raises a similar concern.

"When it comes right down to it," says Thomas, 40, "a Mormon's strength is human. A Christian person's strength is superhuman. I want [a president] who has that extra on his side."

Of course, there are some who are a bit more pragmatic:

This is not an arcane theological dispute; to some born-again Christians, it's at the very core of presidential leadership. If Romney does not understand what they take to be God's true nature, can he still receive divine guidance? If he doesn't accept the Trinity as they conceptualize it, can he still be filled with the strength of the Holy Spirit?

Some evangelicals answer "yes" to such questions: "Just because he's Mormon doesn't mean God can't bless the country through him," says Carissa James, 36, a pastor's wife in this suburban community of 50,000.

I wonder if this woman's husband realizes she's this far off the reservation?

The article is an interesting read. Were the Mittster to become the front-runner, the GOP could form a circular firing squad that has only been rivalled by Democrats. Romney talks the talk, but he walks a strict Mormon walk. His moral values are in line with rank-and-file fundigelicals, but his theology is out the box as far as their pastors are concerned. With the radical clerics calling Romney's church a cult and the average redneck/racist/homophobe Republican voter wanting to maintain control of the white house, Romney presents an even greater dilemma than Rudy.

If Romney starts winning primaries, we could see some neat Republican fratricide. Pass the popcorn.

In February, it was the "Lite Brite" scare in Boston. Last week, it was 150 alarm clocks planted in a high school in Westchester County, NY:

It's senior prank season, and this was the plan for the last day of classes Monday at Hendrick Hudson High School, not far from the Indian Point nuclear plant in Westchester County, north of New York City:

Seniors went to three dollar stores and bought about 150 alarm clocks in the shape of houses or butterflies, which would be scattered throughout the school.

They would be wrapped in duct tape, so teachers could not shut them off by removing their batteries, and set for 9:15. And when they went off, the seniors would rise and march triumphantly outside to acknowledge that the fat lady - or at least her alarm clock - had sung. They had made it through high school.

During and after both incidents, the powers-that-be have over-reacted. In Boston, the toy light-up boards were thought to be bombs. Police and the mayor's office came off looking very foolish when they turned out to be items easily purchased at Toys R Us. At Hudson High School, the administration also made fools of themselves:

But there were two big differences. First, the students broke into the school Sunday night to deposit the clocks, using a key that officials knew had been missing for a year. Second, when the police responded to an alarm and found the clocks wrapped in duct tape, state troopers and bomb-sniffing dogs descended on the school, worried that the devices might be explosives.

But wait a minute. How did the teachers know the clocks were sealed with duct tape to keep the batteries in? Clearly they picked them up and tried to turn them off. If these were bombs, wouldn't that be a bit foolish of them? If the students did a "triumphant march," then it should have been easy for any teacher of more than two years' experience to spot a senior prank.

Still, school administrators called the cops, who brought in the bomb squad.

When I was a junior in high school, in the spring of 1975, the senior prank that spring was actually a bomb, specifically a very well-engineered fireworks display constructed in a school bookbag and controlled by an alarm clock. It was obviously a bit bigger than an alarm clock by itself.

The lesson to be learned by these incidents is that politicians, school administrators, and law enforcement don't like to be punk'd. When someone gets the better of them, either knowingly or unwittingly, they bring the full wrath of the system down on the miscreants:

But the damage was done. Officials filed felony charges of placing a false bomb against the 19 students identified as being in the school during the break-in. The lead headline in the local paper read: "19 face charges in bomb prank."

Felony charges for a senior prank? We're going to ruin the futures of 19 students because a principal and some cops were made to look the fool? That's extremism of the kind that should make all of us sit up and take notice.

What I don't see here is consequences for the school administrators. If a key to the school building had been missing for over a year, with their knowledge those administrators potentially endangered the lives of everyone entering and exiting those buildings. If the school system is prepared to prosecute the students behind this plot, what about disciplining the administrators who have mis-managed their school?

Revenge for not being able to recognize a prank is no reason to pursue federal prosecutions against high school students.

What Blumenthal said:

No president has had a more disastrous European trip since President Reagan placed a wreath on the graves of SS soldiers in the Bitburg cemetery. Yet Reagan's mistake was unintentional and symbolic, a temporary and superficial setback, doing no real damage to U.S. foreign relations, while Bush's blunders not only reinforced counterproductive policies but also created a new one with Russia that has the potential of profoundly undermining U.S. national security interests for years to come.

I remember how Trudeau used the Bitburg incident to mock Reagan aid Michael Deaver, who planned that cemetery visit, showing Mike "Bitburg" Deaver trying to get a gig as a lobbyist after such a monumental screwup. That sort of humor isn't what it used to be, because mocking current and former BushCo hacks is so much shooting fish in a barrel.

This is no time to play nice.  Keep kicking these people while they're down.  Hit them hard and in the balls at every opportunity. 

Holsinger's backers also have brought forth a lesbian who says Holsinger's a good guy even though he's a homo-hater -- in other words, he'll be fair to the gays even if he disapproves. I don't accept that kind of crap, and nor should any of us. It's hard to tell if the White House is leaving it to Holsinger and his backers to now defend him, or if they're orchestrating all of this and plan to stick by him to the end. Either way, the Dems should use this to their advantage and further debilitate a weak president. And we should use it to have national discussion about the damage done by "conversion therapy."

[via The Gist]

Speed Racer's Mach 5 comes to life

Filed under: Transportation

Continue reading Speed Racer's Mach 5 comes to life

--A neoconservative is a Bush administration official who has mugged reality and claims he's the victim. Neoconservatism has now been reduced to a clemency plea.

Sidney Blumenthal, commenting on a possible pardon for Scooter Libby in Salon.com today. Blumenthal does his usual splendid job of eviscerating the Bush administration, but this conclusion was just excellent.

via Crooks and Liars and ScienceBlogs:

Society for the Practical Establishment and Perpetuation of the TEN COMMANDMENTS

From their Introduction:

Instead of a people seeking to govern themselves, the most nobleand civic thing they can do in establishing their nation or society,or in laying down laws by which the structure of their governmentsand their inhabitants must conform is to wholeheartedly embracethe moral laws of God as their constitutions, without ever seekingto amend such morality; and all proposed bills, laws, statutes,ordinances, judgments and customs be based on the moral laws ofGod while vigorously enforcing such morality. Any people thatfail to do that manifest themselves to be stark heathens indeeddespite their deceptive claims of being a great nation, a nobleand civilized people.

From their page "Against Homosexuality:"

The terrible influence of the crime of homosexuality also extendsitself in the societies by homosexuals being allowed to function in the societies, by them becoming prominent members of communities, and becoming leaders and serving in various positions of government. In this way, homosexuals seek to remove all rightful stigmatization ofhomosexuality from the societies by making laws in favor of homosexuality. Again, this is equivalent to murderers going unpunishedand being allowed to function in the societies as prominent leaders ofthe societies and being allowed to serve in government to make laws infavor of murder.

and becoming leaders and serving in various positions of government

see, it's all J. Edgar Hoover's fault...

(crossposted)

So, Norwich, CT, substitute teacher Julie Amero has been granted a new trial:

NEW LONDON -- A Superior Court judge Wednesday granted a new trial for Julie Amero, 40, a Norwich substitute teacher whose faulty computer spewed pornographic images in her seventh grade classroom.

"I had a great team behind me,'' a tearful Amero said. "I feel very confident with the decision today.''

The new trial ordered by Superior Court Judge Hillary B. Strackbein comes after a campaign on Amero's behalf by computer security experts around the country, who offered evidence showing that Amero's computer was taken over by malicious "spyware" that caused a rapid fire sequence of pornographic "pop-up" windows to appear on the screen.

This has been a troublesome case from the start. So many people have been inundated with malware attacks, spam from porn providers, and web-based popup ads for porn sites that it was almost incomprehensible to me that someone would find something insidious about this incident. Still, Norwich had a cop with little-to-no computer training, much less computer forensic training, and allowed him to go after this poor woman.

Worse still, a criminal court judge allowed this detective to testify as an expert witness. Hell, I've been doing computer programming and support work for 36 years, and I don't think I could get certified to testify as an expert on web-based malware. Reporting by Steve Bass of PC World and Mark Rasch of SecurityFocus indicates that neither the prosecutor nor the "expert" witness really have a clue.

The rational for setting aside the verdict, frankly, scares the crap out of me:

In setting aside the guilty verdict, Strackbein ruled that the witness the state presented as a computer expert, a Norwich police detective, provided "erroneous" testimony about the classroom computer.

"The jury may have relied, at least in part, on that false information," said Strackbein.

The motion for a new trial was filed on Tuesday by Amero's attorney, William F. Dow. The motion said that evidence gathered after Amero was convicted in January of four counts of risk or injury to a minor casts serious doubt on her guilt.

The judge cited a forensic computer analysis conducted by the state police crime lab - conducted after the guilty verdict - to support the argument that the verdict should be set aside. She said the lab report "contradicts testimony of the state's computer witness."

They put this woman in the dock based on the affidavits and reports of an untrained police detective. A prosecutor ran with this knowledge and did his damnedest to ruin Amero's life. Now, the judge says this was "false information." Providing false information to a courtroom, under oath should have more consequences to this detective and prosecutor than a simple "oops, we fucked up." If the CT state police's lab and dozens of independent experts could present reasonable doubt in this case after the verdict why wasn't this evidence produced at trial? Would it have been so difficult to not simply take the word of an untrained police officer as gospel?

I don't know if Amero has any legal recourse against the detective in question and the Norwich PD, but I hope she can take them to the cleaners.

Another disturbing aspect of this case is reported by Andrew Kantor, a technology writer for USA Today. In his blog, he reports that the Norwich Bulletin, the paper of record for this case, is purging stories and blog entries where their support for convicting and punishing Amero was quite vocal. Of course, people who pull this sort of stunt are usually too dumb to realize that Teh Google has its neat "cache" feature, but still the "We are at war with Eastasia. We have always been at war with Eastasia" aspect of this is a concern.

In any case, the prosecutor will not re-try Amero, so hopefully she can put this ugly incident behind her.

...and it sounds like he is here...will he advocate that the CBC withdraw its sponsorship of a Democratic Presidential Debate on Faux?

Yesterday, Fox News Channel broke the story of Rep. William Jefferson’s indictment with video of Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers greeting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at a recent Judiciary Committee hearing. The network apologized on-air for airing the wrong video; however, they did not personally apologize to Mr. Conyers or describe the video they aired the previous day. Chairman Conyers responded today:

“Fox News has a history of inappropriate on-air mistakes that are neither fair, nor balanced. This type of disrespect for people of color should no longer be tolerated. I am personally offended by the network’s complete disregard for accuracy in reporting and lackluster on-air apology.”

(h/t Crooks and Liars)

What's the point of outrage if you're going to turn around and play ball with the same people that think you all look alike?

Jane Hamsher has a good summary of Libby's 30-month sentence at Firedoglake:

It was rendered just a little bit easier today when Reggie Walton recognized what Scooter Libby and his cronies did not Scooter is not a great man, he's a common crook and in the eyes of the law he ought to go to jail. This country will be just a little bit better tonight, a little bit healthier and closer to a place where faith in government and our system of justice can be restored because Libby and all his Very Important Friends were not able to hornswoggle Reggie Walton like they have been so many journalists who have fallen down on the job and failed to ask the kind of appropriate questions that should have kept us from getting to this place to begin with.

And Andrew Cohen at CBS makes an interesting point:

No, it's not a great stretch to compare the somber Libby with the flighty Hilton; they both got more prison time than they would have received from their respective judges had they been anonymous schleps.

(h/t TalkLeft)

I just hope that Judge Walton denies Libby bail while he appeals. If you or I are convicted of a federal crime, they're going to cart us off right quickly, whereas politicians get all this extra time to put their affairs in order.

one of the three bloggers who posts on WFI's site maintains her personal blog at suesviews2.blogspot.com. She's adjusted the settings of her blog to "invite only," but cached pages on Teh Google are a wonderful thing.

One of this woman's recent posts is entitled "Try to reason with an illegal immigrant." Then there's another screed on immigration in which she urges everyone to write-in someone named Cary Cartter for president next year. Some of her thoughts:

I believe this is the greatest country on earth. I believe Political Correctness is tearing this country apart, on a variety of fronts - illegal immigration ("they do the jobs Americans won't" - oh, like murder, rape, and driving without license and registration?), the War on Terror ("if we talk to them, we can come to an understanding" - with a religious belief that you either convert or die?), and Liberalism. I believe that the United States needs to regain her direction and drive, and move to the forefront of the free world once again. I believe that We The People need to have our voices heard and listened to once again.

on the side column of her blog, she boasts of membership in the "Redneck Mafia," whose symbol is based on the Confederate battle flag:

another site she supports is "Children of the Confederacy"

Looking into this woman's background is like swimming in shit.

Jeez, what a ratfuck this has become. LiveJournal has (hopefully) learned two important lessons from this incident: First, censorship by keyword just doesn't work, and second, think about the consequences of caving into conservatives when so many of your users are not of that political/social persuasion!

On the first point, censorship by keyword. This hasn't worked, evah. AOL tried to block descritpive synonyms to the female chest, and found they had blocked user access to sites promoting breast cancer awareness, breast feeding, and other "legitimate" boobie-related subjects. LJ fell victim to this same problem. By trying to remove journals and communities by keyword, they attacked the good as well as the bad. (There is potential here for a meta-debate, as to whether LJ should be in the censorship business in the first place, but that's a difficult one to have when issues like child molestation are involved.)

The second lesson LJ has learned tells us all something about how LJ has defined itself. When I tell people I keep a LiveJournal, they assume it's simply another "social networking" site, such as MySpace or Facebook. When SixApart acquired LJ, I'm sure they told their investors just that. The description is accurate, but the target demographic of LJ is quite different from other social networking sites. Fandom communities are the ties that bind users to LJ, crossing age brackets and spanning the political spectrum. Just how important are the fan communities to LJ? The service has experienced some significant performance degradations in the last two days as the fangirls perform wholesale download/backup operations on their journals.

All because a supposed anti-child molestation group threatened Six Apart, claiming they would go after their advertisers. Both Warriors for Innocence and Perverted Justice (links not provided, feel free to use Teh Google) are both pressuring LJ on the issue of pedophiles. Again, the main problem here is the clash of fantasy and reality. The fannish communities argue:

• writing about something isn't the same as acting it out
• "pedophilia" isn't the same as child molestation
• rape, even the rape of children, has a place in literature

The groups opposing these viewpoints hold an absolute zero-tolerance policy when it comes to pedophilia and child sexual abuse. On these issues, WFI and PJ are the equivalent of the teacher who reported the kid with a GI Joe-sized gun for violating the school's zero-tolerance policy on firearms, or the school who suspended one girl for giving Midol to a fellow student. There's no arguing with these people, so it's now up to LiveJournal to decide where their bread is buttered.

I come down on the side of fandom in this debate. Writing about the darker side of the human condition is not the same as joining that darker side. Right off the top of my head, two novels come to mind: Lasher by Anne Rice, and A Secret History: The Book of Ash #1 by Mary Gentle come to mind. In the Rice novel, two of the main characters, one fifteen, the other in his forties, have consensual sex. (In an earler scene, the fifteen year old has consensual sex with a peer as well). Mary Gentle describes her main character, Ash, being raped (vaginally and anally) at age 8, and how Ash kills her attackers.

Contextually, one can make very legitimate arguments for the inclusion of these scenes in both novels. Both authors have made a bit of money from their work, and Amazon.com sells both products. I see little difference here between these published authors and the fanfic authors of LJ.

I have little patience for "zero-tolerance" advocates on most issues. WFI and PJ fall into that category. LJ got suckered by these people, and they're now trying to rectify their mistake. The best defense against zero-tolerance advocates is education and bright spotlights turned back on these people. Rather than continue to bash LiveJournal, fandom's best move now is to expose WFI to daylight. If they can withstand scrutiny, then they will be forced to debate and discuss their positions.

My guess is it won't even get that far. Rarely are these groups what they claim to be in the first place.

It's the First of June, and everyone's all about the anxiety that some people feel at the start of the annual hurricane season. My thoughts on this subject haven't changed on this subject one iota.

It's really quite simple: we're better off here along the Gulf Coast than many other parts of the country. Look at Greensburg, KS, last month--the whole town wiped out in a matter of minutes, with no warning. There's always a bit of concern in the back of my mind about my Cali friends, living on the fault line. I can drive the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway almost in my sleep, but the San Mateo Bridge scares the crap out of me, because what if right when I'm on it is the next big quake.

We get 24-72 hours' warning that a storm is going to strike New Orleans. That's more than enough time for everyone to get to shelter. Da Dome worked as a shelter of last resort--the problem was that the LA National Guard couldn't do their job after the storm passed. The horrific property damage done to the city by the storm was nothing compared to the loss of life from an unnaounced tornado or earthquake.

So, I"m going to enjoy this lovely June morning. I'm going to continue to sit at this coffee shop (Crescent Coffee in Independence Mall in Metairie) and admire the girl in shorts sitting in the corner. If the National Hurricane Center tells me that there's another storm coming our way, we'll pack up the family, tranquilize the cat, and go have dinner with friends in Shreveport.

Until then, it's a lovely late Spring day.

Allowing the Godless Homos to join in civil unions! What will we tell the children!

CONCORD, N.H. - Gay couples in New Hampshire can start applying for many of the rights and responsibilities of marriage as early as January under a law Gov. John Lynch signed Thursday establishing civil unions.

“We in New Hampshire have had a long and proud tradition taking the lead in opposing discrimination,” Lynch said. “Today that tradition continues.”

Here's what I find truly interesting:

Massachusetts alone among the U.S. states allows gay marriage. Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, Maine, California and Washington allow either civil unions or domestic partnerships, and Oregon will join the list with New Hampshire in January. Hawaii extends certain spousal rights to same-sex couples and cohabiting heterosexual pairs.

OK, that's all of New England except for Rhode Island that now allow Teh Gay to function as sort-of real people. When will Republicans in the northeast finally start telling the fundigelicals to STFU?

Mini Stonehenge Kit from thinkgeek.com

shoot, even if you're just an Anglophile or history buff, this is kinda cool.

In a Salon piece about Imus, the master of Lake Woebegon is almost as shrill as Krugman:

When you think of how Mr. Eyebrows had to sit in sackcloth and ashes and apologize, all for an outburst you can hear in a back booth at Bud's Lounge, and then you think of the lasting damage the Current Occupant has done to this country, a man who lends new richness to the word "malfeasance" and who is deaf on top of it and relaxed and pleasant in the face of fresh revelations, you see what a crazy country this is, but then we knew that a long time ago.

The French have a new president, the British will soon have a new P.M., and we envy them as we endure the endless wait for this small dim man to go back to Texas and resume his life. His party is coming to see that it must figure out how to tell the truth about him if it is to compete in 2008, but so far nobody has stepped forward and wound up to throw the pie. Their clock is stuck in the fall of 2001. They are sleepwalking toward the precipice.

His last sentence above is really the sad part. The Republicans are indeed sleepwalking toward the precipice. The current crop of Republican candidates have no ability to think outside the box. This is what got them the disrespectful piece of shit that currently lives in the White House. When all you can field for candidates are racists and men who are batshit insane, a drunk Texan doesn't look so bad.

...it would be sweet irony if Falwell came back as a lesbian...

Anyway, I hope I'm closer to accurate about how the afterlife work than his beliefs, for his soul's sake.

Don't y'all get just a little embarassed when one of your reporters goes on Fox Noise Channel and simply makes shit up?

Ignoring polling, Liasson claimed on Fox News Sunday that all Republicans beat Clinton

On the May 13 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, Fox News contributor and NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson asserted that former New York City mayor and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani is "trying to argue" that he is "the only one who can beat a Democratic nominee -- [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY]." Liasson added, "But I don't think the polls support that. I think the polls show that in head-to-head matchups, for whatever that's worth now, they all do." However, while some recent polling has been less favorable to Clinton, two polls released in May show her leading not only Giuliani, but also the other top Republican candidates in head-to-head contests.

[via Media Matters for America]

Where Liasson goes wrong is when she says "I don't think." You're right, Mara, you don't think. You spout shit.  What I can never figure out about Liasson is if she's more like Crackhead Cokie, who just spews forth crap without a care to the facts because she's nuts, or if Liasson actually read the polls and is playing to the FNC audience.

I'd love to know what FNC pays Liasson for her "contributions" to their shows relative to what she makes for NPR.  It has to be substantial for her to just ignore facts and play to the party line. 

To: Mr. Tom Grubisich
Subj: Your article in today's Washington Post entitled, "Sunshine for the Virtual Town Hall"

Your article fails to make a case for eliminating anonymity on-line because you use only present a very narrow use of pseudonyms. When someone goes to a real-life town hall meeting, he's hanging it out there for everyone to see. It's quite possible that a person will suffer attacks to their business, employment, family, and person if they put forth unpopular opinions.

The same thing happens on-line. There have been numerous examples of reporters who have tried to "turn in" readers who have challenged their published work via e-mail. Political operatives have chased down real-life information about bloggers and other forum participants to shut down their opinions.

Pseudonyms have a number of legitimate uses, such as a reporter changing names to protect a source, or an author of a controversial monograph who might have concerns for their safety. Pseudonyms are used for purely business reasons, such as a mainstream novelist who writes erotica under a different name. Those who participate in on-line chats and forums should be afforded similar cover.

Additionally, if you truly don't like on-line venues which permit the likes of "anticrat424," you have the option to not participate. Vote with your feet, and only make yourself available to sites that don't allow anonymity.

Your article makes it sound like the only reason to use a pseudonym on-line is so one can be obnoxious. Clearly this is not the case. It's hard to tell if you're just a crybaby who doesn't like dealing with hecklers, or if you're advocating identifying participants for more sinister reasons, but either way, it's a bad idea.

Love,
YatPundit