...more recent posts
vintage steel furniture nice.
Dear MoveOn member,
According to the Washington Post, "two top White House officials" committed a high crime in the first weeks of July. They handed over the identity of an American secret agent to journalists. They blew her cover, risking the lives of colleagues and contacts and possibly erasing years of intelligence work. Why? "Purely and simply for revenge," an administration official told the Post. The spy's husband was a vocal critic of the Iraq war. (Sources below.)
The White House and the Justice Department have known about this crime for months -- after all, the agent's identity was published in scores of newspapers in early July. But until a few days ago, they did nothing about it. And even now, President Bush has said he has no plans to ask his staff whether they were connected to it.
Republicans contend that an investigation by the Justice Department will reveal any wrongdoing. But Justice Department chief John Ashcroft -- who was appointed by President Bush and who employed key Bush advisor Karl Rove -- is hardly neutral. Already, there are signs that the investigation will give the White House room to cover the crime up.
The simple fact is that the truth will only come out under pressure. If we don't speak up now, the investigation could be left in John Ashcroft's hands, and the perpetrators and the crime could be swept under the rug. Please tell John Ashcroft and Congress that you want a special prosecutor -- someone who isn't tied to the Bush Administration -- to investigate this illegal and vindictive act.
Join us now
cont'd in comment
Eric Raymond describes the libertarian Free State Project:
The Free State Project identified ten small states where 20,000 active libertarians would be a critically large voting bloc. They are signing up libertarians and like-minded people to vote on the target state and to move there when the group passes 20,000. The winning state will be announced on 1st October; they've signed up about 5400 people so far, on a classic exponential growth curve with a six-month doubling time that should get them there in late 2004.Here is the data on potential states from the freestateproject.org website.
What could be more American than migrating to a thinly-settled area to experiment with liberty?
hi everybody, I'm (Chuck Nanney) doing my theremin thing...
this sunday, october 5th 3:30 PM
Kenny Schacter's conTEMPORARY
14 Charles Lane
between West & Washington sts.
between Charles & Perry sts.
that be the west village
it's free and noisy...
watching that blues doc on pbs. so far so good
Are male humans doomed to extinction? (via boing boing)
I haven't been talking about this one. I guess because it's just too big and scary for me to even think about. But if you haven't at least heard of what is happening with Diebold, and the *serious* problems with their electronic voting machine systems, you should probably be aware.
The story is that the machines are severely compromised from a security perspective. And the company is run by a very right wing republican who has vowed to deliver his home state to Bush in 2004. And the company is going law suit crazy to shut up anyone who publicizes anything about the security flaws in their machines.
Here's a good metafilter round up of the issue.
FWIW (not much probably) I think this is for real. I think democracy, if we still have it post election 2000, is in actual danger. Of course, like I said, I'm not doing anything about it because I am too scared to really think about what's happening. But maybe you should do something about it.
Save me! Thanks.
Wm. T. Vollmann
thanks maud, i really enjoyed this story. and i don't even like football.
failure...
excelent to see the recent minority opinion posts by bj. (and the responses)
Cross posted from artifax page: Baghdad journal.
Some exploit. Norton flagged two emails in my inbox this morning. One from "MS Corporation Internet Security Division" Subject "Critical Security Upgrade" (complete with virus-bearing attachment), the second a "bounce-back" from Microsoft Email Server. The bounce-back is a spoof which doesn't actually come from the Beast of Redmond, but piques the recipient's curiosity just enough to open another virus-bearing attachment. (same or different?)
Didn't open the attachments, don't yetr know what the virus(es) is/are, but quite a clever one-two punch for those who do open them.
remember me?
the gift of giving.
Should we have a political page, or are these posts okay here?
Could this work with Israel and Palestine? I really don't know. Probably the hard parts are too hidden under the "get some really smart people to work out the details" part of the proposal. And of course I don't like the sound of how much the U.S. would have to (militarily?) force this on both sides. But frankly I haven't heard any other plans that even seem worth considering. So could this work? Bypassing Sharon and Arafat and taking it right to the people seems like genius. What am I missing?
Mark, I found the California Governor candidate for you: Georgy Russell. I think she can get out the vote. Or at least 50% of it.
Rant time again.
Does Tom Friedman annoy other people as much as he does me? It's like he's always right, no matter how many times he changes his opinion. Saw him on Charlie Rose a few days ago. He was blasting the Bush administration for how things are going in Iraq. True enough. But he also feels compelled to explain how he wasn't wrong for being in support of the war initally, because if the administration had just done things correctly it would have worked out.
This is completely ridiculous logic.
It should have been obvious that this administration would not do things correctly. And everyone who was for the war (for arguably sound reasons, even if I don't agree with them) was wrong for the same reason. Not because the war was absolutely wrong (although I think it was - but again this is arguable,) but because it was so clear that Bush and company would screw it up. Not predicting this obvious and horrendous outcome was a serious error, and I can't see how any reasonably honest person can say different.
You thought Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld had a good plan for helping the Iraqi people? Time to admit you were wrong Tom.
Notes from Amsterdam.
Ak47 at the Green house (adjacent to the Grand hotel) is a very worthwhile acquisition.
Fish restaurant adjacent to the Rai called Viasaandescheide (or something similar) quite worthy. Had the grilled seabream.
I was cheezed off at the wifi company doing service at the Rai. Flakey service. Very limited area of coverage. But they say I won Sony Clie Peg-ux50 in their daily drawing. All is forgiven.
Flashmob incident: Not a FlashMob(tm), but a something related. A group of highschool(?) girls assembled around the obelisk in Dam Square, posted a banner marked "a. a. '03-'04" and heartily sang. They weren't organized in the sense of having rehersed, but they were organized in the sense of being enthused. They sang in a vaguely northern European tongue, but I can't say if it was Dutch.
gothamist recounts favorite moments from 10 years of conan o'brien.
myself and one other "at large" denizen of the tree also alit upon this isle 10 years ago this week with little more than a plastic container half-filled with change and a dream (or two). im still waiting to awaken from the dream filled with change, but as plastic containers go, it hasnt been half bad.
Then understood-everything was explained : I had discovered the crowning error of the city, its Pandora's box. Full of vaunting pride the New Yorker had climbed here and seen with dismay what he had never suspected, that the city was not the endless succession of canyons that he had supposed but that it had limits -- from the tallest structure he saw for the first time that it faded out into the country on all sides, into an expanse of green and blue that alone was limitless. And with the awful realization that New York was a city after all and not a universe, the whole shining edifice that he had reared in his imagination came crashing to the ground.
what the hell was neil young saying in greendale ? lots of charged imagery, not alot of meaning
then after a normal 2nd set, the
last shot on the jumbotron is video freeze frame of yankees hat tossed on stage (NY, neil young, get it ?)