"The test of civilization is the estimate of woman. Among savages she is a slave. In the dark ages of Christianity she is a toy and a sentimental goddess. With increasing moral light, and greater liberty, and more universal justice, she begins to develop as an equal human being."
-- George William Curtis

Dahlia Lithwick has a nice little article about Sandra Day O'Connor.

Describing herself as a "cowgirl from Arizona," O'Connor tells of graduating from Stanford Law School in 1952 (she doesn't mention she was No. 3 in her class) and being unable to get a single law job. Her one interview at a big firm ended with the question, "Miss Day, do you type?" At which point she was grudgingly offered a secretary's position. At which point she began inventing her own luck. . .

. . . Whenever a glass ceiling appeared, O'Connor either ran around it or blasted through. Women like me, who have seldom faced that kind of discrimination, have no idea of the kind of strength required to deal with it. O'Connor uses the phrase, "I had a great time!" often today, and you know she really means it. She loved working at the DA's office, and then opening her own practice, and then being a state senator, and then a judge. She loved doing it even when she had to, because no one would give her a regular job. When "disaster struck" and she lost her baby sitter, she just stayed at home and did volunteer work for five years. She felt, and still feels, that she was lucky. But with all the talk of fun and chance, you sense that she forgets how hard she fought to make those chances pay off.

Read the whole thing. I'm not a big fan of Sandra Day O'Connor as a jurist at all--her jurisprudence is maddeningly unprincipled. But there's no doubt she lived quite an extraordinary life.

"When our individual interests and prospects do not seem worth living for, we are in desperate need for something apart from us to live for. All forms of dedication, devotion, loyalty and self-surrender are in essence a desperate clinging to something which might give worth and meaning to our futile, spoiled lives."
-- Eric Hoffer

Looks like Hillary's decided to get nasty regarding Bush's re-election.

Re-electing President Bush will mean a loss of freedoms and "create an America we won't recognize," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is telling potential Democratic donors.

In an e-mail appeal distributed by the Democratic National Committee to help Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign, the former first lady said "the stakes in this election are incredibly high."

"If they get their way, you and I will be living in an America governed not by our hopes, but by our fears," Clinton wrote. "We'll be living in an America where we see our freedoms diminished when they ought to be embraced, our rights restricted when they ought to be strengthened."

Normally I wouldn't even acknowledge petty little political shit like this, but this has a particular irony for me. You see, Hillary's husband (you may remember him) gave a speech on my campus last weekend. The theme of the speech? Bipartisanship and how rhetoric of venom and hatemongering without respect for other people's views and opinions was tearing the country apart.

"The empires of the future are the empires of the mind."
-- Winston Churchill

Here's one of those pieces of news that always makes you wonder whether they even bother with bother with security at Los Alamos.

The Los Alamos National Laboratory, the USA's foremost nuclear weapon design facility, has lost a computer disk.

According to a lab statement, staff were checking an inventory of classified material and realised a piece of classified removable electronic media (CREM) was not where it was supposed to be. The lab says that the missing CREM, which could be a CD, USB flash drive or Zip-type disk, "in no way constitutes a compromise of national security".

Nope! No threat to national security at all! At least, we don't think so...

Since the disk is missing, its contents cannot be verified. The statement admits to "administrative errors and the past pervasive use of low-density magnetic and desktop systems."

Nope, no threat to national security at all. Even though we don't know what's on the disk. Don't worry. I mean, it's not like we here at Los Alamos lose computer data all the time or anyway.

Er... wait...

Reuben Ham's latest music column is filled with something for everyone to disagree with! Go read it now! Personally, I think he's dead on, except for #6. Sorry, Reuben, but I'm psyched for the Velvet Revolver album. However, he is, to quote Marisa Tomei, "dead on balls accurate" about this:

2. THE DARKNESS. I don't get it. It's a 57-year-old guy in a leotard, singing falsetto and playing twentieth-rate covers of VAN HALEN's 'Eruption'. I don't get it. GUNS 'N' ROSES in 1987 were nasty. They were filthy, dangerous—anti-cheese. Is this supposed to be like QUEEN? Again, I don't get it. Why do we need QUEEN impersonators in 2004, when we all have access to, erm... QUEEN records? Blow, hookers, and bizarre motorcycle fetishism aside, rock'n'roll is not supposed to be a joke. It isn't about pigtails and glove-puppets and pulling your pants down to reveal cartoon-character underwear. If it was, BLINK 182 would be messianic archetypes. You think ZEPPELIN weren't serious? You think the 'deal with the devil' thing is just a laugh? Go: become an accountant.

He'll get no argument from me on that one.

Well, I graudated from law school yesterday, marking my third and likely final graduation. Nothing fancy or exciting about the ceremony. Just what you expect in this sort of thing.

However, one thing of note is that while we were lining up to go into the ceremony, we were being protested by Fred Phelps anti-gay rights group. And let me tell you, seeing them was a relief!

A relief? You ask. You betcha! You see, every doubt I've had about being a lawyer has now completely disappeared. After all, if Fred Phelps and crew think I'm doing the wrong thing, then I *must* be doing the right one! So thanks, Fred and pals!

(PS - If you don't know who Fred Phelps is, he's the leader of one of the most disgusting anti-gay groups around. His website is here, if you can stomach aboiminable hatemongering.)

"They asked President Bush today why we didn't observe the Geneva Convention in Iraq and Bush said, 'That's easy, we weren't in Geneva.'"
-- Jay Leno

Looks like things are going well for California under Arnold's governorship.

A leading Wall Street ratings agency on Friday raised California's credit rating, citing an improving economy, the first such upgrade in four years and a move that promised to bring down the state's borrowing costs on $44 billion in debt.

Analysts saw the unexpected credit upgrade by Moody's Investors Service as an endorsement of the steps Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has taken to bring California back from the brink of a fiscal crisis that drove its credit ratings near junk levels and had threatened to effectively shut the state out of the bond market for new borrowing.

Citing an "established trend of recovery," Moody's raised California's rating to A3 from Baa1, reversing a downgrade it made in December out of concern over continued political deadlock and a move by Schwarzenegger to cut car license fees.

That's great work. So far, Arnold seems to be doing a pretty good job as governor.

Just finished a long-overdue overhaul of the blogroll. Tweaked the categories, put blogs where they more properly belonged, fixed wrong links, deleted long-abandoned blogs, etc. Also added a few.

IF YOU'RE ON THE BLOGROLL: Please make sure that (a) your link is right and (b) I have you categorized in a manner acceptable to you. ["Multiply biased blogs" are group blogs where the posters don't share a common political bias, FYI.]

GOT SUGGESTIONS? What blogs aren't on the blogroll that I should check out? Put recommendations in the comments!

N.O. Pundit has some thoughts on my thoughts on the Information Age, instant gratificaiton, and everything else. It's well worth the read, and I also appreciate the kind comments.

"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness."
-- C. S. Lewis

(Thanks, Dragoon!)

Michele filled out her own version of this list by Farm Accident Digest. I have a couple more minutes 'til I'm off my lunch break, so I'll do one, too.

Song that most makes me want to kick someone's ass.
Tie between "The Badge" by Pantera, and of course, the fight theme from the original Star Trek.

Most Romantic Song
"Into My Arms" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Best Song For Seducing The Ladies
"New York City" by They Might Be Giants. Don't ask me why, but it works.

Secret Shame Favorite Song
Would you believe the Cardigans cover of "Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath"? Yeah, that's why it's a secret shame.

Best Song Involving Confusion Over Eye Color
Ewan McGregor's version of "Your Song" in Moulin Rouge.

The Greenpeace case I mentioned earlier, where they were being prosecuted for "sailor mongering," has been thrown out of court.

A judge threw out federal charges Wednesday against Greenpeace for a protest in which members of the environmental group clambered aboard a cargo ship loaded with Amazon mahogany. Greenpeace was charged under an 1872 law — not used in more than a century — that was intended to keep bawdy houses from luring sailors off ships with offers of prostitutes, strong drink and warm beds.

U.S. District Judge Adalberto Jordan ruled there was not enough evidence for the case to go to the jury. He put an end to the case after the prosecution rested.

(link thanks to Henry Lewis)

The comments in the Iraq collapse post below have sparked an interesting side discussion. How reliable are the opinion polls we're getting out of Iraq, anyway? One thing I've personally noticed in most of the publicized polls is that the methodology of the polls hasn't been released. This begs a lot of questions. Which Iraqis are being asked questions? Is it a representative sample? From where are the polls being taken? If it's just the Sunni triangle, one can understand why we're having problems. Are Kurds included? Are wives asked questions outside the presence of their husbands? All of these questions are, to my knowledge, unanswered.

This doesn't mean we should discount public opinion polls entirely, but it does mean we should look at them with skepticism. And there's another problem, too, which is similar to the "dictator effect." Prison scandals notwithstanding, the average Iraqi is probably sure that he's not going to get picked up by Americans for voicing anti-American opinions. But he might be concerned about being the target of insurgents for voicing pro-American opinions. Something to think about.

Intersting article in Slate about the effect of gay marriage on heterosexual marriage in Scandinavian countries.

In fact, the numbers show that heterosexual marriage looks pretty healthy in Scandinavia, where same-sex couples have had rights the longest. In Denmark, for example, the marriage rate had been declining for a half-century but turned around in the early 1980s. After the 1989 passage of the registered-partner law, the marriage rate continued to climb; Danish heterosexual marriage rates are now the highest they've been since the early 1970's. And the most recent marriage rates in Sweden, Norway, and Iceland are all higher than the rates for the years before the partner laws were passed. Furthermore, in the 1990s, divorce rates in Scandinavia remained basically unchanged.

Read the whole thing. The arguments that gay marriage will destroy heterosexual marriage have never made much sense to me, and its nice to see that the data reflects this.

"What people commonly call fate is mostly their own stupidity."
-- Arthur Schopenhauer

Took my LAST FINAL EVER today (assuming I don't go back to school.) Feels great! I graduate on Sunday and turn 25 on Wednesday. I'm just jumping into the real world at long last! Law school may only be 3 years, but it feels like forever...

This bit my Matthew Yglesias caught my eye.

Iraq was not as big a threat as Bush made it out to be, but nevertheless the war went well, hence the question -- do we reward Bush's success, or punish his dishonesty. The moment for that debate, however, is long gone. The war, "justified" or not, simply can't be looked at as A Good Thing in light of the near-total collapse of our political and military position in Iraq.

In the past, I've identified one of the key problems of analysis in the Information Age: that we tend to make judgments about things far too quickly. Particularly, I've talked about this being a problem in the context of the reconstruction of Iraq. Well, it's still a problem.

Look, it's been just about a year since major combat operations ended in Iraq. There was a period of relative quiet, but now Islamists and former Ba'athists have joined forces (if they weren't together already) to overthrow the Americans in a plan that appears to have been made before the war. There have been other setbacks, like the commission of atrocities by American soldiers at Abu Gharib.

That doesn't mean that our position in Iraq has "collapsed" any more than McClellan's utter defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run meant that the Union was helpless before the Confederate Armies.

Americans have become used to instant gratification. But you know what? Some things take time. Now, it may well be that five years from now, we'll look back at this point in the war and say, "This is what led to the collapse in Iraq." Or, more likely in my opinion, we'll look back and say, "This was one of the worst points in the otherwise successful reconstruction of the newly democratic Iraq."

The thing is that right now it is impossible to make snap judgments as to what is going to happen in Iraq. Saying that things are going great is just as wrong as saying that things are going horribly. Only time will tell what is happening. Blunders can be corrected and insurgents can be killed. Already the Iraqi people are backlashing against the likes of al-Sadr. Sure, they don't like the fact that Americans are running the country, but that's to be expected.

A year from now, we'll have a better picture of the progress in Iraq. If the insurgency has grown, if civil unrest against American troops is more common, it probably means we're moving in the wrong direction. But if the new Iraqi government helps de-legitimize the insurgency, if Iraqis have taken responsbility for their own security, and if the situation is overall more stable, then it probably means we're moving in the right direction. Two years is probably sufficient time to make a judgment. I honestly don't think that one year is. Remember, too, that contemporary commentators were calling the occupations of Germany and Japan "disasters" in 1946. They were proven wrong, too.

UPDATE: Both James Joyner and Matthew Yglesias have responded to my points. Joyner makes the salient point that while we might win on the ground, we still could lose because we think we're losing.

We’re simply too big, too wealthy, and too skilled to be defeated militarily by anyone on the planet, with the possible exception of a nuclear war with the Russians, but we may be too wealthy, too comfortable, and too short an attention span to sustain popular support for a war that’s taking longer to win than a Lord of the Rings installment.

Already, over half of the country thinks we’re in a lost cause. That can’t sustain itself in a democracy. A whole host of columnists who urged us to fight the war are now calling for some sort of graceful exit or recommending that we lower our sights, settling for a benevolent dictator instead of a democracy for post-occupation Iraq. If President Bush can’t persuade the country that we need to continue to press on, that the goals for which we’re fighting are worth the sacrifices being made (which requires that the goals be perceived as actually achievable, hardly a given) then our hostile will may soon be broken.

This is certainly true, especially given the media's natural predeliction for the negative as well as a cultural bias against Bush. There's certainly plenty of good news out of Iraq, particularly when you consider that in terms of security, only a small portion of the country is under an active insurgency. The Bush Administration's failure to highlight this news is a massive blunder on their part.

Yglesias's points run along similar lines, but involve defeats on the ground, too.

The problem, however, is that these things take time and time is something we haven't got. New poll out shows over 80 percent of Iraqis don't like our presence -- a number that goes up with every dead Iraqi civilian. Half of America wants us to start packing up -- a number that goes up with every dead US soldier. It's obvious that Berlusconi, Blair, et. al. are beginning to buckle under domestic pressure to go home. Right now, we're about 100,000 soldiers short of what it would take to fully secure the country -- 100,000 soldiers who do not exist, and the requirement will go up as our foreign partners lose their nerve. As Andrew Sullivan's been noting, we've surrendered in Falluja and, frankly, we're not going to be going back. Today (as Spencer Ackerman reports) the CPA conceded that we won't even try to disarm the main militia's (Dawa, SCIRI, two kinds of pershmerga) because that would take the number of non-existent troops we need even higher.

I'm not sure a public poll is the best way to gauge how well we're doing in Iraq, simply because I'm not sure what the validity of the poll is, where it was taken, etc. I mean, did they even go to Kurdistan? As for Falluja, I think time has yet to tell on that situation, there. The alternate strategy being pursued by the DOD--having Iraqis taking care of the situation--might yet work. Ditto for the militias--just because they're not going to be disarmed doesn't mean that a huge civil war is going to break out. It's important to note that at this time, the insurgency is still pretty well limited in scope when you consider the big picture of Iraq.

Might we lose the public perception battle at home, causing us to pull back? Quite possibly. However, if this Administration or a future Kerry Administration can convince Americans to stay the course and keep up the reconstruction, there's hope. Joyner is right: tactical problems can be dealt with--the most important thing is getting the American people to realize that we have to finish the job.

But also bear in mind another imporant lesson of history--unpopular or barely popular wars can still be prosecuted successfully. The Civil War was. The American Revolution was. It's certainly true that in the Information Age, it's a lot harder to prosecute such wars, but that doesn't make it impossible.

Ronald Bailey wonders why anyone still believes anything Paul Ehrlich says.

Environmentalist Paul Ehrlich has proved himself to be a stupendously bad prophet. In 1968 he declared: "The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines--hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." They didn't. Indeed, a "green revolution" nearly tripled the world's food supply. In 1975, he predicted that, by the mid-1980s, "mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity," in which "accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion." Far from it. Between 1975 and 2000 the World Bank's commodity price index for minerals and metals fell by nearly 50%. In other words, we abound in "key minerals." Naturally, Mr. Ehrlich has won a MacArthur Foundation genius award--and a Heinz Award for the environment. (Yes, that Heinz: Teresa Heinz Kerry is chairman of the award's sponsoring philanthropy.)

So why pay him any notice? Because he is a reverse Cassandra. In "The Illiad," the prophetess Cassandra makes true predictions and no one believes her; Mr. Ehrlich makes false predictions and they are widely believed. The gloomier he is and the faultier he proves to be as a prophet, the more honored he becomes, even in his own country.

And why is that? Because people won't let facts get in the way of their cherished beliefs, that's why. That's why Christian evangelists who predict the end of the world and miss the date will still get money from their flocks. That's why psychics and mediums get TV contracts, even though they're obvious frauds. Because Ehrlich tells the Greenies what they want to hear -- that is, that the big bad corporations are going to ruin the world -- he'll still be listened to. People don't let facts get in the way of their cherished beliefs. End of story.

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."
-- 1 Corinthians 13:11

"Foreign policy experts now say this Iraq prison abuse scandal could be a real setback in relations between America and the Arab countries in the Middle East. And things were going so well."
-- Jay Leno

The Iraqi governing council is flexing its sovereignty.

Iraq's leaders, flexing muscles as the United States prepares to cede sovereignty, are sending a delegation to the United Nations to demand control of their oil wealth and an end to reparations it pays for Saddam Hussein's wars.

Deputy Foreign Minister Hamid Bayati told Reuters Tuesday that the embryonic government in Baghdad would demand a say this week in a new U.N. resolution on the country's affairs.

Good for them.

Yesterday, over 1,000 couples sought marriage licenses in Massachusetts on the first day they were allowed to wed. No doubt this will lead to the instant destruction of the institution of marriage.

In related news, ABC will be picking up a reality show called Wife Swap, in which two wives will switch places for a few days. Which is okay, y'know, because heterosexual marriage is sanctified, despite divorce, cheating and The Bachelor. Well, it was sanctified, anyway, until those homosexuals got the right to marry. Now it's armageddon! God himself is going to strike us all down!

Or, you know, not.

Well, now that it's confirmed that two chemical artillery shells, one with sarin and one with mustard gas, have been found--and both used by the Iraqi insurgents, I have to say that I'm more and more nervous. Ever since last May, the big story of post-war Iraq has been that when the Iraq Survey Group visited sites that, according to the CIA, had WMD, those sites were found to have been cleaned out and looted by parties unknown.

Well, with these two discoveries, we now are faced with the possibility that some of Saddam's chemical and biological weapons are in the hands of Iraqi insurgents. Right now we're benefiting because they apparently didn't even know they had them. But no doubt they'll get the news eventually. It's well known that Zarqawi, among others, has experience with the production and use of chemical weapons. How long, I wonder, before some of Saddam's old weapons are made effective again?

And to the naysayers who say that chemical weapons aren't all that dangerous, I say look to history. In World War I, mustard gas was used to devastating effect. And Saddam himself used sarin in 1988 to kill over 5,000 people in the village of Halabja.

"Obsession about the details of the current news cycle is the best way to ensure that the future smacks you on the back of the head hard some day. Live micro, but think macro. Inhabit the day, but apprehend the week, the month, the year, and beyond."
-- James Lileks

"It really gets me when the critics say I haven't done enough for the economy. I mean, look what I've done for the book publishing industry. You've heard some of the titles. 'Big Lies,' 'The Lies of George W. Bush,' 'The Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.' I'd like to tell you I've read each of these books, but that'd be a lie."
-- President George W. Bush

Well, after a day of back-wrenching lifting and carrying, Amanda and I moved into our new house yesterday. We are renting it, but just going from a crappy apartment complex to somewhere nice, with a garage and basement and landlord who actually cares what it looks like is awesome. We'll be here for a couple of years, and it's a great place.

Unfortunately, the guy who installed our digital cable yesterday drilled through an electric line, so I have to stop writing now so the electrician can make sure we aren't going to die and resurrect the fried circuit in our house. More later, with pictures hopefully!

This seems like a very strange case.

Greenpeace, charged with the obscure crime of "sailor mongering" that was last prosecuted 114 years ago, goes on trial on Monday in the first U.S. criminal prosecution of an advocacy group for civil disobedience.

The environmental group is accused of sailor mongering because it boarded a freighter in April 2002 that was carrying illegally felled Amazon mahogany to Miami. It says the prosecution is revenge for its criticism of the environmental policies of President Bush, whom it calls the "Toxic Texan."

Sailor mongering was rife in the 19th century when brothels sent prostitutes laden with booze onto ships as they made their way to harbor. The idea was to get the sailors so drunk they could be whisked to shore and held in bondage, and a law was passed against it in 1872. It has only been used in a court of law twice, the last time in 1890.

It doesn't seem like what Greenpeace did fits the bill here, or that even the group as a whole should be charged. But then, it's always pretty strange when laws that haven't been invoked in over a century are being used as the basis for a criminal charge.

Now this is comedy.

7. Carcharodontosaurus

6. "Oh, I see: it's okay to liberate Iraqis, but try liberating a few American nipples and all of sudden you've committed a crime...?"

Read 'em all!

Wizbang has a lot of goods on the Berg/al-Qaeda stuff. But, just to make things weirder, he also links to this article which may hint at a completely different guy altogether.

Berg's parents and brother and sisters are liberals and anti-Bush and antiwar in equal measure, according to friends and the bumper stickers on their cars. Nick was not. He believed in President Bush and the liberation of Iraq. He went out to play football with Lorenz and another friend last December. It was a balmy day and, as always, they talked about everything. Toward the end, Berg spoke of going to Iraq, where he would climb and fix communications towers -- and put American flags on top. He wanted to make some money, and he wanted to be part of building something good.

Read the whole profile. It paints the picture of a different guy than someone involved in AQ. Or does it? Who the hell was this guy? What was he doing in Iraq? What, if any, connection did he have with terrorists?

"The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive is when we recognize that we ought to control our thoughts."
-- Charles Darwin

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Authorities in Baghdad denied that Berg, 26, was held in U.S. custody before he disappeared in early April, despite claims to the contrary by his family. The authorities said he had been held by Iraqi police for about two weeks and questioned by FBI agents three times.

In Baghdad, U.S. spokesmen Dan Senor said that "to my knowledge" Berg was not affiliated with any U.S. or coalition organization, nor was he ever in U.S. custody.

Iraqi police arrested Berg in Mosul on March 24 because local authorities believed he may have been involved in "suspicious activities," Senor said. He refused to elaborate, except to confirm that the Americans were aware Berg was in custody.

The article doesn't elaborate on what these "suspicious activities" were, but might they have had some connection with this?

U.S. officials say the FBI questioned Berg in 2002 after a computer password Berg used in college turned up in the possession of Zaccarias Moussaoui, the al Qaeda operative arrested shortly before 9/11 for his suspicious activity at a flight school in Minnesota.

The bureau had already dismissed the connection between Berg and Moussaoui as nothing more than a college student who had been careless about protecting his password.

But in the wake of Berg's gruesome murder, it becomes a stranger than fiction coincidence -- an American who inadvertently gave away his computer password to one notorious al Qaeda operative is later murdered by another notorious al Qaeda operative.

Moreover, it appears that Berg actually refused a chance to leave Iraq.

Shortly before Berg's disappearance, he was warned by the FBI that Iraq was too volatile a place for unprotected American civilians and that he could be harmed, a senior FBI official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Wednesday.

Officials said the U.S. government warned Berg to leave Iraq, and offered him a flight out of the country, a month before his grisly death.

On April 10, four days after Berg was released from an Iraqi prison, an American diplomat offered to put him on a flight to Jordan, State Department spokeswoman Kelly Shannon said.

James Joyner has more. I don't know what to make of all this. It's just too bizarre. Was Berg somehow connected to al-Qaeda? What, exactly, was he doing in Iraq anyway? Was he complicit, somehow, in his own death? All of these questions are, right now anyway, unanswered. More as the story breaks...

Oliver wonders how long it will take for the right to call Michael Berg 'evil' for his comments about his son "dying for Bush's sins." Personally, I wonder how long it'll take the cuckoo left to say that since Berg's family were anti-war activists, the Administration deliberately let him get killed.

Both positions are, of course, nonsense. I deeply sympathize with the loss that Berg's family is feeling right now. I certainly don't agree with Michael Berg's comments--al-Qaeda fanatics, not Bush or Rumsfeld, killed his son. However, people also say outrageous things during the grieving process, and it may well be that he retracts those comments later.

Or he may not. I don't know. But either way, his comments nor his son's death should be used as political fodder to feed the campaign cycle. That's my opinion, anyway.

This would be funny if it weren't so sad.

When a federal judge ruled two weeks ago that the American Civil Liberties Union could finally reveal the existence of a lawsuit challenging the USA Patriot Act, the group issued a news release.

But the next day, according to new documents released yesterday, the ACLU was forced to remove two paragraphs from the release posted on its Web site, after the Justice Department complained that the group had violated court secrecy rules. . .

. . . The dispute set off a furious round of court filings in a case that serves as both a challenge to, and an illustration of, the far-reaching power of the Patriot Act. Approved by Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the law gives the government greater latitude and secrecy in counterterrorism investigations and includes a provision allowing the FBI to secretly demand customer records from Internet providers and other businesses without a court order.

The ACLU first filed its lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of such demands, known as national security letters, on April 6, but the secrecy rules of the Patriot Act required the challenge to be filed under seal. A ruling April 28 allowed the release of a heavily censored version of the complaint, but the ACLU is still forbidden from revealing many details of the case, including the identity of another plaintiff who has joined in the lawsuit. The law forbids targets of national security letters to disclose that they have received one.

This whole aspect of the PATRIOT Act is ridiculous. Government processes, particularly lawsuits challenging the lawfulness of a statute, should be open and transparent. The fact that the PATRIOT Act itself makes challenges to its validity a secret is testament to the fact that, revealed in the light of day, the PATRIOT Act is not good policy.

That is, of course, unless you want to help end the scourge of online casinos!

"Knowledge is just opinion that you trust enough to act upon."
-- Orson Scott Card

Now this is what I call good news.

A group of libertarian-minded Republicans in Congress is blocking President Bush’s effort to strengthen domestic counterterrorism laws and reauthorize the USA Patriot Act, which the president has made one of his top domestic priorities this year.

As a result of this opposition, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was forced last week to cancel panel consideration of legislation that would have given law-enforcement officials more tools to pursue suspected terrorists.

Good for them.

"I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if i don't remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world is still there."
-- Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce) in Memento

Laurie Mylroie and Edward Epstein have some interesting new information regarding Mohammed Atta's visit to Prague before 9/11.

Atta, a long-time student at Germany’s Hamburg-Harburg Technical University, met with al-Ani on April 8, 2001. Indeed, when Atta earlier applied for a visa to visit the Czech Republic, he identified himself as a “Hamburg student.” The discovery of the notation in al-Ani’s appointment calendar about a meeting with a “Hamburg student” provides critical corroboration of the Czech claim.

Epstein also explains how Atta could have traveled to Prague at that time without the Czechs having a record of such a trip. Spanish intelligence has found evidence that two Algerians provided Atta a false passport.

Mylroie's article has a lot of overheated rhetoric in it in later portions, but the stuff regarding Atta seems to be solid.

Michele has some thoughts on Abu Ghraib that are well worth the time to peruse.

I don't understand the mind set of people who put the needs and wants of their own political agenda above that of country. Your first debt is to your country. The country that gives you freedom, the country that lets you say what you want, when you want, the country that allows you to break into a Senate hearing and shout down the Secretary of Defense and you live to tell about it, the country where you live, work, play and protest - that country deserves your respect if for no other reason than the rights you have to not respect it. The right thing to do right now is obvious.

The wrong to to do is this: give the enemy ammunition. By making this a partisan story - and I'm talking to both the Rushes and the Ralls out there - you are doing a great disservice to the country that harbors you. By making this war about nothing but Abu Ghraib, all day, all night - and I'm talking to both the Reuters and Fox people and everyone in between - you are doing a great disservice to the great many soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq who want nothing more than to give freedom to an oppressed people.

Make no mistake, our nation is in a crisis right now. Our standing with the Arab community and, within that, our standing with radical, jihad crazed Muslims is at stake. We need to find some common ground or we will fail in this crisis. Failure means more terrorism, more death. Failure means a halt to the push for world peace. Failure in this crisis, right here, right now, does not bode well for our future.

Read the whole thing. Certainly, the proper response to this is the criminal investigation of all who are responsible. More to the point, there should be a top-down investigation of what's right and what's wrong with the treatment of prisoners in Iraq. For months now, there have been reports of innocent people being detained. Hopefully this will expedite the process of getting those men and women back to their families.

Who should be held accountable? Well, the persons immediately responsible, to be sure. What about Rumsfeld? Well, I don't think he should be fired, but I think a good, hard look at the situation would cause a man of conscience to resign. It's very clear to me that Rumsfeld did not take this situation seriously, even while a criminal investigation was going on. But I think that the real culprit here is John Ashcroft. Ashcroft picked the man who ran the prison at Abu Ghraib, knowing that he was under investigation for abuses in a prison that he ran.

This situation should also force us to take a look at Gitmo--at men being held without the ability to appeal their detention. It may well be that most of these men are guilty. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if this was the case. But the fact remains that many of the persons held there have already been released for being wrongly held. There should be a much more transparent process in determining the fate of these men.

But one thing that there is no doubt about is that this was the fault of those military personnel directly involved. But that doesn't mean the fault is completely theirs. The fault also lies with the superiors who didn't provide them with proper training, and those who allowed the place to be run by a man already under suspicion of prison abuse.

Some of you are probably thinking: "why did they need 'proper training' to know that what they did was wrong? Surely it's obvious!" Well, it is and it isn't. It's certaintly within the realm of possibility that these soliders were, put baldly, sadistic bastards. But it's also within the realm of possibility that the situation is more complicated than that. As the Stanford Prison Experiment and other psychological experiments have show, people have a tendency to become much more cruel and nasty in situations where they are placed in positions of power and authority over others on the level of a prison guard. Without the proper training necessary to overcome this psychological tendency, the type of abuse seen here and at other prisons around the world is virtually inevitable. Now, this of course does not excuse the actions of the prisoners who abused Iraqi prisoners, but it does put the negligence of the DOJ and the DOD in a greater light. It is well known and documented that without the right training, abuse like this occurs. It should have been foreseen and prepared for. But it wasn't.

One final thought, though, on the situation in Iraq as a whole. It is interesting to me to see some people who supported the war suddenly stop and wonder whether the whole thing was worth it. Now, I certainly approve of self-examinatino, but I have to wonder--what did you expect? I supported this war with my eyes open. I expected insurgency, I expected a tough battle, and I didn't expect to have the love of the Iraqi people. Now, certainly it would have been nice if those things didn't come to pass, but here we are. War is a nasty business. Certainly there are atrocities committed by American soldiers. There have been in every war. Hell, American soliders were hanged for war crimes after World War II by the Allies. But the question is, will this war make things, in the long term, better than they would be if we hadn't gone to war? That, of course, remains to be seen. However, I believed and continue to believe that the situation as it existed in the Middle East was untenable and something had to change. The war in Iraq seemed to me to be the best solution. It may be that I'm wrong--but tough times occuring just a little over a year after the start of the war aren't going to change my mind. It will be five, ten years before the wisdom of the war and the subsequent reconstruction becomes apparent--perhaps even longer.

It took several years after World War II to turn Germany and Japan into functioning democracies under less guerilla resistance than we're seeing in Iraq (although we did see such resistance). But something to keep in mind is that we didn't give up on the battle against Hitler after Kesserine. The Union didn't up and quit after the first battle of Bull Run. We didn't give up our independence when Washington, D.C. burned. Washington didn't give up when his soldiers were in rags and despair at Valley Forge. What we're experiencing in Iraq isn't on the scale of any of those losses--so why are people ready to call it quits?

This is great news from my home state.

A proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage was pronounced "dead" Tuesday by Kansas House Speaker Doug Mays after the lower chamber failed to muster the two-thirds approval needed to put the measure on a statewide ballot.

The Senate had revived the controversial proposal Saturday, and supporters of the amendment were stunned that the House reversed its earlier vote in March advancing the ban.

Never in a million years did I think this would happen. Yes, the measure got the majority vote--but not enough to pass. Here's one interesting reason why:

Rep. Ray Cox, R-Bonner Springs, was one of 10 lawmakers who switched their votes to help defeat the amendment.

Asked why, Cox showed a copy of an editorial cartoon that showed anti-gay minister Fred Phelps of Topeka as captain of a ship called the Kansas Constitution.

"That's why. I don't want Fred Phelps in the Kansas Constitution," he said.

I don't blame him. I'm ashamed to admit I come from the same state as the man. And here's another comment from a legislator that made me chuckle.

Also troubling, [Rep. Scroggins-Waite] said, had been how some legislators used the Bible to condemn homosexuality.

"I taught Sunday school for seven years. I know what's in the Bible," Scoggins-Waite said. "If that's the way we want to go, then I'm afraid a lot of widows are going to have to marry their brothers-in-law, because that's what it says in the Bible."

Heh.

I am happy to report (and my student loan creditors are relieved to hear) that I have accepted an offer to work as a patent attorney after I graduate from law school later this month! Talk about a weight off my chest!

Blogging's going to be sporadic over the next few weeks as a finish up finals, move to new digs, and get settled in the new job. But keep dropping by--there will be blogging. Just in strange, undeteremined increments.

"Teresa Heinz, the wife of Senator John Kerry, is on the cover of 'Newsweek' magazine this week. In fact John Kerry said he first noticed her when she was on the cover of another magazine, 'Fortune'."
-- Jay Leno

"When you say that you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."
-- Otto von Bismarck

If I ran the Bush campaign, and I were a sleazy, negative ad type, I think I would definitely be making more of John Kerry's war record. Particularly, I would have a commercial that went along these lines:

Simply put, take Kerry completely at his word with what he said after the war. That is, take Kerry at his word that he, personally, witnessed and participated in war crimes. Show clips of him admitting this. Use quotes. Then fade to black and display only these words:

"John Kerry. Confessed war criminal."

And that's it.

Now you force Kerry into an unfortunate position, don't you? He either has to back up what he said--in other words, again admit that he committed wartime atrocities--or come out and say that he lied. In which case, now he's stuck saying that he falsely accused American soliders of committing war crimes.

Am I saying that's right or even really fair? Eh, probably not. But it's probably what I'd do if I were in charge of the campaign. Of course, I also have a deep and abiding loathing of John Kerry that is much stronger than my distaste of Bush, and I freely admit that. To use Transmetropolitan as my obscure comic book reference of the day, I consider Bush "the Beast" and John Kerry "the Smiler."

"When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality."
-- Thomas Jefferson

Priceless.

"Sherlock Holmes's quick eye took in my occupation, and he shook his head with a smile as he noticed my questioning glances. 'Beyond the obvious facts that he has at no time done manual labor, that he takes drink, that he is a West African-born diplomat of some stature, that he has been bribed by a ruthless and since deposed dictator, and that he has done a considerable amount of lying lately, I can deduce nothing else.'

"Mr. Kofi Annan started up in his chair, with his forefinger upon the paper, but his eyes upon my companion.

Read the whole thing.

Concerned about the increasing level of rancor in political discussions today, Frank J has come up with a handy list of do's and don't's in having political arguments.

DO agree to disagree when reaching a stopping point.
DON'T declare and intifada and blow yourself and the other person up so you can get 72 virgins. You both lose if you do that, and you should focus on finding one nice girl (or guy) in this world.

DO stick to your principles while still considering what the other person says.
DON'T pile drive the other person into a folding table when you find a topic you vehemently disagree on. Though it would be cool, it's just not civil.

DO back up your statement with facts when necessary.
DON'T punch the other person through the chest, pull out his heart, and show it to him before he dies when you feel run into a corner. That's usually a non-sequitur to the debate... unless the debate is whether you can actually pull someone's heart out and show it to him before he dies.

Read all of them, and Frank raises some very important points about etiquette.

This is currently on Drudge:

After 14 years in capital, Judge Souter is a Washington mystery man... Developing...

A feature about Justice Souter? The only nerd on the Supreme Court? I wait with bated breath!

I never have had any desire to see the movie Godsend, seeing as how anyone with even 19th Century level biology would realize how ridiculous the premise was. However, one thing that the movie has produced was one of the funniest one-paragraph criticisms of a movie I've ever read.

If the line of films stretching from Coma to Flatliners to Outbreak and beyond has proven anything, it's that any science-ethics issue can be recycled into a movie. Continuing that tradition, Godsend squeezes the hot topic of human cloning into a don't-look-behind-you thriller that makes The Core look like an episode of Nova. It's a cautionary tale, though it mostly serves as a warning to stay away from future films involving director Nick Hamm and screenwriter Mark Bomback.

Ouch.

This is extremely good news.

Representatives of Iraq's most influential Shiite leaders met here on Tuesday and demanded that Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric, withdraw militia units from the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, stop turning the mosques there into weapons arsenals and return power to Iraqi police and civil defense units that operate under American control.

The Shiite leaders also called, in speeches and in interviews after the meeting, for a rapid return to the American-led negotiations on Iraq's political future. The negotiations have been sidelined for weeks by the upsurge in violence associated with Mr. Sadr's uprising across central and southern Iraq and the simultaneous fighting in Falluja, the Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad.

On Tuesday, the Shiite leaders, including a representative of a Shiite clerical group that has close ties to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, effectively did what the Americans have urged them to do since Mr. Sadr, a 31-year-old firebrand, began his attacks in April: they tied Iraq's future, and that of Shiites in particular, to a renunciation of violence and a return to negotiations.

It's a little disappointing that it took them this long, but I'm glad they did.

"I imagine that one day Ted Rall will get together with Micah Wright and they'll form one of those drawing/writing teams, the kind that gets relegated to the far corner of the comic convention, wedged between the furries and the guy selling warped video tapes of the Star Wars Christmas Special.

I believe in karma."
-- Michele Catalano

Arafat thinks that Israel might be trying to kill him. They're not, of course. I don't think, anyway.

But here's a question--what, exactly, would the negative consequences to Israel be if Israel were to decide to just go ahead and kill Arafat? What, is the world going to hate Israel more? Are they going to see suicide bombings? I mean, in terms of bad things happening to Israel, about the worst that might happen is a global boycott. Even then, I doubt you could get U.N. backing for one with the U.S. on the Security Council.

Now I'm not saying that Israel should necessarily kill Arafat (not that I'd cry if they did)--I'm just asking: what's the down side?

"Puppies! Yay, puppies...!"
-- Jeff Goldstein

Julian Sanchez has a well-written article about the egalitarian proponents of a military draft.

For Rawls, as for so many of the leading lights of liberal thought, the egalitarian impulse had its roots in a deep respect for individual dignity and autonomy. Equality of resources was seen as a means to an end: The equal freedom of individuals to pursue their life plans. Conscription turns this formula on its head, treating individuals as so many action figures to be arranged in pleasingly equal formation. The perverse desire to spare some a hard choice among limited options by leaving a random subset of Americans with no choice at all runs contrary to the best and noblest strains of the liberal tradition. Modern liberals would do well to remember it.

No arguments here. I've also found the newfound clamor for a draft, particularly from the left, to be mighty puzzling. Personally, it seems to me that conscription directly violates the plain language of the 13th Amendment. But going beyond that, volunteer armies are simply better armies than conscripted ones. Really, whether you're looking at it from a moral, legal, or policy perspective, a draft is a bad idea.

I agree with Matthew Yglesias one hundred percent on this point.

Why do I keep hearing people point out that what went on at Abu Ghraib under U.S. command wasn't as bad as what Saddam did? Not that it was as bad, but to even raise the comparison bespeaks a very telling insecurity. Gerhard Schroder doesn't respond to criticisms of his policies by replying: "Look at what Hitler did!" This is moral relativism of a very strange sort. Where have our standards gone off to? There are many, many, many people sitting in jail in the United States for conduct that doesn't even begin to approach Saddam Hussein levels of badness. And yet I don't see George W. Bush commuting peoples' death sentences to the words, "hey, it was just murder, not genocide."

I honestly don't even know what to make of this item complaining about a New York Times article about banning porn movies by simply making it illegal to give or receive payment for sex acts. Ramesh Ponnuru complains about this censorhip proposal because it's not honest.

My own objection is different. I'm open to the idea of censorship for moral purposes, especially at the local level. But that argument has to be made openly, not tap-danced around. And if Knee is interested in regulating pornography because it corrupts morals and undermines character, then his proposal is insufficient.

For the record, I would be opposed to a ban on pornography. But this response, to me, is just strange. "Get rid of porn, sure, but be honest about it!"

Here's some definite good news for the day: California is getting rid of e-voting.

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley ended five months of speculation and announced Friday that he was decertifying all electronic touch-screen voting machines in the state due to security concerns and lack of voter confidence.

He also said that he was passing along evidence to the state's attorney general to bring criminal and civil charges against voting-machine-maker Diebold Election Systems for fraud.

"We will not tolerate deceitful tactics as engaged in by Diebold and we must send a clear and compelling message to the rest of the industry: Don't try to pull a fast one on the voters of California because there will be consequences if you do," he said.

This is excellent news. Hopefully other states will follow suit. There's still a chance that e-voting might still take place in California, but the counties that want it are going to have to meet stringent security requirements. My guess is that most of them won't even bother.

I'm not sure whether to be elated or angered about this news.

Seven more U.S. soldiers have been reprimanded in the alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners, and the U.S. officer who oversaw Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison suggested Monday that more may be involved.

On the orders of Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, six of the soldiers — all officers and noncommissioned officers — have received the most severe level of administrative reprimand in the U.S. military, a military official said on condition of anonymity. A seventh officer was given a more lenient admonishment.

The official said he believed investigations of the officers were complete and they would not face further action or court martial. However, the reprimands could spell the end of their careers.

Another six U.S. military police already are facing criminal charges.

If a 'reprimand' is all they legally can get, then I guess what little justice can be had has been had. However, it seems to me that the participation in the torture of prisoners deserves more than a reprimand--it deserves criminal charges and punishment. But I admit to ignorance of military regulations on this point. Can someone elighten me? What are the consequences of a reprimand like this?

UPDATE: James Joyner has more on this that's worth the read.

If this turns out to happen, I doubt that it will bode well for Kerry.

Hundreds of former commanders and military colleagues of presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry are set to declare in a signed letter that he is "unfit to be commander-in-chief." They will do so at a press conference in Washington on Tuesday.

"What is going to happen on Tuesday is an event that is really historical in dimension," John O'Neill, a Vietnam veteran who served in the Navy as a PCF (Patrol Craft Fast) boat commander, told CNSNews.com . The event, which is expected to draw about 25 of the letter-signers, is being organized by a newly formed group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

"We have 19 of 23 officers who served with [Kerry]. We have every commanding officer he ever had in Vietnam. They all signed a letter that says he is unfit to be commander-in-chief," O'Neill said.

I'll wait and see what the press release actually says tomorrow. But if it pans out, and gets some attention, it's probably going to hurt Kerry's campaign quite a bit. Perhaps I spoke too soon when I said that the release of Kerry's military records was a boon for his campaign.

UPDATE: Just to clarify, I should say that this bodes poorly for Kerry's campaign if it has more to do with his character than just his Vietnam-era protests. If all this open letter or press release or whatever does is rehash the old Kerry stuff, I doubt it'll have much impact at all.

"Eternal vigilance is only part of the price of freedom. The maturity to live with imperfections is another crucial part of the price of freedom."
-- Thomas Sowell