Dutch may ban foreigners from marijuana 'coffee' shops

I'm sensing a major rush in tourism in the near future from the UK and Germany. So which cash strapped country will want to take a chance and offer up the new Amsterdam?

For those seeking high-grade, low-cost marijuana, free from the attentions of "the man", Amsterdam has long been the weekend destination of choice. But all that could be about to change.

A million British tourists visit Amsterdam each year, but a big draw for a considerable number will vanish if the Dutch justice minister goes ahead with plans to ban foreigners from buying cannabis in the country's famous coffee shops.

"Of course tourists are welcome to visit the Netherlands but not only to visit the coffee shops," said the justice minister, Ivo Opstelten. "In the near future, if we work out the processes, the coffee shops will not be accessible to tourists."

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MIT does it again - develops camera that can snap photos around a corner

How do you not love that place?

The prototype uses an ultra-short high-intensity burst of laser light to illuminate a scene.

The device constructs a basic image of its surroundings - including objects hidden around the corner - by collecting the tiny amounts of light that bounce around the scene.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology team believe it has uses in search and rescue and robot vision.

"It's like having x-ray vision without the x-rays," said Professor Ramesh Raskar, head of the Camera Culture group at the MIT Media Lab and one of the team behind the system.

"But we're going around the problem rather than going through it."

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Night Music

Open Thread, the I Am Roma edition.

The Gipsy Kings, Gitano Soy

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Woman files lawsuit against TSA following 2008 public breast exposure incident

How many more stories like this are out there? Earlier this week there was another report of sexual assault by a female traveler. Maybe this Japanese TV spoof of airport airport security isn't that far off from reality. It also raises questions about the security of video/scanner storage, that is supposed to be secure. This particular incident is from 2008, back when the frisks were "less" invasive.

"As the TSA agent was frisking plaintiff, the agent pulled the plaintiff's blouse completely down, exposing plaintiffs' breasts to everyone in the area," the lawsuit said. "As would be expected, plaintiff was extremely embarrassed and humiliated."

The suit also claims that other TSA employees continued to joke and laugh about the incident for an extended period of time. The woman was distraught over the incident and left the screening area so an acquaintance could console her, the suit said.

When the woman re-entered the boarding area, employees once again began joking about the matter, the suit said.

"One male TSA employee expressed to the plaintiff that he wished he would have been there when she came through the first time and that 'he would just have to watch the video,'" the suit said.

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Carville won't apologize for Obama joke

I suspect a lot of Democrats, while still not willing to say something like this publicly, would privately agree. And rather than get upset about it, the White House needs to figure out how to fix the perception, because it's out there, and has been for a while.

From CNN:

"If Hillary gave up one of her balls and gave it to Obama, he'd have two," Carville said at a "Christian Science Monitor" breakfast discussion.

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QANTAS pilots overcame extreme odds during engine blowout

Sounds like a pretty good crew considering the number of problems that they encountered. I vowed to never again fly QANTAS after a really bad experience (old plane in bad shape inside, lousy service) back in the '90s but the new Airbus 380 fleet is well, new. I was aware of the engine problem but hadn't realized that shrapnel also went through the wing, cutting fuel lines and damaging the beam that holds the wing onto the body of the plane. Here's a more detailed report that includes photos of the problem, for those interested.

Experience counts.

Engine pieces sliced electric cables and hydraulic lines in the wing. One of the beams that attaches the wing to the plane was damaged as well. And the wing's two fuel tanks were punctured. The leaking fuel created an imbalance between the left and right sides of the plane, Woodward said.

The electrical problems prevented the pilots from pumping fuel forward from tanks in the tail. The plane became tail heavy, a condition that could have caused the Singapore-to-Sydney jetliner to lose lift, stall and crash.

And then there was that torrent of computer messages, 54 in all, alerting the pilots to system failures or warning of impending failures.

Luckily, two extra pilots, both captains, were aboard the flight on Nov. 4, two of them undergoing evaluation. In all, the crew had more than 100 years of flying experience.

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Sen. Ensign says Americans should be allowed to serve 'regardless of their sexual orientation'

Just posted this at AMERICAblog Gay. We're seeing movement on DADT.

Yesterday, Chris Johnson at the Washington Blade reported that a staffer to Senator John Ensign (R-NV) told constituents that he was inclined to support repeal of DADT.

Now, via Greg Sargent, comes word from the Senator himself, in the form of a letter to constituents:

Another step forward on Don't Ask Don't Tell, ladies and gents.

In a letter to constituents who have inquired about his position on DADT, GOP Senator John Ensign strongly suggests he is leaning towards supporting repeal of the policy, another sign that there may be enough tacit GOP support in the Senate for repeal to get it past a GOP filibuster.

"It is my firm belief that Americans, regardless of their sexual orientation, should be able to fight and risk their lives in defense of this great nation," Ensign writes in the letter, which I've obtained. "As a nation currently engaged in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, the focus of all decisions affecting military readiness, recruiting and retention, and unit cohesion should be to maximize the success of ongoing operations."

Greg notes that this is not a completely done deal. Ensign and his spokesperson both indicated that the Pentagon's DADT study will influence his final decision:

In the letter, Ensign adds the caveat that he's still awaiting a Pentagon report, due out on December 1st, that will gauge the impact of repealing the policy. Asked for comment, Ensign spokesperson Jennifer Cooper reiterated this point: "Senator Ensign is waiting on the report from the Pentagon and the testimony of the military chiefs to see if any changes to this policy can or should be done in a way so as not to harm the readiness or war fighting capabilities of our troops."

But it's already been reported that it's set to find repeal of the policy can be done with minimal and isolated risk.

This feels like momentum.

That Pentagon report takes on added significance by the day. And, we've still got the timing and process hurdles to get over when the Senate reconvenes after Thanksgiving. But, it's way better to be picking up potential supporters at this point, than losing them. Read the rest of this post...

FOX commentators knock Palin's new TV show, thinking they're off camera

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Man who would make the Soviet propagandists proud accuses NPR of being run by 'Nazis'

Remember: Republicans accuse others of being what they already are. From Brian (Goering) Montopoli at CBS News:

Fox News chairman Roger Ailes is characterizing executives at NPR as Nazis.

"They are, of course, Nazis," Ailes told the Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz. "They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don't want any other point of view. They don't even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive."

Putting aside the Nazis comment, the claim that NPR (previously known as National Public Radio) uses government funding to "keep them alive" is questionable at best: Even when indirect funding is included, less than one tenth of NPR's budget comes from taxpayer dollars. It receives no direct federal funding for operations.

The man runs the equivalent of 1980s-era Pravda, and he has the nerve to accuse NPR of being propagandists. This is what today's conservatives do. They go to the extremes, then accuse anyone who isn't them of doing exactly what THEY have already done, and 99% of the time it's not even true. It provides them cover, and tends to make the media search for equivalences - "FOX on the right, NPR on the left."

There is no left-wing news network. FOX is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican party. Read the rest of this post...

It's not a 'new' Democratic group if it's the same old players

My constitutional law professor used to call this "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic."

Every few years, Democrats get the bright idea of throwing a lot of money at a "new" group that is comprised of everyone who ran the "old" groups.  And, surprise, the new group doesn't end up acting that new.  Even new-new groups, like HCAN, ended up being far too "old Europe" once the health care debate got rolling (don't do anything to upset Obama or the Democrats!).

What we need is new groups, new money, and new blood.  Most of all new blood.

Democrats already have people who know how to fight back, and who have a proven record of being able to steal a news cycle and beat the bejeesus out of their opponents.  We're called the Netroots.  Perhaps it's time someone started funding people with a proven record of success, rather than people with a proven record of failure. Read the rest of this post...

TSA protects America by groping a grandmother

Feeling safer now?

“Right out in the middle of everything,” a female airport screener began patting Bitter's body in places she did not expect.

“She touched my private parts,” said Bitter.

Pressed for details, the 67-year-old Rye Beach resident said the airport employee put her hands inside the waistband of her pants, felt around her waist, passed her hands over both her breasts, and rubbed her hands up and down the insides of her legs - “twice in front and twice in back.”

“As it got more invasive, I thought, ‘why am I consenting to this?'” she said. “It was totally humiliating.”

Bitter said after the screener “finished feeling me all over,” she removed a pair of blue latex gloves, rubbed them with “a detecting pad,” put the gloves into a machine and got a reading clearing Bitter for hazardous substances.

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Too-big-to-fail banks to be broken up in Ireland with bailout

In other words, common sense rather than lobbyist pressure is winning the day. It was a enormous mistake for the US (Bush and Obama) to help too-big-to-fail banks become even larger. It's especially bad because the financial reform was so mild and even that is in jeopardy with the GOP taking back the House.

Initial aid talks between Ireland and a joint European/IMF mission centered on ways to reduce the size of Irish banks considered too big and reliant on ECB funding, The Irish Times said on Friday, without citing sources.

European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund officials arrived in Dublin on Thursday and Ireland's central bank chief said he expected Dublin to receive tens of billions of euros in loans.

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Friday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

The President has arrived in Lisbon, Portugul for the NATO Summit. Afghanistan will be a major topic of discussion among the NATO leaders. General Petraeus will also be attending. Today's Washington Post reports that the allied forces will be using battle tanks for the first time in that theater of operation.

The Senate has gone home for Thanksgiving. A lot of the Senators are tired. Plus, they may have to work three whole weeks after Thanksgiving. The prospects for passing the Defense bill with that DADT language are looking a bit brighter, but there are still many hurdles ahead. Timing and process are the critical factors. Things can happen fast in the Senate -- or not at all.

An important election that hasn't been called yet is the race for Attorney General of California. The Democrat, Kamala Harris, won't defend Prop. 8 in the courts. The GOPer, Steve Cooley, will. Cooley was the favorite to win this one, but, as the number of outstanding uncounted ballots continues to dwindle, Harris has the lead by almost 30,000 votes. I'm constantly refreshing this site to get the updated totals.

And, I just realized that two years ago today, I picked up Petey at the Washington Humane Society. He's proven to be a worthy successor to Boomer, who also came to me via the WHS. Read the rest of this post...

Tory adviser apologizes for saying Brits 'had never had it so good during this so called recession'

Ahh, welcome to modern conservatism. I guess the Lord doesn't mingle with too many other Lords who have struggled during the recession. Clueless? Of course! But sheesh, look at the other party and then you realize there's plenty of that going around.

He had also suggested that George Osborne, the chancellor, had deliberately inflated the rhetoric around the spending cuts to protect the pound.

He claimed that in a few years people would look back and wonder what all the fuss was about, and said most of the complaints were coming from those who thought the state had a right to support them. He also described the loss of 100,000 public sector jobs a year as within the margin of error in the context of a jobs market of 30m workers, adding "people will wonder what all the fuss was about".

His remarks were seen as an offensive throwback to Thatcher-era harsh rhetoric, and are bound to lead to Labour calls for his dismissal as enterprise tsar on the grounds he is totally out of touch with the squeeze on living standards almost all voters are experiencing. Cameron had just appointed Lord Young to the post after he had overseen a review of Britain's health and safety rules. The PM has been desperate to portray the cuts as difficult, but necessary, medicineeven if he has on occasion himself pointed out that the cuts will still leave the public sector as a proportion of GDP back at quite recent levels.

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Blogger in Egypt released after four years in prison

He was allegedly beaten while in custody, including two weeks ago. One of the "crimes" that sent him to jail was calling "President" Mubarak a dictator. BBC:

The case of Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman, often known as Kareem Amer, highlighted early government restrictions on political bloggers.

He was the first Egyptian convicted specifically for his writing online.

Human rights groups and opposition figures had campaigned for him to be freed.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), which represented the blogger in court, said he was in bad health and was beaten by security officers in Alexandria before his release on Tuesday.

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Study: Native Americans brought to Iceland 1,000 years ago

Few people still believe Columbus was the first European to visit North America, but this is still an interesting development.

Spain's CSIC scientific research institute said genetic analysis of around 80 people from a total of four families in Iceland showed they possess a type of DNA normally only found in Native Americans or East Asians.

"It was thought at first that (the DNA) came from recently established Asian families in Iceland," CSIC researcher Carles Lalueza-Fox was quoted as saying in a statement by the institute.

"But when family genealogy was studied, it was discovered that the four families were descended from ancestors who lived between 1710 and 1740 from the same region of southern Iceland."

The lineage found, named C1e, is also mitochondrial, which means that the genes were introduced into Iceland by a woman.

"As the island was virtually isolated from the 10th century, the most likely hypothesis is that these genes corresponded to an Amerindian woman who was brought from America by the Vikings around the year 1000," said Lalueza-Fox.

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