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http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-study/102186/the-mega-millions-jackpot-reached-record-high-today-does-winning-the-lottery-m# Discusses how winning the lottery does not make you happier.

I BEG of the powers that be.

Please give me the chance to prove everyone wrong that says that winning the lottery does not make you happier.

I assure you...I will be ecstatic the rest of my days.

from:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-study/102186/the-mega-millions-jackpot-reached-record-high-today-does-winning-the-lottery-m#
Discusses how winning the lottery does not make you happier.

Let's not forget that Democrats gerrymander too. Maryland is the Texas of the Mid-Atlantic when it comes to gerrymandering and quashing dissenting viewpoints.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20203888/ns/us_news-life/t/study-murder-victims-disproportionately-black/

Unfortunately your information is anecdotal. If you live in a mostly white area, it should be no surprise that the crimes are caused by mostly white people. The base murder rate is much higher for blacks then it is whites. It is mostly thought that the reasons for that are socioeconomic, but there is some debate on that

http://www.tnr.com/article/80316/relationship-poverty-crime-rates-economic-conditions

Lott has been debunked a few times. Here's a recent article with a summary explaining the flaws in his reports:

Regarding the Cato Institute's examples of Israel and Switzerland: seems like cherry picking two small, mostly homogenous societies. What about places that are more comparable to the US like Germany or France?

And for your final example: how many guns per person do those seven European countries have and how does that number compare to the US? Our country is flooded with guns. Just about enough for every man, woman, and child.

Anyway, I don't think gun control will ever be implemented in the US in a way to produce any meaningful results. That ship sailed over two hundred years ago. We might as well just get used to the idea of mass shootings occurring on a regular basis with ever increasing body counts.

The initial popular vote tally will make the race look closer on election night than it really is. This is because some Western states, such as Washington and Ohio do a large portion (41%) of their vote by mail, and because the polls close later on the West Coast, which means that popular vote will not be tallied until way after a candidate is projected to win. In 2008, Obama was projected to win when the popular vote count was 50-50 — he ended up with 53.6 percent of the vote, which is an enormous difference. You can read about it here. http://www.tnr.com/blog/electionate/109533/the-popular-vote-nightmare

It should at least be "becoming an epidemic", though as a noun it only refers to disease. Endemic is just wrong as it's the antonym to epidemic. Endemic would be more proper if people shined lasers at planes only in Detroit or something. Why can't they just use "widespread" or something like that?

Well, if you want to go Full Orwell on this, get rid of latin altogether and speak plainly, why not say 'dangerously common'?

(For those of you who have yet to read Orwell's Politics and the English Language, now's your chance. It can -it should- change the way you think and speak.)

The reason we don't see health insurance competition across state lines is the concept of a race to the bottom like the one that happened when credit cards deregulated. There's a reason all of the credit card companies are in South Dakota and Delaware now: those are the places with the weakest consumer protection laws. The same will happen with safeguards on health insurance.

In other words, if your state thinks it makes sense for every woman to have access to birth control on a basic health plan and passes a law to that effect, it'll only govern insurers based in that state. So much for states' rights, eh?

Emerich's stats are questionable to begin with, and even he has admitted that he used the term "disposable income" incorrectly. Source: http://www.tnr.com/article/82962/conservatives-economic-chart-fox-de-rugy

His response to the criticisms? His numbers come from free online paycheck calculators, and his conclusions are backed up by anecdote. Source: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/84160/disputations-welfare-emmerich-singal-de-rugy

Emerich's stats are questionable to begin with, and even he has admitted that he used the term "disposable income" incorrectly. Source: http://www.tnr.com/article/82962/conservatives-economic-chart-fox-de-rugy

His response to the criticisms? His numbers come from free online paycheck calculators, and his conclusions are backed up by anecdote. Source: http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/84160/disputations-welfare-emmerich-singal-de-rugy

Bullshit claim is bullshit:

http://www.tnr.com/article/82962/conservatives-economic-chart-fox-de-rugy

Indeed, the real story here isn’t necessarily Emmerich’s fuzzy math; as important is the fact that the chart was posted again and again with so little discussion of its accuracy. If those who pushed the chart along in its Internet journey cared about its content and the methodology, rather than its underlying political message, they could have done a little Googling. It wouldn’t have taken much to crack the surface, get below the presumption that poor people are coddled by the government, and find the beginning of a long list of problems with Emmerich’s work. But, perhaps because of ideological bent or maybe due to simple laziness, people decided that no fact-checking was required.

A high deductible plan is no more of a 'gamble' than a low deductible plan.

I think maybe high deductible plan is a misnomer. The cheapest "high deductible" plans are actually so cheap, not because of the deductible limit, but because they have very low lifetime limits on claims paid and other sneaky limitations which can leave the insured out to dry and in bankruptcy court in a heartbeat.

An an article on the ACA talks about high deductible plans allowed by the act...

"The minimal, or bronze, insurance option allows out-of-pocket spending of up to $12,500 for a family of four. The actuarial value is 60 percent, which means, very roughly, that the plan only covers about 60 percent of the average person's medical bills."

To me the that seems pretty flexible when it comes to high deductible plans. Where it is not so flexible is things like lifetime limits on claims paid, which I would guess are the cause of many/most medical bankruptcies.

Governments last year gave $43 billion to $46 billion of support to renewable energy through tax credits, guaranteed electricity prices known as feed-in tariffs and alternative energy credits, the London-based research group said today in a statement. That compares with the $557 billion that the International Energy Agency last month said was spent to subsidize fossil fuels in 2008.

Source.

You were saying?

Also see this post on Yfrog's insecure "random" email address generation that likely played a role in the hack:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/page/248630_yfrog_secret_email_addresses_a

Yeah, it was hacked.

Which must be why Weiner is so adamant about getting the FBI involved.

Oh, wait. He's not, now is he?

Yeah, I know. He doesn't want to "waste taxpayer money" on a "prank". Or maybe he just doesn't want to caught making false statements to police, because he had no qualms about wasting taxpayer money on getting police to toss a reporter out:

Weiner’s Office Calls The Police After CBS 2s Marcia Kramer Asks For An Interview

Congressman Anthony Weiner said Thursday he’s finished talking about the lewd photo sent from his Twitter account.

But he still wouldn’t say whether he’s the one in the picture.

So CBS 2 political reporter Marcia Kramer decided to go to his office on Capitol Hill to try to get you some answers.

You’ll never believe what happened.

Kramer tried to get an interview with the six-term New York Democrat and as a result had the cops called on her.

Yeah, but his account was HACKED!!!!

Which MUST be why Weiner won't deny that's his weiner in the photo, right?

Which MUST be why Weiner won't get the FBI involved in tracking down the hacker, right?

And Weiner has a history of being a, umm, dick to women. Here's what the ranting founding member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Jonathan Chait wrote today for Rush Limbaugh's favorite online site, The New Republic (oh, that's "sarcasm", by the way. Chait and TNR are hardly members of any VRWC or favorite of Rush Limbaugh):

Anthony Weiner's Skeeziness

The best starting point for understanding the bizarre controversy surrounding Anthony Weiner is this great 2001 Vanity Fair story about the culture of interns and exploitative sex on Capitol Hill:

        The women are heckled as they enter. “Tell us your name and where you are from,” says one of the men. As if on a game show the women comply, one by one. When Caroline says she is an intern, the largest of the group, a white-haired man with a big belly and big laugh, roars, “We’re afraid of interns.” He throws his knife at a lean man named Mike, at the other end of the table. Mike is unamused. He threatens to throw it back. Another guy, rotund and jolly-faced, stands up and does an impression of Marlon Brando doing Don Corleone. The others think it’s hysterical.

        Diana whispers that there is no way they can be congressmen. She figures they are businessmen. She wonders how she is going to get out.

        They are congressmen—although at first they pretend not to be. One, the youngest, with a tiny goatee, introduces himself as Anthony, an auto-parts salesman. The others call him “the Jewish kid” and make fun of his beard. Their real names and states are as follows: the auto-parts salesman is Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.); the lean Mike is Michael Capuano (D-Mass.); the jolly guy who imitated Brando is John Larson (D-Conn.); the man who was worried about interns is Robert Brady (D-Pa.).

Nice guy.

I won't insult your intelligence by asking you if you REALLY believe Weiner's account was hacked.

That's pretty much the conclusion I've reached. By cost, solar (20-45 cents per kWh) is currently nonviable except for places with extraordinarily high electricity costs (e.g. the more remote islands of Hawaii) or extraordinarily strong and consistent sunshine (e.g. the desert Southwest U.S.). Wind is getting there, down to about 7-12 cents per kWh wholesale, compared to 3-5 cents for coal.

But the biggest problem I think people are overlooking for wind is the sheer scale of the wind farm you need to replace a decent-sized power plant. Roscoe Wind Farm is the largest wind farm in the U.S., with 781.5 MW peak capacity, 627 turbines, covering 400 km^2. Note however that that's peak capacity - how much electricity the farm generates under ideal conditions if each turbine is running at maximum power and efficiency. In practice, the average power generation from land-based wind farms has been about 20%-25% of peak. Be generous and go with the high 25% capacity factor. So 627 turbines and 400 km^2 gives you 195.4 MW of power on average.

A single AP1000 nuclear reactor generates 1154 MW. Figure maintenance and other reasons will drop that to about 90% capacity factor, or about 1000 MW. A plant will typically have at least two so one can remain operational while the other is shut down, so 2000 MW for the plant. How big would the wind farm need to be to replace that?

2000 / 195.4 = 10.3x bigger. To replace two AP1000 reactors will require nearly 6500 turbines covering over 4000 km^2. Each turbine requires 100-200 tons of steel, so that's around a million tons of steel. I don't even want to think about the transmission lines needed to string them all together. And wind turbines cost about $1.2 - $2.6 million per MW of peak capacity. Since this hypothetical wind farm has ~8000 MW of peak capacity, that's $9.6 - $20.8 billion in construction costs. The AP1000 reactors are estimated to have a total construction cost of about $4-$5 billion each. So $10 billion for two of them would actually line up with the low end of an equivalent wind farm's construction costs.

4000 km^2 is about 1% the land area of California. In 2010 California generated about 200 TWh of electricity, or an average of 22 GW. So even if you assumed lots of areas are as wind-productive as Roscoe Wind Farm, and that we developed some technology which could store 100% of generated electricity for later use, California would need to cover 11% of its land area with wind turbines to replace its current electricity generation with wind. That's a bit far-fetched to say the least.

Wind and to a lesser extent solar are not the panacea a lot of people seem to think they are. They're going to primarily be supplemental power generation technologies for a long, long time. My hopes had been on deep well geothermal, but that's run into significant problems of its own.

What isn't being widely reported (although you can read about it here) is that the computer had an advantage in ringing in that the human players didn't. Namely, unambiguous knowledge of when it is safe to ring in without risking a 1/4 second penalty. In a fair competition, the computer would have had to guess when Alex was "done" reading the question as well.

however wikileaks seems to not agree

because wikileaks didn't try and retract names & information that could be used to identify a person and put them at risk?

I wrote "there are certainly cases where discretion is called for"; such cases are not necessarily only those where an individual is put immediately at risk (e.g., spy names).

"Discretion" is a wider term, and for instance might include "not screwing up difficult negotiations with country X by mentioning embarrassing (but irrelevant) facts about their leader". Wikileaks may try to redact certain obviously dangerous information but it appears that they don't care about discretion, or less immediately obvious harm that they might cause. [Ok, to be fair, they may indeed care, but their actions don't seem to support that...]

Unfortunately, perhaps, discretion is important in diplomacy, and thus is a part of solving international conflicts peacefully. As Rubin's essay notes, by damaging diplomatic efforts, wikileaks may actually be working against the underlying interests of many of their supporters...

I'm still processing this but I think Rubin makes some good points here.

Rubin is quite wrong when he suggests that Israel wants peace with the Palestinians.

Either he hasn't read the cables, or he's spreading misinformation (lying).

I'm still processing this but I think Rubin makes some good points here.

Interesting article, while diplomacy may be harder as the article suggest perhaps it is not such a lofty goal to think diplomacy involving nations can not be done with transparency. When honesty becomes difficult we often have to face up to even more difficult situations.

I'm still processing this but I think Rubin makes some good points here.

This guy seems to have connected the dots.

We. Need. To Stop. Spending.

Good article: Smart Debt and Stupid Debt.

Scientists, as you say, are self-interested jerks. In medicine, studies which contradict drug-company studies tend to get buried.

So what you are saying is that studies funded by drug companies can find results that the drug companies do not approve of. Doesn't that mean that the Science behind the studies is sound and objective, while the larger corporate body is what perverts the results? How does that contribute to your statement that scientists are self-interested jerks?

In schools in the '70s and '80s, we were teaching kids that the Earth was headed for an oncoming ice age.

Since you bring up the topic of kids being taught about an oncoming ice age, you might be interested to read a modern interview with the scientist whose work was the basis of the media-led "global cooling" campaign of that time period: Q&A: Dr. Stephen Schneider - One of the world's leading climatologists discusses the line between science and activism .

A simple mistake which was later corrected, but now gets to appear in every anti-climate-change debate as proof that all climate scientists are dumb and shouldn't be trusted.

Seconded. He was a Republican long before proclaiming himself Libertarian. Republican and all that is implied by that...

http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/angry-white-man?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca

Now only if something could slow down the over-fishing done by the rest of the world. This includes the US, of which I'm a citizen.

I agree.

Interesting related article:
http://www.tnr.com/article/environment-energy/aquacalypse-now

I want to know on what planet Keynes is considered a "Lysenko". Not the same planet that noted Chicago school economist and judge, Richard Posner, lives on: http://www.tnr.com/article/how-i-became-keynesian . Nor the planet that Milton Friedman lives on, the man who said that, in a certain sense, "we are all Keynesians now." Certain elements of Keynes's theory are the standard ways of approaching economics, used by everyone. That you think otherwise suggests you are profoundly profoundly profoundly ignorant of economics.

Though, I suppose, if you want to be an anti-Keynesian, I suppose you would accept Friedman's opinion that monetary contraction was the main cause of the recession, a point upon which most economists currently agree. What's that? You think HOOVER caused the recession? Oh, that's right, you know nothing about economics, but you insist on talking about anyway. For a second I forgot about that...

Finally, you claim that Hoover, of all people, was the source of depression-causing progressivism. This claim is too ridiculous to be believed. It's like blaming Democrats for the expansionary federal budget during 2000-2006. They didn't do anything! They were never given the chance!

It sickens me the ass-talking ignorance that passes for economic knowledge on Slashdot. It's not that people like you don't bother to do the research, but rather there is this pervasive sense of anti-government pseudo-Austiran countercultural conspiratorism that makes enema-bags like you think you are too good for economic knowledge. "Keynes is just another Lysenko!" If you had taken any intro to econ course, or read any intro to econ books, ever, you would not think this. Shut up.

All we really need is good disclosure laws.

Against Transparency, an article by Lawrence Lessig indicates why increased transparency is probably not enough to make a difference on it's own.

No because our fool politicians granted Comcast a monopoly.

Because our laws are written by corporate interests, not the people.

...which is the inevitable result of "private funding of campaigns"

See Change Congress and Lectures by Lawrence Lessig on Institutional Corruption for more information. Hour Version Half-Hour Version

Against Transparency an article by Lawrence Lessig indicates why increased transparency is probably not enough to make a difference on it's own. A number of people have responded to Lessig's article. Someone was kind enough to provide a walkthrough of the article too.

...to really see it in action. The state legislature approval rating was approaching single digits last I heard.

As a Californian, I saw that's that's the government we deserve. We did it ourselves. We decided through an initiative to require a 2/3 vote to pass ANY budget, then in 1978 with Prop 13, we required property tax increases to need a 2/3 vote, we passed inititives to require any tax increase to require a 2/3 vote, but no such requirement to lower taxes. We pass initiatives that lock budgetary allocations, thereby removing the ability of the legislature to make sensible budgets. We are children. We want everything, but never want to pay for anything. We have a radicalized GOP that opposes any revenue increases, but then only wants budget cuts to tax collection enforcement and the poor, but not for their groups. Oh did I mention that the GOP only has 35% of seats in legislature? It's the tyranny of the minority.

God we need a constitutional convention.
Eliminate the 2/3 rules!
Eliminate the initiatives!

Grow the fuck up California!

As this article points out (with a nice graph), the market has recovered from its initial missteps. Carbon emissions have been trending down (even before the mega-recession began), and Europe is on track to meet the Kyoto requirements (8+% below 1990 levels) by 2011. The major problems had to do with a lack of data about how much carbon the European countries were emitting. Therefore the cap was set too high. There have been several adjustments since then, and the results have become much better.

One hopes that we'll be able to avoid this, since we have much better emissions data. To my mind, the most important finding of the post above is that corporations are finding massive improvements in efficiency, since the cap has essentially set a price on emitting carbon. This, plus technological development, is going to make the problem a lot less scary than conservative estimates would have you believe.

(Now there are various caveats. The really big one being the ability of nations to "outsource" their emissions by importing from nations with no such caps. But I don't think this is an argument for removing the caps --- rather, we should be finding ways to integrate the trading schemes of those nations with caps, and recover some of the carbon cost on imports from the other nations.)

One can only hope that in the future [Reeves] will devote himself to playing androids, less-self-aware species of undead, stylish pieces of contemporary furniture, and other roles that do not require the exhibition of any recognizably human traits.

Reeves is a horrible actor and it's so disappointing that producers keep giving him roles. I guess it's done because the movie will sell more tickets, as opposed to using a lesser-known actor who might actually be able to act.

Despite what you may have heard on your favorite talk radio outlet, there has been no "recent push for the reinstitution of the Fairness Doctrine".

Today, the doctrine has almost no support from media-reform advocates. According to Mark Lloyd, co-author of the CAP report, "I don't think there's any movement [to restore the fairness doctrine] at all. ... We don't support it. " Craig Aaron of the media-reform group FreePress says, "[I]n reality, the fairness doctrine as it existed is never ever coming back."

Responses from the offices of most of the Democrats who have been pegged as fairness-doctrine proponents--Schumer, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, and others--have ranged from a firm denial that the issue is a priority at all to disbelief at finding themselves at the center of a manufactured controversy. "Somebody plucked this out of the clear blue sky," says the press secretary for New Mexico Senator Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat who was questioned about the issue by a conservative radio-show host a few weeks ago. "This is a completely made- up issue."

The only people fulminating about the Fairness Doctrine are right-wing talk radio blowhards, and that's because they need something to fulminate about, even if that something doesn't really exist.

That $75/hour number is incorrect, for a variety of reasons outlined in the linked article.

The Audacity of Data

I rewatched it, and it still doesn't sound like an intentional dig at the town's name. Watch his face, he doesn't crack a little smirk like McCain does whenever he's getting a meaningless dig in on Obama.

Maybe it was intentional. It would be out of character with how he's conducted his campaign to date if it was.

But let's assume that it was (which I am not at all convinced of), even in that case, here you have Obama making one very tiny dig, then going on to support his point with figures and discussion. McCain's campaign - and I have to compare McCain more than Palin since her presence has been so far so short-lived and the GOP is deciding to keep her sequestered away from the press to avoid any gaffes - has made silly and absurd dig after silly and absurd dig at Obama's campaign.

I don't think the fact that he's been briefed on Palin makes his statement a prepared one. I also don't suspect Anderson Cooper send the questions to Obama in advance. Heck, if it was a prepared statement as you suggest, why would he have had the um's and uh's in there (which of course every GOP die hard dutifully transcribes).

If you want to call Obama out on something like that, you have to call McCain out on the hundreds of petty, meaningless digs he gets in against Obama on a regular basis. Things which have nothing to do with issues, policy, or suitability to be president (such as every time they quote Obama, they transcribe the "uh" and such filler sounds). Things that are outright lies (such as repeatedly claiming that Obama's tax plan is to raise taxes for middle class Americans - which is not currently nor has it ever been true unless you include people who make over $250,000 as middle class).

McCain has been running a dirty, dirty campaign. Obama has been refusing to drop to that same level, which interestingly almost seems to make McCain get all the dirtier, perhaps out of desperation.

I agree with Obama that it's more challenging to run a campaign that has 50 times the number of staffers, and 36 times the budget. I can't say whether he addresses her gubernatorial experience since the video cuts off w/ no indication that he was done answering the question except that he was finishing a point. I even had to re-watch to have heard the "and as governer" in the question which was just kind of thrown in there.

Anyway all of this is again a meaningless distraction from the real issues. Maybe he didn't address a question during a live interview that well. Big freaking whoop. The media gives McCain a pass every time he completely changes his policy week to week. Let's get back to what matters.

Obama has concrete thought out and well defended plans for many major issues. He has run a respectable campaign in the face of repeated meaningless insults. He has a strong foreign policy. He has exhibited consistency and clarity of intention throughout. He rarely has had to change his stance, and when he has done so, he has explained in clear terms why he made that change.

McCain doesn't have cogent policy, he changes his stated policy depending on what will get the best response from the crowd he's currently talking to. He has flip flopped on dozens and dozens of major issues (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,

That's a pretty big haul of pork for a district which doesn't even have a single voting representative to gather the pork. What do they mug congressmen on the way into congress?

That's not pork, it's a chart of Federal Government Spending. You might be surprise to find out that Washington, DC is chuck full of Federal Government buildings. Those buildings need services, including roads, security, and your figure likely even includes the salaries of the Congressional and Executive staff. Truth is that Alaska is practically a welfare state, and pulls out of the federal government nearly twice as much as it puts in.

And yet, she specifically targeted the Bridge to Nowhere and had it killed.

Despite what people continue to say Palin didn't oppose the bridge to nowhere. There are more links on it.

Falcon

, including helping kill the Bridge to Nowhere,

Actually, she was for that before she was against it. Also she was against it only after it became apparent that the state would have to kick in serious $$$ that the feds weren't providing, *and* Alaska still got the federal dollars, just not earmarked specifically for that project anymore.

Not quite the maverick-y bucking the party line that McCain'd have you believe.

Also, she is anti-abortion (even in the case of rape), pro-creationism in science classes, a global warming denier, and has it out for polar bears.

-Ted

5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?

        Yes. I would like to see Alaska's infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now--while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.

http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/08/29/did-palin-really-fight-the-bridge-to-nowhere.aspx

She opposed the bridge only after it became apparent the whole world was laughing at them. She didn't do it out of principle or some grand corruption warfare. She did it for political gain.

She said no thanks to Sen. Ted "Internet Tubes" Steven's 100 million dollar "bridge to nowhere", and called for his investigation in a corruption scandal.

Palin was all for the bridge until the federal funding disappeared.

First Sgt. Hatley and the Beauchamp TNR Affair

Updated below
---

A U.S. Army sergeant outed as a murderer in today's NYT seems to be the same one that led the unit involved in last years New Republic / Beauchamp controversy. Then he denied atrocities Beauchamp reported on.

In July 2007 a U.S. soldier under the pseudonym Scott Thomas wrote about the war in Iraq at the The New Republic's Shock Troops blog. Scott Thomas described some disgusting behavior by his fellow soldiers. Such included running over dogs with Bradley fighting vehicles and playing with a child's scull found in a mass grave.

The rightwing media, the Weekly Standard, the National Review and many others, went nuts over these reports. The blogger's name was disclosed as Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1-18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division, and after some heavy push and pull and an army investigation, The New Republic said it "cannot stand by these stories."

At the time of that controversy, a mil-blogger in the U.S. wrote to Beauchamp's company senior non-commissioned officer, identified as First Sgt. John E. Hatley, and got this response:

My soldiers conduct is consistently honorable. [...] Again, this young man has a vivid imagination and I promise you that this by no means reflects the truth of what is happening here. I'm currently serving with the best America has to offer. [...]

Sincerely,

1SG Hatley

Today the NYT reports about willful killing of Iraqis who were taken prisoners by the U.S. troops.

In March or April 2007, three noncommissioned United States Army officers, including a first sergeant, a platoon sergeant and a senior medic, killed four Iraqi prisoners with pistol shots to the head as the men stood handcuffed and blindfolded beside a Baghdad canal, two of the soldiers said in sworn statements.
...

After the killings, the first sergeant -- the senior noncommissioned officer of his Army company -- told the other two to remove the men's bloody blindfolds and plastic handcuffs, according to the statements made to Army investigators, which were obtained by The New York Times.
...
The soldiers, all from Company D, First Battalion, Second Infantry, 172nd Infantry Brigade, have not been charged with a crime.
...
The accounts of and confessions to the killings, by Sgt. First Class Joseph P. Mayo, the platoon sergeant, and Sgt. Michael P. Leahy Jr., Company D's senior medic and an acting squad leader, were made in January in signed statements to Army investigators in Schweinfurt, Germany.

In their statements, Sergeants Mayo and Leahy each described killing at least one of the Iraqi detainees on instructions from First Sgt. John E. Hatley, who the soldiers said killed two of the detainees with pistol shots to the back of their heads.
...
Last month, four other soldiers from Sergeant Hatley's unit were charged with murder conspiracy for agreeing to go along with the plan to kill the four prisoners, in violation of military laws that forbid harming enemy combatants once they are disarmed and in custody.

Is the First Sgt. John E. Hatley who l

We are proud of the U.S. role in reducing the threat to innocent civilians of landmines left in the ground after conflicts end. Since 1993 the U.S. has provided close to $1 billion dollars for these efforts. As the conferees in Nairobi mark this progress, there is important work that remains to be done. Eliminating civilian landmine casualties requires a comprehensive approach addressing landmines of every type that remain hazardous after a conflict has ended, including the larger anti-vehicle landmines that are not covered by the Ottawa Convention.

The United States' landmine policy increases funding for humanitarian mine action substantially. It includes an unconditional commitment that U.S. military forces (despite worldwide treaty commitments and major ongoing operations) will cease the use of all persistent landmines, anti-vehicle as well as anti-personnel, by the end of 2010. The United States will also eliminate from its inventory all non-detectable mines, which pose an extraordinary risk to civilians and deminers.

The U.S. applauds the initiative and commitment of those gathering in Nairobi, and we reiterate our commitment to work with the international community to accelerate progress toward an end to the humanitarian harm caused by persistent landmines. We encourage states participating in the Review Conference to:

* Increase funding for humanitarian mine action, and harmonize their efforts with other key mine action programs worldwide.

* Examine their own policies on the continued use of persistent anti-vehicle landmines, which pose substantial dangers to innocent life yet are not covered under the Ottawa Convention.

* Agree to negotiate, at the Conference on Disarmament, a ban on the sale or export of all persistent mines, including anti-vehicle mines.

* Eliminate all non-detectable landmines, which pose a particular hazard to deminers.

Interesting. I usually try to stay informed on politics and had missed this. The source is questionable, of course, but the original newsletters turned up soon enough, and they are indeed quite damning. To be fair, they aren't the usual caricature of racist diatribe- they avoid the 'N' word, for example- but they are filled with thinly veiled comparisons of african-americans to animals, repeated reference to black-on-white violence, and a variety of wild assertions about african-americans, their predilections, and black culture. Here's the link: L.A. Riots

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca

I did, in fact, do some research. :)

Had it been one article, I could buy that, but we're talking _years_ worth of racist venom in his newsletter. There wasn't a flood, but there was a steady enough stream that even the most laissez faire (rim shot) editor should have noticed it.

And something from Anti War Radio and Prison Planet? Come on, there's got to be better material in his defense out there. At the risk of engaging in the ad hominem fallacy, that station is largely populated by complete lunatics and 9/11 conspiracy theorists (but I repeat myself). I wouldn't trust them to tell me the time of day, much less balance out years of racist vitriol under Ron Paul's banner.

This one was signed by Ron Paul.

What's more, Paul's connections to extremism go beyond the newsletters. He has given extensive interviews to the magazine of the John Birch Society, and has frequently been a guest of Alex Jones, a radio host and perhaps the most famous conspiracy theorist in America. Jones--whose recent documentary, Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement, details the plans of George Pataki, David Rockefeller, and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, among others, to exterminate most of humanity and develop themselves into "superhuman" computer hybrids able to "travel throughout the cosmos"--estimates that Paul has appeared on his radio program about 40 times over the past twelve years.

This "Special Issue on Racial Terrorism" was hardly the first time one of Paul's publications had raised these topics. As early as December 1989, a section of his Investment Letter, titled "What To Expect for the 1990s," predicted that "Racial Violence Will Fill Our Cities" because "mostly black welfare recipients will feel justified in stealing from mostly white 'haves.'" Two months later, a newsletter warned of "The Coming Race War," and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, "If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it." In June 1991, an entry on racial disturbances in Washington, DC's Adams Morgan neighborhood was titled, "Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo." "This is only the first skirmish in the race war of the 1990s," the newsletter predicted. ...
Martin Luther King Jr. earned special ire from Paul's newsletters, which attacked the civil rights leader frequently, often to justify opposition to the federal holiday named after him. ("What an infamy Ronald Reagan approved it!" one newsletter complained in 1990. "We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.") In the early 1990s, newsletters attacked the "X-Rated Martin Luther King" as a "world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours," "seduced underage girls and boys," and "made a pass at" fellow civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy. One newsletter ridiculed black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that "Welfaria," "Zooville," "Rapetown," "Dirtburg," and "Lazyopolis" were better alternatives. The same year, King was described as "a comsymp, if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration."

While bashing King, the newsletters had kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. In a passage titled "The Duke's Victory," a newsletter celebrated Duke's 44 percent showing in the 1990 Louisiana Senate primary. "Duke lost the election," it said, "but he scared the blazes out of the Establishment." In 1991, a newsletter asked, "Is David Duke's new prominence, despite his losing the gubernatorial election, good for anti-big government forces?" The conclusion was that "our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom." Duke is now returning the favor, telling me that, while he will not formally endorse any candidate, he has made information about Ron Paul available on his website. ...
Paul's newsletters didn't just contain bigotry. They also contained paranoia--specifically, the brand of anti-government paranoia that festered among right-wing militia groups during the 1980s and '90s. Indeed, the newsletters seemed to hint that armed revolution against the federal government would be justified. In January 1995, three months before right-wing militants bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, a newsletter listed "Ten Militia Commandments," describing "the 1,500 local militias now training to defend liberty" as "one

I voted today, and did not vote for Ron Paul. If you are considering backing him I suggest you read this piece (excerpt below) from The New Republic and consider whether he has made an adequate response (e.g. Reason Magazine)
The Newsletters: Since at least 1978, Ron Paul has attached his name to a series of newsletters--Ron Paul's Freedom Report, Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Survival Report, and The Ron Paul Investment Letter--that frequently made outrageous statements:
A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism" analyzes the Los Angeles riots of 1992: "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. ... What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided."

• The Obama campaign has renewed my sense of patriotism, long buried under the cynical misuse of patriotism as a cudgel to suppress honest debate and dissent. If you haven't seen it yet, this video captures in four minutes much of the feelings his campaign has rekindled for me.
  
• After the last seven years, I want to feel proud of America again, and help send a message that we as a nation reject torture, fear-based authoritarianism, an unaccountable executive, ideologically-driven anti-science policies, and indefinite war with a constantly changing mission.
  
• I believe Barack Obama is the strongest candidate, with the best chance of garnering enough support across parties, races, genders, religions (including us atheists!), and regions to actually credibly claim a mandate for change. He has a proven record of bringing diverse interests together to get meaningful legislation passed: when he authored a law that required the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases, prosecutors and police adamantly opposed the bill, as well as the governor and most legislators who wanted to look tough on crime. But Obama led a campaign to get it passed, and a key element of that was to quietly but effectively bring together prosecutors, public defenders, police organizations, and death penalty opponents work out an agreement that all groups could endorse. Eventually, the bill was passed unanimously and became law. (the American Bar Association later unanimously adopted a similar resolution)
  
• Despite being considered a visionary, Obama is very conservative (in the traditional Burkean sense), with a pragmatic, minimalist, and consensus-based approach to government.