Slashdot Mirror
Lawrence Livermore Lab On The Chopping Block?
guttentag writes "According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Bush's Homeland Security plan calls for transferring $1.2 billion of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's $1.5 billion budget to a new Department of Homeland Security under Tom Ridge. However, the plan transfers only 4 percent of the lab's employees. Ridge's explanation of the numbers: "I cannot give you the kind of explanation you need to deal with that imbalance." LLNL funded and houses the ASCI White supercomputer, among other cool projects." While Livermore has an impressive research record, we would miss most the laser lab from Tron.
much ado about nothing. a fairly minor mistake in the most complex reorganization of the us gov't since the truman administration. it's been seized upon and made front page news (particularly on the Left Coast) to make the Bush administration seem inept and disorganized.
More newsworthy: The Bush Administration is holding three US citizens in military custody, with no rights to legal representation or due process.
Jesus Christ, am I the only one who this terrifies? Am I going to someday have to explain to my kids why, on old episodes of Law & Order, the suspects weren't simply turned over to the military when they asked for a lawyer?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Some people hold the flag sacred. I, on the other hand, hold the ideas embodied in the Constitution and Bill of Rights in the same esteem.
It frightens and dismays me that you're willing to rip up our most basic civil rights by yelling "terrorist!", "smallpox!" and "dirty bomb!" at the top of your lungs.
And these aren't people who "come into this country", they're citizens of the US. Every American should be outraged that Bush and company are so willing to disregard the rights he's sworn to defend.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Do you know how old our curent stockpile is? Do you know what the expected stable life time is of our curent weapons? Look both nubers up and you may be in for a shock.
Right now we have a shortage of people able to design and maintain nukes. This is a bad thing unless we manage to get rid of every last one of them (not going to happen).
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Why do you like living in America? If the MPAA shock troops kicked in your door and arrested you for ripping your CDs, don't you think you deserve a lawyer and a trial in front of your peers? If you were accused of killing someone, shouldn't the police have to prove that you did it before you get carted off to prison?
You live 15 minutes from downtown DC. Go look at the war memorials and ask yourself why those people died. You think it was for some stripped scrap of cloth, or for what it represented? Look at the memorials to Jefferson and Lincoln and Washington, then tell me you think they'd toss civil liberties out the window the second it was convenient.
People like you kill me -- you seem to know that being an American means something, but you couldn't tell me what.
how can you assume that they are guilty?
"due process" is a construction over time. you can argue with a lot of aspects about our legal system, but i doubt you seriously want to challenge innocent-until-proven-guilty
and no, i don't trust a government that is desperate to show that the intelligence community can catch evil(TM) terrorists now, really, honest.
on september 11th, when they cleared out a hotel near the world trade center, security thought they found a shortwave radio in the room (which overlooked the towers) of an islamic college student. pretty incriminating, right? so he was held without trial for six months. his lawyer was not given access to evidence, or even any word of who witnesses would be, or who the prosecution was. finally someone called the hotel and asked for their radio back. security had fucked up, it came from the wrong room. the guy had allready been labeled as a terrorist in his hometown and had to transfer schools. i know because i've met his lawyer, and read about it in the papers later. i had a link, but can't seem to find it now.
your assumption that everyone that the US detains is automatically guilty is highly disturbing.
i don't want these guys to have due process because i think criminals deserve light punishment, but because there's an excellent chance that at least one of them has *done nothing wrong* and the law should be strong enough to prosecute the guilty without endangering or disenfranchising the innocent.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Dance around the law as much as you want. This is what I believe in:
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Besides, today's top supercomputer is tomorrow's video game CPU. Pretending that locking up a particular supercomputer can stop the work is just that: pretending.
-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
Don't talk to me about "a high degree of lethality" or "concern for the true physical safety of your children" until the threat comes close to the yearly death rate of automobile accidents. 9/11 is down to what? 2850 or so for the twin towers and 800+ for the Pentagon. That pales compaired to the 40 to 50 thousand that die by auto every year in this country. If you really care about your kids, you should fear the car far more than al Qaueda.
And many didn't I'd bet. From the amount of spelling and grammatical errors I read on slashdots, you'd think they were pseudoliterate oafs. Point this out and we get the endless choruses of "but that's not IMPORTANT"--funny how they'll criticize some poor journalist for getting a minor technical detail incorrect, but see no problem with themselves mixing up "who's" and "whose".
The mistakes, of course, are even funnier when they're in one of the many self-congratulatory stories that slashdot often runs insisting that geeks are more literate in the humanities than the humanities graduates are in the sciences, and that engineers are just so well-rounded as opposed to those liberal arts morons.
This is a complete and total non-sequiter. What does the rate of deaths by car accident have to do with anything???
First of all, it's non-sequitur, not "non-sequiter".
Second, you only think it's a straw man or a non-sequitur because you don't get his point. Let's put it this way. Something like 10,000 people die every year from gun-related deaths. We have not implemented gun control, because we have a Second Amendment. We have decided that 10,000 casualties per year is a price that we are willing to pay for the Second Amendment. Whatever your feelings about the Second Amendment are, you have to concede that the casualties we tolerate on its behalf are somewhat illustrative of the value we place on it.
Sept 11 comes, there is a terrorist attack that kills a mere 3000 people, and all of a sudden people are "forefeiting" their Fourth Amendment rights. Does this not concern you? The going rate for a constitutional right should be much higher than this. You can make an argument that possibly saving lives should be worth more than worrying about the civil rights of crazy Islamic black guys. But if you're going to view civil liberties via this public safety perspective, you should at least be consistent with it and favor gun control with as much enthusiasm. That would save way more lives, wouldn't it?
I haven't heard any sensible argument in favor of this guy's incarceration. They've all been variations of "oh so you would like a dirty bomb in your neighborhood then huh!" Which is like saying "Why are you defending whichcraft? Why are you in favor of witches?" to accusations of a witch hunt. We've got a guy who's in jail for wishing he could build a dirty bomb. He's doing time for surfing the web as far as I can tell. For typing "dirty bomb recipe" into Google and "researching" their construction. (1. Wrap deadly isotope around dynamite. 2. Light dynamite. 3. Run away.) Merely planning to do something is not a crime. You now live in a country where citizens are put in "indefinite detention" with no trial for a thought crime. This is a major milestone toward a police state. You should be alarmed that this is happening.
And it's not as if wanting to build a dirty bomb means you're going to do it. Does he have any radioactive material with which to make one? "Planning" to build a dirty bomb doesn't amount to a hell of a lot if you don't have any dirt. It's fairly obvious the only reason he's being held in military detention is because Ashcroft knows this crappy evidence would be laughed out of any legal court. They wouldn't even have enough for an indictment. And by arresting rather than monitoring and following this guy, they screwed up one of the only good leads they've gotten from their Camp X-Ray interrogations- which have otherwise been a complete fiasco. All they can do to cover their asses now is keep the guy in jail forever by inventing new laws for themselves as they go along.