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The Ridiculous LexisNexis Search that the Justice Department Used
[First name of a candidate]! and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!
Needless to say, when asked about it, Williams first said she didn't remember ever seeing it, then said she'd used an edited version just once. LexisNexis records show she used it, as shown, 25 times." Note that 'sex!' appears twice in the query. Must be VERY important.
what the hell
"Sex, sex, sex, that's all they think about!"
A service that provides online legal and business information. LEXIS was the first full-text information service for the legal profession. NEXIS provides the archives of The New York Times as well as Wall Street industry analysis, public records, tax information, political analysis, SEC filings and more. See online services.
http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=LEXIS-NEXIS&i=46050,00.asp
Not that I'd expect you to know, I didn't know either.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
But the damage he's done will remain for much longer.
For those of you wondering what that query is about and what it's being used for, here's TFA:
So there you go. The Justice Department was using a screwy LexisNexis query to try to determine the political leanings and affiliations of people they were looking to hire, because they were illegally filtering out applications people (non-repubs/conservatives) based on their political affiliations.
You really should drink more coffee in the morning before you start posting, Taco.
Why would you bother writing such an inane and senseless post? Why does the fact that Bush will be gone in six months mean we have to stop talking about the crimes he and his administration committed? There is a reason we hate him, and it isn't just because he's a stupid, self obsessed, spoiled frat boy who somehow fooled the nation into voting for him twice. We hate him because he has tried to take away our rights.
You know, defending the man at this point is pretty much an admission that not only did you vote for him, twice, but you are too proud to admit you screwed up.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Plus, whatever he decides to do in the last few days of his administration. Let's hope he only limits himself to the typical last-minute pardoning spree.
Don't forget, the Democrats (and Republicans) in the House and Senate are just as complacent in whatever damage has been done, by allowing it to continue and contributing their own malfeasance.
If the Ds really didn't want a war in Iraq, they shouldn't have given Bush the piece of paper authorizing military action.
GWB isn't any more evil than Pelosi and crew! The whole bunch is corrupt! So until you stop voting for the Republicrats, you get what you deserve.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Why shouldn't an administration be able to hire people on their side of the political fence? Are you seriously going to sit there and tell me with a straight face that President Clinton's administration didn't weed out conservatives from executive branch jobs? I can understand certain things such as race or gender being illegal to use as hiring factors but I would assume that a given administration would not want to hire attorneys who hate everything that administration stands for, whether the administration is conservative, liberal or anything in between.
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
It is THE most powerful database of public records and sometimes not-so public records in the entire world. You can start with a name and city and match a person and get social, dob, city of birth, all their criminal and civil cases, any citations including speeding tickets, any mention of them in other criminal or civil cases, news articles, legal findings etc. etc. etc.
Needless to say it is very dangerous in the wrong hands.
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LexisNexis
They used Lexis to do a form of background search on people. They used the information from these searches to decide who to hire. The DOJ said the way they did this is federally illegal and also against DOJ policy.
And if you're an actual RTFAer, here you go: http://www.usdoj.gov/opr/goodling072408.pdf
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
The massive spending spree, the total ignoring of the constitution, lying to go to war, outing undercover agents (aka treason), just to name a few.
You're not reading it right. It only drops anything that matches one of those results that's within 7 words of the name of the candidate. An article just on sex won't get picked up unless it also mentions the candidate by name.
I found this here:
/n, +n, NOT /n /s /p /seg /seg
/p and /s connectors with a proximity connector (e.g., /n).
/25 discharg! AND student OR college OR education /5 loan is operated on in the following manner:
/5, the smaller of the /n connectors, ties together the term loan and the previously formed unit of student OR college OR education!. /25 operates next and creates a unit of bankrupt! /25 discharg!.
Connector Order and Priority
Connectors operate in the following order of priority:
1. OR
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. NOT
7. AND
8. AND NOT
If you use two or more of the same connector, they operate left to right. If the "n" (number) connectors have different numbers, the smallest number is operated on first. You cannot use the
Example: bankrupt!
* Because OR has the highest priority, it operates first and creates a unit of student OR college OR education!.
*
*
* AND, with the lowest priority, operates last and links the units formed in the second and third bullets above.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
There are certain high level posts in the various executive branch agencies that are tagged 'political appointments'. These jobs, which steer those agencies, can be determined based on politics.
For everything else, such discrimination is illegal. It is assumed, by the law, that people are professional enough to do their job regardless of who is in charge - and anyway, they can be fired if they intentionally sabotage the agency without legal cause.
Only recently, since the Neocons took over, has it even been an issue that 'attorneys hate' the people they work for. I mean, really, is such harsh language remotely accurate? Or is it being used as a boogie man in order to make an end-run around very wise laws; laws that prevent the government from swinging to extremes with every change in the administration.
(And lets not even bring up the fiscal nightmare it must be if agencies have to rehire everyone every eight years...)
Now, with my straight face: Clinton did NOT weed out conservatives from executive branch jobs. He in fact explicitly hired many people across the aisle, for better or for worse. The idea that you never hire people who disagree with you is one that has only seen it's heyday in the last eight years. It's actually often a very good idea.
[Ego]out
Sorry, that argument doesn't fly. Yes, the House and Senate are somewhat complicit, and everyone loves a good 'Republocrat' joke, but there is a HUGE difference between the two parties. Don't forget, the Democrats do not have an overwhelming majority in either house, and Republicans can win if they just filibuster.
Bush and company are qualitatively different from other politicians. It isn't just a matter of the amount of corruption. It is the type of corruption and the unmitigated, "What are you gonna do about it? hur hur hur," GALL of these criminal clowns.
Stealing a pack of gum and robbing a bank at gunpoint are both crimes. That does not mean they are both equally serious.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Indeed. Our Sheriff's department uses it (along with other services by the same company), and it's downright scary the ammount of stuff they can pull.
Want all the blue and gray SUV's that have a 9 and an F within a 100 mile radius of a given location? It can pull that up. Want to find out if a particular person has ANY connection to the owner of that vehicle. It can do that. As a demonstration it was able to connect our sherrif to a woman that his wife had been roomates with over 20 years ago (before they were even married).
It was astonishing how much information it could coordinate on any person in the room that we plugged into it.
Also was tied into the sex offenders database. If you wanted to narrow that search for the blue/gray SUV earlier down to sexual offenders within a certain radius that owned or were associated with the owner of such a vehicle, then it could do that.
What's scary is that some level of this functionality is available to whoever wants to pay for it (afterall, most of the information is just public records correlated into a massive database). Law enforcement and such agencies do get more access (for instance, the ability to pull up social security numbers), but the average person with deep pockets could still get a hell of a lot of information for it. They do TRY to be secure with the LEO-only portions though.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Back when I used LN a lot, about ten years ago, the thing that made it useful to me even when searching through sources that were indexed elsewhere as well were the search terms like A w/5 B, which searches for term A within 5 words of B. That always produced much more relevant results than A and B, and despite all the praise of things like Pagerank, I've never seen a modern internet search engine give nearly as good of results as I was always able to find using this sort of technique.
Is this type of search still limited to LN, or are there ways to do the same sort of thing on Yahoo/Google/etc?
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
They do TRY to be secure with the LEO-only portions though.
So, if you're beyond a Low Earth Orbit, you're safe?
rewriting history since 2109
Get over it. He'll be gone in six months.
Because, after all, the only reason to disagree with any of the things he and his cohorts have done is irrational hatred. It has nothing to do with subverting the Constitution he swore to protect, failing to prevent a major terrorist attack despite warnings, unapologetic law-breaking, stove-piping intelligence to justify a war of aggression and an occupation that's trashing our armed forces and our economy, gutting the balance of powers, alienating long-time allies, making the tax burden even more regressive, hamstringing prosecution of marketplace abuses, blatantly politicizing the Justice Department, rewriting science in the name of ideology, or any other similarly whiny little complaint.
Nope, those things are all just shallow excuses. It's all about the hate.
It's a Shibboleth. Something that you can use to guess at another person's social/regional/political origin.
Back in 1992, there was a plan to log some forest. Republicans liked the idea of logging. Democrats didn't like the idea of logging.
Democrats went with environmentalism -- the notion that a risk to 50 of the 500-odd remaining spotted owls in existence outweighed the commercial interests of the loggers -- as their means of obsctructing the Republicans' goals.
Republicans went with the commercial argument -- "preposterous to forego millions of dollars in revenue over 50 spotted owls!" -- as their means of embarassing the Democrats.
The spotted owl became a shibboleth. Anyone who said "save the endangered owls!" was likely to be a Democrat, and anyone who said "to hell with the owls!" was a Democrat.
Many of the things in that list are shibboleths from the Clinton era. If you followed events such as Iran-Contra (a scandal embarassing to the Republicans), the spotted owl (a shibboleth for environmentalism), the recounts in Florida (which could have only benefited the Democrats), or worked (or ruled) on cases involving other politically-loaded wedge issues -- whether economic ones like NAFTA, outsourcing, and Enron, or sociolopolitical ones like racism, sexism, abortion, homosexuality, and gun ownership -- you had political opinions.
This query wasn't designed to figure out what those opinions were, but it would be a very clear way listing all the times someone identified their political stance by using a political shibboleth within seven words of the name of either Presidential candidate:
"John Doe accused Al Gore of placing the interests of the spotted owl above the legitimate interests of the taxpayers" -> John Doe is almost certainly a Republican.
"Jane Doe suggested Al Gore wasn't doing enough to protect the spotted owl" -> Jane Doe is almost certainly a Democrat.
The spotted owl is a particularly effective shibboleth; most of us have opinions about gun ownership, NAFTA, or Enron that don't necessarily dermine how we vote. But the spotted owl was a manufactured controversy; outside of birdwatchers, very few people knew or cared about the spotted owl until it became the center of a political debate.
Modern-day shibboleths include "homicide bombers" or "the Democrat party" (phrases used only Republicans), or "big business / big health care / big pharma" or "multinational corporations", or "neocons" (which are phrases used almost exclusively by Democrats.)
Okay, first, there was a huge concerted attack by the right wing against Clinton for the most minor of offenses. It wasn't 'dismissed,' the man was IMPEACHED. Why hasn't Bush been impeached? We will move on when there is at least the same level of justice for Bush.
Second, your cynicism is disgusting. You can't excuse one wrong act by pointing that others have done lesser evils. Wrong is wrong and it is never right to pressure people into shutting up about it.
Third, the GP wanted this story gone. He wanted us to stop talking about the crimes committed by this administration. The justice department engaged in criminal and unethical behavior, and he obviously doesn't want that talked about.
Finally, no, sorry, no past administration has ever been this blatant in apply purity tests to career hires rather than political appointees. And unless people like you get their way and this is all swept under the rug, then future administrations will have even less of a chance of doing it.
It really sounds as if you'd love it if everyone would just shut up and let ourselves get fucked over by the powerful. Not gonna happen, sorry.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
They do TRY to be secure with the LEO-only portions though.
So, if you're beyond a Low Earth Orbit, you're safe?
Law Enforcement Officer, but I like your sense of humor.
I would have also laughed if you took it as limiting access based on astrological sign.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
According to the Vanity Fair article "The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush" [December 2007] (1):
"our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush."
And, I believe it will be longer than that due to the stated facts in said article.
(1) http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/12/bush200712
I dislike this argument not only because it's used in virtually every political discussion on Slashdot, but also because it appears to be designed to encourage complicity. Sure, the argument states that change is just as simple as deciding to vote for some third party, but all of the existing third parties tend to only appeal to a very limited fringe group, so that's really no solution at all.
So, dismissing the idea that simply voting for a third party will change everything as realistically unfeasible, we're left with the central part of the argument, which is that both parties suck, so you might as well just throw up your hands and do whatever you've been doing. Neither party will ever change anything, the argument goes, so just vote for whoever you've always voted for and go on with life. Of course, this argument is designed to assure the current party in power stays in power.
However, it contradicts actual reality. It's possible, given their complicity in GWB's antics, even probable, that the Democrats would not be any better if they took power. However, the evidence we currently have is that while Bush has actively sought to come up with new ideas to destroy the country, the Democrats are responsible only for allowing it to happen. Yes, passively allowing someone else to screw everything up is a bad thing, but is it really just as bad as actively screwing things up? Isn't it at least possible that the Democrats might screw things up less if allowed to implement their own ideas rather than just being content to allow someone else to implement his ideas?
In reality, what we have now is the fact that Bush and his cronies have done a monumentally shitty job. We also have a theory that the Democrats would do an equally shitty job. You seem to be content to stay with the people in power because a shitty job will be done either way. I, on the other hand, would rather not reward a shitty job with more time in power, and would instead rather give the other party a chance to prove they are capable of doing a less shitty job.
An individual's best bet for political change these days remains to pick the party that most closely aligns with them and attempt to change it from the inside (a difficult and time-consuming task to be sure). Simply voting for the Loony Toon Party, knowing that it will never get more than 3% of the vote, is just not a practical solution.
This must be what they mean about a search with a "wide stance".
Perhaps it's more enlightening to add together all the terms appearing more than once, like sex!, fired, racis!, arrest!, intox! and contravers!. What emerges is an interesting psychological view into the heads of the people doing the search. Based on what they list more than once, I would guess Jan Williams and Monica Gooding are afraid of getting so drunk or otherwise intoxicated that they wind up having sex with someone of a different race, being arrested (perhaps by an aggrieved other-racial spouse or something), and having the subsequent controversy cost them their jobs.
Just kidding, but who knows? Some of those prim and proper morality queens get really, really twisted when they drink a bit too much. Yeah alcohol!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
The search requires that the candidate's full name is found, along with at least one of the following 'keywords' not more than 7 words (that's the "w/7") away from the name; so in most cases it would be a pretty small return.
Actually, the syntax used seems to be incorrect (I've never used LexisNexus, but just did an exhaustive 30 second search for information on the syntax).
The "pre/2" control assures that the word preceding and the word following are found, with a maximum of 2 words in between. I think the "and" before the "pre/2" is incorrect, or at least superfluous.
Cynicism is a disease of the soul, it excuses inaction. It doesn't make you cool and hip and smarter than the average bear. It makes you an apathetic lump.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Civil service positions (not political appointees) are supposed to be appointed on merit. Getting around this process is spitting in the eye of the values of American Constitution that we were all taught in school. Even Ashcroft would not do this and specifically instructed his staff that as employees of DOJ they were to be non partisian. Without a doubt the worst administration in modern history. Hopefully America can recover from the deep hole in which it has dug itself.
Funny. I wonder whether Bush, Cheney, Limbaugh, and Rove understand how many lifetime Democratic voters they've created.
A new electorate in the making
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
The president doesn't have the power to run the administration however he sees fit.
The president doesn't even have the power to have an administration without Congress.
Constitutionally, it's just him and the VP, standing around outside somewhere. He does have the constitutional power to sign bills into law, so legally he probably demand, in the courts, that Congress budget him a pen or other writing utensil. But that's it.
Does none of these 'Bush has the right to run the executive how he sees fit' people ever read the constitution? Congress buys everything. Congress creates every single cabinet position, and every single executive agency. (And the entire military, while we're at it.)
Without Congress creating things for him to run, the president is essentially just some guy with a veto pen.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
...the damage good ole [President Bill Clinton]...did to us
8 years of peace and prosperity ending with a budget surplus?
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
The law, which the practice was violating [...], is, probably, unconstitutional in itself, because it tramples on the President's power to run the Administration however he sees fit.
So you're saying that the guy in charge of upholding the constitution and the rule of law can, at his option, ignore any law that he pleases and do what he wants because somebody, somewhere thinks it is probably unconstitutional?
Because my crazy idea was that we had some sort of checks-and-balances system where only the legislature can make the laws, only the executive implements them, and only the courts interpret them. Maybe I was reading about some other country, though.
not according to any court, BTW, but only to the new Justice Department
How is it that here you can recognize that only courts can authoritatively interpret law, but the rest of your jabber grants that power to the executive branch? I can understand making this mistake weeks apart, but you've managed to contradict yourself in the same sentence.
The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 does list it among the criteria (it is in fact in the very first of the 12 prohibited personnel practices):
Twelve prohibited personnel practices, including reprisal for whistleblowing, are defined by law at  2302(b) of title 5 of the United States Code (U.S.C.). A personnel action (such as an appointment, promotion, reassignment, or suspension) may need to be involved for a prohibited personnel practice to occur. Generally stated,  2302(b) provides that a federal employee authorized to take, direct others to take, recommend or approve any personnel action may not:
(1) discriminate against an employee or applicant based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, handicapping condition, marital status, or political affiliation;
What we're seeing here is one basis of Karl Rove's "permanent Republican majority" that he bragged about in 2004. There are already instances on the books (sorry, I can't produce any specifics) of charges filed against Democrats shortly before elections, even at the time those charges were known to be baseless by less political employees, and after election were found to be baseless by due process of law. The counter to this would be charges against Republicans either not filed, or delayed until after an election. If you have the power to instigate and time prosecutions relative to election cycles, you have a powerful tool for influencing elections without touching the ballot box or counting mechanism.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
After watching the 911 truth movement pull together massive amounts of correlations based of basically nothing I am in awe of the human ability to rationalize correlations. I can see the dangers of this stuff outweighing the benefits in almost every way.
I can only wonder how many small coincidences could be completly misconstrued during both investigations, or other things such as affairs.
I know I'm splitting hairs, but these definitions mean nothing because they only mean something in the context of the speaker.
Conservative means that the belief holder is against change and wants things to stay roughly status quo. They feel that things are good they way they are in a if it ain't broke; don't fix it. kind of way.
Classical conservatism (original Republicans) had nothing to do with liberty, it had to do with protecting the rich Northern industry and winning the Civil War for the US at any costs. Hence protecting the status quo for the North.
Neo-con is similar in that it is pro-big business and war-hawkish which is actually just an excuse for no-bid contracts; hence more pro-big business. Unfortunately their fiscal policy tends to align with the compromises of those goals which lends itself to fiscal irresponsibility. They tend to mouth their support of social restrictives like the religious right and some times even throw them a bone, but it is mostly a ploy to get their votes.
A neo-libertarian (what is now called libertarianism) is anti-tax and small government but mostly ends up removing long-standing laws written to protect the public from the conflicting interests of big-money, and hence ends up actually removing freedoms from the populace. This is because they tend to ignore that the lack of a legal framework leaves the weak prey to the strong, like all anarchism does (why should fiscal anarchy be any different?)
A liberal is someone who is for a change, be it women's sufferage, equal rights, decriminalizing drugs, etc. Pure and simple.
right and left wings refer to fascism and communism respectively.
The Democrats and Republicans of today would not recognizable to voters around the civil war times although I think the terms actually meant something then and not shifting meanings based only on the speaker's starting political leanings.
This is all like having some idiot try to explain away the differences between nerd, dweeb, dork and geek. (Hint: they are all synonyms, but if you ask 10 people you'll get ten equally idiotic answers depending on what social group they belonged to in high school!)
cat sig >
Disclaimer: I am not a political scientist, and thus can only write from my observations as a lay person. The above statements are IMHO only.
That's a very short and limited disclaimer. Any casual Slashdot reader could easily take your observation about the shortcomings of parliaments and apply it in the real world with terrible consequences, and you would be liable. Might I suggest:
Disclaimer: The posting Slashdot user ("the author") who authored the above electronic nested web comment ("the comment") being read by you ("the reader") is not and has never in any previous capacity been a political scientist or professional political pundit, nor has he/she assisted any persons occupying these or similar occupations. His/her comment is provided "as is" with no warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of reliability and fitness for a political purpose. The entire risk as to the quality and veracity of the comment is with the reader. The author posted the comment purely as the observations of a lay person ("IMHO") and should not be construed as a wholehearted endorsement of any political proposal that may or may not have been included within it.