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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.
Spotted Owl Party members are among the most dangerous people to have in the DOJ. If allowed into the DOJ, they will do everything in their power to preserve the environment and wellbeing of this bird, no matter what the financial or human cost.
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
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.
This is the Department of Justice. It's supposed to be a neutral, non-partisan organization. Any overt partisan involvement should be a cause for alarm.
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?
Yes, of course -- since it is illegal to take political views into consideration for certain kinds of career non-political jobs. Federal law is very clear on this. Read the PDF linked in the story for more information.
First and foremost, because it's illegal.
But there are two types of nominations in the DoJ: "Career" & "Political". Political appointments are indeed open to scrutiny of political affiliation, but are temporary and remain active only until a change of administration. Career posts are normal jobs, and those people are supposed to be more neutral. Filtering people for Career jobs based on political affiliations is illegal. The issue coming to light now is that Bush administration officials used the same questionnaires and methods for both types of posts.
If he explores all forms and substances Straight homeward to their symbol-essences; He shall not die.
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
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
Not really surprising. Spotted owls are notoriously poor prosecutors. They also have a well-known bias against rats and other vermin, making them unsuitable for political work.
Yes, the House and Senate are somewhat complicit
Is that like being somewhat pregnant?
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.)
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.
Even if all those stories are true, which they aren't, you can't excuse corruption by pointing to corruption. This isn't a game, son, this is our country and our rights. And blanket cynicism is even more pointless and harmful to our nation.
You seem to want everyone to believe that all politicians are equally corrupt. This is a disservice to your country, and a transparent attempt to excuse great crimes by pointing to petty misdemeanors.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
My clock is digital with 1 minute resolution and is set ~30 seconds slow. It's right 1440 times a day - Try that trick with a broken clock.
You insensitive clod.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
...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
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 don't really know, but anytime I bring up the heinous acts of the current administration, some idiot has to pipe up about how both sides are corrupt, as if that negates my complaint. And they never point out the crimes of both sides as you imply, reread those posts. They only pick on Democrats, as if that means there is no difference.
Maybe excuse isn't always the right word. Some times, they are just trying to make everyone feel so cynical that no one feels that anything can be done. Its as if they are saying, "all politicians are corrupt, there's nothing you can do about it, so shut up about Bush."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Oh please. The 'big mean government is coercing me with guns' argument is so old and tired. If you don't like it, go some place else. There's plenty of uninhabited land in the world where you can set up a homestead and no one will ever even know. No one is holding a gun to your head and making you participate in society. You do so because you benefit more by doing so than by leaving, and you know it.
The thing that gets me about you libertarian types is how hypocritical you all are about coercion. It's perfectly okay to use coercion to enforce your unilateral ideas about property and take away MY rights to go wherever my legs will take me. That's okay, but using 'coercion' to ensure that everyone has enough to eat before allowing anyone to profit outrageously from the hard work of other people is communism.
You people do not believe in individual responsibility. You simply support the individual's right to amass power and use it against others with less power. You hate any method such as democracy or rule of law that the less powerful can use to band together to protect themselves against the more powerful. You see yourselves as superior to the rest of us, and the right you want protected is your right to prey on us.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton