china is perhaps the most capitalist country in the world
Not really, though. Capitalism only works when there's rule of law, and free communication. To the extent that China echoes any of the late 19th century stuff you mentioned (killer gangs taking out the competition, etc), that's not capitalism. More like fuedalism. China's oppressive central government is anything but the lubricant of capitalism - it's the protector of a condition in which there is abundant cheap labor. That is the engine of that country's house-of-cards economic growth. If the factory workers there started actually operating at a middle-class level, the growth would grind to a halt for the lack of cheap workers to keep making the stuff they're selling to the rest of the world at a handsome profit. After much turbulence, they're going to end up looking just like Europe or North America... fishing around for cheap labor from countries that are still a few steps behind, with their competitive edge diminishing. Next stop, Myanmar, where thousands living in primitive conditions just died in a storm. Countries like that will - for a while - become the source of cheap labor, until THEY get their act together.
China's reliving the entire history of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries as experienced by the western world, but over the course of a couple of decades. And with an enormous population. It's going to be an economic, ecological, and cultural train wreck. But for now, we can sure get some cheap motherboards, teak garden furniture, and t-shirts!
At least when it comes to my customers, the stuff that lives in datacenters is there - at least in part - to support distributed workers. In droves, they are shifting towards working from home, avoiding a lot of transportation-intensive face time, and learning to take advantage of not having to have their same back-office systems humming in a closet in a rented office where nobody shows up any more, except to reset the router so they can go back home and get some damn work done.
Some newly used rack space in datacenters actually offsets other daily fuel burning - sometimes a lot of it.
the non-government email systems were probably used by Rove & Co because the government ones were so fucked up
No, the non-government one were used because when those people (Rove, Bush, their staffers, etc.,) were working on campaign or party-related stuff, it's ILLEGAL for them to use the government systems. So, if they HAD used those systems for that sort of messaging, everyone would then complain about THAT.
Well, there are all sorts of government agencies that (sometimes) wear uniforms, carry guns, and even operate overseas. Like the State Department's protective people... yes, the Secretary of State might have Marines guarding her at some locations, but State's own crew is out in advance, sort of like the Secret Service. The Secret Service, of course (part of the Treasury!) is also out, overseas, packing heat, in advance of the arrival of certain parts of the government showing up. There are more, of course.
Well, unless of course you're not trolling, and decided to be REALLY oblique about the Coast Guard. Which isn't exactly how that played, is it? Most people here don't like the necessary interaction between, and sharing of intel between the domestic activities of the DHS and the military intel people. Well, unless they can complain that sharing it badly is a defect of whatever administration they don't like, in which case sharing correctly is goood... but otherwise it's bad, see? One must slashdottify one's mind to get the right frame of reference, of course.
There's five branches in the U.S. military. Four in the Department of Defense, and one in the Department of Homeland Security.
In your snarkiness, you were partly right (since you left out the Coast Guard), even as you knew you were wrong about DHS. If you're going down that road, why not say that Agriculture Department is part of the DoD, since pilots have to eat? Or that the IRS is just the revenue collecting branch of the military? Or that Nancy Pelosi is part of the military since it's something she talks about as part of her job? Or that the FBI is part of the military, since they've been known to arrest and prosecute some DoD employees who go wrong? Never mind, you're a troll, anyway. Have a nice day.
FISA clearly states it's illegal to wiretap on US citizens who are on US soil communicating with other US citizens on US soil without a warrant. Bush has admitted this was done under his orders. That was (and still is) illegal. Your erroneous attempts to state it was in reference to overseas communication is a red herring.
Nope. Wiretapping was between international endpoints, or between international endpoints, and the people they were talking to in the US. Calls between domestic endpoints associated with those international calls were logged, in terms of the data describing the (in order to watch for additional international calls likely to be related to them). You're confusing retaining the fact that a call was made with a recording of it.
This was a major point of contention by Bush vs Kerry during the 2004 re-election campaign
Right. And at no point did Kerry say anything to suggest that he didn't support the conclusions made by the Clinton administration about Saddam's possession of, and continued pursuit of WMDs. Kerry himself described Iraq's nuclear threat before Bush was even in office. And unlike him (he acknowledged the concerns over things like Saddam's UN-observed chem weapons stashes, or the long range missiles he continued to build right up until 2003), you're tap dancing right past issues like VX.
Libby was convicted on four felony counts for obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements to federal investigators.
Right. And at no point did the prosecutor even try to make the case that Libby had anything to do with Plame's name being leaked. He wasn't accused of it, and wasn't convicted of anything related. As for Cheney: he authorized Libby (and others) to specifically address the issues that Plame's husband brought up and fabricated. You'll recall that Wilson claimed he'd been sent by the White House to check into a possible Nigerian connection to Iraq's nuclear aspirations (this was not true, the White House didn't do that), and that when he got back from his trip, that he reported his findings to Cheney's office (also not true - no written report, no briefing to the White House - nothing like what he described, and he never even communicated with the administration). When the Senate Intelligence committee got into it later and talked to Wilson directly, here is what they had to say, right from that (Democrat-led) committee:
First, the former ambassador described his findings to Committee staff as more directly related to Iraq and, specifically, as refuting both the possibility that Niger could have sold uranium to Iraq and that Iraq approached Niger to purchase uranium. The intelligence report described how the structure of Niger's uranium mines would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Niger to sell uranium to rogue nations, and noted that Nigerian officials denied knowledge of any deals to sell uranium to any rogue states, but did not refuse the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium.
Second, the former ambassador said that he discussed with his CIA contacts which names and signatures should have appeared on any documentation of a legitimate uranium transaction. In fact, the intelligence report made no mention of the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal or signatures that should have appeared on any documentation of such a deal. The only mention of Iraq in the report pertained to the meeting between the Iraqi delegation and former [Niger] Prime Minister Mayaki.
Third, the former ambassador noted that his CIA contacts told him there were documents pertaining to the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction and that the source of the information was the [blacked out] intelligence service." In fact, the CIA did not provide Wilson with "any information about the source or details of the original reporting as it would have required sharing classified information and noted that there were no 'documents' circulating... at the time o
Entertainment isn't directly supposed to be productive
I'm certainly not going to debate that, and that's not my contention, here. I'm talking about the assertion that time spent online is somehow, by its nature, more productive than the time spent catching a broadcast or TiVo'd session of a sitcom. People want to be entertained, and they're going to find ways to spend time being entertained. From what I'm able to determine - anecdotally, of course - the generations that most recently grew up sitting in front of the TV and talking on land-lines with their peers are indeed different than the ones that are spending the same (or, I'd guess, wildly more) hours sitting in front of MySpace and IMing their friends. But only in trivial ways. And worse, actually - at least people who sat through a 30-minute sitcome narrative actually had their brains involved in following a story arc, however silly it might have been. The ADHD-ness of how that same time is now being spent is dramatically visible, and might even worsen the sort of productivity that comes from being able to concentrate for more than 30 seconds at a time on any one thing.
I don't think that stopping the practice of watching long hours of re-ran Seinfeld episodes, so that you can spend even more hours writing and following links to various discussions and trivia about Seinfeld episodes and looking for places to download bootlegs of the same is an indication that, finally, all of that brainpower is getting put back to productive use.
On which the congressional and senate leaders were briefed, from day one. And of course, your use of the word "illegal" in reference to surveilance on overseas communications is just pure spin.
WMD misrepresentation
Leadership in the senate and the congress digested the same information. The previous administration had already drawn the same conclusion. Numerous foreign governments came to the same conclusions based on their own intel. Saddam himself was being lied to about his weapons capability by his own frightened subjects, and thought he had more than he actually did. You need to read past your favorite syndicated columnists, and recall the enormous stockpiles of things like VX that UN inspectors saw, and which they never saw disposed of... and which Saddam refused to account for. If you can't see something that used to exist, do you tell yourself it never did? How does that work out for you?
e.g. Valerie Plame
LINKED to him? Her name was spilled by one of Bush's political opponents in a fit of forgetfulness. He's readily admitted it. Meanwhile, Plame herself was playing political games from her CIA office, and her husband repeatedly lied about the nature of the little trip he went on, and on the conclusions that could be drawn from it. You really should come up with better examples of "crime," since you've got that one pretty much exactly backwards. Even Plame herself recently referred to her husband as a blowhard on that very subject.
So, we're back to you being OK with a structure wherein the only thing protecting covert activities, the people asked to risk their lives performing them, and the delicate relationships that realy upon them from disclosure in court is the unlikeliness that someone will sue? Are you even hearing yourself, here?
As for Clinton's handling of bin Laden, the "quiet communications" with other governments ended up doing as much damage to the operations as telling Congress possibly could have.
Only because he insisted on seeing an attack on a naval vessel in a foreign port, and attacks on our embassies, as criminal matters. Many quiet conversations with third parties would never, ever get started or go anywhere useful if those third parties knews (as they absolutely would) that anything said would wind up in the news.
Saying you can't trust Congress to do the right thing with sensitive information is basically a repudiation of democracy
Ah, so you're saying that we CANNOT trust a politician (the president, whose job is to head up the executive branch, which runs the sorts of operations in question) to use good judgement and keep the appropriate information from leaking out and damaging foreign relations or getting people killed, but you're willing to trust 400 politicians to exercise that judgement flawlessly? Do you mean people like Democrat rep. William Jefferson, caught with tens of thousands in bribe cash in his freezer, and who is not only still in office, but who might be considered to be a somewhat compromised keeper of sensitive information... and so Nancy Pelosi re-assigns him to committee that oversees the department of Homeland Security. Is that the sort of person you were thinking should be briefed on the the most sensitive, covert, under-cover operations? He's only still in office because Pelosi didn't want the stain of having to go through the process of kicking him out damage the politics on her side of the aisle. Of course, she would scream (and has, and does) for that sort of action if it's her political opponents exhibiting anything like that very same behavior.
That's the setting in which you'd like the most sensitive, lives-at-risk secrets to be passed around in rooms full of congressional aides, staffers, and the like? Yeah, what could go wrong? MORE than could go wrong when the executive branch keeps it close, and then briefs the next administration on what's up. Or perhaps you're suggesting that Bill Clinton's ham-fisted handling of Bin Laden and Al Queda in the wake of the Cole incident, embassies, etc., should have been hashed out in congress, with operational details and intelligence methods, and quiet communications from other governments (which would never be forthcoming if they thought it was going to be handed over to 400 gasbag legislators in the middle of negotiations) spread all over the news?
Right! And it is with that consent that a president is hired for four years, and trusted to do his or her job. Part of that job includes dealing with things that absolutely, positively should not be talked about in open court. If you don't like a particular administration well enough to give them that job (or re-hire them for another four years)... then all you have to be is persuasive enough to get people to vote your way. But you seem to be suggesting that no president can be trusted for four years. Which means you don't trust them for four minutes, either. On the other hand, you ARE trusting 400 politicians in Congress to make minute-by-minute judgement calls? Because if you don't think ANY president can do it, then you're pushing such authority somewhere else (never mind that pesky constitution, that places such authority with the executive branch).
It's very similar to the consent we give to police departments to hire and use undercover officers. Without them, certain rings of organized crime types cannot be dealt with. If someone who is politically opposed to the police chief can just fire off a lawsuit and, as part of discovery, simply demand that a list of all of the undercover cops is produced in court... well, you get the idea. It's simply absurd. Don't like the way those officers are conducting their work, or frustrated that you don't have enough details of their day-to-day jobs as they risk their lives? Fine. Get the mayor changed in the next election, and have that person - for whom those cops work - change the nature of those jobs. But making who they are and what they do and how they do it a matter of public record, as-is, is like allowing anyone who feels like drafting a lawsuit to just walk up and shoot those officers in the head. And it's even more true for counter-intelligence types, foreign operatives, etc.
If you don't like the fact that covert activities are essential, then elect someone who will take whatever action you think is necessary to make that condition go away. Say, complete appeasement of North Korea. Or a new public policy that supports the Iranian government's every wish in the Middle East. Or a new policy that proclaims the Russian mob as a worthy international organization. Just change those policies, and you'll have no need for the people who have to deal with them under difficult, dangerous circumstances, and no need for their boss (the commander in chief) to protect their identities from those that would like them all killed.
I gotta say that's a totally excellent way to sabotage an election. Hire the "terrorists" to print an "endorsement" for the opposition. It's funny/sad that the trick actually works.
Except in this case, of course, it was the Hamas spokesman on the radio in New York, doing an interview, and expressing his preference for Obama. I'm really not thinking that McCain's people, or Hillary's, have a lot of influence over the Hamas PR machinery in that way. Obviously, Obama was quick to say, "la la la! I'm not listening to that endorsement!" because obviously he has a vested interest in it going away. I found it more amusing than anything else.
Basically, invoking the privilege is fine, but it should mean the government basically loses the case automatically.
So, you can't see anything that President Obama, as he's re-sending Secretary Of State Carter back to have another friendly sit-down with Hamas (who just endorsed Obama - fabulous!), might have a need to keep secret... AND which should be that way? Or should his political opponents be able to sue him for political reasons, and automatically "win" (and what? get whatever they want?) because if Obama were to divulge secret info or methods as used in pursuit of his foreign policy or defense chores he'd be risking lives or breaking promises made to other governments? Just think through the consequences of making anyone who decides to file a suit automatically win if the Commander In Chief doesn't cave in and dole out things that it's foolish to divulge. The Dems need to look past their pathological Bush hatred and consider that they may not like their own guy being unable to support and protect the necessarily covert things that that office's duties require.
I like dogs, and would never hurt one for no reason. But I'd still kill a rabid one, especially if I thought it was about to hurt someone else. Finding its owner, and thoughtfully explaining the history and mitigation strategies related to rabies - as the dog is chewing some kid's arm off, or killing someone else's pet - might feel more politically correct, but it's absurd, too. Poisoning the botnet is a good thing.
Right. They're able to use very slow film - which helps with fogging from other sources. I believe they also stored the equipment and film in foil-lined cases for this very reason.
If you don't use religion to make disprovable statements about reality, they're quite compatible.
And if you don't use the framework through which you understand existence to talk about existence, then that framework is pretty much useless, isn't it? And worse, since most people do NOT put it in such a tidy little box off (entirely) to the side of reality, their magical thinking DOES intrude on more practical issues, like how to evaluate the prospects of a brain-dead patient, or how to decide which textbooks make it into a school... where young minds are being shaped to do a lot more than just think about biology. And those young minds, trained to tolerate magical thinking (and the inherent contradictions and irrationality that comes along with it) are thus set up for a lifetime of nagging doubt about how they see and understand all sorts of things. If they're willing to sweep that under the rug, it can rot there, and cause all sorts of cognitive oddities later on. And those corrosive little flaws in a person's world view ARE incompatible with their development as critical thinkers on a host of other issues... from understanding the chances that they'll win the lottery, to consigning their cancer-having child to death via treatment-by-wishful-thinking. Let the camel nose of superstition in under the tent, and you'll got the whole camel.
So, what do YOU stand to gain by portraying the feds' concerns about prospective threats to government infrastructure and everything that rides on it as bogus? How does your characterization (implied) that counterfeit routing equipment used to protect systems on which lives depend is just fine, and not a concern, benefit you? You seem to have a vested interest in devaluing the concerns of the people that are asked to protect national interests in this respect - possibly because you conflate that issue with, say, also having less maneuvering room to rip off movies, or something else tangental, like that. You're right: I don't trust you.
its hasn't happened in recorded history that I know of
Let's see... life has been evolving on this planet for a couple billion years, and we've been recording history for 0.0002% of that time (and I'm being very generous, there). We've been using somethign roughly approximating the scientific method, and had quality tools with which to observe the actual nature of things for roughtly 0.00003% of that time. Plenty of creatures WITH legs have continued to observably specialize in the last few thousand years, but legs - as an anatomical feature - have been with us for many hundreds of millions of years. Why you think that the adaptation of a particular single-cell organism would only be marked by the sudden appearance of features that took millions of years to appear in other evolutionary branche is beyond me. Well, no it's not. Because that's not really what you're talking about. You're hoping that by posting such a silly response, that you'll distract yourself from the real issue: that by admitting that you're a little uncomfortable with the fact that life is changing before our eyes, that you have to actually question a whole lot of the mysticism that you've also signed onto.
only the latest version was able to survive is actually quite silly
Are you so uninformed, or do you have your eyes closed so tightly, that you only see one type of primate alive in the world? Our closest cousins, the chimpanzees, are exactly what you say doesn't exist.
the animal would never be in both environments to get any kind of advantage
Right, because there aren't any reptiles that operate both underwater and on land (say, crocs, gators or many snakes), and there aren't any amphibians like toads and frogs. Nah.
let's not treat macro-evolution dishonestly with our heads in the sand
Amazing. You actually think that the person with their head in the sand is the scientist, and not the person who's so annoyed at having to actually think about this and the complexity involved that they just throw up their hands and say, "My brain can't handle thinking about long periods of time, so... it's magic! Which I will also cite as the reason that I should be allowed to have multiple wives, now that I think about it."
no two animals alive today have the same adaptability in any environment
Ah. You mean... that animals become specialized (adapt over time!) to the environment in which generations of them are bred, whether or not those conditions, over the last (for example) several generations are still the same? What ARE you saying, exactly? There are all sorts of animals that USED to be perfect for their environment, but which no longer are, and are also not yet extinct. Are you that hard up for money that you can't take a trip to the zoo for a look-see?
who wants to posit why genocide of macro-evolutionary down chain entities has been the first act of every new macro-evolutionary entity
They can't observe anything because their excuse for everything is that it takes millions of years
No, that's the excuse you WISH "they" would use. There are bacteria thriving today, showing traits (such as resistence to antibiotics) that didn't exist ten years ago. Or even ten months ago. Evolution happens rapidly in life forms that reproduce rapidly (because each generation undergoes some mutation, and SOME mutations result in traits that make some offspring more successful, and more likely to reproduce). In organisms that only reproduce a few times over the course of decades (like us) it takes a lot longer to see changes.
Stand a Yorkshire Terrier up next to a Bull Mastiff sometime, and see how much Wolf you recognize in each of those variations on the same nearly identical DNA. The mastiff goes back a thousand years or so more than the terrier, but neither go back very far at all. Variations on the wolves go back many hundreds of thousands of years. If you accelerate natural selection by personally choosing which mutated offspring get the chance to breed with which other ones, you can see the changes in the species that much more quickly. Ask any dog breeder that's been around for the last 40 years whether or not they've personally witnessed entirely new breeds take hold, and then shift further in response to circumstance. Where do you think domestic dogs came from, anyway? Adam and Eve had a pet or two that looked like a beagle? Actually, you probably DO think that, don't you.
I don't see how Intelligent Design theory can be forced out of school when Evolution is a theory itself.
Speaking of being forced out of school, have you ever actually opened a dictionary (let alone a science text) and wrapped your mind around a working definition of the word "theory," as it applies in such cases? Creationism isn't a theory in any sense of that word. It's mythology. You could say, of course, that you have a theory about the origin of species, and it includes an all-powerful Flying Spaghetti Monster. I'm sure you've heard of Him. If your standards for what should be considered a viable scientific theory are so thin and dull that you're willing to consider anybody's fairy tale as equal to repeatable, observable things right in front of your eyes, then of course you will also passionately defend the teaching of the FSM in science class too, right? There are also other mythologies found in, say, tribes in the African bush. They involve species being hatched from the severed testicles of various warrior gods.
Which part of your science curriculum will be dedicated to exploring ALL of the other creationism tales that are every bit as valid as yours? Some people are convinced that the movie The Matrix is real, and everything around us is fake - a simulation. By your standards, that's a perfectly valid "theory." How many school days should we dedicate to that one? Ten? A hundred? More days than are dedicated to your favorite magic tale? Remember, there are hundreds, possibly thousands of such stories. Sounds like each day of a student's entire educational career is going to have to be dedicated to a different one. And of course, there are crazy people who come up with new ones every day. Kids may have to extend their stay in school just to keep studying all of the new ones that come up.
Or, perhaps we could just look at the endless evidence around us, and watch life - from the bacteria-size critters on up to things that are bigger than you are - adapt and succeed (or fail to) as mutations occur. And move on to learning some other actual stuff, too.
Slashdot Mirror
china is perhaps the most capitalist country in the world
Not really, though. Capitalism only works when there's rule of law, and free communication. To the extent that China echoes any of the late 19th century stuff you mentioned (killer gangs taking out the competition, etc), that's not capitalism. More like fuedalism. China's oppressive central government is anything but the lubricant of capitalism - it's the protector of a condition in which there is abundant cheap labor. That is the engine of that country's house-of-cards economic growth. If the factory workers there started actually operating at a middle-class level, the growth would grind to a halt for the lack of cheap workers to keep making the stuff they're selling to the rest of the world at a handsome profit. After much turbulence, they're going to end up looking just like Europe or North America... fishing around for cheap labor from countries that are still a few steps behind, with their competitive edge diminishing. Next stop, Myanmar, where thousands living in primitive conditions just died in a storm. Countries like that will - for a while - become the source of cheap labor, until THEY get their act together.
China's reliving the entire history of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries as experienced by the western world, but over the course of a couple of decades. And with an enormous population. It's going to be an economic, ecological, and cultural train wreck. But for now, we can sure get some cheap motherboards, teak garden furniture, and t-shirts!
At least when it comes to my customers, the stuff that lives in datacenters is there - at least in part - to support distributed workers. In droves, they are shifting towards working from home, avoiding a lot of transportation-intensive face time, and learning to take advantage of not having to have their same back-office systems humming in a closet in a rented office where nobody shows up any more, except to reset the router so they can go back home and get some damn work done.
Some newly used rack space in datacenters actually offsets other daily fuel burning - sometimes a lot of it.
What a rediculous article
It's not only diculous, it's re-diculous!
They must really feel the ridicule, I guess.
the non-government email systems were probably used by Rove & Co because the government ones were so fucked up
No, the non-government one were used because when those people (Rove, Bush, their staffers, etc.,) were working on campaign or party-related stuff, it's ILLEGAL for them to use the government systems. So, if they HAD used those systems for that sort of messaging, everyone would then complain about THAT.
Well, there are all sorts of government agencies that (sometimes) wear uniforms, carry guns, and even operate overseas. Like the State Department's protective people... yes, the Secretary of State might have Marines guarding her at some locations, but State's own crew is out in advance, sort of like the Secret Service. The Secret Service, of course (part of the Treasury!) is also out, overseas, packing heat, in advance of the arrival of certain parts of the government showing up. There are more, of course.
Well, unless of course you're not trolling, and decided to be REALLY oblique about the Coast Guard. Which isn't exactly how that played, is it? Most people here don't like the necessary interaction between, and sharing of intel between the domestic activities of the DHS and the military intel people. Well, unless they can complain that sharing it badly is a defect of whatever administration they don't like, in which case sharing correctly is goood... but otherwise it's bad, see? One must slashdottify one's mind to get the right frame of reference, of course.
There's five branches in the U.S. military. Four in the Department of Defense, and one in the Department of Homeland Security.
In your snarkiness, you were partly right (since you left out the Coast Guard), even as you knew you were wrong about DHS. If you're going down that road, why not say that Agriculture Department is part of the DoD, since pilots have to eat? Or that the IRS is just the revenue collecting branch of the military? Or that Nancy Pelosi is part of the military since it's something she talks about as part of her job? Or that the FBI is part of the military, since they've been known to arrest and prosecute some DoD employees who go wrong? Never mind, you're a troll, anyway. Have a nice day.
FISA clearly states it's illegal to wiretap on US citizens who are on US soil communicating with other US citizens on US soil without a warrant. Bush has admitted this was done under his orders. That was (and still is) illegal. Your erroneous attempts to state it was in reference to overseas communication is a red herring.
... at the time o
Nope. Wiretapping was between international endpoints, or between international endpoints, and the people they were talking to in the US. Calls between domestic endpoints associated with those international calls were logged, in terms of the data describing the (in order to watch for additional international calls likely to be related to them). You're confusing retaining the fact that a call was made with a recording of it.
This was a major point of contention by Bush vs Kerry during the 2004 re-election campaign
Right. And at no point did Kerry say anything to suggest that he didn't support the conclusions made by the Clinton administration about Saddam's possession of, and continued pursuit of WMDs. Kerry himself described Iraq's nuclear threat before Bush was even in office. And unlike him (he acknowledged the concerns over things like Saddam's UN-observed chem weapons stashes, or the long range missiles he continued to build right up until 2003), you're tap dancing right past issues like VX.
Libby was convicted on four felony counts for obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements to federal investigators.
Right. And at no point did the prosecutor even try to make the case that Libby had anything to do with Plame's name being leaked. He wasn't accused of it, and wasn't convicted of anything related. As for Cheney: he authorized Libby (and others) to specifically address the issues that Plame's husband brought up and fabricated. You'll recall that Wilson claimed he'd been sent by the White House to check into a possible Nigerian connection to Iraq's nuclear aspirations (this was not true, the White House didn't do that), and that when he got back from his trip, that he reported his findings to Cheney's office (also not true - no written report, no briefing to the White House - nothing like what he described, and he never even communicated with the administration). When the Senate Intelligence committee got into it later and talked to Wilson directly, here is what they had to say, right from that (Democrat-led) committee:
First, the former ambassador described his findings to Committee staff as more directly related to Iraq and, specifically, as refuting both the possibility that Niger could have sold uranium to Iraq and that Iraq approached Niger to purchase uranium. The intelligence report described how the structure of Niger's uranium mines would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Niger to sell uranium to rogue nations, and noted that Nigerian officials denied knowledge of any deals to sell uranium to any rogue states, but did not refuse the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium.
Second, the former ambassador said that he discussed with his CIA contacts which names and signatures should have appeared on any documentation of a legitimate uranium transaction. In fact, the intelligence report made no mention of the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal or signatures that should have appeared on any documentation of such a deal. The only mention of Iraq in the report pertained to the meeting between the Iraqi delegation and former [Niger] Prime Minister Mayaki.
Third, the former ambassador noted that his CIA contacts told him there were documents pertaining to the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction and that the source of the information was the [blacked out] intelligence service." In fact, the CIA did not provide Wilson with "any information about the source or details of the original reporting as it would have required sharing classified information and noted that there were no 'documents' circulating
Entertainment isn't directly supposed to be productive
I'm certainly not going to debate that, and that's not my contention, here. I'm talking about the assertion that time spent online is somehow, by its nature, more productive than the time spent catching a broadcast or TiVo'd session of a sitcom. People want to be entertained, and they're going to find ways to spend time being entertained. From what I'm able to determine - anecdotally, of course - the generations that most recently grew up sitting in front of the TV and talking on land-lines with their peers are indeed different than the ones that are spending the same (or, I'd guess, wildly more) hours sitting in front of MySpace and IMing their friends. But only in trivial ways. And worse, actually - at least people who sat through a 30-minute sitcome narrative actually had their brains involved in following a story arc, however silly it might have been. The ADHD-ness of how that same time is now being spent is dramatically visible, and might even worsen the sort of productivity that comes from being able to concentrate for more than 30 seconds at a time on any one thing.
I don't think that stopping the practice of watching long hours of re-ran Seinfeld episodes, so that you can spend even more hours writing and following links to various discussions and trivia about Seinfeld episodes and looking for places to download bootlegs of the same is an indication that, finally, all of that brainpower is getting put back to productive use.
allegations of illegal wiretapping
On which the congressional and senate leaders were briefed, from day one. And of course, your use of the word "illegal" in reference to surveilance on overseas communications is just pure spin.
WMD misrepresentation
Leadership in the senate and the congress digested the same information. The previous administration had already drawn the same conclusion. Numerous foreign governments came to the same conclusions based on their own intel. Saddam himself was being lied to about his weapons capability by his own frightened subjects, and thought he had more than he actually did. You need to read past your favorite syndicated columnists, and recall the enormous stockpiles of things like VX that UN inspectors saw, and which they never saw disposed of... and which Saddam refused to account for. If you can't see something that used to exist, do you tell yourself it never did? How does that work out for you?
e.g. Valerie Plame
LINKED to him? Her name was spilled by one of Bush's political opponents in a fit of forgetfulness. He's readily admitted it. Meanwhile, Plame herself was playing political games from her CIA office, and her husband repeatedly lied about the nature of the little trip he went on, and on the conclusions that could be drawn from it. You really should come up with better examples of "crime," since you've got that one pretty much exactly backwards. Even Plame herself recently referred to her husband as a blowhard on that very subject.
If it does, then it will lose, simple as that
So, we're back to you being OK with a structure wherein the only thing protecting covert activities, the people asked to risk their lives performing them, and the delicate relationships that realy upon them from disclosure in court is the unlikeliness that someone will sue? Are you even hearing yourself, here?
As for Clinton's handling of bin Laden, the "quiet communications" with other governments ended up doing as much damage to the operations as telling Congress possibly could have.
Only because he insisted on seeing an attack on a naval vessel in a foreign port, and attacks on our embassies, as criminal matters. Many quiet conversations with third parties would never, ever get started or go anywhere useful if those third parties knews (as they absolutely would) that anything said would wind up in the news.
Saying you can't trust Congress to do the right thing with sensitive information is basically a repudiation of democracy
Ah, so you're saying that we CANNOT trust a politician (the president, whose job is to head up the executive branch, which runs the sorts of operations in question) to use good judgement and keep the appropriate information from leaking out and damaging foreign relations or getting people killed, but you're willing to trust 400 politicians to exercise that judgement flawlessly? Do you mean people like Democrat rep. William Jefferson, caught with tens of thousands in bribe cash in his freezer, and who is not only still in office, but who might be considered to be a somewhat compromised keeper of sensitive information... and so Nancy Pelosi re-assigns him to committee that oversees the department of Homeland Security. Is that the sort of person you were thinking should be briefed on the the most sensitive, covert, under-cover operations? He's only still in office because Pelosi didn't want the stain of having to go through the process of kicking him out damage the politics on her side of the aisle. Of course, she would scream (and has, and does) for that sort of action if it's her political opponents exhibiting anything like that very same behavior.
That's the setting in which you'd like the most sensitive, lives-at-risk secrets to be passed around in rooms full of congressional aides, staffers, and the like? Yeah, what could go wrong? MORE than could go wrong when the executive branch keeps it close, and then briefs the next administration on what's up. Or perhaps you're suggesting that Bill Clinton's ham-fisted handling of Bin Laden and Al Queda in the wake of the Cole incident, embassies, etc., should have been hashed out in congress, with operational details and intelligence methods, and quiet communications from other governments (which would never be forthcoming if they thought it was going to be handed over to 400 gasbag legislators in the middle of negotiations) spread all over the news?
the consent of the governed
Right! And it is with that consent that a president is hired for four years, and trusted to do his or her job. Part of that job includes dealing with things that absolutely, positively should not be talked about in open court. If you don't like a particular administration well enough to give them that job (or re-hire them for another four years)... then all you have to be is persuasive enough to get people to vote your way. But you seem to be suggesting that no president can be trusted for four years. Which means you don't trust them for four minutes, either. On the other hand, you ARE trusting 400 politicians in Congress to make minute-by-minute judgement calls? Because if you don't think ANY president can do it, then you're pushing such authority somewhere else (never mind that pesky constitution, that places such authority with the executive branch).
It's very similar to the consent we give to police departments to hire and use undercover officers. Without them, certain rings of organized crime types cannot be dealt with. If someone who is politically opposed to the police chief can just fire off a lawsuit and, as part of discovery, simply demand that a list of all of the undercover cops is produced in court... well, you get the idea. It's simply absurd. Don't like the way those officers are conducting their work, or frustrated that you don't have enough details of their day-to-day jobs as they risk their lives? Fine. Get the mayor changed in the next election, and have that person - for whom those cops work - change the nature of those jobs. But making who they are and what they do and how they do it a matter of public record, as-is, is like allowing anyone who feels like drafting a lawsuit to just walk up and shoot those officers in the head. And it's even more true for counter-intelligence types, foreign operatives, etc.
If you don't like the fact that covert activities are essential, then elect someone who will take whatever action you think is necessary to make that condition go away. Say, complete appeasement of North Korea. Or a new public policy that supports the Iranian government's every wish in the Middle East. Or a new policy that proclaims the Russian mob as a worthy international organization. Just change those policies, and you'll have no need for the people who have to deal with them under difficult, dangerous circumstances, and no need for their boss (the commander in chief) to protect their identities from those that would like them all killed.
I think you are a bit too rapid my friend, assumptions are everywhere in your post. Either you are a pathological liar or a troll.
Wow.
It's call a hypothetical example, used to make a point. I could have used any name.
I gotta say that's a totally excellent way to sabotage an election. Hire the "terrorists" to print an "endorsement" for the opposition. It's funny/sad that the trick actually works.
Except in this case, of course, it was the Hamas spokesman on the radio in New York, doing an interview, and expressing his preference for Obama. I'm really not thinking that McCain's people, or Hillary's, have a lot of influence over the Hamas PR machinery in that way. Obviously, Obama was quick to say, "la la la! I'm not listening to that endorsement!" because obviously he has a vested interest in it going away. I found it more amusing than anything else.
Basically, invoking the privilege is fine, but it should mean the government basically loses the case automatically.
So, you can't see anything that President Obama, as he's re-sending Secretary Of State Carter back to have another friendly sit-down with Hamas (who just endorsed Obama - fabulous!), might have a need to keep secret... AND which should be that way? Or should his political opponents be able to sue him for political reasons, and automatically "win" (and what? get whatever they want?) because if Obama were to divulge secret info or methods as used in pursuit of his foreign policy or defense chores he'd be risking lives or breaking promises made to other governments? Just think through the consequences of making anyone who decides to file a suit automatically win if the Commander In Chief doesn't cave in and dole out things that it's foolish to divulge. The Dems need to look past their pathological Bush hatred and consider that they may not like their own guy being unable to support and protect the necessarily covert things that that office's duties require.
I like dogs, and would never hurt one for no reason. But I'd still kill a rabid one, especially if I thought it was about to hurt someone else. Finding its owner, and thoughtfully explaining the history and mitigation strategies related to rabies - as the dog is chewing some kid's arm off, or killing someone else's pet - might feel more politically correct, but it's absurd, too. Poisoning the botnet is a good thing.
Right. They're able to use very slow film - which helps with fogging from other sources. I believe they also stored the equipment and film in foil-lined cases for this very reason.
If you don't use religion to make disprovable statements about reality, they're quite compatible.
And if you don't use the framework through which you understand existence to talk about existence, then that framework is pretty much useless, isn't it? And worse, since most people do NOT put it in such a tidy little box off (entirely) to the side of reality, their magical thinking DOES intrude on more practical issues, like how to evaluate the prospects of a brain-dead patient, or how to decide which textbooks make it into a school... where young minds are being shaped to do a lot more than just think about biology. And those young minds, trained to tolerate magical thinking (and the inherent contradictions and irrationality that comes along with it) are thus set up for a lifetime of nagging doubt about how they see and understand all sorts of things. If they're willing to sweep that under the rug, it can rot there, and cause all sorts of cognitive oddities later on. And those corrosive little flaws in a person's world view ARE incompatible with their development as critical thinkers on a host of other issues... from understanding the chances that they'll win the lottery, to consigning their cancer-having child to death via treatment-by-wishful-thinking. Let the camel nose of superstition in under the tent, and you'll got the whole camel.
never trust those who stand to gain
So, what do YOU stand to gain by portraying the feds' concerns about prospective threats to government infrastructure and everything that rides on it as bogus? How does your characterization (implied) that counterfeit routing equipment used to protect systems on which lives depend is just fine, and not a concern, benefit you? You seem to have a vested interest in devaluing the concerns of the people that are asked to protect national interests in this respect - possibly because you conflate that issue with, say, also having less maneuvering room to rip off movies, or something else tangental, like that. You're right: I don't trust you.
its hasn't happened in recorded history that I know of
Let's see... life has been evolving on this planet for a couple billion years, and we've been recording history for 0.0002% of that time (and I'm being very generous, there). We've been using somethign roughly approximating the scientific method, and had quality tools with which to observe the actual nature of things for roughtly 0.00003% of that time. Plenty of creatures WITH legs have continued to observably specialize in the last few thousand years, but legs - as an anatomical feature - have been with us for many hundreds of millions of years. Why you think that the adaptation of a particular single-cell organism would only be marked by the sudden appearance of features that took millions of years to appear in other evolutionary branche is beyond me. Well, no it's not. Because that's not really what you're talking about. You're hoping that by posting such a silly response, that you'll distract yourself from the real issue: that by admitting that you're a little uncomfortable with the fact that life is changing before our eyes, that you have to actually question a whole lot of the mysticism that you've also signed onto.
only the latest version was able to survive is actually quite silly
Are you so uninformed, or do you have your eyes closed so tightly, that you only see one type of primate alive in the world? Our closest cousins, the chimpanzees, are exactly what you say doesn't exist.
the animal would never be in both environments to get any kind of advantage
Right, because there aren't any reptiles that operate both underwater and on land (say, crocs, gators or many snakes), and there aren't any amphibians like toads and frogs. Nah.
let's not treat macro-evolution dishonestly with our heads in the sand
Amazing. You actually think that the person with their head in the sand is the scientist, and not the person who's so annoyed at having to actually think about this and the complexity involved that they just throw up their hands and say, "My brain can't handle thinking about long periods of time, so... it's magic! Which I will also cite as the reason that I should be allowed to have multiple wives, now that I think about it."
no two animals alive today have the same adaptability in any environment
Ah. You mean... that animals become specialized (adapt over time!) to the environment in which generations of them are bred, whether or not those conditions, over the last (for example) several generations are still the same? What ARE you saying, exactly? There are all sorts of animals that USED to be perfect for their environment, but which no longer are, and are also not yet extinct. Are you that hard up for money that you can't take a trip to the zoo for a look-see?
who wants to posit why genocide of macro-evolutionary down chain entities has been the first act of every new macro-evolutionary entity
Oh yes, please get a job teaching high school.
They can't observe anything because their excuse for everything is that it takes millions of years
No, that's the excuse you WISH "they" would use. There are bacteria thriving today, showing traits (such as resistence to antibiotics) that didn't exist ten years ago. Or even ten months ago. Evolution happens rapidly in life forms that reproduce rapidly (because each generation undergoes some mutation, and SOME mutations result in traits that make some offspring more successful, and more likely to reproduce). In organisms that only reproduce a few times over the course of decades (like us) it takes a lot longer to see changes.
Stand a Yorkshire Terrier up next to a Bull Mastiff sometime, and see how much Wolf you recognize in each of those variations on the same nearly identical DNA. The mastiff goes back a thousand years or so more than the terrier, but neither go back very far at all. Variations on the wolves go back many hundreds of thousands of years. If you accelerate natural selection by personally choosing which mutated offspring get the chance to breed with which other ones, you can see the changes in the species that much more quickly. Ask any dog breeder that's been around for the last 40 years whether or not they've personally witnessed entirely new breeds take hold, and then shift further in response to circumstance. Where do you think domestic dogs came from, anyway? Adam and Eve had a pet or two that looked like a beagle? Actually, you probably DO think that, don't you.
I don't see how Intelligent Design theory can be forced out of school when Evolution is a theory itself.
Speaking of being forced out of school, have you ever actually opened a dictionary (let alone a science text) and wrapped your mind around a working definition of the word "theory," as it applies in such cases? Creationism isn't a theory in any sense of that word. It's mythology. You could say, of course, that you have a theory about the origin of species, and it includes an all-powerful Flying Spaghetti Monster. I'm sure you've heard of Him. If your standards for what should be considered a viable scientific theory are so thin and dull that you're willing to consider anybody's fairy tale as equal to repeatable, observable things right in front of your eyes, then of course you will also passionately defend the teaching of the FSM in science class too, right? There are also other mythologies found in, say, tribes in the African bush. They involve species being hatched from the severed testicles of various warrior gods.
Which part of your science curriculum will be dedicated to exploring ALL of the other creationism tales that are every bit as valid as yours? Some people are convinced that the movie The Matrix is real, and everything around us is fake - a simulation. By your standards, that's a perfectly valid "theory." How many school days should we dedicate to that one? Ten? A hundred? More days than are dedicated to your favorite magic tale? Remember, there are hundreds, possibly thousands of such stories. Sounds like each day of a student's entire educational career is going to have to be dedicated to a different one. And of course, there are crazy people who come up with new ones every day. Kids may have to extend their stay in school just to keep studying all of the new ones that come up.
Or, perhaps we could just look at the endless evidence around us, and watch life - from the bacteria-size critters on up to things that are bigger than you are - adapt and succeed (or fail to) as mutations occur. And move on to learning some other actual stuff, too.