"Engineers at Morton Thiokol (manufacturer of the solid rocket boosters) knew that the temperatures were outside of the design range of the O-rings. They strongly objected to the launch, but were overruled by senior Thiokol management."
From Columbia:
"In a risk-management scenario similar to the Challenger disaster, NASA management failed to recognize the relevance of engineering concerns for safety. Two examples of this were failure to honor engineer requests for imaging to inspect possible damage, and failure to respond to engineer requests about status of astronaut inspection of the left wing."
From DART:
"Investigators also raised issues with the mission's management style, saying that lack of training and experience caused the DART design team to shun expert advice. They also found that internal checks and balances were inadequate in uncovering the mission's shortcomings."
"Democracy"
"Tianamen Square protests of 1989"
"Censorship"
"Li Hongzhi" (leader of the Falun Gong movement)
Each gets your IP banned for a few minutes, and then eventually you'll be able to use it again. Each must be typed in Chinese characters of course.
Microsoft's Encarta has been repeatedly attacked by the Encyclopedia Britannica for making multiple editions with different content for different nations --- a separate one for mainland China and another one for everyone else, for example.
President Bush is going to make an official statement on the wiretapping reported in USA Today ten minutes from now at the time of writing, at noon Eastern Time. You can probably view it on C-SPAN for commercial free coverage, but CNN, MSNBC, or FOX will be covering it if they aren't.
Also, donate a penny or two to C-SPAN. They work hard to provide live coverage of House and Senate debate to you for free. And that Colbert White House dinner video (which they sold to Google Video.)
They said of Mendeleev's Britannica article that he was the 13th of 17 surviving children, and not the 17th. They said of Wikipedia's article that he was the 13th surviving child, and not the 17th. Britannica's error was probably due to a typographical error in the source material that they used, a New York Times article.
Wikipedia users in January found out on the talk page, trying to make sure they used written sources to correct articles, and not just Nature's word, that in actuality, conflicting sources say that he was the 13th child, and others say he was the 14th, because historians disagree. They made a note of this in the article.
About two and a half months later, after Wikipedia has already fixed the 'error,' Britannica comes out with the response, and does not directly admit they made an error, but goes on to disagree with Nature saying he was the 14th child, and brags about how they noted historians disagree on the issue of whether he was 13th or 14th. The new Britannica issue will be coming off the presses with the error corrected in about a year, probably. I see a lesson here.
I should know what 180 Solutions was. I was infected by it once. I was in the middle of installing a video game I had downloaded, while browsing the Keenspot website, which is a service that hosts webcomics. One of Keenspot's advertisers had gone rogue, BurstNet, and started dispensing spyware to whoever went there.
I, having thought I was still in the middle of installation, installed install026.exe when it queried me. It took me a $40 purchase of MacAfee and about a month's time to get it completely off. It binded to the root of the computer, infecting vital files, such that they could not be deleted without hurting the computer itself.
Look at this Wikipedia revision, creating an article on a 180 Solutions product. Look at the history tab, and you will note this revision was done by the IP address 206.169.156.2. The IP address corresponds with 180 SOLUTIONS HOOKED-2 when looked up in the American Registry for Internet Numbers.
The article was changed to give it a more neutral tone many times, but in all cases the IP address tried to revert to the original version. The article in its current form is located here, but with a sign that says that everything in this article but not be accurate, nor true. The IP address range for 180 Solutions is 206.169.156.0 - 206.169.156.255. See this American Registry for Internet Numbers entry for 180 Solution's physical address. The city can be confirmed by Wikipedia itself.
This was done in June 2005, around the same time the U.S. Congress staffers began editing Wikipedia, coincidentally. Again, using Wikipedia as a source, this company has less than 250 employees. Because this IP address came from the company, what are the odds that the editor created that article about that "instant messaging service" for love of the company alone? It reads like an advertisement.
They used Wikipedia to market their filth, and spyware company or not, that's something I'll always hold in contempt. (mod up)
I could not help but notice how they commented on Mendeleev's article:
Reviewer:
Declaring him the 17th child is either incorrect or misleading. He is the 13th
surviving child of 17 total.
Britannica:
We disagree with the reviewer's implication that there is full agreement that
Mendeleyev was the 13th surviving child. Our new article makes it clear that scholars are not
uniform in their views on whether Mendeleyev was the 13th or 14th surviving child.
If you were thinking while you read this, you would notice this was simply a clever way of saying "We were wrong," while throwing some blame back to Nature itself.
---
Interestingly, Wikipedia originally stated he was the 14th surviving child. Not only did Wikipedia "correct" this instantly so that it read as "13th" for some time after the study had first been published, but at the end of January, on the talk page, someone independently noted that sources were in conflict over whether he was the 13th or 14th surviving child on the talk page and corrected in the article about two months before Britannica's recent response.
Britannica's error, saying he was the 17th surviving child, may have resulted from a typographical error within a New York Times article it used as a source.
All this time I had honestly thought it was natural for "animehouse" to appear in that list out of nowhere and have my connection knocked off, due to natural crowding from being in a metropolitan area.
Guess I shouldn't be on Slashdot.
I should say that China does not own the most U.S. foreign debt. China is the second highest owner of U.S. foreign debt, but Japan is the country ranking #1, with three times more debt bought than China. This does not enter news reports, of course, because people are much less worried about Japan's integrity.
The main body of the bill passed one week after 9/11:
"That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."
As long as Al-Quaeda exists, as long as former members of Al-Qaeda exist, and then that doesn't take into account countries that would harbor those members, and how "harbor" is defined, to the extent that at its greatest Australia refusing to turn over a high ranking member thinking it would get the death penalty, possibly without a fair trial, constitutes "harboring." Replace "Australia" with the name of a Middle Eastern country with an already tarnished reputation, like "Iran," and it sounds more plausible.
This would be taking the interpretation to its greatest heights, but when Congress passed the resolution, in its full here, they trusted the chief executive would interpret it fairly and use its vague wording responsibly to go after whichever organization or nation or people planned the attacks, which was uncertain at the time, or at least according to Bush supporters. (See Wikipedia for a list of initial suspects.)
That was the line of thinking Alberto Gonzales said he was a part of during the Senate judiciary meetings, that Congress had given the Chief Executive the power to wiretap when they said "all appropriate and neccessary force" in the resolution. This is relevant because they see a military authorization of force as being synonymous with a declaration of war, after which FISA says electronic surveillance may be allowed for 15 day periods after presidential authorization and repetitive reauthorization.
Thoughtful dissidents would say that they are not synonymous because past administrations and American congressional bodies have acted as if they are not. First, not declaring war provides a way to circumvent constitutional safeguards against the executive declaring war, and also, in some cases, to avoid feeling bound by the established laws of war. Not using the word "war" is also seen as being more public relations-friendly. For these reasons, they have generally ceased to issue declarations of war, instead describing their actions by euphemisms such as "police action" or "authorized use of force."
More importantly, typically a full declaration must be ratified by various legislative bodies, but 'authorized use of force' may allow an elected head of state to directly initiate forceful action without further consultation. In addition, with declarations of war being increasingly regulated by international bodies, 'authorized use of force' can often be used to avoid some of the negative consequences of a declaration.
Why pass such a vaguely worded bill? It was a way for them to allow the administration to go after al-Quaeda without ruling out the possibility of them going after the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or other organizations, had they been found to have been involved. It was a way for them to act quickly, voting against the bill would make them look soft on the people that destroyed the World Trade Center, and it was a way to prevent Congress from looking foolish if it turned out they were going after or overlooking the wrong people.
Black propaganda is propaganda that lies about where it comes from. In black propaganda, the U.S. government would release a tape of an actor of Arabic descent dressed up as Osama bin Laden stating that they have found a major security flaw and intend to target the Torino Olympics.
In white propaganda, the real source is declared, true, and identified, and is generally characterized by factual, but one-sided information and standard public relations techniques.
Gray propaganda may come from an adversarial source pretending to be friendly or neutral, and presents misleading information in a more insidious manner than white propaganda, in the same way the author says. For more information, see the Wikipedia article on propaganda.
The media does not believe in providing extensive coverage of information now. I particularly mean the visual media, but other types are guilty as well. First, the visual media does not have time for broadcasting 10 page news reports. Forget that they are a 24/7 news network. They want to repeat the same headlines over and over, beginning the cycle every thirty minutes, for viewers just tuning into the network. This leads to thirty second news briefs, with a tiny fast-moving screencrawler at the bottom for those that, for whatever insane reason, are looking for more of today's less privilaged headlines.
Explaining the reasoning behind Bush's position, that he and Alberto Gonzales think Congress allowed it when they passed the authorization of military force in 2001, yet that Alberto Gonzales refused to ask for legislation to amend the authorization because he knew that the legislation would not pass. Explaining that this interpretation would depend entirely on whether or not an authorization to use military force is included in the definition of a declaration of war will not make the news. Talking about Supreme Court precedents related to this, like East District of Michigan v. United States, I think it was called, would not make the news either.
The most I have ever seen any of this in the media was in a written two page report carried by the written MSNBC, with only two paragraphs of Bush's lawyers explaining about the authorization and declaration of war part, which to my knowledge did not air on the television network.
With CNN's very frequent recycling of headlines, and the bottom crawler, it is very obvious they want to be as accessable to people just tuning in as possible, trying to talk about as many current issues as possible, meaning to me that CNN is just trying to be a poorly performed version of CNN.com. The Internet, or the newspaper, if you can bother figuring out how to flip through the pages now days, will always trump TV for that reason. CNN borrows nearly all congressional footage from C-SPAN with permission, and cuts to them frequently, but it seems very, very wrong to me to advertise to watch the Alito hearings on CNN where there is a version not punctuated by advertisements and Woolf Blitzer saying, "This is the Situation Room. Stay tuned. You're watching CNN."
In year 1984, you listen to your phone. In year 2004, your phone listens to you.
If you look through all the edits that the House of Representatives and Senate IPs have done, you will see that it was not only Meehan's staffers involved, but others, too, including Republicans. This applies to both parties.
I am a Wikipedia editor and am personally going through all edits that have come through the U.S. Congress IP range. It's mildly entertaining, like a made-for-TV horror comedy, as I look through these. The government is spreading propaganda into Wikipedia. There are edits that seem to be useful, and true, but there is a majority of vandalism that disturbs me.
Edits range from articles to articles like the ones on the Superfriends and the Pope, to inserting the name of the White House press secretary in odd places, and what appears to be an extremely puerile form of libel against certain senators.
They already have made a sequel to The Incredibles in the form of a video game. This is becoming increasingly common. I think the same thing happened with A Nightmare Before Christmas, I think. I haven't seen either, but I suspect they would be filled with no substance at all, just like horrible film sequels, except these would try to make up for it with interactivity and fail.
Actually, FISA has a provision of it that states the president can authorize warrantless wiretapping and physical searches for 15 day periods after a declaration of war, with the first part on electronic surveillance, as you said, being passed in 1978, and the second part, on physical searches, being passed as an amendment to FISA during the Clinton administration in 1994. A third amendment was made during the Bush administration, I think by the Patriot Act, in 2001 that makes companies have to turn over their business records if a very high-ranking FBI agent demands it, but only if it doesn't relate to a U.S. citizen and it is for foreign intelligence only.
World War II clearly had many declarations of war by the U.S. The Iraq War and the War on Terrorism, unfortunately, had none. Thus, under FISA, domestic wiretapping would be legal for World War II, disregarding constitutionality.
First of all, that quote in no way anywhere says only administrators can comment on Wikipedia process. All Wikipedia editors and anonymous users are welcome to comment on the process.
Second of all, on the pages where users vote on whether or not to delete a page, only registered users may have their votes counted. Anonymous users can engage in debate, but not vote, I suppose like Puerto Rico and Guam's delegates to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Third, this is to prevent users from going to their LiveJournal and rounding up hundreds of their online buddies to vote on an Article for Deletion page to keep their no-name garage band or other non-notable things from being deleted. Registered users that vote in AFDs, or Articles for Deletion, have their votes counted based on how many edits are sufficient to tell if they've registered specifically to vote in that AFD or not.
When an anonymous user creates hundreds of registered accounts to vote on a Wikipedia AFD to prevent it from getting deleted, the jargon for this is "sockpuppeting." The jargon for an anonymous user getting hundreds of their friends to vote on an AFD to keep an article they created from getting deleted is called "meatpuppeting."
Fourth, there is no 50% threshold where entries on AFD become deleted. If an article has around 50% deletion votes, the default is to keep the article because it the community is too uncertain. Most administrators I have talked to say it's clear the community has decided a certain way when around 66% vote a certain way, while some have put it around 80%, or, most wisely, judge it on a case-by-case basis.
These are very good mechanisms to help prevent Wikipedia from being overwhelmed by neo-Nazis and beastiality connaisseurs who want to create 500 Wikipedia articles on self-invented terms for man-on-sheep sex positions.
Furthermore, I say, there is a difference between an authorization of military force and a declaration of war. In the 1972, Nixon and company were wiretapping phones, too, but FISA was not around. The Supreme Court decided in United States v. United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan that people had the right to not have their reasonable expectation to a private phone call invaded without a warrant.
They set up FISA for the reason of that case, so the government could obtain warrants. In 1972, we were at war, but legally, it was an "escelation," or a "military authorization of force," specified in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It was the Vietnam War. If that provision of FISA applied to military authorizations, it would apply to the Vietnam War. If it applied to the Vietnam War, it would allow what the Supreme Court had actually ruled against!
The legality of the wiretaps entirely depends on this section of FISA. Because of that section, it entirely depends on whether or not Congress has issued a declaration of war.
Because of that sentence in that section, it entirely depends on whether the authorization to use military force in Iraq constituted a declaration of war, and for 2001 to 2003, it entirely depends on whether, in the document's words, the "authorization to use military force against the persons or nations or organizations who were involved in the September 11 attacks and the people or nations that harbored them."
The 2001 authorization, should it be interpeted as a declaration of war, would last until every person involved in the 9-11 attacks are captured, and Bin Laden, and maybe one or two others, are still out there, so soon enough it would be like we have "declared war," from Bush's lawyers' point of view, on one person, which has happened before, when we declared war on the leader of a Mexican revolution one or two centuries ago.
No, rather than just the 19 that hi-jacked the planes, because it says organizations, we are after the entirety of Al-Qaeda, and that "declaration of war" will last until every member of that organization is either caught, killed, or dead. It will last until every nation that has harbored Al-Quaeda members has surrendered. It will last until every organization that harbored Al-Quaeda is defunct, their membered killed, or their members dead. It is the sheer broadness of this that leads me to believe that this is a war we cannot win.
Furthermore, according to the Rules of Construction outlined in Title 1, Chapter 1, Section 1, "person" includes societies, organizations, companies, firms, and partnerships. A society is a group of people who share similar beliefs. Would you not say terrorists, are, then, a society? If Bush wanted to stretch this for all it's worth in the world, when he says we are in the middle of the War on Terrorism, does he really, honestly, believe we are really in the middle of a War on Terrorism?
The media, or at least the visual media, has not mentioned this provision of FISA, but once, to my knowledge, in the entire time since this scandal came to light, when MSNBC quoted Bush's lawyers and Alberto Gonzales explaining that Bush has had the authority to do this because they interpret the authorization as a declaration of war. This took two paragraphs. The other times it has been dumbed down, in saying the president says he can do it because of an article of the Constitution invested in him the power of commander-in-chief, which doesn't tell anything at all. They're trying to dumb it down for you, but hopefully, since this is news for nerds, this post will make it up to the top.
I sent a letter to my congressman, Jim Cooper, on this on the 22nd of December and received no reply. I expect you all to send letters to your congressmen and women, too. Here is the letter I sent, explaining the same as above, but with more references to statues, bills, and resolutions:
Dear Mr. Cooper,
When the Authorization for Use of Military Force, S.J. Resolution 23, was passed in September 2001, I was greatly disturbed by the phrasing of Section 2, Subsection a, because of its usage of the word "persons." Title 1 Section 1 of the United States legal code defines "person" to include "societies," which, although I think legally undefined, is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as, in that context, "A group of humans broadly distinguished from other groups by mutual interests, participation in characteristic relationships, shared institutions, and a common culture," or "An organization or association of persons engaged in a common profession, activity, or interest."
Under this notion, President Bush could be said to be able to continue this military authorization until all necessary and appropriate force has been taken against the society o
Slashdot Mirror
Why not just go all-out and decide who gets the presidency based on who gets the higher score on SimCity?
From Challenger:
"Engineers at Morton Thiokol (manufacturer of the solid rocket boosters) knew that the temperatures were outside of the design range of the O-rings. They strongly objected to the launch, but were overruled by senior Thiokol management."
From Columbia:
"In a risk-management scenario similar to the Challenger disaster, NASA management failed to recognize the relevance of engineering concerns for safety. Two examples of this were failure to honor engineer requests for imaging to inspect possible damage, and failure to respond to engineer requests about status of astronaut inspection of the left wing."
From DART:
"Investigators also raised issues with the mission's management style, saying that lack of training and experience caused the DART design team to shun expert advice. They also found that internal checks and balances were inadequate in uncovering the mission's shortcomings."
Actually, President Bush has said in a speech they've been doing it just since 9/11/2001.
"Democracy" "Tianamen Square protests of 1989" "Censorship" "Li Hongzhi" (leader of the Falun Gong movement) Each gets your IP banned for a few minutes, and then eventually you'll be able to use it again. Each must be typed in Chinese characters of course.
Microsoft's Encarta has been repeatedly attacked by the Encyclopedia Britannica for making multiple editions with different content for different nations --- a separate one for mainland China and another one for everyone else, for example.
And, oddly enough, much of the content in Baidupedia was copied directly from the real Chinese Wikipedia, at zh.wikipedia.org.
President Bush is going to make an official statement on the wiretapping reported in USA Today ten minutes from now at the time of writing, at noon Eastern Time. You can probably view it on C-SPAN for commercial free coverage, but CNN, MSNBC, or FOX will be covering it if they aren't. Also, donate a penny or two to C-SPAN. They work hard to provide live coverage of House and Senate debate to you for free. And that Colbert White House dinner video (which they sold to Google Video.)
Wikipedia users in January found out on the talk page, trying to make sure they used written sources to correct articles, and not just Nature's word, that in actuality, conflicting sources say that he was the 13th child, and others say he was the 14th, because historians disagree. They made a note of this in the article.
About two and a half months later, after Wikipedia has already fixed the 'error,' Britannica comes out with the response, and does not directly admit they made an error, but goes on to disagree with Nature saying he was the 14th child, and brags about how they noted historians disagree on the issue of whether he was 13th or 14th. The new Britannica issue will be coming off the presses with the error corrected in about a year, probably. I see a lesson here.
I, having thought I was still in the middle of installation, installed install026.exe when it queried me. It took me a $40 purchase of MacAfee and about a month's time to get it completely off. It binded to the root of the computer, infecting vital files, such that they could not be deleted without hurting the computer itself.
Look at this Wikipedia revision, creating an article on a 180 Solutions product. Look at the history tab, and you will note this revision was done by the IP address 206.169.156.2. The IP address corresponds with 180 SOLUTIONS HOOKED-2 when looked up in the American Registry for Internet Numbers.
The article was changed to give it a more neutral tone many times, but in all cases the IP address tried to revert to the original version. The article in its current form is located here, but with a sign that says that everything in this article but not be accurate, nor true. The IP address range for 180 Solutions is 206.169.156.0 - 206.169.156.255. See this American Registry for Internet Numbers entry for 180 Solution's physical address. The city can be confirmed by Wikipedia itself.
This was done in June 2005, around the same time the U.S. Congress staffers began editing Wikipedia, coincidentally. Again, using Wikipedia as a source, this company has less than 250 employees. Because this IP address came from the company, what are the odds that the editor created that article about that "instant messaging service" for love of the company alone? It reads like an advertisement.
They used Wikipedia to market their filth, and spyware company or not, that's something I'll always hold in contempt. (mod up)
You're never going to guess what I found at pokeballs.com when I was nine.
Reviewer:
Declaring him the 17th child is either incorrect or misleading. He is the 13th surviving child of 17 total.
Britannica:
We disagree with the reviewer's implication that there is full agreement that Mendeleyev was the 13th surviving child. Our new article makes it clear that scholars are not uniform in their views on whether Mendeleyev was the 13th or 14th surviving child.
If you were thinking while you read this, you would notice this was simply a clever way of saying "We were wrong," while throwing some blame back to Nature itself.
---
Interestingly, Wikipedia originally stated he was the 14th surviving child. Not only did Wikipedia "correct" this instantly so that it read as "13th" for some time after the study had first been published, but at the end of January, on the talk page, someone independently noted that sources were in conflict over whether he was the 13th or 14th surviving child on the talk page and corrected in the article about two months before Britannica's recent response.
Britannica's error, saying he was the 17th surviving child, may have resulted from a typographical error within a New York Times article it used as a source.
All this time I had honestly thought it was natural for "animehouse" to appear in that list out of nowhere and have my connection knocked off, due to natural crowding from being in a metropolitan area. Guess I shouldn't be on Slashdot.
I should say that China does not own the most U.S. foreign debt. China is the second highest owner of U.S. foreign debt, but Japan is the country ranking #1, with three times more debt bought than China. This does not enter news reports, of course, because people are much less worried about Japan's integrity.
Actually, Wikipedia has gone beyond 3,000,000 total articles by now.
"That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."
As long as Al-Quaeda exists, as long as former members of Al-Qaeda exist, and then that doesn't take into account countries that would harbor those members, and how "harbor" is defined, to the extent that at its greatest Australia refusing to turn over a high ranking member thinking it would get the death penalty, possibly without a fair trial, constitutes "harboring." Replace "Australia" with the name of a Middle Eastern country with an already tarnished reputation, like "Iran," and it sounds more plausible.
This would be taking the interpretation to its greatest heights, but when Congress passed the resolution, in its full here, they trusted the chief executive would interpret it fairly and use its vague wording responsibly to go after whichever organization or nation or people planned the attacks, which was uncertain at the time, or at least according to Bush supporters. (See Wikipedia for a list of initial suspects.)
That was the line of thinking Alberto Gonzales said he was a part of during the Senate judiciary meetings, that Congress had given the Chief Executive the power to wiretap when they said "all appropriate and neccessary force" in the resolution. This is relevant because they see a military authorization of force as being synonymous with a declaration of war, after which FISA says electronic surveillance may be allowed for 15 day periods after presidential authorization and repetitive reauthorization.
Thoughtful dissidents would say that they are not synonymous because past administrations and American congressional bodies have acted as if they are not. First, not declaring war provides a way to circumvent constitutional safeguards against the executive declaring war, and also, in some cases, to avoid feeling bound by the established laws of war. Not using the word "war" is also seen as being more public relations-friendly. For these reasons, they have generally ceased to issue declarations of war, instead describing their actions by euphemisms such as "police action" or "authorized use of force."
More importantly, typically a full declaration must be ratified by various legislative bodies, but 'authorized use of force' may allow an elected head of state to directly initiate forceful action without further consultation. In addition, with declarations of war being increasingly regulated by international bodies, 'authorized use of force' can often be used to avoid some of the negative consequences of a declaration.
Why pass such a vaguely worded bill? It was a way for them to allow the administration to go after al-Quaeda without ruling out the possibility of them going after the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or other organizations, had they been found to have been involved. It was a way for them to act quickly, voting against the bill would make them look soft on the people that destroyed the World Trade Center, and it was a way to prevent Congress from looking foolish if it turned out they were going after or overlooking the wrong people.
Black propaganda is propaganda that lies about where it comes from. In black propaganda, the U.S. government would release a tape of an actor of Arabic descent dressed up as Osama bin Laden stating that they have found a major security flaw and intend to target the Torino Olympics. In white propaganda, the real source is declared, true, and identified, and is generally characterized by factual, but one-sided information and standard public relations techniques. Gray propaganda may come from an adversarial source pretending to be friendly or neutral, and presents misleading information in a more insidious manner than white propaganda, in the same way the author says. For more information, see the Wikipedia article on propaganda.
Explaining the reasoning behind Bush's position, that he and Alberto Gonzales think Congress allowed it when they passed the authorization of military force in 2001, yet that Alberto Gonzales refused to ask for legislation to amend the authorization because he knew that the legislation would not pass. Explaining that this interpretation would depend entirely on whether or not an authorization to use military force is included in the definition of a declaration of war will not make the news. Talking about Supreme Court precedents related to this, like East District of Michigan v. United States, I think it was called, would not make the news either.
The most I have ever seen any of this in the media was in a written two page report carried by the written MSNBC, with only two paragraphs of Bush's lawyers explaining about the authorization and declaration of war part, which to my knowledge did not air on the television network.
With CNN's very frequent recycling of headlines, and the bottom crawler, it is very obvious they want to be as accessable to people just tuning in as possible, trying to talk about as many current issues as possible, meaning to me that CNN is just trying to be a poorly performed version of CNN.com. The Internet, or the newspaper, if you can bother figuring out how to flip through the pages now days, will always trump TV for that reason. CNN borrows nearly all congressional footage from C-SPAN with permission, and cuts to them frequently, but it seems very, very wrong to me to advertise to watch the Alito hearings on CNN where there is a version not punctuated by advertisements and Woolf Blitzer saying, "This is the Situation Room. Stay tuned. You're watching CNN."
In year 1984, you listen to your phone. In year 2004, your phone listens to you.
If you look through all the edits that the House of Representatives and Senate IPs have done, you will see that it was not only Meehan's staffers involved, but others, too, including Republicans. This applies to both parties.
I am a Wikipedia editor and am personally going through all edits that have come through the U.S. Congress IP range. It's mildly entertaining, like a made-for-TV horror comedy, as I look through these. The government is spreading propaganda into Wikipedia. There are edits that seem to be useful, and true, but there is a majority of vandalism that disturbs me. Edits range from articles to articles like the ones on the Superfriends and the Pope, to inserting the name of the White House press secretary in odd places, and what appears to be an extremely puerile form of libel against certain senators.
They already have made a sequel to The Incredibles in the form of a video game. This is becoming increasingly common. I think the same thing happened with A Nightmare Before Christmas, I think. I haven't seen either, but I suspect they would be filled with no substance at all, just like horrible film sequels, except these would try to make up for it with interactivity and fail.
Actually, FISA has a provision of it that states the president can authorize warrantless wiretapping and physical searches for 15 day periods after a declaration of war, with the first part on electronic surveillance, as you said, being passed in 1978, and the second part, on physical searches, being passed as an amendment to FISA during the Clinton administration in 1994. A third amendment was made during the Bush administration, I think by the Patriot Act, in 2001 that makes companies have to turn over their business records if a very high-ranking FBI agent demands it, but only if it doesn't relate to a U.S. citizen and it is for foreign intelligence only. World War II clearly had many declarations of war by the U.S. The Iraq War and the War on Terrorism, unfortunately, had none. Thus, under FISA, domestic wiretapping would be legal for World War II, disregarding constitutionality.
Second of all, on the pages where users vote on whether or not to delete a page, only registered users may have their votes counted. Anonymous users can engage in debate, but not vote, I suppose like Puerto Rico and Guam's delegates to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Third, this is to prevent users from going to their LiveJournal and rounding up hundreds of their online buddies to vote on an Article for Deletion page to keep their no-name garage band or other non-notable things from being deleted. Registered users that vote in AFDs, or Articles for Deletion, have their votes counted based on how many edits are sufficient to tell if they've registered specifically to vote in that AFD or not.
When an anonymous user creates hundreds of registered accounts to vote on a Wikipedia AFD to prevent it from getting deleted, the jargon for this is "sockpuppeting." The jargon for an anonymous user getting hundreds of their friends to vote on an AFD to keep an article they created from getting deleted is called "meatpuppeting."
Fourth, there is no 50% threshold where entries on AFD become deleted. If an article has around 50% deletion votes, the default is to keep the article because it the community is too uncertain. Most administrators I have talked to say it's clear the community has decided a certain way when around 66% vote a certain way, while some have put it around 80%, or, most wisely, judge it on a case-by-case basis.
These are very good mechanisms to help prevent Wikipedia from being overwhelmed by neo-Nazis and beastiality connaisseurs who want to create 500 Wikipedia articles on self-invented terms for man-on-sheep sex positions.
They set up FISA for the reason of that case, so the government could obtain warrants. In 1972, we were at war, but legally, it was an "escelation," or a "military authorization of force," specified in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It was the Vietnam War. If that provision of FISA applied to military authorizations, it would apply to the Vietnam War. If it applied to the Vietnam War, it would allow what the Supreme Court had actually ruled against!
Because of that sentence in that section, it entirely depends on whether the authorization to use military force in Iraq constituted a declaration of war, and for 2001 to 2003, it entirely depends on whether, in the document's words, the "authorization to use military force against the persons or nations or organizations who were involved in the September 11 attacks and the people or nations that harbored them."
The 2001 authorization, should it be interpeted as a declaration of war, would last until every person involved in the 9-11 attacks are captured, and Bin Laden, and maybe one or two others, are still out there, so soon enough it would be like we have "declared war," from Bush's lawyers' point of view, on one person, which has happened before, when we declared war on the leader of a Mexican revolution one or two centuries ago.
No, rather than just the 19 that hi-jacked the planes, because it says organizations, we are after the entirety of Al-Qaeda, and that "declaration of war" will last until every member of that organization is either caught, killed, or dead. It will last until every nation that has harbored Al-Quaeda members has surrendered. It will last until every organization that harbored Al-Quaeda is defunct, their membered killed, or their members dead. It is the sheer broadness of this that leads me to believe that this is a war we cannot win.
Furthermore, according to the Rules of Construction outlined in Title 1, Chapter 1, Section 1, "person" includes societies, organizations, companies, firms, and partnerships. A society is a group of people who share similar beliefs. Would you not say terrorists, are, then, a society? If Bush wanted to stretch this for all it's worth in the world, when he says we are in the middle of the War on Terrorism, does he really, honestly, believe we are really in the middle of a War on Terrorism?
The media, or at least the visual media, has not mentioned this provision of FISA, but once, to my knowledge, in the entire time since this scandal came to light, when MSNBC quoted Bush's lawyers and Alberto Gonzales explaining that Bush has had the authority to do this because they interpret the authorization as a declaration of war. This took two paragraphs. The other times it has been dumbed down, in saying the president says he can do it because of an article of the Constitution invested in him the power of commander-in-chief, which doesn't tell anything at all. They're trying to dumb it down for you, but hopefully, since this is news for nerds, this post will make it up to the top.
I sent a letter to my congressman, Jim Cooper, on this on the 22nd of December and received no reply. I expect you all to send letters to your congressmen and women, too. Here is the letter I sent, explaining the same as above, but with more references to statues, bills, and resolutions:
Dear Mr. Cooper,
When the Authorization for Use of Military Force, S.J. Resolution 23, was passed in September 2001, I was greatly disturbed by the phrasing of Section 2, Subsection a, because of its usage of the word "persons." Title 1 Section 1 of the United States legal code defines "person" to include "societies," which, although I think legally undefined, is defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as, in that context, "A group of humans broadly distinguished from other groups by mutual interests, participation in characteristic relationships, shared institutions, and a common culture," or "An organization or association of persons engaged in a common profession, activity, or interest."
Under this notion, President Bush could be said to be able to continue this military authorization until all necessary and appropriate force has been taken against the society o