Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:20 PM

A few more briefs regarding our current system of justice that I've meant to blog. [I originally was going to concatenate this with Marcus Dixon's case, but thought that deserved a post of its own for more easy forwarding.]

1. This week, the Supreme Court ruled random police roadblocks are a constitutional means of obtaining information about a crime that was conducted a week earlier. The opinion included language about "reasonableness" as judged by three factors: relevant public concern, whether the roadblock (or other steps) advanced that concern, and that it "interfered only minimally with liberty" protected by the Fourth Amendment. But as a "defense lawyer who has analyzed the opinion" wrote to TalkLeft:

Post 9/11 and the Patriot Act, where does that leave us ? Is it now OK any time there is a loss of life for the "minimal intrusion" of being stopped, observed and potentially questioned ? Leave aside for a moment the potential for abuse. Are we as citizens required to participate in the State's investigations ? What happens when the police start asking for ID to "verify" who they have already spoken to ? This "minimal intrusion language [which I trace back to at least Mendenhall (1979)] is growing.

2. This week, the Court also heard oral arguments regarding the extent of the Americans with Disabilities Act, based upon an event that I thought would be an open-and-close case. Paraphrasing Fredrick Lane of Demagogue, "George Lane, the lead plaintiff in the case, was summoned to appear as a defendant in a criminal case. In 1975, the Supreme Court ruled in Faretta v. California that every American has 'a right to be present at all stages of the trial where his absence might frustrate the fairness of the proceedings.'" Lane is also a paraplegic. Continuing with Dahlia Lithwick's summary, "Since the Polk County courthouse in Tennessee had no elevator, he was forced to crawl up two flights of stairs on his hands and knees while court workers chuckled. He refused to crawl up again for a subsequent appearance, or to be carried, and was arrested for failing to appear." He sued the state under the ADA, and Tennessee claimed it was immune from suit.

On the face of it, it seems pretty clear that Tennessee ought to accommodate the disabled who are required to appear in its courthouses, which is what the ADA requires.

Unfortunately, news reports of the questions asked by the Supreme Court justices sound like it's going to go the other way, further weakening the ability to enforce the law and ensure equal access for all. Lithwick's account is well worth reading, but only if you have a strong stomach. Scalia's comments are particularly heartless.

Remember, even if you're not disabled now, diseases and accidents can strike at any time, causing permanent or temporary impairments. Not only that, but you're getting older even as you read this, and disability is a function of age. So it's in your own benefit to support accessibility efforts. The law's been in effect for 14 years now; it was passed during the first Bush administration, and his fellow Republican Bob Dole was a major proponent of the legislation.

3. You can find political activism and sense in the most surprising of places. JoeSentMe.com is a website for business travellers. In the latest column, Joe Brancatelli takes on the current state of airport security, and suggests a complete overhaul. A few relevant points:

What if everything we're trying to do with airline security is wrong? I don't mean any particular procedure or an isolated policy. I mean the basic concept, the entire approach to security.
What if trying to keep the skies safe by proactively pre-screening passengers before they board a flight is just wrong? Wrong because it takes too long, annoys too many and misses too much. Wrong because it costs too much and catches too little. Wrong because, in point of absolute fact, it just doesn't work.
And what if there is a better way, a tried-and-true way that law-enforcement officials around the planet use successfully every day of the week.
<snipped for length and fair use, but please, read it all!>
So why not mothball all the checkpoints and the X-ray machines and the phalanx of security screeners peering into security monitors? Why not put two armed, uniformed marshals on every flight and try and get back to something like the old normal. Have the air cops police the aisles during every flight just like they walk a beat on the ground.
This tin-stars-in-the-sky approach would undoubtedly be cheaper than what we're doing now. It would rightfully assume that 99 and 44/100 percent of passengers mean no harm, even if they are carrying a few bullets or a knife or, heaven forfend, a pointed stick. It would guarantee that we wouldn't have to strip down in public just to board a plane.

Please, read the whole article! For both civil liberties and practical purposes, he makes a lot of sense. [Also, this approach would distribute the money spent on airport security around to lots of individuals in law enforcement and security (better paying white collar jobs), rather than concentrating it in high tech companies and depending upon low-paid screeners on the front lines. And that's better for the economy overall, spreading the wealth.]

4. Running short on time, but I just want to draw people's attention to the excellent essays and surprising news on our rapidly dwindling civil liberties over at Warblogging. His January 8th post, Secretary Ridge on Civil Liberties is a must! Las Vegas tourism uses the slogan "What Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas" but that's as far from the truth as can be. Shortly before New Years Eve, the FBI visited all the "major" Vegas hotels, demanding the guest lists. They did not have a subpoena! A subpoena requires a judge's approval, which generally means presenting probable cause to some authority. The FBI just went around with their own national security letters, which require no outside approval. And all but one hotel handed over the requested data. Read the rest of his story, for a glimpse at just how much data Ashcroft's Justice Department is gathering on innocent Americans.

I also recommend two other related and recent Warblogging stories: Your bank account, your liberties and The Fourth Amendment and You for more information about these expanded and unchecked FBI powers.

And that's about all I have time for. A mass of links about the Mars proposal will have to wait until after the con. I'd wish you all a good weekend, but I wonder how much today's posts will put a damper on that. [You see, that's why I haven't been newsblogging so much of late. It's all so depressing!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:35 PM

Last month I blogged the following quote:

"The relentless and prolonged assault by politicians and the public on the competence and motives of their government bureaucracies is slowly but surely undermining democracy in the Americas and Europe."

Unfortunately, our government is currently being run by a pack who keep finding new reasons for citizens to distrust them.

Two stories that deserve to be seen in conjunction:

The first comes from CalPundit, who summarizes it succinctly:

Congress mandates that HHS produce an annual report on healthcare disparities related to race and poverty. The most recent version was released a month ago, but it turns out that the final version released by the political troops was dramatically different from the initial draft written by HHS scientists. Upon learning of this, Bush heckler-in chief Henry Waxman commissioned a report comparing the scientists' draft with the final draft. Here's my favorite part:

The scientists' draft concluded that "disparities come at a personal and societal price," including lost productivity, needless disability, and early death. The final version drops this conclusion and replaces it with the finding that "some 'priority populations' do as well or better than the general population in some aspects of health care." As an example, the executive summary highlights that "American Indians/Alaska Natives have a lower death rate from all cancers."

You think that's bad, it's only going to get worse. The second story was reported in the St. Louis Post Dispatch:

Under a new proposal, the White House would decide what and when the public would be told about an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax release, a nuclear plant accident or any other crisis.

The White House Office of Management and Budget is trying to gain final control over release of emergency declarations from the federal agencies responsible for public health, safety and the environment.

The OMB also wants to manage scientific and technical evaluations - known as peer reviews - of all major government rules, plans, proposed regulations and pronouncements.

Currently, each federal agency controls its emergency notifications and peer review of its projects.

In my U.S. Government on the Web class, we discussed recent attempts to eliminate, or at least diminish, the Government Printing Office (GPO). The GPO was founded in 1861 to separate the government's printing work from political patronage. But in the last decade, Republicans have tried to privatize their service, preferring each agency to arrange printing and dissemination on their own, rather than having one centralized service with expertise in handling government documents. [Have none of these cost-cutters ever heard about discounts for buying in bulk?]

And now the White House wants even broader control for itself and its subordinates.

Earlier this week, I read a quote which I cannot find now for the life of me (gratitude to anyone who replies with the wording and/or source!) But it asked 'why we were giving our government the tools of a police state?' As has been said about other recent moves by this administration: if they don't need these powers they shouldn't have them; if they do need these powers, that's highly suspect. And even if you like and support everything this administration is doing, they won't be in power forever. Think of your least favorite politician and imagine them with these tools at their disposal... And if that fills you with dread, then maybe you ought to think twice about allowing this administration to have them.

And what was I just writing about encouraging a diversity of voices, rather than stifling or censoring dissenting views?

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:52 PM

I so concur with RJ's sentiment -- Margaret Cho r0xx0rs:

Ms. Cho spoke at the event announcing the winner of the MoveOn.org's "Bush in 30 seconds" ad contest and as a result got a lot of hate mail sent to her.

Margaret, being into that whole free-speech thing, published them. With e-mail addresses attached and names showing (no additional research was done; this is just what was sent to her) and in at least one case, the person's company, business phone and fax.

Now, as Margaret Cho writes in her followup post,

People be trying to beg us to take their email addresses off the site because they have been deluged with hate mail in response to their hate mails to me. I want to say, "You reap what you sow," but now I have all kind of love for the because it is out of my hands. They spit their shit all over me, but they don't realize I have a global posse ready to roll. That was unexpected, there was so much support out there for me, but actually it was not for me personally, just the disenfranchised voiceless people out there who truly have concern for the world. We are in jeopardy, baby, in a Greg Kihn way. If our nation is to stay truly free, and not be a police state, we need the ability to voice our opinions in any way, without repercussions, or at least, reasonable repercussions. I have been held accountable for all my actions and words, and you know, I am really proud of them, my actions and words I mean, not the reactions really. It is just so odd and inappropriate. People have said the darndest things.

Like I've written in the past, I prefer letting good speech drown out bad speech, rather than resorting to censorship or legislation. And this is the second time in recent months I've seen that happen, the first being the hasty death of the Dean - Israel spam, where the debunkings (multiple, now) outrank the chain letter on Google.

Margaret, You go, girl!

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:45 PM

Via the new group blog, The American Street, I found this horrific conviction. Why don't I just quote directly from the site:

There is an 18 year old African American honor student -- Marcus Dixon -- in Rome, Georgia who is spending ten years in prison for having consensual sex with a white classmate who was just three months shy of 16 yrs old at the time they had sex. Although a jury acquitted Marcus of rape and three other counts of violent acts, the prosecutor also charged him with "aggravated child molestation." Consensual sex with a virgin fits into the technical reading of this Georgia statute. The statute has never been applied to consensual sex between two teenagers with less than three years age difference, until now.

This sure sounds like a travesty of justice. Even though few of my friends were involved in athletics, surely many of you can relate to a high school senior with "a 3.96 grade point average, a 1200 on his SATs." He should be planning for college right now (after numerous scholarships, he accepted at Vanderbilt), but instead is facing a decade in jail! I've seen some comments that the victim's father is extremely racist, so the girl may have lied to protect herself from his anger.

Both Act4Justice.com and HelpMarcus.com are dedicated to this case, and have further information, including a petition and ways to donate.

Emmett Till was murdered nearly 50 years ago.
Martin Luther King's 75th birthday was yesterday, with the observed holiday on Monday. It's 2004. How have things gone so far astray?

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:13 PM

Magpie blogged the Economic Policy Institute snapshot on unemployment. Two quite eloquent graphs (click to enlarge):

And, I keep reading other articles on how the "official" unemployment rate is artificially lowered by excluding certain large categories of workers. Dave Johnson's post is just the latest example. Even pessimistic economists are "stunned" by the numbers. As the EPI study notes, "The unemployment rate fell in December 2003 only because people gave up looking for work, not because more people were finding jobs."

Meanwhile, it's been widely reported that the Department of Labor -- the branch of government whose mission statement says they "foster and promote the welfare of the job seekers, wage earners, and retirees of the United States by improving their working conditions, advancing their opportunities for profitable employment, protecting their retirement and health care benefits, helping employers find workers, strengthening free collective bargaining, and tracking changes in employment, prices, and other national economic measurements" has been telling employers how they can save money with the new overtime regulations. "Among the options for employers: cut workers' hourly wages and add the overtime to equal the original salary, or raise salaries to the new $22,100 annual threshold, making them ineligible."

Oh, and take a look at what Greenspan recently said, and what that really means.

There's much more I could and would like to write, but I've taken long enough on this and there are other topics I want to mention...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:59 AM

The discussion of CBS's refusal to air MoveOn's ad reminded me of something I'd been meaning to post for months now.

I was IM'ing with my father back in December, and he raised an important point.

We still hear the ultracons harping on the "liberal media." Shouldn't we co-opt that message? Let's straight-out call it the "conservative media" to make the point how unfair and unbalanced they really are.

Some people have coined and use the phrase mighty Wurlitzer for the phenomenon, but that takes too long to explain. Eric Alterman has written What Liberal Media and many bloggers use the acronym SCLM -- but those still use (and thus reinforce) the "liberal media" phrase. Not only is the language defensive, rather than offensive, but, as my father pointed out, "double negatives don't stick. What Liberal Media, implies "liberal media" -- you need to hang CONSERVATIVE MEDIA out there or some other buzz phrase. The libs are always defending, while the conservatives are always on the offensive. OFFENSE is always more effective than DEFENSE. Until the liberals learn that simple message ..."

In related news, the latest Altercation notes:
Columbia Journalism Review will be monitoring media coverage of the election here. We can't have too much of that.

CampaignDesk.org. From what I've read in other blogs, it's already worth watching.

This morning's wire stories include another media watchdog group, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, reporting:

• Dean Versus the Dems -- Only 49 percent of all on-air evaluations of former Vermont governor in 2003 were positive while the rest of the democratic field collectively received 78 percent favorable coverage.
• Networks Tune Out Campaign -- The networks spent 5 hours and 20 minutes covering the election's preseason in 2003, a 32 percent drop in coverage from the 2000 campaign (7:49), in which both party's nominations were contested -- and a 62 percent drop from 1996 (14:02), the last time only one party's nomination was contested.
• NBC Hardest On Democrats -- Nearly two out of every three on-air descriptions of the Democratic candidates were positive on ABC (64% positive) and CBS (63% positive), while NBC painted a more negative picture of the candidates in 2003 (46% positive assessments).

So what the hell are we waiting for?

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:35 AM

During the 1997 Boskone, I participated in a Punday contest MC'd by filker Tom Smith. I did not win -- I finally wiped out late during the elimination round of "politicians." (I think I was about the sixth from last before my mind just went blank. Of course, once I took my seat, I immediately thought of three others... Them's the breaks.)

At any rate, after the last man standing won his award, somebody said they should also vote on audience favorite. So they brought everybody back up on stage, and I won by overwhelming audience applause. I was touched. Really.

Of course, they didn't have a formal award planned for audience favorite, so Tom Smith gave me one of his business cards, and handwrote on the back of it:

Reedemable for one (1) tape or CD of Tom Smith: Plugged
Audience Award, Boskone 1997

I never got around to mailing it off to him, but he's the filk guest of honor at Arisia, which starts tonight. And, impressively enough, I still have and was able to find the card. It's sitting in front of me right now. I almost don't want to turn it in, because it's the only actual evidence of my victory that night (maybe I can get him to just write "redeemed" and let me keep the card...)

By the way, two of my favorite quips in that long-ago Punday competition:

• The topic was "music" and the person immediately before me used the old canard about "too much sax and violins on television." I turned to him, and said, "What, like cello wrestling?"
  It was at that point Tom Smith suggested suspending the contest and moving it to his hotel room. :)
• The other one I'm proudest of was also an ad-lib. The previous contestant said, "Architects have been hired to redesign the UN building. They're adding flying Boutroses." And I replied completely off-the-cuff with a Gomer Pyle "Well Gha-a-ali!

I'm good at puns, I enjoy punning, but I'm honestly not sure if I'll ever participate in a punday competition again. Not only are they hard (in a good way) but they mess up my mind. As I said, they did a long, long elimination round on "politicians", weeding down from 20-40 contestants to a final three. And, eventually I blanked and dropped out. [Couldn't even think of a lame answer, like some people had used, just went totally blank; complete wipeout.] And, as I also said, the moment I sat back down, I thought of an appropriate one that hadn't been used. [I still remember it -- "Waldheim want for Xmas is my two front teeth." Hey, I didn't say it was very good; we'd long since used up most of the easy names.] Problem was, my mind kept coming up with puns for the rest of the weekend. It was like a switch had been flipped in my processing and it took me a good day or two to come down. I really don't need that going on in my head, nor do those around me need to hear it from my mouth.

Anyway, I've got a backload of links I've been meaning to blog that I'm going to try to get off my desktop today. Last night, I tried switching styles to quicker, briefer posts. One side-effect of that was that I frequently found additional information shortly afterwards that I needed to append. May be fine for folks reading it on this site or on LiveJournal, but folks whose aggregators pick up the posts once and never refresh old links may have missed stuff. So, I'm just wondering, how did last night's posts work for you?

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:11 PM

Ian told me I simply had to blog this. Leslie just posted:

A friend writes, "On January 10, during the day, the coldest temperature that Spirit found on Mars was -15 Celsius. That's 5 F. It's actually colder here than it is on Mars."

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:00 PM

Flipping through the Arisia Program Schedule, I spy:

Shakespeare and SF
Beyond the Forbidden Planet, the Bard still affects us all. Were Shakespeare's treatments really that universal, or are authors trying to impress their high school English teachers?
Michael Anderson, Sarah Smith (tentative), Abigail Weiner

I'm wondering whether I should attend, or if I'm just too much of a smart-aleck on the subject for the panelists' own good...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:55 PM

Though there were rumors of this on DailyKos last night, Atrios has the wire story:

Viacom's CBS today rejected a request from liberal group MoveOn to air a 30- second anti-President Bush ad during the Super Bowl, saying the spot violated the network's policy against running issue advocacy advertising.

What a load of crap! [The title of this post comes from my instinctive reaction upon reading the above paragraph.]

What about all those idiotic anti-drug ads the government wastes our money on every year?

Heck. Here's Ad Age's current list of Super Bowl advertisers. Let's just look and see:

• American Legacy Foundation: a public health foundation focused on tobacco
• Philip Morris USA, also running "anti-smoking" ads
• yup, there it is: White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which has among the lamest, least-effective and most intelligence-insulting ads on TV

Those are all advocacy ads. The only difference is, those are ads the current administration approves of. The ad MoveOn wishes to air has exactly one line of text: "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?" And that's more objectionable than other memorable Super Bowl ads, such as mud-wrestling bikini-clad twins...

Remember a few months ago, how quickly CBS rolled over to Republican pressure to pull the Reagans miniseries and move it to Showtime?

This really sucks.

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:56 PM

If you're in the United States, head over to the Google home page and see what they've done to their logo today.
[On future dates or for those in other countries not showing the special logo, here is the URL to the image, clicking it links to these news stories, and it should shortly be available on their Holiday Logos page.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:19 PM

Quoting Sisyphus Shrugged:

Bush Plan to Honor Dr. King Stirs Criticism - he wasn't invited, he's using it to write off a campaign appearance, and he wants to preempt the planned activities

Julia's post provides two more links for further aspects of the story.

I'm not sure where he got his info from, but Atrios just wrote:

From what I've been told, there are people in Atlanta who are refusing to obey police and leave the area so that Bush can go lay a wreath at MLK's crypt without having to actually see anyone.
Apparently, CNN, based in Atlanta, is unable to get a camera there. Odd - they always have cameras at Bush's appearances.

I just want to remind people how Bush wants to be known for his compassion in these harsh times.

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:09 PM

Trying to keep things brief and quick, so I'll start with Juan Cole's money quote:

So, the response of the Bush administration to the September 11 attack on the United States by a group of radical Islamist extremists has been to abolish secular law for Iraqi women and impose a fundamentalist reading of Islamic law on them. Yes, it all makes perfect sense.

Seen on Suburban Guerrilla, which linked to Brad DeLong. CalPundit also has the story.

Added later: More on this issue from Riverbend -- a female blogger in Iraq, who's in a position to know.
Via journalist/blogger Christopher Albritton, who's been to Iraq before and after the war, who's written about the issue here and here.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:22 PM

A PhD candidate in the Sociable Media Group at MIT Media Lab is conducting a survey on ethics and blogging. If you're a blogger and have time, please fill it out.
It's longer and requires more thought than the Quizilla quizzes that go around, but it's also for a better cause. Upon request (the last question in the poll), the researchers will email you their results upon completion. Pass it on!

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:30 PM

Two light amusements worth reading:

And two excellent quotes:

There are lots of important news issues to blog about, such as Paul O'Neill's revelations about the Bush administration, their latest spacy proposal, some really ugly Supreme Court decisions/arguments... Unfortunately, they're all incredible downers, so I don't like dwelling on them, much less taking the time and thought to write them up.

Maybe I should just start listing links, like Sisyphus Shrugged has been. [BTW, if you're on LiveJournal and like the news I provide, befriend her LiveJournal. It's worth it!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:25 PM

Something I've been thinking about since watching Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on New Year's Eve.

The matter of consent cuts across many different highly-charged debates around sex and death (particularly issues involving BDSM and the right-to-die). In particular, there's the question of whether people can (or should) consent to harming themselves, and if someone does, whether others should respect that decision or try to stop it.

Most recently, Alas, a blog raised the case for cannibalism, which seems most directly relevant to the point I've been pondering.

How many of y'all have seen/heard/read/played Hitchhiker's Guide?
Remember the Dish of the Day?
If you're at all fuzzy about it, here are a few excerpts from the scene that explain the concept:

Now, this creature isn't human, but is articulate and apparently consents to dying so it can be eaten.

Would it be ethical to eat such a creature? Would you eat of it? How does your answer in this scenario compare to your opinions regarding a person's right/ability to consent to extreme BDSM, suicide, euthanasia, cannibalism, etcetera? If there is a difference, what sets this apart?
And, taking things in the other direction, if you do object to eating a consenting creature, how do you feel about eating meat in general? For those who would refuse the Dish of the Day and aren't vegetarians, again, why the difference? Is it seeing it alive first (if so, how do you feel about lobster tanks)? Is it because it talks?

I'm not going to share my answers, because I'm intensely curious how others feel about this and don't want to bias matters further than I probably already am.

And on that note, it's lunchtime and I'm hungry.

Added later: I meant to tie this post on rights and who are entitled to them into this discussion. Unfortunately, I forgot until too late. Nonetheless, here's the link if you'd care to follow it over.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:50 PM

Two great and subtle tidbits from tonight's WB shows (no spoilers)

1. In Smallville a partially obscured newspaper headline said "Themysciran Queen Addresses Vatican."
2. On Angel, an internal PR piece listed Yoyodine as among the clients of Wolfram and Hart.

[For those who don't get the references, Themyscira is the island home of Wonder Woman and the Amazons; Yoyodine comes from Buckaroo Banzai. Coolness!]

Added later: Via AICN (and Google), I was able to identify the other two companies mentioned in last night's Angel: Weyland Yutami, the company from the Alien films. And the third was News Corp. -- Rupert Murdoch's baby (that's what I thought I heard while watching the show, but I wasn't certain enough to post).
As far as I'm concerned, these were excellent examples of how these in-jokes should be done. For those in the know, they were delightful little rewards for paying attention. But not recognizing them didn't reduce enjoyment or understanding of the story one iota. Kudos to the writers! Well done.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:59 PM

As promised (threatened?) earlier, here's a list of modern fiction about Christopher Marlowe.

To put these stories into context, I strongly recommend the following three nonfiction works:

And here's the fiction list, with my comments. I'm limiting this to English language fiction written and published within the last 25 years (plus a little leeway)^*. The Library of Congress has two relevant subject headings -- "Marlowe, Christopher, 1564-1593 Fiction" and "Marlowe, Christopher, 1564-1593 In literature" -- which I used in searching for these works. I also relied upon What historical novel should I read next, which includes an index by historical figures. In compiling this list through various online library catalogs, I've discovered several other books I wasn't previously aware of.

Apologies in advance for not providing more detailed reviews; at this point I've read so many, and many of them were so long ago, that many of the details have run together in my mind. The Marlowe Society of America Winter 1995 book reviews critiqued several of the works listed below.