Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:00 AM

Okay, Ian just wrote a post that needs further dissemination. I don't have the background to evaluate his claims.

So, any comments (here, or in Ian's journal)? Were we just the victims of a massive financial shell game?

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:50 PM

Last week, just before they started hearing public testimony, the 9/11 commission released a preliminary report. You probably read or heard the AP coverage, which seemed to spread the blame equally between the Clinton and Bush administrations:

The Clinton and Bush administrations' failure to pursue military action against al-Qaida operatives allowed the Sept. 11 terrorists to elude capture despite warning signs years before the attacks, a federal panel said Tuesday.

The Clinton administration had early indications of terrorist links to Osama bin Laden and future Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as early as 1995, but let years pass as it pursued criminal indictments and diplomatic solutions to subduing them abroad, it found.

Bush officials, meanwhile, failed to act immediately on increasing intelligence chatter and urgent warnings in early 2001 by its counterterrorism adviser, Richard A. Clarke, to take out al-Qaida targets, according to preliminary findings by the commission reviewing the attacks.

As I said, most places spun this as splitting the blame evenly between the two administrations, although I do see a major qualitative difference between pursuing numerous angles that weren't successful and "fail[ing] to act" at all.

However, it now looks like the panel may not have the full story. According to a story that appeared in last night's New York Times (though it was too late at that hour for me to blog it), the Clinton administration tried to give the commission nearly 11,000 pages of documentation, but the Bush administration has blocked the panel from seeing nearly three-quarters of them! The commission is making its conclusions based upon incomplete evidence.

So, be forewarned: whenever the commission uses an absence of documentation to suggest "the Clinton administration didn't" think/discuss/consider/whatever... The Clinton White House very well may have, but the Bush administration is preventing the commission from seeing that information.

Other news about the commission include:

• revelations that the White House counsel may have given the commissioners talking points before Clarke testified before them. Considering the commission is investigating the White House's behavior, such contacts are definitely questionable. [And I agree with Julia that TBogg came up with the best headline ever for this story: You've got to fight...for your right...to ex parte.
• Clarke's book has also revealed the fact that the commission's executive director was part of Bush's transition team and has coauthored a book with Condoleezza Rice. Those aren't the only conflicts of interest in his biography, calling into question his ability to view the situation objectively.

BTW, following up to my post about Plame last night, some legal experts have come up with a different possible spin on the expanded inquiry. It may be that they're pursuing perjury instead of the stronger felony charges related to the initial leaking. Or instead of and. Either way, Josh Marshall has uncovered a very interesting legal memo (unrelated to anyone in the investigation) which calls into question Rove's public statements.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:49 PM

Was it just me (and my sheltered perspective) or was April Fools rather lame this year? I noticed a few decent hoaxes (Howard Stern's spooked a lot of people) and Google certainly managed to get people talking by announcing release of their new GMail service on April 1st, though most of the discussion was on whether it was a hoax. But for the most part, I didn't hear any really great pranks this year. [If you heard or saw anything particularly good, please share with me -- I could use the laughs.]

Now, I considered pranking my own website by completely inverting the color scheme, but in the end decided the risk to legibility was too high a cost. And I couldn't come up with anything else terribly inspiring. Mind you, for a few years while I worked at Lotus, I managed to come up with some really clever pranks. Judge for yourselves:

One April Fools day (before I was dating Ian), I tried to register my cat Boopsie as my spousal equivalent (corporatese for domestic partner for the purpose of insurance and benefits). I had checked the official requirements, and all it said was that both partners must be of the same sex, adults, not blood relatives nor married to anybody else. Nothing whatsoever about both parties being human.

In the end, HR disqualified Boopsie over a financial requirement (meaning that were she a showcat bringing in independent income, I might've been able to get away with it) -- which actually raised a useful discussion about the merits of that restriction (which didn't exist for heterosexual marriages).

---

I participated in an even more satisfying hoax the following year, though I wasn't the originator. Lambda was (is?) the internal discussion database for GBLTO issues. One guy I worked with was a bit of an instigator on the database. He was straight and tended to take positions in opposition to the general stance of the group. I don't know that I'd call him bigoted, but he certainly upset and offended a lot of people with his rhetoric. I was also friends with another of the big talkers in the dB, who was out, proud and very funny about it. They worked in different buildings and never met in person.

Well, the morning of April 1st, we promulgated the story that I was sick of their bickering and finally introduced the two of them face-to-face. And the meeting went so well that they started dating! I think we had most people going until about noon before we fessed up...

---

Another time, I modified the Lotus bug report form and wrote up SPR THX1138, pointing out the crucial flaw in the original Death Star. [After all, what kind of database could the Rebel Alliance have gotten ahold of that would enable them to find the weaknesses so quickly? It had to be their bug database. (In a similar vein, Jurassic Park is a case study in why a good QA team is necessary -- I mean, really -- gates failing in the open position!?)] At any rate, the Death Star developers deferred that error as too unlikely and difficult to occur, though they did add further weaponry and shielding.

I thought I had posted that somewhere online a long time ago, but don't see it offhand. Maybe I'll try to find it and put it on the website...

---

I think the last major prank I pulled was my most elaborate -- and unfortunately, that one backfired on me. I created a spoof sell-sheet for the product I was working on. I went all-out, changing the product name and logo, rewriting the copy, modifying the screenshots, down to pixel-by-pixel changes to the icons... Spent ages getting all the details just right...

I knew these things had the potential to spread indefinitely if they were available electronically (is Lotus ReOrganizer still making the rounds?), and wanted to limit distribution. So, I printed my parody on a color printer (wouldn't reproduce so well in black & white), spent my own money to have sufficient copies made for the department, and slipped them into my coworkers' mailboxes the morning of April 1st.

While most people found them to be a hoot, unfortunately the office AA really took offense to them. About an hour later, I got an email from her saying the department head also objected (to this day, I wonder how much of the outrage was whose), and I voluntarily pulled all the remaining copies out of the mailroom and apologized to them. No lasting harm was done. [The next department head was a fan.]

I still have one or two copies floating around (I really wish I thought to grab copies of the original sell sheets before they cleaned out the storeroom and dumped them all -- the parody works even better in comparison). The original files are probably somewhere on one of my computers, and I've been tempted more than once to dig them up and try to create a more-lasting PDF out of it, but the product I created it in tended to rearrange all the design elements upon switching printer drivers, so it may not be perfectly reproducible.

And there you have it. Any other particularly good ones (by you or witnessed by you) that you wish to share? Maybe we can outdo these next year.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:45 PM

The story Drudge leaked earlier is now up. The New York Times is now reporting that:

Prosecutors investigating whether someone in the Bush administration improperly disclosed the identity of a C.I.A. officer have expanded their inquiry to examine whether White House officials lied to investigators or mishandled classified information related to the case, lawyers involved in the case and government officials say.
<snip>
Mr. Fitzgerald is said by lawyers involved in the case and government officials to be examining possible discrepancies between documents he has gathered and statements made by current or former White House officials during a three-month preliminary investigation last fall by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department.

In other words, he's no longer just looking at who feloniously leaked Valerie Plame's identity, but sounds like he may also be finding evidence of perjury. The article also mentions that prosecutors "appear to be preparing to seek additional testimony before a federal grand jury, lawyers with clients in the case said. It is not clear whether the renewed grand jury activity represents a concluding session or a prelude to an indictment." but elsewhere quotes anonymous sources that claim the prosecutor said he is nearing completion of the inquiry.

The timing sucks for the administration, but I look forward to seeing justice finally pursued in this case. It's certainly taken long enough for it to get any serious attention.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:04 PM

Interesting. One of the final questions Rep. Barney Frank was asked on Majority Report was whether he'd run for Senate if (when) John Kerry wins.

Frank pointed out that the governor would get to nominate Kerry's replacement. If the state holds a special election in 2005, Frank would run. If the first election to fill Kerry's seat doesn't happen until 2006, however, Frank's answer would depend. If a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage makes it to the Massachusetts ballot that year, Frank said he would not run for Senate, because he would want to devote all his time to defeating that measure. [I wonder whether that would also affect his House reelection campaign.]

Just something else to consider...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:15 PM

As seen in comments to the latest Atrios post:

INVESTIGATION OF WHITE HOUSE ROLE IN CIA LEAK IS SAID TO HAVE BROADENED, NYT FRIDAY: Prosecutors examine whether White House officials lied to investigators or mishandled classified information related to the case...

Nothing on the NYT site yet... we'll see...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:25 PM

For the longest time, whitehouse.org has been a parody site (the real URL is whitehouse.gov).

But I just checked and whitehouse.org has been superceded by a governmental site and now automatically redirects to the DOJ's cybercrime.gov.

I don't know when this happened; Google's cache shows items as recent as Tuesday, but even the link labelled a chickenhead productions parody, which goes to an entirely different domain, is also now redirected to Ashcroft's propaganda page.

A year and a half ago, Dick Cheney protested the site, but that went nowhere and was generally laughed out of court.

Anybody know what's going on?

BTW, as long as we're talking about DOJ propaganda websites, when the DOJ created lifeandliberty.gov for pro-USA PATRIOT propaganda, I registered lifeandliberty.info as a place to tell the truth about the law. Unfortunately, I just don't have the time to devote to it. I own the domain, but have neither a place to host it nor time to contribute content. Is anybody else interested in managing such a domain? Contact me for more info.

Added later: People are saying the redirect from whitehouse.org to the government page was an April Fools joke by the creators of the site. Hopefully it will be back up tomorrow, so if so, nothing to worry about.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:50 PM

Got home tonight and started listening to the streaming radio feed once again. Tacitus describes it like listening to the left blogosphere being read aloud. And I'm quite enjoying it. I missed Randi Rhodes' much discussed conversation with Ralph Nader yesterday, but somebody on DailyKos transcribed it.

At any rate, several thoughts after listening to this station two nights in a row...

• I really really really wish they'd get an affiliate here in Boston. According to Hesiod, they're not syndicating individual programs, but are only looking for affiliates willing to air the entire 24-hour package. Not that I'm complaining, because I'd listen. [If you like Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Sue Ellicott cohosts the deliciously named Morning Sedition.] I've heard rumors that they've been talking with local stations, but can't find anything definite yet. If anybody hears anything concrete, I'm dying for news!
• They need to tell the guy reading the headlines at the top of the hour to use a less... jovial... tone of voice when reading serious news or they need to find somebody new. It's very jarring and doesn't sound good.
• Finally, I know they're just starting out and don't have many advertisers, but I'm already feeling incredibly tired at hearing the same ads over and over and over again. It's got me wondering -- what are their advertising rates? Not that I actually have anything to advertise besides myself, my services and my blog. Eventually, it's going to get competitive, but for now they're still mostly airing PSAs, so the opportunity is there...

[Speaking of PSAs, any mathematicians care to explain to me why the concepts of odd and even are a philosophical illusion? I have a few ideas, but I'd welcome a more definitive answer.]

Added later: While Googling for something else, I found an article on Air America's ad rates. "Air America Radio will be seeking about $1,500 for a minute of advertising time... That's just a fraction of Limbaugh's rate, which goes as high as $16,000 for a 60-second ad." So there you have it -- anything you want to promote? Believe me, they've got such a small selection of advertisers that I'm nearly to the point I could list them all from memory.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:45 PM

This morning, Jim Henley wrote: "I think Glenn Reynolds said about what there is to say about yesterday's Fallujah riot, which is very little."

So what did Instapundit so cogently express in that linked post? He quoted James Taranto, who wrote:

It's worth emphasizing that the four victims were civilians working for an American company (which company the news reports have not yet told us). Like America's soldiers, these civilians are putting their lives on the line to enhance America's security and help build a better Iraq.

John Kerry and other Democrats have been vilifying American contractors in Iraq, especially Halliburton. This seems a fitting time to point out what a despicable bit of demagoguery this is.

I don't know about you, but when I think of contractors, I think in terms of construction or office services or the Halliburton employees who have been serving our soldiers meals and performing cleaning services. But as Ian explained:

These contractors worked for Blackwater Security Consulting, out of North Carolina. They are, vaguely, a mercenary outfit, who focus mainly on training security forces.
<snip>
[I]t's no less horrifying for police officers or security guards to be brutally killed than it is for anyone else. But it seems like people are trying to obscure the fact that they ARE security forces.

When many people hear about civilian casualties, we think that means noncombatants. But that wasn't the case here. So, this may be yet another way of obscuring casualty counts (notice that civilian deaths aren't listed).

Ian further observed another issue about using civilian contractors over government personnel:

You know what ELSE is horrible about this? Their families don't get government pensions, or military funerals. Even though their loved ones died for the US just as much as the soldiers.

A frequent argument in favor of privatizing government services is that it will somehow be cheaper. But is this really how we want to be saving our money?

And as far as Reynolds/Taranto's slur that "John Kerry and other Democrats have been vilifying American contractors in Iraq, especially Halliburton," that's a nifty bit of hand-waving. The word "contractors" can be used to refer to either the individuals or the corporations. While it's true I've seen a lot of valid complaints against the companies and their policies (particularly those who have been overcharging the government -- and that money is lining the pocket of the executives and stockholders; it sure isn't being used to benefit the folks on the front line!), I've never heard anyone denigrate the people who have actually gone over to work in Iraq.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:35 PM

Ananova via Salon

Johnny Depp's new film needs 300 naked extras.

Men and women over the age of 16 are needed as extras in The Libertine which also stars John Malkovich and Samantha Morton.
Shooting is due to take place on the Isle of Man next month, says the Daily Record.
In the film, Depp plays the Earl of Rochester, the debauched 17th century poet and confidant of King Charles II.
<snip>
The production is described as "period piece packed with sexual material."

I still haven't blogged my comments on what I saw of The Last King, but at the thought of more salacious Restoration histories, I have to say both ooh! and yaay!.

Anybody interested in more information on appearing in the film, the article says only some of the roles they're looking to cast will require nudity and here's the casting agency's website.

Pleasant dreams, people!

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:30 PM

Built to Fail: "The federal No Child Left Behind law is threatening to wreck public education in Minnesota and elsewhere. That's what it was designed to do." No real surprises (to me). [via Avedon]

Last year, I wrote, "the people in charge have a vested interest in proving our [public] schools are failing," and this article elaborates the ways in which the law makes successful schools look like failures.

Continuing to listen to Majority Report, Dave Chappelle is talking about Bill Maher's comments about racial profiling. Racial profiling is about protecting the white people. Well, he's asking, who's protecting the rest of us from white people. Which reminds me of all the domestic terrorism stories I've been seeing lately about rightwing kooks: weapon stockpiles and bomb plots and other threats against gays and blacks and women health clinics... And do we have any ideas yet on who was mailing anthrax back in 2001!?

I'm just asking...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:00 PM

So, during Atrios' appearance on Majority Report, I started thinking about what topics I might want to talk about if I was given a few minutes of national airtime. Highlight stories that have been bouncing around the blogosphere that (IMO) don't get enough attention from the mainstream press... First thing that came to mind was Orrin Hatch, the serial thief... and then, not five minutes later, Atrios mentions it (at least the more major theft).

So what would I discuss if I had the platform?

I suppose I'd be qualified to talk about what's going on with same sex marriage here in Massachusetts. I'd love to draw more attention to Ashcroft's subpoenas of medical records. I'm extremely proud of my research and writings on the USA PATRIOT Act and the McDonalds coffee lawsuit, but those aren't currently topical... I'm extremely interested in the Supreme Court, but others have more expertise. And I'd love a chance to use my research powers for good by debunking the falsehoods and harmful urban legends being spread.

Though I haven't personally blogged about this, the theft of Kerry's FBI records certainly deserves major headlines. And these weren't my words, but I was really impressed by Peter David's comments on Hamas and the role of race in Janet Jackson's exposure flap.

Anyways, I'm just musing...

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:30 PM

I've been listening to Air America all evening. Atrios is on Janeane Garofalo's Majority Report right now. And I've heard of other bloggers who have been asked to contribute segments on her program.

As much as I'd like to be a more influencial pundit, I don't like my speaking voice. In an aside, co-host Sam Seder just mentioned Air America's "research staff." Now that would be my ideal job... Anybody know if they're hiring? [I did send them an email when Al Franken first announced the radio station last year, but never heard back.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:50 PM

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is also co-founding a Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame in Seattle [via Hiawatha Bray]

BTW, for those who have been listening to Air America Radio through one of the affiliate links I posted, KPOJ 620 is now on a three-hour delay from the East Coast. [I'm rather grumpy about that, because their site had the best performance noon to three.] Right now, the official feed seems to be stable, but I expect there will be a huge bandwidth hit at 8pm for Janeane Garofalo's show.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:35 PM

And sometimes you don't need humorists like Al Franken to mock the Republicans; the jokes just write themselves (or are working for the party directly).

Charles Kuffner posts about some upcoming RNC advertising. Quoting the L.A. Times:

"It's one more way to reach out to voters, but it's a very new medium," said RNC spokeswoman Christine Iverson. "We're on the frontier right now of figuring out how to use the Internet effectively for political communications."

So what innovative new method have the RNC chosen to reach Internet users?

As Kuff wrote:

Pop-up ads? POP-UP ADS? Are they on crack? Have they never heard of the X10 camera and the violent hatred those ads inspired? Are they not at all familiar with the range of popup blocking technologies, from Mozilla to Google's Toolbar, from AdSubtract to Earthlink? I was going to make a snarky comment about the GOP's support for Microsoft throughout its antitrust trial, but it turns out that even Internet Explorer will soon have the ability to kill the accursed things. What century are these guys living in?

Another example of Republicans "figuring out how to use the Internet" was reported in last week's news. I'll quote from the AP article:

Republicans have accused Democratic U.S. House candidate Stephanie Herseth of maintaining a secret Web page to receive campaign donations raised from ads on liberal groups' Internet sites.
<snip>
The supposedly secret Web site is one of the first results when an Internet user does a standard search for the terms "blog" and "Herseth" on the Google search engine, [Herseth campaign spokesman Russ] Levsen said.

<Sigh> Given this attitude to the web, I half expect to see RNC spams fill my mailbox over the next several months. And I've already seen several politically motivated chain-letters full of falsehoods that I've had to debunk... Oh look! A supermarket scanner!

[Pop-up story courtesy of Julia, Herseth from DailyKos]

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:35 AM

It's nearly a half-hour to the broadcast premiere of Air America Radio, and it looks like their website is completely overloaded and unusable. I still haven't gotten my confirm key, and now the website seems to be having trouble just loading pages. It's obviously the shakedown cruise and they didn't anticipate the demand...

But don't despair!

Commenting in an Atrios thread Chris Tucker has posted a list of the affiliates which have their own streaming audio.

So you can point your browser to one of these sites and still listen to the inaugural broadcast :

• WLIB 1190 New York (official) (Listen Live!)
• KBLA 1580 Los Angeles (official) (Listen Live!)
• WNTD 950 Chicago (official)
• KABL 960 San Francisco (unofficial) (Listen Live!)
• WNMA 1210 Miami (unofficial)
• KPOJ 620 Portland (unofficial) (Listen Live!)

I can't guarantee all of these will work, but they may provide a better shot than going through the official website at this time.

Added at T - 2 minutes: I'm currently listening thru KPOJ, but another Atrios commenter posted http://play.rbn.com/?url=airam/airam/live/live.rm as another official feed.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:00 AM

Today's Boston Globe:

Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly said yesterday that Massachusetts marriage law will forbid same-sex couples from at least 38 other states to get married here after May 17, when gay matrimony becomes legal.

Reilly, addressing the issue for the first time at a press conference yesterday, said a 1913 Massachusetts law prevents out-of-staters from getting married here if they are not eligible for marriage in their home state. The law was originally written to block interracial marriages, but has gained new relevance since the state's high court legalized gay marriages on Nov. 18.

Even though couples from coast to coast are readying plans to be married here this summer, Reilly said it was his opinion that the landmark court ruling applied only to Bay Staters and couples who live in states where no law expressly defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Currently, 38 states have Defense of Marriage Act laws, or DOMAs, that define marriage solely as a heterosexual institution, and others are debating such measures.

Me, November 17, 2003:

The existing Massachusetts laws on marriage include this clause:

Chapter 207: Section 11 Non-residents; marriages contrary to laws of domiciled state
No marriage shall be contracted in this commonwealth by a party residing and intending to continue to reside in another jurisdiction if such marriage would be void if contracted in such other jurisdiction, and every marriage contracted in this commonwealth in violation hereof shall be null and void.

Given the existence of DOMAs in other states, this would seem to preclude couples vacationing in MA solely to get hitched, then taking the legal battles back to their home states. May not be as beneficial from a tourism POV, but maybe it will allay some of the fears of the other 49 states, thus allowing Massachusetts to mind its own business. [first seen on Demagogue]

So, if you read my blog, you would've known about this four months prior to those getting their news solely from the Boston Globe. [So what are you waiting for? Link to me already. I've been stuck among the Flappy Birds of the Blogosphere Ecosystem for a long time. I wanna evolve!]

Gloating over scoops aside, the Globe article is worth reading: it points out disagreements over interpretation (does the law bar marriages only from people in states with DOMAs or from all states that don't explicitly allow SSMs?) and I hadn't known the history of the law. They were able to talk to more people than I did in my solo research.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:35 AM

And if you're not in one of the half-dozen markets that have local affiliates nor do you have a satellite radio, you'll need to listen to it over streaming audio. The URL is http://www.airamericaradio.com/www/main.cfm, but in order to do so, you'll need to register and log in. And they're using an e-mail confirm key on registers which they email to you. And that may take a while (Internet time, at least -- I've been waiting 15 minutes for my confirmation so far). So, as the sign in the Boy Scout horn repair shop says, "Beep repaired" -- go and sign up now so you can listen to Al Franken at noon or Janeane Garofalo this evening at 8...

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:20 PM

A few random things that have crossed my radar recently:

• As I hoped for last week, somebody has made a video of Bush's WMD "joke" [via See the Forest]
• User Friendly, March 30 2004: It's funny because it's true!
  Oh, yeah I immediately noticed the revamp to the Google interface yesterday. Don't entirely like it. Yes, it's cleaner, but the elimination of the tabbed interface gives a much smaller target to click on when switching among the various search types (image, news, groups). I'm sure I'll re-habituate to it after a while, but for now I find it annoying.
• Air America, the new liberal talk radio network is premiering tomorrow at noon. Unfortunately, they only have broadcast stations in a few markets (New York, LA, Chicago), but will be available both thru streaming audio on the Internet and satellite radio.
  According to their schedule, Al Franken's program runs from noon - 3pm; Janeane Garofalo is from 8 - 11pm. Several bloggers have already mentioned they've been invited to speak on Janeane's show (alas, not me yet), so be sure to listen close for some familiar names...
• The Statue of Liberty will reopen to visitors this summer. Count me with Elayne as upset that the government would only pay one-sixth of the necessary costs, the rest of it coming from private donations. Further, anybody want to bet that the GOP will use it as a symbol of their success when they hold their convention in NYC later this summer, no matter how little they had to do with the reopening?
• Susan found a useful quote from Richard Clarke's book for those who claim Al Gore would've been weaker against terrorism than our current administration:

  The first time I had proposed a snatch [a covert operation to grab a terrorist], in 1993, the White House counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass."

• Josh Marshall found another telling quote about the politicization of intelligence:

  U.S. officials told NBC News that the full record of Clarke?s testimony two years ago would not be declassified. They said that at the request of the White House, however, the CIA was going through the transcript to see what could be declassified, with an eye toward pointing out contradictions.

• The Fifth International Edible Book Festival is being held the day before Pesach. [via Librarian.net] So sorry I can't participate, though other cooks and bakers of my acquaintance might wish to consider it. And by all means, take a look at the photos on the website -- some astonishing creations!

Other than that, I've been spending a lot of time recently reading the comment threads on Teresa Nielsen Hayden's Making Light. For book buyers in the Boston area, Avenue Victor Hugo will be starting a 50% off store closing sale on 10 AM April 1st.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:52 AM

Yes, the Massachusetts constitutional convention passed an amendment that would define marriage heterosexually and establish civil unions. Frankly, I'm not terribly worked up about this.

For one thing, passage isn't going to change anything immediately.

Sure, Romney may try to appeal to the SJC to delay same-sex marriages, but these are the same judges who already ruled SSM are legal under the current constitution. And apparently the Attorney General has refused to represent the governor in such a request, and he's the only one who can legally do so. [via Rachel Wortman]

The same wording still has to pass next year's concon after the elections. Not only was the vote margin extremely narrow, but the approach chosen is opposed by organizations on both sides. Even if it passes again next year, it then goes to public ballot. And there is no natural consistency to fundraise and advertise in support of it. As I wrote last concon, (and earlier) there are three main groups:

Group	Marriage?	Civil Unions?	Preferences
1.	Supports SSM	Opposes CUs	Against this amendment; rejecting separate-but-equal arguments
2.	Opposes SSM	Supports CUs	Favor this amendment
3.	Opposes SSM	Opposes CUs	Against this amendment; do not want to sanction any rights for same-sex couples

Spokespeople for the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus and Coalition for Marriage have already declared their opposition for this amendment. So, who is there to advocate in its favor?

Incidentally, the most frustrating thing about this process was the poor news coverage of what was going on up-to-the-minute. Boston.com and the Boston Phoenix had occasional updates, but NECN didn't offer a webcast, and many of the bloggers I'd relied upon the previous two sessions were otherwise occupied and unable to blog. The national news was hopeless, because the legislators were gaming the system. Extremely clever, too -- how can amendment proponents gauge their progress (when to call for a vote, how much pressure to apply, etc) if some legislators were specifically voting yes on the nonbinding preliminary votes with the intention of turning around and opposing it on the final vote. Made reports yesterday afternoon look much bleaker than they were. [Only when I noticed that Festa was among the "yes" votes in the early ballots, did I realize that I understood what was up better than the AP reporters, and knew that only the final vote would really tell us anything.]

After a crazy six months, the issue is more-or-less dead for the year. While it will certainly be a campaign issue, there's nothing the legislature or anyone can do until after the election. Andrew Bayer writes It's Not Over By A Long Shot, but nothing happened to get too overworked about.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:25 AM

After endless stonewalling, Condoleezza Rice will testify in public under oath to the commission investigating 9/11!

Added later: I've just looked at the text of the letter, and while there are some definite victories for the committee -- Rice testifying in public and under oath, Bush & Cheney testifying privately to the whole commission, rather than just the leadership -- there are also some striking conditions set forth. Makes me wonder whether the angle that made the headlines "Rice to testify" might be spin, and the details give a greater victory to the White House.

In order to get Rice's testimony, "the commission must agree in writing that it will not request additional public testimony from any White House official, including Dr. Rice." In other words, Rice would get the final word and visuals in the media, with no chance of the commission finding independent tie-breakers when her testimony disagrees with Clarke's.

And Josh Marshall further questions why the president and vice-president would be required to appear jointly, if at all. This instead of the meeting with the president and just the committee leadership. Bush isn't trusted to speak without a handler?

On the whole, this sounds like good news and that the White House lost, but I wonder if we haven't just fallen for some serious White House spin. Because, what happens if the commission rejects these terms -- will they get painted as the unreasonable ones, because al