Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:55 PM

The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for "The Little Red Book" by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story.     Continued...

I will update the original post with this disclaimer as well. [I don't want to remove the entry for archival reasons.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:02 PM

Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett present New Year's resolutions of the demon Crowley and the angelic Aziraphale -- characters in Good Omens, one of my all-time favorite books which you should read if you ever need a laugh.

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:35 PM

Flipping through the latest Carnival of Feminists, I discover I Blame the Patriarchy.

Her most recent post, a roundup of several unrelated stories, includes this gem:

Meanwhile, since decrepit old Viagra devotees are all dicked up with nowhere to go, research for a sexbot pill for women who aren’t wild enough carries on at a frenzied pace. Note that the sexpackets for women address “lack of desire,” which, in our pornsick society, is interpreted as an illness, but which is actually a completely normal expression of disinterest in being used as a submissive receptacle. If you need a quaalude to fuck him, girls, fucking dump him.

Sigh...

I can't tell whether I'm more annoyed at the attitude that FSD doesn't exist or the insults against my husband and the other supportive guys who stick around and suffer alongside us.

You know, though it wasn't always easy outing myself, on the whole I think it's a positive.

Among other things, it means I can just post a comment or send the blogger an email pointing to that week's archives rather than having to write a whole educational diatribe from scratch.

Anyway, if you see anybody who needs firsthand information on female sexual dysfunction, send 'em to http://www.osmond-riba.org/lis/journal/2005_11_13_j_archive.htm. Consider it an open invitation for an education.

Because, sadly, I don't think the issue is going away...

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:45 AM

Having silly thoughts this morning.

Simon's exposition in the Firefly pilot was playing through my head (excerpted from the shooting script; actual dialog may have varied):

There was a school... a, uh, government-sponsored academy, we'd never even heard of it but it had the most exciting program, the most challenging... we could have sent her anywhere, we had the money... but she wanted to go. She wanted to learn.

And suddenly I had this image of River receiving an acceptance from another exclusive school the Tams never heard of...

What if, at eleven, River Tam was invited to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry? How would the Tams react? Particularly given the fanon convention that Muggleborn students have their letters hand-delivered so a wizard or witch can explain the situation to the family.

Last week, StarrySummer opened a flashchallenge: Cowboys and Wizards in Space, for character crossovers between Harry Potter and Firefly.

You claim a pairing. It must include at least one character from the Firefly verse and one character from the Potterverse. More characters (from either world, or another entirely) may be added to form a threesome. It's not required that there's smut, or even any sort of romantic/sexual pairing, but genfics must focus on one character from each verse. Why? It's more cracktastical that way. When a pairing's been claimed, you can't claim it until it's been written (or drawn).

That's one of the reason this blog has been so quiet the last couple days. I came up with an idea that I've been trying to tease out. I didn't claim the pairing because I didn't want to lock others out if I proved incapable of writing it. And sadly, that seems to be what's happening. I'm at 800 words and going nowhere. I've got two characters and a meeting, but no plot or direction beyond getting-to-know-you. Character and atmosphere alone aren't enough to sustain it, so I think I may abandon this effort.

On the other hand, while trying to work up possible plots, I may have come up with a different crossover scenario that may be feasible. We'll see...
[Of course, I have so many other overdue writing commitments I was hoping to get done this holiday weekend, maybe I should just backburner this entirely.]

Meanwhile, somebody has already written Regulus/Simon, and among the pairings that have been claimed, are possible WIPs about Aberforth/Cow, Dementors/Reavers, Jayne's Hat/Ron's Hat and Serenity/Squid. There are still plenty of open pairings, though, so if you have an idea, hop in!

PS: Over on Girl Genius, the Foglios have been running a seven-page short story titled "Fan Fiction." Quite funny, nonspoilery, begins here. [The last page should be up Monday.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:00 PM

This evening's AP reports:

The House passed a one-month extension of the Patriot Act on Thursday and sent it to the Senate for final action as Congress scrambled to prevent expiration of anti-terror law enforcement provisions on Dec. 31.

Approval came on a voice vote in a nearly empty chamber, after Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, refused to agree to a six-month extension the Senate cleared several hours earlier.

Anybody know how many Reps were actually still there?

I've been trying to figure out why a one-month extension instead of just approving the Senate's six-month and being done with it. My speculations include: (a) Congressmen are ticked off at other last-minute changes Senate has made to bills which require a House revote, so this is their way of sticking it back to the Senate, (b) this doesn't give the Senate time to hold further hearings on certain matters before it comes up for a re-vote. Of course, considering the House plans to stay closed for much of January, hoping to avoid a leadership battle in hopes DeLay's legal problems will be resolved, that doesn't leave much time for negotiations before they have to re-vote on the issue.

I'm a lousy chess player; anybody else care to explain why the one-month extension?

6:10 pm PS: Just saw a commenter on Atrios speculate that the GOP didn't want this coming up for discussion during mid-term elections, which is another plausible interpretation.

Posted by Lis Riba at 8:25 PM

Lotsa chatter in the blogosphere regarding legality of and justifications for the president's unwarranted domestic spying. Here are some of the best I've seen this evening:

Shakespeare's Sister offers a recap for those struggling to catch up. [See also my weekend posts, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

I'll start with two by Glenn Greenwald (a new favorite read of mine, if you can't already tell): Claiming the right to break the law and The new "constitutional" excuse for warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, both of which break down some of the justifications provided by Bush supporters.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has been speaking out. Georgia10 rips apart his arguments on this morning's Today Show. Kos takes on his press conference and points out the inherent contradiction in his explanations:

Gonzales says it was okay to spy on Americans without authorization because the war resolution gave them that power. But when asked why they didn't ask for specific congressional authorization, he says, well, Congress wouldn't have given them that power.

Think Progress notes that Bush's account contradicts statements Gonzales made under oath at his confirmation hearings.

Meanwhile, Dwight Meredith scores a nice slam dunk against one of Vice President Cheney's claims:

Follow the Logic

1) Dick Cheney says:

Vice President Richard Cheney said the September 11 attacks on the United States could have been averted, if the government had the power to monitor electronic communications inside the country.

'It's the kind of capability if we'd had before 9/11 might have led us to be able to prevent 9/11,' Cheney said in an interview with ABC's 'Nightline' program.

2) The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act permits such the monitoring of electronic communications inside the country upon issuance of a court order or for a period of 72 hours in emergency situations without a court order.

3) On August 6, 2001, The President received a Presidential Daily Briefing entitled Bin Laden determined to strike in US.

4) Ergo, the September 11 attacks on the United States might have been averted if the administration had exercised the power granted to it under the Foreign Surveillance Act.

QED.

Marty Lederman points out a contradiction in the President's arguments:

In his press conference this morning, the President focused on two things: (i) defending the legality of his Executive Orders authorizing eavesdropping of conversations involving U.S. persons (including citizens); and (ii) scolding Senators for refusing to reenact the PATRIOT Act.

What virtually no one is pointing out is the incongruity of these two arguments -- that if the President is correct about the legality of his wiretapping protocol, then there is little need to reenact the PATRIOT Act.

While Echidne takes out the "quick action" defense (excerpting):

[George Bush] states speed as the reason:

``To save American lives we must be able to act fast,'' the president said in a news conference at the White House.

But this excuse doesn't wash, because the law allows the secret court to be contacted up to three days after the spying has commenced. So there was never any delay to begin with.

If that's not clear enough, Ezra Klein provides an even more basic explanation:

Bush's only justification for his program is speed. Fine. Which is why this can't be said enough: FISA allows for immediate wiretapping without the consent of a judge. All you need to do is, three days later, go get a warrant.

Let's put this another way. Say Bush gets word of a potential hostile element. And let's assume he's got a time machine. Under FISA, he can dispatch an aide to get a warrant, then step in his machine, travel 72 hours back in time, order the wiretap, and have broken no laws. Or, let's say you don't like bending space-time. Bush gets word of a suspect, but he's busy. Harried. Frazzled. He's got a state dinner in an hour and some time allotted for the treadmill right now. He hasn't time to dispatch someone to the judge and deal with the case. He can order the tap immediately, take a run, go to dinner, procrastinate for 68 or so more hours, and then send an underling for a warrant.

I want to say this very clearly as it is absolutely the heart of the issue: there is no possible circumstance under which FISA would slow Bush's ability to respond. None. Any emergency can be handled instantaneously, with all oversight conducted retroactively. Add in that the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Courts have denied a total of three applications out of around 20,000 and you get a sense of how deliberately non-invasive this law is. FISA does nothing but ensure Bush doesn't use the NSA improperly. Nothing. Bush is attempting to muddle the issue by suggesting evasion of the FISA allows him more freedom to protect us. That's a lie. All it does is protect him. And the question the press needs to be asking is what it protects him from.

Mahabarb takes on those who consider this part of the President's constitutional powers:

The “inherent powers” argument is nonsense, but I think it’s fascinating the “strict constructionists” could have found powers in the Constitution no one ever noticed before. The same people who can’t see, for example, a right to privacy in the 4th Amendment certainly have developed an expansive view of Article II Section II. And they say the Constitution is not a living document. Haw.

Steve Soto poses further questions:

But I have a simple test: Bush says that the only people who were being monitored were Americans with suspected Al Qaeda links, who had emails or phone calls with suspects overseas. We are also told that there have been hundreds if not thousands of such taps since 2001. If this is true, and Bush has been listening in since 2001 on all this traffic, I have several questions:

Why haven't we had more prosecutions here at home?

Why haven't we had more arrests here at home?

If these are folks with known Al Qaeda links, then why haven't you gone to the Foreign Intelligence Services Act court and received warrants on all these people? The current law allows you to do whatever you want for the first 72 hours and then get a warrant, yet you apparently haven't even gotten warrants on many if not all of these folks even though you've been doing it for years.

If the current law was insufficient, why haven't you tried to expand it in the last four years?

Because the official excuses don't add up, and because following the law would appear to give Bush everything he claims to be asking, bloggers have been guessing what the President might be doing that he would avoid court approval.

Several commenters mention a program called Echelon (or Total Information Awareness; remember those plans?) which would scan massive amounts of traffic, datamining for relevant phrases or participants, like a giant fishing expedition through all faxes, phonecalls, emails, etcetera. I don't know much about this program, but something like that might cover so many people that warrants would be impossible.

In contrast, John Aravosis speculates these searches might be targeted:

I don't have proof yet, but Bush spying on US journalists would explain everything UNEXPLAINED about this entire story. Bush refusing to follow the law, Bush refusing to go to court, Bush refusing to tell more members of Congress, Bush's concern that the terrorists, if they knew we were doing this, would be tipped off, and Bush's desire to keep this from the public. It all makes sense that the target of the domestic spying could be US journalists.

And since I started writing this, a couple late posts: Orin Kerr weighed in with his legal analysis, as does Kevin Drum.

In a related vein, Amanda's sick of the assumption of a zero-sum game in such policy decisions. But I'll conclude with a quote found by Roxanne:

Sums It Up

Conservative Mark Earnest, commenting at Bérubé's:

The President is does not take an oath to keep the country perfectly safe, he takes an oath to uphold the constitution. Living in a free country is inherently dangerous, and always will be. The same liberties and freedoms that make us great also are enjoyed by jerks to can take advantage of them to cause harm. Try suggesting to a conservative that thinks safety is the number one value and goal in America that we should change the national anthem to better reflect this: "O'er the land of the safe / And the home of the scared"

PS: I heard rumors that Senator Byrd gave a great speech in the Senate today; want to track that down...

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:30 PM

Upset about the President's illegal actions?

Are you upset enough to make three phone calls, one each to your Senators and Representative?

I agree with Hilzoy that if everything we know now is true, this is probably unconstitutional: "I have a high bar, not a nonexistent one. And for a President to order violations of the law meets my criteria for impeachment."
Nicholas and Amanda look at the political calculations and suggest that impeachment is an impractical goal: probably impossible and could be detrimental to Democrats attempts to retake Congress and the presidency in the next elections. [Lindsay Beyerstein and Dadahead disagree.] Nicholas says he's "inclined to think the best tactic is to call for a censure of the President and an end to warrantless domestic spying."

Nonetheless, we can't sit by and let this pass without comment. That might suggest we're apathetic; that we condone such behavior from our government. As smintheus asks: "If we do not attempt to take back our country now, then when?"

smintheus has his own set of recommendations, which he's calling Operation Flabbergasted.

Read those if you wish, but I say:

• Call your elected officials
• In your own words, tell them you oppose the President's actions
• Demand action and feel free to be specific:
  • Presumably, we want the executive branch to cease these warrantless
  • An investigation, with punishment for the guilty and restitution for those harmed by the practice
  • Tell them where you draw the line, whether you'd rather stop at censure or pursue impeachment and removal.

You don't need to talk too long; the person taking your call probably won't record your comments verbatim.

And once again, I remind you of Working Assets' general tips on communicating more effectively with Congress and the tollfree Congressional switchboards at 1-800-839-5276 and 1-877-762-8762

If you can't be bothered to call; why should you expect your Senators to act?

Back to smintheus, "The only campaign that would be worthy of this issue, in my opinion, will be one that produces the biggest fire-storm that Washington has ever seen." And you can do your part by making three phone calls. Is that too much to ask?

At the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1878, a lady asked Ben Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?"

Replied Franklin, "A republic, if you can keep it." [Source]

PS: If you do call Congress, let me know. I'd love to hear what kind of response we're giving and you're getting...

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:50 PM

“As President, I took an oath to defend the Constitution, and I have no greater responsibility than to protect our people, our freedom, and our way of life.”

Our freedom and our way of life does not include the executive illegally eavesdropping on Americans without warrant.

          Copyright Clay Bennett, The Christian Science Monitor, reproduced with permission

Posted by Lis Riba at 4:42 PM

Mahabarb makes an excellent point: the current crop of Republican leadership don't believe in a right to privacy anyway.

Although that term is usually modern political shorthand for gay rights and women's right to abortion (and birth control!), it clearly has broader implications and applications.

Because it's not explicitly stated in the Constitition, it's still controversial. [The Court ruled privacy exists within the protected penumbra of specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights.]

Well, maybe it's time to come up with a new Constitutional Amendment preserving the right of individual privacy...

I'm sure somebody must've come up with proposed wordings for such a beast. Anybody know where I can find some?

Poking around, I found Carpetbagger sees one risk in pushing for such a change: "the fundamental flaw in a liberal arguing that an amendment is necessary is that implicitly argues that a right to privacy doesn't already exist in the Constitution, which is the conservative argument." Of course, he also provides a useful counterargument: Since the federal government is routinely ignoring that right, clearly we need to spell it out for them.

Thoughts?

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:45 PM

Sometimes, my husband is just too nice.

Got a call last week from a market research company asking if they could send a video of a sitcom pilot for him to watch and answer a few questions about.

The show is called Dads and involves C. Thomas Howell, Rue McClanahan, Jane Sibbett (among the names I gleaned from the opening credits)

Calling this painful is an insult to agony.

Since Ian's the only one under any agreements, once the opening credits began, I began Googling for further info.

This isn't a potential new show, it's just an excuse for advertising. The tape includes commericials and all the survey questions are product-based.

Other bloggers report falling for this scam as far back as February 2005, August 2004, July 2004... The closing credits were fast (and the tape is nonrewindable) but the copyright date looked like 1997...

When they called, the organization identified themselves as ASI, Audience Studies Inc. Don't know if it's always the same scam, but their website lists "prizewinners" back to January 2002. So if you get an unsolicited call from ASI offering you a video, say no!

Walter Barnett was listed as the show's producer. I wonder how the cast and crew feel about their show being used in this deceptive manner.

Halfway thru the show, Ian started guzzling a bottle of rye because he found it so unbearable (since I was under no obligation, I was mostly ignoring it). Thank gd, I found a loophole in time: The instructions state "Please watch the show however and whenever you usually watch TV at home." Which means largely ignoring it while blogging...

Meanwhile, we've now got a videotape that allegedly erases while it plays. Any Mission Impossible fans want it for reverse engineering?

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:18 PM

One of the tactics of Holocaust deniers is to try to frame their lies as merely one side of a "debate." Those who refuse to give equal time to both parties, truth and lies, are then somehow criticized as biased. Gaming the refs.

They're not the only group to use this technique: Playing upon the modern media's need to seem impartial. Sadly, the press keeps falling for it.

Last week, Chris Mooney noted this passage in a Washington Post article:

Like others who adhere to a literal reading of the Book of Genesis, Rogers, a lawyer, believes that Earth is several thousand years old, while most scientists, basing their estimates on the radioactive decay of rock samples, say the planet is billions of years old.

Aaarrrghhhh!!! This "balanced" journalistic framing reduces the age of the earth to a matter of opinion ("most scientists say?"). It is no such thing. It is a matter of well established scientific fact. Here's what Whoriskey should have written, with my changes in bold:

Like others who adhere to a literal reading of the Book of Genesis, Rogers, a lawyer, believes that Earth is several thousand years old. That is incorrect. Scientists studying the radioactive decay of rock samples have demonstrated that the planet is billions of years old.

[More on this story from PZ Myers]

That's been running through my mind since I saw the opening sentence to this article in today's Boston Globe:

President Bush acknowledged yesterday that he has repeatedly authorized secret eavesdropping within the United States without obtaining warrants, a policy that some critics called illegal.

Um, no. Everyone who takes an honest look at the law agrees the president broke the law.

Even Bob Barr says it's wrong:

BARR: Well, the fact of the matter is that the Constitution is the Constitution, and I took an oath to abide by it. My good friend, my former colleague, Dana Rohrabacher, did and the president did. And I don't really care very much whether or not it can be justified based on some hypothetical. The fact of the matter is that, if you have any government official who deliberately orders that federal law be violated despite the best of motives, that certainly ought to be of concern to us.

[Crooks and Liars has the video. Watch the whole six-minute segment; it's scary.]

The problem isn't so much that the government was spying, and the New York Times didn't give anything away by acknowledging that openly: the crime was ignoring the law to do so. And don't give me the excuse that they didn't have time to follow proper procedures. Ezra Klein provides a clear succinct debunking of that claim:

Everything Bush is doing is legal, but nothing in the way he's doing it is. When you need a wiretap, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows you to apply for one. When you need it yesterday, FISA allows you to place the tap immediately and retroactively clear it with a judge 72 hours later. The law strikes a balance between broad executive powers and substantive oversight -- the president has full authority to assault the evildoers, but cannot deploy the law on behalf of his own political interests. It's a check on totalitarianism. What Bush has done is unilaterally decide the oversight unnecessary. Given the shape and safeguards of FISA, there was no operational need to evade it. It was an exclusively ideological decision in service of unlimited executive powers, and it's chilling.

The FISA court has a reputation for being overgenerous to prosecutors. [Josh Marshall has the numbers.] Can anyone give me a good reason why they didn't request warrants?

PS: If truth was on the Bush-supporters' side, why do they need to blatantly lie about the laws Bush broke?

Related:

• Mark Kleiman was one of many to point out a flip-flop the media is ignoring. [Update: apparently Tim Russert and the NYT did mention it]
• Amanda on differing interpretations of Bush's Saturday address
• David Neiwart says this is characteristic behavior for the President
• Iocaste has two other examples of the press trying to make balance where none exists, Josh Marshall has another. When reality isn't balanced, editors try to tip the scales to make it appear even.
• And in contrast to false efforts to add balance, read Arthur Silber's comments about the new Spielberg movie, Munich