Naomi Klein Debunks Bushs Off Shore Drilling
Plan; But Does FBC Hear It

post from Crooks and Liars on 18 July 2008 12:50:12 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Gah! I admit that I’ve never watched Fox Business Channel, even though my cable company carries it. Based on this clip of their “after-the-market-closes” show, Happy Hour, I see I’ve made a wise choice. What kind of surreal experience is this? Bar set, complete with a bartender and business men with their brewskis in the [...]

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Indianapolis Implements Plan to Curb Police
Misconduct

post from TalkLeft on 18 July 2008 12:50:00 PM. © TalkLeft

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department has a plan to clean up its act. The plan is designed to make police officers obey the law. You wouldn't think that would be difficult, but this is what's been happening in the absence of meaningful oversight:

Narcotics detectives ripping off drug dealers. A police officer selling a gun to a felon informant. Another officer helping his wife run an illegal escort service.

Misconduct allegations against the officers have caused the dismissal of at least 20 criminal cases that the bad officers tainted. The question is how many other charges over the years have resulted from work done by officers who feel free to ignore the law. When police officers behave lawlessly, there's reason to wonder whether they have any qualms about planting evidence or committing perjury to advance their own careers.

Here's the plan, such as it is: [more ...]

The plan calls for increasing supervision, tightening oversight of evidence collection, reinstating more widespread polygraph testing of officers, creating a department recruiter position and instituting mandatory performance evaluations.

The value of polygraph testing is questionable. Mandatory performance evaluations should have been implemented long ago (despite the objections of the police union), but police "performance" is too often measured by the number of arrests made, not by honesty. A "requirement that supervisors write reports after searches" is useful, but many searches (stopping people on the street and patting them down, for instance) will never come to the attention of supervisors. The plan nonetheless has value by assuring that "a supervisor signs off on search warrants and is present whenever officers recover drugs or money."

Oversight is a key, but it's an easy word to use and a difficult concept to implement. Supervisors typically learn about bad officers only if other officers report them, an act often seen as a betrayal by their peers. The careful investigation of citizen complaints, coupled with strong, independent civilian oversight might be more productive in the long term.

If they aren't already there, putting security cameras in the property room might make it more difficult for property officers to steal money and drugs. Still, they wouldn't have prevented "narcotics detectives Robert B. Long and Jason P. Edwards [from] allegedly skimm[ing] portions of marijuana from intercepted packages before delivering them to IMPD’s property room."

Using "a recruiter and college visits to draw higher-quality applicants" is one of the best long-term solutions. Insisting that officers be well-educated and well-trained, coupled with psychological screening to weed out the authoritarians who want power in order to abuse it, will lead to a better breed of cop. That plan needs to be coupled with an attractive salary and rigorous training about the important role that police have in protecting civil rights.

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Come Fly With Me...

post from Daily Kos on 18 July 2008 12:48:33 PM. © Daily Kos

Way to boost morale, guys...and fight terrorism at the same time:

The Air Force's top leadership sought for three years to spend counterterrorism funds on "comfort capsules" to be installed on military planes that ferry senior officers and civilian leaders around the world, with at least four top generals involved in design details such as the color of the capsules' carpet and leather chairs, according to internal e-mails and budget documents.

Air Force officials said that the comfort capsules were needed to ensure leaders could talk and work. Which doesn't really explain why they were to be:

..."aesthetically pleasing and furnished to reflect the rank of the senior leaders using the capsule," with beds, a couch, a table, a 37-inch flat-screen monitor with stereo speakers, and a full-length mirror.

Words fail...

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Ashcroft Cites Executive Privilege, Discusses
Waterboarding with House Judiciary

post from TPMMuckraker on 18 July 2008 12:45:00 PM. © TPMMuckraker

As we've reported , former Attorney General John Ashcroft was on the Hill yesterday, testifying before the House Judiciary Committee,

As we mentioned, Ashcroft's testimony called into question the timeline of the CIA interrogations and suggested that perhaps torture began before it was authorized by the DOJ. But it also shed some light on the DOJ's thought process about the authorization of the interrogations to begin with.

It was during Ashcroft's years as attorney general that the infamous "torture" memos were written. The memos approved the use of waterboarding and other forms of interrogation as long as they did not "cause pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure."

While Ashcroft approved the memos initially, he later withdrew them out of concern that they overstepped the bounds of executive authority, a decision that he described this way:

It wasn't a hard decision for me to - when they came to me, and I came to the conclusion that these were genuine concerns - get about the business of correcting it.

Just one week ago the committee was host to the current Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

And just like Mukasey, Ashcroft was ever the artful dodger, citing a lack of memory, executive privilege or the classified nature of the information as reasons why he could not answer lawmakers' questions.

When asked asked repeatedly about waterboarding, Ashcroft described it as "very valuable," "not torture," and claimed that it "has happened three times."

"I have been aware of waterboarding," he stated in answer to questions on how he learned that the interrogation technique was being used. "I'm not sure how I am aware."

The former attorney general conceded his lack of recall as to the events in question during his opening remarks.

"It's been difficult . . . to distinguish between what I in fact recall as a matter of my own experience, and what I remember from the accounts of others," he said.

And indeed throughout the hearing, Ashcroft informed the committee that he couldn't remember. . . and that even if he could remember, he wouldn't tell them because of executive privilege.

One particularly rapid-fire stonewalling occurred during Rep. Linda Sanchez's (D-CA) five minutes of interrogation. It really can't be summed into words, so we have the clip here. Enjoy.

video details and more

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McCain: ‘I Don’t Know’ If Obama
Is A Socialist

post from Think Progress on 18 July 2008 12:44:00 PM. © Think Progress

Yesterday, during an interview with the Kansas City Star, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said he didn’t know if Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) was a socialist:

HELLING: Do you think he’s a socialist, Barack Obama??
MCCAIN: Oh, I don?t know. All I know is his voting record, and that?s what people usually judge their elected representatives by.

Listen to It:
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McCain joins a long line of conservatives who have tried to discredit Obama by implicitly suggesting or overtly claiming that that he is a “socialist” or a “Marxist”:

- Karl Rove: “I don?t find a lot of people in rural America, I certainly don?t find the dominant view to be ? ?I?m so bitter that I?m going to hold on to my gun or I?m gonna? ? You know, it was almost Marxian in this they cling to their religion. I mean, you know, it?s sort of like it?s the opiate of the masses.”
- Former Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX): “I have said publicly, and I will again, that unless he proves me wrong, he is a Marxist.”
- Glenn Beck: “This guy [Obama] is a socialist and all you have to do is listen to his words.”
- Hugh Hewitt: “And did the Obama rally begin with the Soviet National Anthem?”
- Bill Kristol: “My occasion for spending a little time once again with the old Communist was Barack Obama?s now-famous comment at an April 6 San Francisco fund-raiser.”

McCain’s “favorite Democrat” — Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) — has also expressed doubts about Obama’s political affiliation. During a Fox News Radio interview in April, Lieberman said that it was ?a good question? to ask if Obama is ?a Marxist,? though he said he would ?hesitate? to call him one himself.

Transcript:

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Don Siegelman at Netroots Nation --
ContemptForRove.com

post from MyDD on 18 July 2008 12:43:18 PM. © MyDD

I'm here in the main convention hall at Netroots Nation, and as has been the case the last couple years I have found it slightly difficult to keep up with the news and blogging. However, there are many, many upsides to being here, of course, chief among[...]

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Don Siegelman at Netroots Nation

post from MyDD on 18 July 2008 12:43:18 PM. © MyDD

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Netroots Nation Notes: Some Quick Jots

post from Firedoglake on 18 July 2008 12:42:26 PM. © Firedoglake

The gathering this year is hot. Whoda thunk? Austin in July ...There have been a lot of panels and some good speeches last night As it has been the last two years, though, the real heart of the Netroots Nation action is in the[...]

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Friday Pop Culture Diversion: Movies

Having finally got around to seeing a film that definitely qualifies as one of the more under-seen (ergo under-appreciated) releases of last year, it occurred to me that we might be missing many cinematic gems solely because they were badly marketed -- which is often the case simply because of absurd political shifts at the studio level.

It is a little-known fact (little known outside Hollywood, that is) that many excellent films get swept under the marketing carpet simply because they were created or championed by people whose replacements at the studios where they were made want to dismiss everything having to do with their predecessors. It's shamefully adolescent behaviour -- but then, if shameful adolescent behaviour were outlawed in Hollywood, we'd still be listening to radio plays broadcast out of New York.

So, without further ado, my latest addition to the woefully long list of The Best Movies Nobody Saw:

3:10 to Yuma (2007)
Starring Christian Bale, Russell Crowe and
the only-getting-better-with-age Ben Foster

It's a remake, and I never saw the original. Maybe the title was a problem; ever notice how many movies with numbers in the title bomb?

Granted, it wasn't technically a "bomb" -- generally a film has to fail critically as well as commercially to warrant that label, and in the case of 3:10 to Yuma the critics almost universally recognised a new classic in this one.

As is far too often the case, 3:10 to Yuma's relative commercial failure resulted in its exclusion from most of the major awards nominations; doubly criminal, because it not only deserved such recognition, but would surely have garnered a wider audience had that recognition been bestowed. I would argue that 3:10 to Yuma is not only the best Western since Unforgiven -- to say nothing of being one of the best Westerns ever made -- but that it arguably rivals that film as the best Western made in the past 35 years.

I won't bother giving you a synopsis or going into detail regarding the acting, writing, direction, cinematography or set decoration; suffice to say the result in every single category imaginable surpasses most known standards of excellence.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In a twist on the scientific truism, for every great, critically lauded film that nobody saw there is usually a really shitty, critically lauded film that nobody saw. That's just one of the things that makes it so damned hard to sort through the cinematic wheat and chaff when it comes to that vast array of films that never see the box office light of day; Critics Can't Be Trusted.

After all, if you listened to the critics, you'd have rushed right out to see, say, The Savages, which sucked monkey balls.

Sure, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney are great actors. Doesn't mean they can drag a shitty story into the pantheon of cinematic masterpieces -- though if you bought into the near-universal critical acclaim bestowed upon their performances in The Savages last year (and the attendant requisite acting nominations), you might have been among the seventeen people who actually saw it in a theatre -- and probably among the sixteen who demanded a refund on principle's sake.

More likely, you joined the people in a slightly larger group who added it to their Netflix queues and forced themselves to sit through two hours of the most saturnine, torpid, depressing and self-indulgent bullshit ever perpetrated upon a gullible, critic-credulous audience.

Yes, dear readers, I fall into the latter category. Count me, then, as one of many who likely watched the end credits in stunned, angry disbelief: "THIS DRECK made the critics sit up and say 'Bravo!'???"

The Savages sucked. Period. And no amount of thespian acrobatics from Hoffman or Linney could EVER have made it suck less, though bless them for trying. On the other hand, DAMN them for bothering in the first place.

So...

Which movies make your lists?

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The Daily Rant

Puzzled brought my attention to the proposed "new rule" from HHS concerning making it illegal for organizations receiving federal funding to refuse to hire someone for any job in health care on the basis of their views on abortion, or what constitutes abortion (which can include practically any reversable form of birth control more effective than a diaphragm or a condom).

Now, there are many jobs in many hospitals where this never comes up. Buildings and Grounds, Housekeeping, and Food Services, for instance, just to be obvious. Many of the medical departments, such as Orthopedics, Neurology, and the like; many research departments. But her outrage is quite justified, since there are many areas---not all of them directly medical; executive and administrative positions come to mind---where having people working or in charge of decision-making and policy who are opposed to abortion/contraception could be disastrous in a secular hospital or clinical setting (I leave aside hospitals run by particular religious groups such as Catholic hospitals; they usually are not the "only player" in a town). Indeed, if some officious bureaucrat wanted to push the issue (and we've never seen that happen, have we?), it could even be extended to private OB-GYN practices; after all, many of us do see Medicare and Medicaid patients, which is technically "federal funding".

This could, by chance or by deliberate targeting by anti-abortion activists, give us geographic areas where the less well-to-do have no access to effective contraception as well as abortion; the rich folks' MDs would take their right to refuse to accept Medicare/Medicaid patients, as many do, thus getting out from under the rule, and the poor might have no other available options. And before anyone tells me we have no evidence of such "conspiracy" on the part of anti-abortion forces, um, yes, we do. Operation Rescue comes to mind.

A large part of the basis for my ire is this: "conception" is not "fertilization", and no amount of fiat and confusing a non-technical definition with a rechnical one will make it so. It's the same bait-and-switch in definitions that allows creationists and ID folks to characterize evolution as "just" a theory: they deliberately replace, in their discourse, a non-technical definition ("theory" equalling the scientific term "hypothesis") with the technical one ("theory" as a scientific fact regarded by scientists as proven though still disprovable). Indeed, IIRC, conception wasn't even used as a synonym for fertilization until the anti-abortion forces started using it in that way, as a means of confusing the topic being discussed and associating abortion with murder. And of course, once that happens, medical hypotheses about how some forms of birth control work are taken as proven fact...and even if long since disproven or discounted, such as the "birth control pills work primarily by preventing implantation" hypothesis (the "grounds" used for considering OCPs and Plan B "abortifacients"), those who have a vested interest in denying women access to reproductive choices can and do continue to use them as "reasons" to oppose effective birth control.

More later/tomorrow...

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