Judge, jury and non-executioner

The Boston Globe has this must-read story in today's paper. It's about how a chain of presidents going back two decades has decided to increase the president's powers. The system has de-volved so far that more than one-tenth of Congress' laws can be ignored, and evidence suggests long-passed and -enacted laws can and already are being ignored without judicial oversight.

This story is frightening. It overturns everything you learned about the Constitution in that high-school civics class. That's simply because it overturns major portions of the Constitution. The executive branch is free to say it'll ignore laws appropriately passed by the legislative branch. No appeals process is implied, anyway, but it doesn't matter: The executive branch has already declared it will interpret laws in direct contradiction of judicial branch rulings. Remember those old movies about checks and balances? Forget 'em.

This story is a must-read for anyone who believes in America or the Constitution.

Jose, can you see?

(1)

George W. Bush, who can't see any disasters in his procedures in Iraq, has quickly seen a disaster-in-the-making at a Spanish-language version of "The Star-Spangled Banner," the American national anthem.

I found a link to the audio recording via the San Jose Mercury News -- ironically, with a newspaper that draws only half of its name from the English language. Artistically, it sounds "icky" to MeTheSheeple, but what does he know. His major phrases in Spanish are "Dois quesadillas, por favor" and "Tu madre tiene un pene pequeno."

To get slightly back on track, "The Star-Spangled Banner" seems to be a highly visible scene of the divide in America over immigration and, well, immigrants. The Spanish-singing performers even changed the lyrics in some places, adding, for example, "we are equals, we are brothers, it's our anthem."

What's ironic about this whole thing -- the taking of "The Star-Spangled Banner" away from its American roots -- is it doesn't have American roots. The song -- written during a British attack on those uppity "American" colonialists -- was actually just Francis Scott Key's words drafted to a British song -- and a British drinking song at that. One of the few things that could be said is the original lyrics were as challenging to sing as the actual melody. The melody we made worse by changing the key.

Wikipedia notes that the song became the national anthem only in 1931, some 70 years after it was translated into German. (Were these the guys that "dat fite mit Siegel" in the Civil War?) Wikipedia also notes that Jewish immigrants translated it into Yiddish, while Louisiana's Acadians translated it into French. American Somoans translated it this year.

Clearly, this idea of a purebred version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" is absolute malarkey. That isn't to say that the Spanish-language singers are absolutely right, or the new lyrics are perfect. But, as with much of much of what revolves around the long history of this song, everything's sort of a compromise. And so, I propose:

And besides I'll instruct you,
Like me, to intwine
The Myrtle of Venus
With Bacchus's Vine." *

Or we can stick with the American version, even though most people only know -- and some poorly -- just 25 percent of it.

O thus be it ever when free man shall stand
Between their lov'd homes and the war's desolation;
Blest with vict'r and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation!

But if all that's too much, I say we should all learn a different song: When some Americans, fighting to preserve the very nation itself, couldn't speak English worth a flip. The ensuing struggle claimed more casualties than the rest of America's wars combined. This song, then, may say more about America's heritage:

Ven I comes from de Deutch Countree,
I vorks somedimes at baking;
Den I keeps a lager bier saloon,
Und den I goes shoemaking;
But now I was a sojer been
To save de Yankee Eagle;
To Schlauch dem tam Secession volks,
I'm going to fight mit Sigel.

---

(1) Title for blog post ... inspired ... by http://noapostrophe.blogspot.com/

Priests molesting priests

The Washington Post has this unusual story that began in the Boston area, where seminarian James Moran was molested by a priest but then went on to become a priest himself. The Catholic Church didn't exactly stumble over its own feet investigating. The truth came out years later:

In 2002, he told then-Boston Archbishop Bernard Law about the 1970 incident and received an offer of financial support for counseling and later a $90,000 settlement from the archdiocese, but not what he wanted. "There was no validation of me as a good person," he said of his meeting with Law, who resigned later that year.

Since then, the Catholic Church has tried to make right, doing its best to honor a long-serving good priest while acknowledging there is no way to make up for the 1970 horror.

Just kidding. The church stripped away his priesthood six weeks before his retirement.

Moran feels he is being punished for speaking out: "My gut feeling is that I have been raped again."

It's funny, how in any dealings vaguely involving the Boston Archdiocese, the Catholic Church always seems to miss the core message of Christianity. Take a look over at 1 John:

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God.

Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love.

In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him.

In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins.

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another.

Does the Catholic Church love James Moran, a man who served the church for 35 years?

Lobbying for government unfriendliness, incompetence and inefficiency

Lawrence Lessig praised the tax man in 7">his latest column for Wired Magazine. This odd maneuver provides an all-too poignant, more recent example of assaults on government's attempts to make tax collection easier, something described in here.

Lessig's example hails from California, where the state Republican Caucus attacked a state effort that actually prepared simple returns for some taxpayers when the state had all the needed information. Taxpayers could review the proposed returns, and about 30 percent accepted them. The result was less hassle for the citizenry and for the government, which presumably didn't have to do much further processing and typing.

In short, it sounded too good to be true for all involved. And it was. The problem was, the tax-preparation people were not involved. These, of course, are the same moronic jerks that can't get their own taxes right on the first, or even second, try (see earlier post, in re H&R Block).

The result was a lobbying effort through the Senate Republican Caucus, which seems to have obeyed its masters. Check out their public-relations effort here. Many of the arguments would be laughed at by a high-school debate team. In their absence, MeTheSheeple will begin the ridicule:

ReadyReturn confuses simplicity with simplification. The program does not address the underlying need to simplify our tax code. Just as automatic withholding made the impact of income taxes less visible to taxpayers, the ReadyReturn program will diminish the public pressure to simplify the tax code.

Umm. What? Changes to the tax code would be the legislature's responsibility, which is to say, in part, the responsibility of the Republican Caucus that wrote this crap. This is a legitimate effort on the part of an administrative agency to ease the way for taxpayers, which is to say these legislators' constituents. The state agency itself cannot change the tax code. Sorry. Are these guys actually arguing that the government shouldn't make it easier for the people who elected them? Yep.

And what of this claim of decreasing the pressure? Maybe there's something to it. Yet if the legislators can take the time to begin public lobbying against this ReadyReturn program, surely one of them can take the time to begin studying the tax code, while another one can begin lobbying for a true simplification. Nobody's stopping them. They talk about "pressure," but the legislators are the ones increasing the pressure -- against a government reform that actually works, and helps.

The second claim, that ReadyReturn could miss some income and thus taxes, is legitimate and acknowleged as such by the state. Fine. But what about number three?

The third claim is that taxpayers may accept the ReadyReturn forms without adding all the exceptions, such as charitable deductions:

But, provided with the option of a tax return already prepared by the government, a taxpayer may just sign it and send it in as a convenience. The result is that the taxpayer may never consult a tax preparer, tax preparation software, or even the instructions included with the tax form and realize his or her ability to reduce his or her tax liability.

Wow. Is this actually a Republican effort to undermine a sense of personal responsibility? Yes, indeed, it is. Nitwits. And God forbid they accept a convenience without first A) paying someone; B) paying someone; or C) actually taking the responsibility to read the instructions. But, importantly, people should be inconvenienced and encouraged to spend more money to figure out what they owe, when a free service may at least give 'em a head start. Who is pulling the strings? Ah, "some":

Some have articulated concern that ReadyReturn violates the proper role of government. In his testimony before the FTB, Bernard McKay, Vice President of Corporate Affairs for Intuit, provided perspective on this issue ...

Intuit, of course, being the people that write popular tax software. "Some have articulated concern"? Nice use of passive voice. Mistakes were made, too.

The basic claim that follows is that government has spent 50 years making income taxes hard, and now has an easy way out. The irony is this claim against history is utter bullshit. For much longer than 50 years, the government determined your taxes and collected them. Centuries ago, it was a sheriff, who could be incredibly abusive in every sense of the term (see, for example, the excellent historical novel "Pillars of the Earth" for an idea). Ever since then, the government has assessed property values and collected taxes accordingly, with no substantive input from the taxpayers. The government assesses sales taxes and collects them, too, with no substantive input from the taxpayers. This evil shift against income taxes doesn't go against tradition as much as bring it back into line.

The Senate Republican Caucus' fifth argument doesn't even make coherent sense in English. It is, of course, drafted almost entirely in the words of a tax-preparation businessman. Presumably the senators would have rather kept the incoherent argument verbatim than risk offending such an important donor, who seems to suggest that everyone that gets a ReadyReturn will have to pay someone to do their taxes a second time, while they'll do it themselves a third time. There is no explanation for this argument, although MeTheSheeple wonders about links to California's long history of methamphetamine production.

The sixth argument is that ReadyReturn may not be easily understood by people who don't speak English well. Sadly, neither will any tax documents. These folks are still free to puzzle over their taxes on their own or pay someone else to do the taxes. The only reason to make this argument, then, is that the professional tax people are afraid more people might not turn to them. They're not actually worried about these immigrants; they're worried about their bottom line while pretending to be worried about them.

This whole op-ed piece is pathetic in its logic, and filled with nothing but contempt for the hard-working taxpayers who elected this nimrods. MeTheSheeple hopes this comes back to haunt the senators at election time.

The Iraqi war's divides

Earlier this month, I posted about a conservative criticizing the Iraqis for being ungrateful. I found, in a round-about way, more insight into how the war in Iraq is dividing more Americans. Bear with me for a second.

The Washington Post wrote about Iraqi bloggers, leading me to the Baghdad Burning blog by "Riverbend," who won a book award and is up for another. This, in turn, led me to look up the book on Amazon.com, where I found it: "Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq."

What I also found were a bunch of customer reviews that suggest the increasingly broad division over America's role in Iraq, and, in MeTheSheeple's view, an increasingly unwillingness by some to objectively view the facts. "Baghdad Burning" -- the book, not the blog -- gets incredibly polarized reviews: Nearly all are either five stars, two stars or one star. In short, people love it or hate it.

The reviews, it turns out, are less about the writing of the book and more about the viewpoint. I'm fascinated by the comments, but this one just sticks out:

Starts good but ends up being a rant, November 30, 2005
Reviewer: Thomas J. Villars "Tom Villars" (Ann Arbor, MI USA) - See all my reviews
I read Riverbend's blog entries as she was posting them and the impression I have are probably different from those who read everything in all at once. Like many of the Iraqi bloggers the best part is the honesty that comes across in her writing. Her descriptions of the killings, bombings and other hardships endured by the previously privileged residents of Baghdad were griping.

Unfortunately as time passes Riverbend becomes overly cynical and starts sounding like a western journalist covering the story. When she decided, along with most Sunni, not to vote in January 30th, 2005 election, it becomes clear political ranting is all that's left of the once semi-objective "Girl Blog from Iraq."

For a balanced view of the situation in Iraq, including blogs like IraqTheModel and HealingIraq is a must.

You have to wonder what "overly cynical" means when your country is spiralling toward civil war. The reviewer also questions her objectivity, while noting she is a blogger and once only semi-objective. Now that the review disagrees with her posts, she is apparently no longer allowed to have an opinion ... ? So much for freedoms.

Another reviewer critizes the Iraqi blogger for biting the hand that feeds her. Curiously, a look at the "Quality of Life" measures on the Brookings Institute's Iraq Index shows little progress in many measures, from unemployment to electricity available to oil production (the presumed base of an Iraqi economic revival).

Other reviewers simply fawn over the book. One guy is buying it for all of his grandchildren:

This chronicle of what really happened and continues to happen with America's well intended invasion of Iraq will be a case study for generations. Truthful reporting always brings detractors with vested interests, some of them venomous. But Riverbend's work will be treasured for the understanding it brings among peoples meeting for "hearts to heal and souls to mend."

You almost have to check twice to see if they're writing about the same book, don't you?

Sadly, that suggests you have to check twice to see if Americans are even thinking about the same war.

Florida: The new California

There's a wacky free-speech and political honesty case being fought in Florida. A congressional candidate named Nancy Detert hit a bit of a snag when her campaign finance manager apparently disappeared with about $94,000 -- two-thirds of the money she had raised -- and left for Argentina. About $27,000 is now missing, Florida papers report. (For those who don't know, she was incredibly "poor" for a Congressional race before this, and largely screwed now.)

One part of the story, with interesting free speech implications: She is now fighting with the Federal Elections Commission, which will not let the guy's family replace the missing money because it exceeds federal limits on contributions.

The other part of the story, with interesting free speech implications: She talked a reporter out of doing a story, saying it would be inaccurate when, in fact, it matched the facts.

What's even more stupid is that the logistics aren't that complicated. The campaign manager's parents want to make up the difference; they can individually "gift" a majority of the missing $27,000 to the son, who can pay it as restitution. Most of the rest of the money they could give back directly as campaign donations to Detert. In the end, Detert's campaign might be out less than $1,000, if MeTheSheeple remembers the figures right.

MeTheSheeple has to wonder if Detert's campaign is really ready for the big leagues. Most people wait until they their boss gets elected before pilfering the money. Most candidates wait until they win the election before beginning to flagrantly lie and insult the intelligence of the media. It's not yet clear whether Detert and her cohorts are merely eager to get off to a good start, or don't have the maturity to make it all the way. Stay tuned.

OfficeSpace: The documentary

While wandering around the Web to relieve stress, MeTheSheeple found a curious reference and followed it to "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Assessing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments" (500k PDF), a work that matches "The Peter Principle" in clarity of thought, boldness of claim and humor between the lines.

It's tough to find someone who thinks they're a craptacular driver. Nearly every driver on the road things he's above average. This study tries to quantify that through a series of four tests. Simply put, the driving thing carries over in other areas. The one-quarter of the worst-performing people think they do a better job than two-thirds of the people.

One explanation advanced by the authors is that the incompetent are so incompetent they don't know how incompetent they are. Ignorant and talentless, they lack the means to compare with others the quality of work that they, themselves, cannot do.

This explains so much.

Nothing else to say

Romanesko linked to this Wall Street Journal story citing some of outgoing White House spokesman Scott McClellan's greatest hits. It's worth a read, just to see how weasely a PR flack can be. A great one is February 2006, after the Cheney hunting accident.

MeTheSheeple is simply going to paste his favorite interchange below:

Sept. 6, 2005

Q: Scott, the reality at hand right now is that the president said that we still live in an unsettled world. This is an administration that has told us since 9/11 that it's not a matter of "if," but "when" that we could be struck by a terror attack and, obviously, other disasters that are the result of Mother Nature. So at this point, where is the accountability? Is the president prepared to say where this White House, where this administration, went wrong in its response to Katrina?

McClellan: You know, David, there are some that are interested in playing the blame game. The president is interested in solving problems and getting help to the people who need it. There will be a time --

Q: Wait a minute. Is it a blame game when the president, himself, says that we remain at risk for either another catastrophe of this dimension, that's not manmade, or a terrorist attack? Isn't it incumbent upon this administration to immediately have accountability to find out what went wrong, when at any time this could happen again?

McClellan: This is a massive federal response effort that we have under way. We've got to stay focused on helping those who are in need right now and help them rebuild their lives and get back up on their feet. It's a time of many challenges, enormous challenges. We've got to stay focused on the task at hand. That is what the president is doing.

Now, in terms of addressing threats, we've made a lot of progress since the attacks of Sept 11. And one of the most important things we're doing is staying on the offensive abroad. There are important priorities that we have to continue to address and we are working to address those priorities, too. But we have a major disaster that has occurred over a 90,000 square mile [sic] here in the United States. There are people --

Q: Right. And there are people who want to know why this government couldn't respond --

McClellan: Hang on. There are people who are suffering, and we've got to respond to their needs, and that's what we're going to keep our focus.

Q: So no one is prepared to say what went wrong?

McClellan: We will look back at the facts and we will get to the bottom of the facts and determine what went wrong and what went right. But right now --

Q: Will the president support an outside investigation, or does he want to do it himself?

McClellan: -- but, David, right now, we've got to continue helping the people in the region.

Digital wrongs management

There's a growing concern among consumer groups about digital rights management, which allows publishers to control how their products are used -- after they're bought by consumers. The companies are scrambling over each other like a bunch of snakes to control what plays on hardware that you own.

Now Phillips has taken the DRM issue to a new low.

A patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said researchers of the Netherlands-based consumer electronics company has created a technology that could let broadcasters freeze up a channel during a commercial, so viewers would not be able to avoid it.

Some DRM schemas are so restrictive that the hardware will not play much of the content otherwise available. (MeTheSheeple confesses this was a small part of the reason he didn't get an iPod; the major reason, though, is that iPods are unreliable POSs.)

MyConvict

Wired News (not the magazine) did an interesting test with MySpace.com and convicted sex criminals, trying to link names with others. It's easy to attack the relatively small percentage of people who do evil things on sites from MySpace to eBay. MeTheSheeple hopes parents realize the true nature of the Internet -- which is to say, a way of e-mailing friends and family, or of getting pornography at high speeds, plus some other stuff -- makes it very much the mixed bag for children. NOW is a good time to teach proper online safety.

It's also a good idea to keep in mind the ratio of the bad guys to the normal. You don't want your kid getting picked up by a child molester, no, but in the end MySpace, Facebook and the rest may be safer for any child than hitching a ride home with a Congressman.

All that "keep in perspective" stuff said, it's both amusing and frightening to see what the Wired News folks might have found:

All but one of the offenders Wired News found on MySpace appear to have been convicted of engaging in some kind of sexual activity with a minor. The other, one of the two probable matches, is listed as having raped, penetrated with a foreign object, and engaged in oral sex with an unconscious person.

On MySpace, he's a Christian with a girlfriend and nearly 400 friends.

The glacial speed of progress

Only 24 years after an airplane skidded off the end of a runway in an accident that killed two people, Boston's Logan Airport thinks it might be almost ready to address the problem.

Curiously, the airport's history neglects to mention this.

A Salon account of the incident reports that the two bodies were never found. The reporter, then young, saw it himself: "I remember how strangely clean the fuselage had been broken, as if the nose had been cut away with a hacksaw, or cracked open around a perforated ring."

MeTheSheeple and Mrs. Sheeple will be passing through Logan Airport soon. This may contribute to a pucker factor.

Unclear on the facts

The Washington Post has taken some heat lately for never acknowledging that WMDs were never found in Iraq. The popular Romanesko blog linked to this Washington City Paper story:

All of it would have the ring of authority if the Post would simply say, “We're sorry for backing an ill-conceived war in the first place.” Other publications—notably the New Republic and the New York Times—have acknowledged their gullibility in swallowing administration propaganda about Iraq's weapons programs.

The Post's editorialists bought the White House line in full, yet they haven't gone the mea culpa route. They flirted with accountability in an October 2003 editorial, which reads in part: “Were we wrong? The honest answer is: We don't yet know.”

Well, that was two and a half years ago. Do we know enough now to admit the mistake? When asked that question, Hiatt responded, “I'm not getting into that subject...I guess what we have to say about that I would say in an editorial.”

Ironically, though, this chart claims to show a timeline of the Washington Post's opinion ... yet somehow jumps nearly two years in a war that's been in the works for about three years. What kind of timeline skips two-thirds of the time, altogether? (If you try to read the chart, you'll likely have to click in the bottom-right corner to zoom in so it's large enough to be legible.)

Meanwhile, The Washington Post is trying to figure out what happened to those weapons of mass destruction. I seem to recall the Boston Globe offered a good timeline; the Post is a little more fragmented. Yesterday's story offers some dates. The writer could have made it more clear that Bush spoke just two days after civilians reported the trailers had nothing at all to do with WMDs; the dates are separated by two paragraphs. It's several paragraphs after that that we find out in the intervening day, a DIA report contradicted the civilian report of the day before. Today's story in the Post mimics the same flaws. This, thinks MeTheSheeple, is just some flawed writing. It's tough for readers to pay much attention to mid-2003 dates, but easier with "a day earlier" verbiage to support the writing.

When public services aren't

The National Archives has been hosting censorship for years, with previously declassified documents getting pulled off the shelves, the Associated Press reports. Even worse than the censorship of previously "open" documents is the fact that the National Archives agreed to keep the censorship quiet -- to the point that the agency won't even say which OGAs, other government agencies, are pushing for this:

"It is in the interest of both (unnamed agency) and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to avoid the attention and researcher complaints that may arise from removing material that has already been available publicly from the open shelves for extended periods of time," the agreement said.

And clearly, these are relevant, current threats to national security:

The number of documents that have been removed from public view has soared since President Bush took office in 2001 and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks occurred. The reclassified documents, which include 55,000 pages within 10,000 documents, deal with subjects ranging from information about 1948 anti-American riots in Colombia to a 1962 telegram containing a translation of a Belgrade news article about China's nuclear capabilities.

In other news, found by a brother-in-law, one public service quit being quite so public after a church decided to discriminate in its social-service agency -- and now is complaining about budget shortfalls because they're not getting additional clients that would bring in more public money. This blog post offers commentary on the Minneapolis Star-Tribune story about a person with a sex-change operation. The church didn't lovingly see her as a sinner in need of support:

What she has done, Maxfield said, runs totally "contrary to God's revealed will."

Mass murderer revealed

The Massachusetts media are focusing more on minor developments in the case of a man accused of killing his wife and infant child. They're ignoring, relatively speaking, the outting of a mass murderer, with bigger developments afoot.

The Boston Globe ran this wire story on Page B3:

In an interview with federal agents, [Marko] Boskic allegedly admitted participating in a July 1995 massacre in a field outside the town of Srebrenica, when 1,200 Serb Muslims were led out of buses, lined up and shot with automatic rifles.

Boskic's lawyer is claiming, in essence, that his client was led to confess after a series of maneuvers and ruses by investigators, making Boskic think he was not the target. In that story, at least, the lawyer does not dispute the substance of the confession or his actions, e.g., if the story is thorough enough, the guy did it. The lawyer does say Boskic did it only under threat of his own life.

The Globe's earlier story is here. It notes that he is accused of being one of eight gunmen. Twelve hundred victims. On average, one hundred and fifty people, each.

It's hard to say that some murders are more less atrocious than others, to in essence make judgments and downplay the value of the ending of others' life. Yet, as this Newsday story shows, relatives of the victims are also victimized. Worse, too, may be the American judicial system:

And while Boskic may ultimately face justice in Bosnia, the Justice Department's decision not to prosecute him thus far for torture means there is unlikely to be a precedent-setting case and therefore, some officials say, no deterrent message for other war criminals considering making America their home.

The Newsday story includes other details, such as Boskic's attendance at an awards ceremony shortly after the massacre.

Chilling stuff.

The right to be a bigot

The Los Angeles Times has an interesting article on a push by college conservatives to be bigoted. The article opens:

Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.

Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.

MeTheSheeple understands and supports people's idea of saying stuff, even if it's stupid and offensive. It's the marketplace of ideas, in which anyone can say something and others can evaluate on its merits. Or, clearly, here's something completely without merit:

The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. "Christians," he said, "are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian."

Yes, because clearly homosexuals have achieved societal equality, and women, minorities and immigrants are on a level playing field in the business world. Clearly, the discrimination against these Christians is intolerable. Why, just the other day I saw a bunch of Buddhists siccing their police dogs on the Baptists crossing the bridge, while the Muslims were hosing down some Catholics with fire hoses.

Striking first

A follow-up to the last post on Seymour Hersh and the debate over whether America is planning a pre-emptive strike on Iran:

Such an idea remains part of the United States' official strategy. From "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America":

At the time of the Gulf War, we acquired irrefutable proof that Iraq’s designs were not limited to the chemical weapons it had used against Iran and its own people, but also extended to the acquisition of nuclear weapons and biological agents. In the past decade North Korea has become the world’s principal purveyor of ballistic missiles, and has tested increasingly capable missiles while developing its own WMD arsenal. Other rogue regimes seek nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons as well. These states’ pursuit of, and global trade in, such weapons has become a looming threat to all nations.

We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends. Our response must take full advantage of strengthened alliances, the establishment of new partnerships with former adversaries, innovation in the use of military forces, modern technologies, including the development of an effective missile defense system, and increased emphasis on intelligence collection and analysis.

...

The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction— and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack. To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively.

So, just why is the White House in a tizzy over Seymour Hersh?

Consider the source

MeTheSheeple grabbed some food while his monthly laundry run was in progress, and heard something odd from FOX News on the television. It sounded a lot like this excerpt, about Seymour Hersh's report that the United States might pre-emptively attack Iran:

Another [administration] official said to "consider the source" when it comes to The New Yorker's reporting. "This story is breathlessly over-reported and hyped without knowledge of facts or the president's thinking. The president himself has refused to rule any options out and said that diplomacy is our strategy, that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon."

Now, it seems to me that we should consider both sources. On one hand, you have Seymour Hersh, whose reputation is far less sullied than Bob Woodward. On the other hand, you have the Bush administration, which is still trying to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, still trying to link Iraq to Al Qaeda, and most definitely pre-emptively attacked Iraq to prevent it from getting weapons of mass destruction. MeTheSheeple has yet to hear our fearless leader repudiate that policy of pre-emptive attack, making it likely it is, indeed, still the law of the land. If that's the case, then, Hersh's report on Iran is predictable. So why the huge backlash?

Nuclear family

A guy named Joshua Ellis collected donations until he could make one of the twice-a-year visits to Trinity, the site of the first atomic blast. The result was "Dark Miracle: Trinity, the Manhattan Project and the Birth of the Atomic Age." It's worth a read. Heck, it harkens back to the time when Edward Teller earned a modicum of personal respect. =)

Combatting ignorance

Years and years ago, MeTheSheeple filed his first federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the U.S. military, getting in return a floppy disk with FM90-8, the U.S. Army's classified counterinsurgency manual (since updated). A typical excerpt:

The Army faces an enemy that may strike from any direction. It must contend not only with military considerations in this environment but with the political, economic, and social considerations which may oftentimes outweigh military considerations.

Sounds a bit familiar, right? One of the core messages was that non-military matters (political, economic social) would in essence trump the military and determine the outcome of a "military" conflict. A natural thought from this, then, is that the military must understand the full spectrum of the conflict to be most effective in terms of the eventual outcome, rather than a specific battle or incident.

That ain't happening. I got cued in by a craptacular cartoon in Rolling Stone magazine, of all things, to this Zogby poll, which focuses on how many American troops want the United States to get out of Iraq soon. But take a closer look at this paragraph here, in which I will add emphasis:

The wide-ranging poll also shows that 58% of those serving in country say the U.S. mission in Iraq is clear in their minds, while 42% said it is either somewhat or very unclear to them, that they have no understanding of it at all, or are unsure. While 85% said the U.S. mission is mainly “to retaliate for Saddam’s role in the 9-11 attacks,” 77% said they also believe the main or a major reason for the war was “to stop Saddam from protecting al Qaeda in Iraq.”

Umm. What? Just what the hell fight do our soldiers think they're in? How was such a warped message passed through the chain of command, or how did military leaders not recognize such a deficiency of thought and respond appropriately? MeTheSheeple, who has no military record, still feels free to opine that there's a leadership shortfall here. American soldiers can't win against an insurgency they so drastically misunderstand.

There are leadership and reality gaps everywhere. Via Fark.com and the Think Progress blog is this little gem about neocon commentator Daniel Pipes, as noted on PittsburghLive.com:

Q: What is the biggest lesson you have learned from the Iraq war?

A: The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them -- to release them from the bondage of Saddam Hussein's tyranny. They have rapidly interpreted it as something they did and that we were incidental to it. They've more or less written us out of the picture.

Q: How will we know when the occupation or the invasion of Iraq was a success or a failure?

A: Oh, it was a success. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. Beyond that is icing.

That nasty little comparison between Iraq and VietNam keeps coming back in. I'm wondering, though, if this war is fundamentally different. It seems like maybe the warmongers, rather than the hippies, are taking the purple acid. How else do you explain this?

Paying the tax man

MeTheSheeple wimped out and used Intuit's TurboTax Online this year to do the taxes. It was relatively painless and relatively cheap, at about $130 state and federal, with professional review. Still, I was stunned by this question:

Alternate 5.85% Tax Rate
The Massachusetts Department of Revenue offers a voluntary tax rate on 5.3% income. The voluntary tax rate is 5.85%.

Do you want to pay this higher rate of tax?
Note: This tax rate is strictly voluntary and will increase your tax. Most people answer No here.

Hey, you gotta give 'em credit for trying.

Last year, our 2004 income taxes counted income from three states. It seemed like a good idea to go to tax professionals. You know, those guys between the video store and the Chinese take-out place, in the stripmall, near the Wendy's and Brooks Pharmacy. Of course, those were the tax professionals now getting sued by New York for defrauding their clients. We decided against using those tax professionals after the tax professionals had to restate theirtax filings, and then, if I understand correctly, had to rerestate the filings.

Not much has changed since 2002, when the Washington Post (no link to article, sorry) wrote about tax preparers and a federal government initiative to make it easier for regular people to file on their own. An excerpt:

Two years ago, when the Clinton administration appeared to be moving toward building an electronic tax preparation system, Congress won commitments from IRS officials not to compete with private industry. Industry officials complained yesterday that the Bush administration is violating those pledges by proceeding with its initiative.

The move is "so unbelievable given the administration's attitude about the public sector and government interference," said Edward Black, president of the Computer and Communications Industry Association, a trade group. "My members certainly did not believe that the United States had elected an administration that would increase the role of the government in competing with high-tech companies."

Black said it also raised "huge privacy issues to have the law enforcement entity involved in the use of raw data."

Now, what I can't find, but I swear I actually read, was a letter to the editor by an association of tax preparers, or some such. In there was a curious statement along the lines of "Tax collection has never been a function of government." God, MeTheSheeple wishes he could find that letter.

The only reason the tax preparation folks do so much business is: A) the federal tax code is unwieldy at best, nightmarish at worst; and B) people have complicated, busy lives that don't neatly fit into boxes. (A), at least, could be reduced.

Now, don't go running to your Congressman to demand a simplfication. Reporters Bartlett and Steele discovered years ago that every self-proclaimed tax simplication added hundreds of pages to the tax code.

Maybe there should be three things out there that are sure: Death, taxes and frustration.

Politics killing FEMA

The New York Times has a brief sidebar showing the Federal Emergency Management Agency is still wracked by political troubles. The sidebar's the particularly interesting reading; it features quotes by seven would-be FEMA leaders, all but one (Fugate) of whom directly cite either a lack of political commitment to providing needed resources, a vision of what FEMA should do in an emergency, or both.

Sadly, FEMA used to be one of the nation's most professional agencies, well-regarded for its efficiency, if you believe at least some of the 20/20 vision here. A Los Angeles Times editorial read in part:

How far things have fallen at FEMA, which is led by the types of unqualified political appointees who usually settle for an ambassadorship in one of the Benelux countries. It's been so since the agency's inception in 1979, to be sure, but at least President Clinton's crony at FEMA, James Lee Witt, had disaster-relief experience in Arkansas and proved exceptionally capable.

Bush political operative Joe Allbaugh inherited a tightly run and well-focused agency from Witt. There was no question about its ability to act independently during the terror attack.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, though, one Congresscritter offered a curious statement, insisting that FEMA did not have political problems:

Democratic Chief Deputy Whip Diana DeGette (CO-01) released the following statement regarding the removal of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Michael Brown from management of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort:

“Michael Brown’s removal was a good first step toward restoring a level of professionalism to FEMA. However, the problems raised by the agency’s slow initial response to the hurricane will not be solved by the removal of one person – even the director. What we have seen over the past two weeks is an agency charged with protecting Americans’ lives that is clearly not up to the challenge. This is not a political problem, but a potential national security crisis. Congress and this Administration need to improve federal disaster response, and establish better oversight of emergency relief funding, and do it immediately.”

No political problems. Just fix it, she says. Yeah. How?

A Salon article from September brings together a number of sources, pointing out that FEMA suffered from at least five high-level political appointees. It concludes:

Considering the Bush administration's woefully inept response to the devastation wrought by Katrina, it's clear that Bush administration patronage has hobbled FEMA -- with fatal consequences for the people affected by the hurricane.

But of course you wouldn't know that from listening to Vice President Dick Cheney. He defended Bush's FEMA appointees yesterday, saying, "You've got to have people at the top who respond to and are selected by presidents, and you pick the best people you can to do the jobs that need to be done ... We've also got some great career professionals, an absolute and vital part of the operation — couldn't do it without them."

Of course we couldn't have done it without them. That's the problem.

Kudos to The New York Times for trying to keep some light on an issue of critical importance. The many, many problems at FEMA cannot be fixed if everyone ignores the agency again until the next failed response to a crisis.

MeTheSheeple also has to point out that not much will change unless there's an attitudinal shift. Faced with the obvious failure of cronyism in FEMA in the wake of Hurricane Katrina -- when the director was more interested in eating meals uninterrupted than in coordinating aid -- our elected president took a fresh approach on cronyism: He nominated his own lawyer to be a Supreme Court justice. This seems like a wonderful time for members of the public to keep pressure on the politicos to increase bipartisan support for FEMA while opposing rank political interference. If nothing else, the next hurricane may be yours. Witness:

"Right now, about 96 million people live in the 330 counties or equivalent geographic units that border on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Great Lakes. According to census data, the overall population of coastline counties jumped more than 13.3 percent between 1990 and 2002, and the number of housing units there increased more than 12.3 percent during the period. On average, those counties host more than 400 residents per square kilometer, more than triple the population density in noncoastal counties."

Hold on to your hats, lads. We may yet be in for a helluva storm.

Time to check the smoke detector

Quick PSA: Daylight savings time for Americans reverts at 2 a.m. Sunday, which becomes 3 a.m. Sunday. This is also an excellent time to check and/or change your smoke-detector batteries. If you ever want to make a grown professional cry, ask your neighborhood fire marshal about the people hurt or killed because of a dead battery. He'll have a story. Every one of the fire marshals has a story. Not every homeowner has a good battery.

You can also go a different route: "They" sell 10-year lithium smoke detector batteries for about $12. That's $1.20 per year, or 0.3 cents a day. Heck, it could be about $3 per life.