I have not been following this matter as closely as it deserves, but I note with satisfaction that the Iraq resolution's language giving the President carte blanche authority to "restore international peace and security in the region" has been struck.
Cecilia and I made dough for bread this morning (the first time, I might add, I've ever made bread from scratch). Anyone who's ever seen me cook knows that it's a much more chaotic process than what you'd see on the Food Network...I crash about the kitchen, grabbling implements and ingredients as I need them. As you might imagine, adding a three-year-old to the mix makes it even more chaotic, and right now the kitchen's a mess, with flour everywhere. But she had fun mixing the ingredients and kneading the dough. As we began, I hunted through the stacks of CDs in the kitchen muttering about finding good bread-making music (settling on The Gin Blossoms' New Miserable Experience). When we put the dough into the bowl to rise, Cecilia said she wanted some rising music. If you guessed that I put on this song, score yourself ten points. We're washing out hands at the sink; she's standing on a kitchen stool, and she asks me to dance with her. When the song gets to the slow break in the middle, she tells me that the song talks about tears. Then as the E Street Band starts building the tempo, she said "The music is getting faster and faster!," bouncing up and down in my arms in time with the quickening pace (she has good rhythm!). As if I'm not charmed enough (I'm holding back tears of love and pride at this point), she starts singing along with the "Li li li" chorus at the end of the song. When the song stops, she says, "Daddy, I have to tell you something...you're my best friend," which is how she tells her mother and myself that she loves us.
I held her tight. That moment was worth all the mess and more.
I get Wired News' daily email notification, so of course I saw this story about a former Marine/small-town cop who recently got busted in a child-pr0n sting. Although the article raises ominous implications that innocent Web surfers can face child-pr0n posession charges with one inadvertent mouse click, I declined to comment on the artice. (I actually chose to, as opposed to simply lacking the time, as is the case with so many other things that cross my radar.) For one thing, although the article seemed to portray suspect Adam Vaughn as a high-energy, risk-taking kind of guy who basically downloaded a lot of pr0n and didn't realize there were some kiddie images in the mix, as a result of a Yahoo newsgroup he once joined and apparently forgot about,
Now lawyer Dodd of Ipse Dixit has a legal analysys of the statute under which Mr. Vaughn was charged, and he concludes that--while the discretion and zeal of a prosecutor always needs to be taken into account--that a single, inadvertent, promptly deleted image appearing on one's computer doesn't pose the legal risk the article implies.
[to be continued...I am having trouble connecting to Dodd's blog and therefore can't link his post or cite his analysis.] Update: Everything's working now, so here goes.
I thought that the article seemed a bit overblown, so I did what the author apparently thought was un-necessary: I read the actual statute (18 USC 2252A). It took less than one minute to find it and determine that I was right. Every variation (possession, distribution, and conspiracy) of 18 USC 2252A has the word "knowingly" in it. In short, possession of child pr0n is not a strict liability crime. [Emphasis in the original]
So, one cannot be convicted for having a single image in one's deleted files - the act of deletion establishes that one took "reasonable steps to destroy" it. One also cannot be convicted for having an image one does not know one has...
With all due respect to Dodd's legal knowledge, I would offer the small dissent that one could not be justly convicted. Although Dodd is certainly correct that the statue makes the noted excptions, whether one is actually convicted has much to do on the lawyers, judge and jury. A jury could, after all, decide to disregard evidence that the pr0n was unintentional, or a defense lawyer fail to assert the defense at all, or with sufficient vigor. That said, I'm sure such a convition ultimately would not stand. Of greater concern would be am innocent person who accepted a plea bargain despite the availability of this defense. After all, the thrust of the Wired article as I understand it was that Mr. Vaughn accepted a plea bargain believing that no matter what defense he raised--and apparently unaware of a flaw in the prosecutor's case--a just seeing the images would convict him no matter what. I'm not erudite enough on the law to know the availability of appeal to one who has pled guilty rather than been convicted.
Was Mr. Vaughn treated unjustly? That's hard to say. We cannot ever know for certain that the 300 images he had on his hard drive were unintentional downloads. Quite possibly they were; as described (albeit by a demonstrably sloppy author), he didn't act guilty. But the only way to reduce the draconian effect on people who really do get snared by this law for unwitting violations would be to increase the defense threshhold across the board. Doing that would make it easier for the people who do intentionally traffic in this stuff to evade prosecution, as well. A balance between society's desire to crack down on child pr0n and the reality that simply using the Internet may cause one to end up downloading an illegal image entirely by accident has to be struck somewhere. As a policeman, Mr. Vaugh should be expected to know and understand this even better than ordinary citizens. Maybe the 3 images threshhold really is too low; but there's no way it would be increased to 300, now is there?
The lesson here is that ordinary, everyday Internet users need to be careful what they say, do, and especially download when they're on the 'Net. We already know we need to be careful because of viruses. Mr. Vaughn's case shows that we have to be wary of other hazards, too.
Indeed, one perception I got from the Wired piece was that for the most part--down to both electing to accept and then not challenge his plea bargain--Mr. Vaugn's situation arises from a series of choices he has made. Perhaps that situation is not just, and perhaps Mr. Vaughn could have made better decisions WRT his legal strategy had he been better informed or better advised, but ultimately I don't see Mr. Vaughn having anyone to fault but himself.
When Al Gore talks, conservatives listen. And then they lie. And they never, ever, apologize or retract. They just play up one lie until it's discredited, or long after, and then go on to the next one. Conservatives pundits have been doing so for years. And their younger brethren in the blogosphere have learned the same rules.
To cite one obvious example, the claim that Gore said he "invented the Internet" is pure bunkum, but it was repeated often enough that it's accepted as fact. Don't stop there; read the whole post.
I might add that we saw the same pattern in the whole Democrats "not interested in the security of the American people" (that's a direct quote by Bush, folks--he didn't say "Homeland Security" or "National Defense," he said that); I challenged those who agree with the Administration to admit that Bush had gone too far, but what I saw instead (although I admit, I didn't look much) were attacks on Daschle. I have problems with the way the Dems are approaching this debate, of course, but that isn't the issue.
Powell told a Senate Committee that while there was evidence of Iraqi-al Qaida cooperation there was still "no smoking gun" connecting Iraq to 9/11. I would hasten to note that there is also still no definitive proof that the author of Talking Points lives in a mansion in Georgetown or even that he owns that villa in Capri. But somehow stating this undeniable fact in such a fashion strikes me as a touch misleading.
Normally when you have a claim for which you have no evidence you characterize this as 'a claim for which you have no evidence.' Or one might even be bold and say 'it's not true, as far as we know.'
When you say there's no smoking gun, the obvious implication is that there is a lot of information, a lot of clues pointing in that direction, but no real slam-dunk evidence. But of course there simply isn't any evidence pointing to an Iraq-9/11 connection, and a lot of circumstantial evidence -- to the extent that one can ever prove a negative -- to the contrary.
So, as I asked several days back, why the endless attempts to fudge? Why the resistance to having this debate on the basis of the very serious facts and threats at hand? ...It's almost like these little bogus stories are the bon-bons of war, the little morsels and appetizers to chum up those who can't quite swallow the whole complicated rationale whole.
While it's true that had Iraq been behind 9/11 there'd be all the causus belli you could ask for, I can't help but wonder why, if the Administration is sooooo convinced of the righteousness of its case, it keeps grasping at these flimsy straws?
(Hey, remember back when "no smoking gun" was spun to indicate Bush has a squeaky clean record as CEO of Harken?)
I loooooove zombie movies, and I plan to kick off my Halloween movie binge October 1 by watching my DVD of Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (reviews here, here and here). Since I'm an avid zombie movie fan, the following story from The Onion came as no surprise at all:
By the way--just so we have our facts straight, zombies in the classic George Romero films craved human flesh but not exclusively brains. The brain angle was prominent in the Dan O'Bannon homage Return of the Living Dead.
I recently referred a friend to the movie review site that I mentioned here a while back: Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension. Arch-reviewer Ken Begg writes lengthy and frequently hilarious reviews of bad movies of all stripes, from Johnny Mnemonic to Magnificent Obsession to Bad Movie touchstones The Lonely Lady (with Pia Zadora) and Showgirls (a film so bad, not even an endless parade of nudity could make it interesting). The Jabootu site also hosts an invaluable Bad Movie Glossary that defines terms like the Hero's Battle Death Exemption (in which the movie's protagonist survives an extended encounter with a monster/villain that makes short work of everyone else in the film, as seen in Prophecy, which Begg also skewers).
Here's the master at work, in his Showgirls review:
The script was by Joe Eszterhas (for which he received three million dollars), Hollywood's most famous misogynist. Some of his other women-friendly scripts include Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct. Eszterhas kept complaining about how moral his story was (the "corruption" angle), and continues to jabber about his "strong" female characters. However, he writes women not only like he never met one, but as if they were a mythological species that he was too lazy to research. Watching one of Eszterhas' woman characters is akin to watching a werewolf expert in a horror movie state that "the only way to kill a werewolf is by driving a wooden stake through its heart." You snort, wondering how anyone could be so ignorant about something so basic, much less commit it to paper (or film).
Begg is also deft at lambasting left-wing bias, especially in films where the roles of hero and villain seem to be assigned based on political stance rather than the character's actions (two excellent examples: his blistering takedown of sucky sequel The Lost World and the Peter Benchley made-for-TV The Beast).
Almost everyone loves great movies. Personally, I love many bad ones too, and Begg is generous in observing the differences between movies that turned out bad because directors lacked the budget to adequately portray a compelling vision (or hire a decent cast) and ones that should have been good, but the producers and directors just didn't care enough to deliver a quality product (see the Lost World review again).
Martin Wisse left a thoughtful comment on the first part of my post regarding Christopher Hitchens' column. (By the way: It--and this one, for that matter--spans multiple postings; from where I ususally post, Blogger chokes and dies on posts if they get too long, so I have to break 'em down.) Hitchens wrote:
It is almost certainly a mistake to assume anybody's position on Iraq is determined by evidence alone. After all, last year there was overwhelming evidence of the connection between the World Trade Center aggression, al-Qaeda and the Taliban - and a decisive UN mandate for action - but many on the left opposed military action in Afghanistan, and still do.
Then I said:
Outside of wingnuts, exactly who did? And who still does? (Frankly, given the continued presence of al Qaeda and Taliban elements along the Afghan/Pakistan border, I for one would like to see more military action there...) But this ad homenem attack implies that the case is obvious without evidence, and that anyone opposing action WRT Iraq wouldn't be convinced by evidence anyway. Which, I predict, will absolve Hitchens from presenting any...
And Wisse responded thusly:
I did oppose the war against Afghanistan and still think it was a bad idea. I don't think it enhanced the safety of the US nor did it solve the problems of Afghanistan itself.
I don't support any call to war by the current US administration mainly because I don't trust them.
I certainly didn't mean to portray Wisse, or anyone in particular, as a wingnut simply for doubting the Administration's hawkishness. As I've pointed out myself, I don't trust the Administration, nor do I feel the Administration is doing much to earn that trust. And part of my response is based on my past experience with warbloggers leading me to distinguish my own skepticism from what I beleive is a straw man argument that equates questioning the war with denying the United States should ever act in self defense. Nevertheless, I was overly broad in my statement, and I apologize for any offense it may have caused.
However, I think I'm right in trying to deconstruct what Hitchens is trying to do here. He's saying:
War skeptics will never accept any evidence justifying an attack on Iraq. Not true; but speaking solely for myself, I do not accept the Administration's claims that it has evidence as equivalent to seeing said evidence.
Hitchens draws a parallel between the "overwhelming evidence" of al Qaeda's connection to the Taliban and whatever goods the Administration claims it has on Iraq. If the Administration has overwhelming evidence WRT Iraq, I'd love for them to present it.
Hitchens is implying that opposition to the Administration's use of the military is driven solely by ideology (which is, of course, why it ignores that "overwhelming evidence"). But I wouldn't imagine even Hitchens would include the Joint Chiefs of Staff as among those ideologues, yet they too have voiced concerns.
The bottom line is that Hitchens attempts to portray opposition to the war as driven by blind dogmatism. I couldn't disagree more. As Wisse points out, opposition to the military action in Afghanistan is a reasonable position. It's entirely possible that one could have basically gotten behind the action in Iraq and yet have grave doubts about Iraq. And distrust of the Administration is, I believe, not only a reasonable position but an essential response to the unprecedented powers it seeks to assume. As I've said before, when the case supporting action against Iraq is based on rampant distortions of the threat Iraq poses and the nature of the opposing arguments, the inevitable result is to be all the more skeptical.
A collection of Playboy centerfolds from 1960 to 2000. (Pictured: Miss May 1961) Of, er, historical interest, natch--for example, here's Miss August 1967, the month I was born; apparently Miss(es) October 1970 was a pair of identical twins, the first black centerfold was in April 1973, and the first Asian in the same month in 1976. And oh, Lord, those 1980s hairstyles...
I'm not sure what to make of this. This graphic reconstructs the events President Bush experienced on September 11, 2001. Although it tends toward a paranoid tone ("Did Bush need an excuse for not going to the White House straight away, or did Cheney just prefer to have President Bush out of the way?"), its main purpose seems to be to debunk public statements Bush is alleged to have made indicating he saw the first plane hit the World Trade Center on TV just before addressing a group of Flordia elementary students (the crash of the first plane was not, of course, broadcast live).
I know where I was when I heard about the attacks. And frankly, who could blame Bush for being unaware of the attack until informed by one of his staff? But if Bush would lie about such a trivial--and easily verified--matter, what else (*ahem*Iraq*ahem*Harken*ahem*you-name-it*ahem*) might he be lying about?
I've never been a big fan of marshmallow-spiked cereal; when I'm in the mood for a sugar fix, I generally turn to Cap'n Crunch; otherwise, I'm pretty much a corn flakes--or better yet, oatmeal--kinda guy. But I was pleasantly surprised with Star Wars cereal. The corn puffs were not overly sweetened--alone, they had a lightly sweet, faintly cinnamon taste reminiscent of Kix--and until the milk soaked in, the marshmallows barely registered. After a few minutes in the milk, the corn puffs retained a pleasant crunchiness, but the marshmallows had released more sweetness into the concoction. Even so, the wholesome, robust flavor of the corn puffs prevented the whole deal from dissolving into a big puddle of sugar.
Toss in the shiny box (in two "collector's editions") with their bright photos of Star Wars characters (including Christopher Lee as Count Dooku, Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi and of course the yummy Natalie Portman as Padme Amidala) and a board game on the back of each (which can be combined for a double-size "travel around the Star Wars universe" game), and you have a cool breakfast--or late-night videogame fuel--experience.
I finally ate a bowl of the SW cereal, and I'd have to give it a solid 3 out of 5 spoons, if for no other reason than the fact that it's not nearly as horrid as one would expect. It's definitely a bit too sweet for my palette, but somehow the puffed corn spheres and marshamallows form a nice marriage of cereal elements. I wouldn't rank it at the top of my 'must buy' list, but if they still have some next time I'm at the store, I may pick up a few more boxes...
Even if the American military can actually find where Saddam Hussein has hidden his chemical and biological arms -- and that's a big if -- the military has no way of quickly and safely destroying these weapons once they've been tracked down.
That said, I'm glad that at least someone in the government (specifically, the Office of Naval Research among others) is taking such matters into consideration. It's an encouraging sign.
Needcoffee.com (the "Official Website of the Sleep Deprivation Institute") is a cool collection of rants, essays, and reviews of music, DVDs, comix and more. It also provides handy link to the Coffee FAQ and the Caffeine FAQ as well as other coffee information resources. Check it out!
A recent survey found that while workers spend an average of 8.3 hours a week surfing the Web from work, news sites have supplanted pr0n, gambling and shopping as the most popular destinations, with 23 percent reporting news as the most addicitive versus 18 percent for pr0n. (What about *cough*blogging*cough*?)
Experts speculated that companies monitoring or blocking pr0n or gambling sites might have contribute to the upswing in news' popularity. That doesn't explain all the people who come here looking for pictures of a certain Miss America contestant, though.
Many respondents also said they'd sooner give up coffee than the Internet. Ooooh...that'd be a tough choice.
Folks...I love Doom, but aside from killing every demon and zombie that moves, it has no plot at all! Come to think of it, a Doom movie might go along well with Hollywood's recent output...
