Pangloss

No, that's too simple. This isn't something that's as easily categorized as that. Labelling is easy. Getting at the truth is harder. I agree that two wrongs never make a right. That justification is always invalid, in my book. (Though it's worth pointing out that that kind of thinking drives many opponents of the prisoner policies as well.) But there are other reasons for keeping these people captive. This isn't a Disney movie or a Tolstoy epic. What's happening is progressive in nature, not regressive - clearly an attempt is being made to NOT repeat the mistakes of history. Some of it may be good, some of it may be bad. Over time we'll figure out which parts were bad and weed them out. The good parts we'll keep and progress forward to some better world. An example of this is the use of the word "torture", such as in Husmusen's (very intelligent) post above. (As I say, that's an intelligent observation, and I respect everything in that post, but I'm just saying there's more to it than that.) There are no racks or braziers in Guantanamo Bay. For the first time (the *first* time), policies are being applied that happen to be in the gray area, somewhere between torture and non-torture. We will find out if they work, and we will find out if they crossed the line. Nobody knows the answers to those questions right now. Nobody. Another example is the condemnation of the information being gathered in spite of the fact that nobody has this information except the government. You don't know if it's valuable or worthless. It might be valuable. It might be worthless. We will have to wait and see. The model you want to look at here is not "two wrongs don't make a right", but rather the concept of letting our elected leaders do the job we elected them to do, lest we, in our inability to see the road as clearly as the driver, steer the bus right off the road. We spoke our minds before, we will certainly continue to remind the government of our general concerns during, and afterwards we assess and make any needed new rules. That's how good government works. Not by second-guessing, without full and complete information, every decision made along the way.

There was. It just wasn't enforced. The Clinton/Reno Justice Department was notoriously incapable of prosecuting corrupt corporate management (even though many of the most famous cases happend and were even exposed on their watch), and some accused them of doing so because of campaign contributions. It's notable that the Bush/Ashcroft (now Gonzales) Justice Department has prosecuted hundreds of corrupt corporate upper management in spite of contributions of millions to the president's and his party's campaigns. Not that you'll see them get much credit for this in left-wing circles, which focus more on the "war on drugs" and infringements on civil liberties. (Some of those concerns I share, but I'm a huge believer in giving credit where it's due.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/17/AR2005061700863.html Similar links in case that one's registered: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/business/17cnd-tyco.html http://www.reuters.com/financeNewsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=8826570 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4105628.stm

John Danforth is a moderate Republican who many will remember was appointed by Janet Reno to investigate the Waco incident. More recently he was our last ambassador to the United Nations, a post which he left in January, after which he was asked to serve as special envoy to Sudan. He's an Episcopalian minister, and he may also be remembered for officiating at Ronald Reagan's funeral last year. (Notably, he also officiated at Washington Post owner Katherine Graham's funeral in 2001.) My point in all that being that he's an example of a christian, a conservative, and a Republican, but he isn't trying to convert the world to fundamentalism. He is well-respected by both sides of the political spectrum, and an interesting contrast with someone like, say, John Ashcroft, who succeeded him in representing Missouri in the Senate. Some of that is clear in his editorial in the New York Times today, entitled "Onward Moderate Christian Soldiers", which may be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/opinion/17danforth.html?ex=1276660800&en=25349ae86c8966e1&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss Some of the more interesting bits:

Sadly even the Mozilla products are no longer immune to pop-ups and spyware. I'm seeing more pop-ups every day in Mozilla. But yeah, it's still a lot better than IE, even with IE's new anti-popup feature. I've been beta-testing Microsoft's Anti-Spyware program and I'm pretty happy with it so far. The only thing it's missed that Spybot picked up are really just the normal tracking cookies that you don't typically want to stop anyway. One annoyance with the MS product is the way it appears to ask you if you really want to install this or that. It's done in a pretty reasonable way (quick, small, fairly easy to understand window) but it's still kinda annoying. It doesn't pop in for all new software, though, just stuff that's suspicious. It appeared for me recently when I installed Tor and Privoxy, for example. You can disable that feature, though.

I'm reminded of a story that came out during the Elian Gonzalez affair a few years back. He was the kid who escaped with his mother from Cuba, but she died on the way over, and his father wanted him back. He was visited by his grandparents or aunt and uncle or something like that, who came up from Cuba to see him, and the women did something that struck most of us as *very* strange -- they grabbed his genitals and then called him a strapping young man (or whatever you might say in Spanish). There was a collective gasp over it, but in the end it was just viewed as a cultural thing and more or less forgotten. But Michael Jackson is an American, from Gary, Indiana. You'd think he would know better, even if he does view himself as a culture of one.

One sad twist to the story is that the autopsy revealed that Schiavo was blind. This gives lie to the family's claims that she was responding to visual cues, such as balloons and whatnot, which the family claimed was happening right up to and including the time after he feeding tube was removed for the last time.

Well in that case I guess it's fortunate for me that I don't consider US interests to be "pro-Israel and pro-intervention in the middle east". Israel needs to withdraw from the occupied territories, and the US needs to avoid intervention in the middle east except when called upon in joint, UN-approved cases. Just my two bits, of course.

Wups. I made a mistake above and need to clear it up for the record. When I was speaking above I thought we were talking about Biden's 6/5 appearance on This Week, which I sometimes confuse with Meet the Press, because I watch both shows. I just now watched Sunday's Meet the Press on my Tivo and caught Biden's comments there. He does talk about the draft, and says that he thinks we can avoid it but that we have to face the shortfall in troops (a point which is well and interestingly refuted by revprez, see above). Sorry about any confusion, mea culpa, etc etc.

The verdict: No evidence of spousal abuse. No sign of trauma. No sign that her collapse was the result of a beating by her husband at all. The report also says that she would not have ever recovered from her injury, as her parents had hoped. The report confirms that her brain was "profoundly atrophied", suffering from "massive neuronal loss" that was "irreversible". The brain weighed in at half its normal size. The report showed no evidence that the husband attempted to hasten her death with the use of drugs or other substances, as the parents had alleged. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-fschiavo15jun15,0,3263358.story?coll=sfla-news-florida http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8225637/ This appears to finally put the issue to rest. Husband right, family wrong. End of story.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has an interesting editorial today about the current state of affairs in Iraq. His opinion stands somewhat in contrast with what I said in this thread (that we can finish the job with the troops we have). I don't agree with him, and I think he actually disproves his own point in this editorial when he talks about how we need to focus more on Iraqi police/troop morale than on "training" per se. But he makes some other interesting points, and he's always a good read. I've always felt that we sent more than enough troops to capture Iraq (and topple Hussein), but that time has shown us that it wasn't enough troops for the occupation. I think this is a valid criticism. Where that critism breaks down is when you pin those proponents down on how many troops would have been sufficient. Double? Triple? Quadruple? Is it even conveivable that there IS a "sufficient number"? I don't know, but I suspect the answer to that last question is "no". So this is why I think Friedman's opinion is important, even though I disagree with him in a key respect. As Friedman puts it, "I still don't know if a self-sustaining, united and democratizing Iraq is possible. I still believe it is a vital U.S. interest to find out." Anyway, his column is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/opinion/15friedman.html?ex=1276488000&en=ea26178049434900&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss A couple of interesting quotes:

Norm Stamper was the chief of police in Seattle during the 1999 WTO-related riots there. His book about it came out about a month ago, and looks very interesting. Stamper was apparently seen as a progressive, reformist police chief, and it must have been a blow to left-of-center supporters of reform in the police department when all this came down. I'm afraid I don't know much about it -- just what I've read in the links below -- so I'm just setting the table here, don't take my comments as definitive. Check out these links for more info: Amazon has the book for sale here . From the book description: Here are two interesting links. The first one is a story about Stamper, and the second one is a chapter from the book that has been reprinted in Seattle Weekly. The links do not ask for registration at the moment. A Good Cop Wasted (Story in Seattle Weekly) Book Excerpt from Seattle Weekly

I don't either.

You're mistaken. I stand by what I said. I clearly addressed the issue at large, not your comments specifically. If you don't like it, talk to a mod. For the record, I will not discuss this "hit-and-run, then swoop in for the kill when they take the bait" deal of yours any more. Future claims of words-in-mouth from you will be ignored. You're not fooling anybody, and I'm not going to play your little game anymore.

Because I think it's interesting. These guys are slippery characters, and it's interesting that Biden (who, in my view, is one of the tamer ones) tried to imply that the commanders support his suggestion that we may have to reinstitute the draft (which, by the way, he didn't actually claim, or propose, or even support! -- he simply talked about the possibility, which of course is how these old-hand politicians work). Bah. Just thinking about it makes me feel all slimey. Bah.

I'm not sure how you got to that' date=' since we weren't even talking about lawsuits. I was referring to (hypothetical) people who would ask the government for compensation, and specifically those who ask for compensation [i']for sins against their ancestors[/i]. I'm not opposed to compensation for actual lynching survivors, if any still exist. I didn't say that you did.

It was felt, at various times, that a federal law was necessary because local law wasn't being enforced. Whether it would have done any good or not I don't know. Had I been a Senator during that time I would have voted for it and pushed hard for its enforcement. Some of the cases of what happened to those people are staggering to read and almost impossible to comprehend. As to this business of a few of the Senators not signing, I am somewhat bothered by the jack-boots tone of the story as it played out in the media. Not signing a piece of paper condemning racism is not a declaration of racism, dammit, and it's about freaking time we learned that in this society. Still, some morons will draw that comparison. Like I've said countless times, there is no worse abuser of a given freedom than its radically faithful defenders. Like listening to a free speech defender talk about how the opposition needs to be silenced. Some things just boggle the mind. But in general I don't really see where opposition would necessarily, say, open the door for reparations (which may be important to some people out there, I don't know, but if they think they're going to get money from me that they didn't earn and I don't owe, they can kiss my lilly-white you-know-what). Apologies are fine. We should never forget what happened to those people. Nor should we repeat the mistakes of history. Even the popular ones.

Perhaps an exaggeration on my part. I don't think he campaigned on isolationism either. I'm referring to his well-known position opposing "nation building". I've made my meaning more clear in the subsequent post in response to tiny. That's fine, I'll take your word for it. You're right, that is interesting, given the general population ratios. It's also interesting that, for example, the UK spends around a tenth what we spend on defense. I mis-spoke earlier. China spends, according to the source below, around $67 billion. Versus our number, which is rapidly approaching $500 billion. So my 10% memory guesstimate was a little off. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html#Military (Talking about Biden's comments re Iraq) To clarify, Biden didn't say *squat* about military commanders recommending a draft. Zippo. Zilch. Nada. And just before he came on the air, ABC News ran a piece featuring at least two (as I dimly recall) high level Pentagon officials saying that a draft would be a bad idea. Yah, like I said, Biden is a partisan. He has to be taken in context. I do consider him to be one of the more relatively sane Democrats in the Senate.

(shrug) Close enough on the numbers. You spend what we ought to be spending, and if we spent that amount you wouldn't have your victory in Bosnia. As for your examples, no, that was the US (and others, such as the UK), not the "UN". They're made up of member countries, remember? They just put a nice blue-and-white face on our money (yours and mine) and our troops (yours and mine). And you're welcome. I'm glad we were able to help. I'm willing to continue to do so. But not if the thankless blowhards of the world continue to (a) berate us for doing what we all agreed to do, and (b) criticize us for spending what we all agreed to spend (and not a bazillion more just because some blowhard wants to stand on a soapbox and pick on an easy target). We'll spend what we spend, we'll put forth the military effort that we're able to put forth, they'll damn well thank us for it, we'll thank others for their efforts, and that'll be the end of it. That's how it should be in polite, egalitarian society. Unlike today.

This has been the subject of a growing amount of discussion over the past few months. It first came up for me personally about a year ago, during a discussion I had with a female friend who was concerned at the time that the war would reduce the enlistment rates. I (being opposed to the war but, I like to think, a fairly objective guy) felt that it was not a major concern. Turned out I was way wrong. Enlistment began to plummet last summer, as I recall, and I remember commenting on it in various places before the election. Anyway, a few points, not on any particular agenda: 1) A returning draft would not be well-received here. (I'm putting it mildly. Read that to mean "riots in the streets".) (Edit: We cross-posted, but I'll just add that I agree with revprez that it's not something that's actually likely to happen.) 2) It's not necessary for us to restore Iraq's entire infrastructure, re-create its entire economy, and so on. What is necessary is that we not leave before an environment is created that may allow that to happen. I think everyone can more or less agree that creating some kind of democratic (rather than religious) government in Iraq will be the primary measure for success. It gives them a chance. Look at it this way: No matter how great a job we do, it can still fail after we leave. And if it does, the criticism WILL be that we didn't do a great job of it. This is, I feel, an indisputable observation. So we need to be less concerned about specifics, and mainly working on the broad strokes of democracy. When they're in place, the locals are trained as well as we can generally train then, and the basic environment for change and development exists, then we need to leave. As fast as our equipment can possibly take us. (Can we borrow some Concordes and A380s, Mr. Chirac, pretty please?) On that basis, my personal opinion is that we will be able to pull out of Iraq within the next 2-3 years without the need for a draft. 3) There is a valid concern that there will be a long-term negative impact on enlistment, even after we're done in Iraq. I think this is a serious and important concern, and it should be telling us something about our internal feelings about our own foreign policy. We are tired of being "Team America, World Police". We have not forgotten that George Bush ran, in part, on a platform of NON-intervention in world affairs. We have not forgotten how incapable the United Nations is at putting its money where its mouth is, and we're sick to death of enforcing its worthless mandates, paying for its humanitarian ineptitudes, and just generally doing its dirty work for it. It needs to stop. No country on Earth (even China) pays TEN PERCENT of what we pay for defense alone. In fact, I don't think there's another country on the planet that has a total budget equal to our defense budget. We're mad as hell, and we're not going to put our children in harm's way for that kind of bullpucky anymore. 4) Just as a side note really, I wanted to mention that I personally watched that episode of "Meet the Press" with Joe Biden (it was a week ago Sunday), and I thought his comments were more or less valid, and not *just* partisan. Biden is a fairly objective and intelligent guy in general and I usually pay attention to what he says. He's one of the ones, for example, calling for moderacy and realistic cooperation by Democrats. More or less the opposite of guys like Howard Dean or Michael Moore. He's not a demogogue, in other words. But he's not above making Republicans look bad, and yes, his words have to be taken with a grain of salt. It's worth noting, however, that his comments came immediately following his return from Iraq, where he spoke directly with unit commanders on the field (the second time he's done that). He's the chairman of the foreign relations committee, which is why he was there.

Yeah no kidding. You waste almost five months of your life going to court 40 hours a week (when most of us dread even a brief appearance for a traffic ticket), and in the end it's all for naught, and you have to (in essence) tell the district attorney that he wasted $2 million of your money too. If I were one of those juror's I'd be pretty pissed. So much so, in fact, I might even be inclined to write a book to that effect. (grin)

One thing I thought was interesting about this case is how it hung on the believability of the witnesses. Jurors commented on it after the trial, saying in effect that they didn't find them credible (one juror even expressing how she couldn't understand how the mother would let her kid sleep with Jackson). Given the make-up of the jury, which certainly seemed to be the type that would convict a child molestor faster than you can say "What time is Bill O'Reilly on?", it seems to me that the "why are these pathetic weasels wasting six months of my life" element outweighed the "lock the freak up and throw away the key" element. (In fact, from the jury's point of view, it was a complete waste of time in every way. They didn't convict, so they can't really make much money off it, and they didn't even get the satisfaction of being able to say that their investment of time resulted in safer streets for our kids. In a way you gotta hand it to them -- they certainly didn't take the easy route.) Anyway, there's "pro" and "con" here, but I can't help but wonder if this is evidence that much of our judicial system still hinges on subjective opinion. The moral of the story seems to be (whatever you think of these people) that if you don't look and act respectable, you don't get justice. Somebody call Bill Cosby, I think he's got a new angle here....

I'm surprised, given the make-up of the jury. And a little less embarassed about living in Florida now.

Thanks for the feedback.

Just curious if anybody here has any experience running a Tor server. It's kinda the latest thing in web browsing anonymizers, but it relies on a third-party server to launder your packets along the way to their destination (as I understand it). I'm thinking about setting one up but I don't know all the ins and outs of it. Thanks!