February 2002 Archives

A body has been found by volunteer searchers looking for Danielle, the little girl who's been missing in California. The authorities have not released an official identification, but believe it is Danielle.

David Westerfield, the neighbor charged with kidnapping and murder in the case, plead not guilty on Wednesday. He was arrested when blood consistent with Danielle's was found in his mobile home.

UPDATE (03-01-2002): Medical examiners have confirmed that the body was Danielle van Dam.

The family is maintaining a website with information at http://www.daniellemissing.com/.

Cliff Palmer, who I deduce is either a member or officer in the Free@VT club, was kind enough to post a response to my prior post on the Creation/Evolution debate. You can read the original there, but I'll be quoting it here for response.

Two Green Beret soldiers were shot, and one killed, in a terrible training accident in North Carolina today. In what appears to be an incredibly tragic failure of communications, the soldiers mistook a deputy sheriff for a participant in an exercise. When the deputy attempted to seize a weapon the solders had, they attempted to disarm him. Fearing for his life, the officer (who was unaware of the military exercise) shot both men.

I have no witty comments for this one. It's a sad day when the life of a man is lost, especially one dedicated enough to his country to become a Green Beret.

HokiePundit gives an account of the recent Evolution/Creation debate held at Virginia Tech. During my years there, I never attended these debates for the reason that HP gives as "dislike of the campus Freethinkers", although I would have phrased it "the so-called Freethinkers were the most closed minded, spiteful people I ever met". But I digress.

My personal philosphy doesn't particularly incorporate evolution or creationism, so I'm mildly unbiased on the issue. But I was severely disappointed by the comments of Dr. Pigliucci, who spoke for the evolution side. (Note that my comments are based solely on the account of the debate as given by HokiePundit.) Here's the worst bit attributed to Dr. P.

Finally, he said that evolutionary biology was a scientific field that was not required to use the scientific method, and said that one reason most evolution papers don't provide much proof is that it would be too difficult for an ordinary person to understand.

Quite frankly, if Dr. P was willing to stand up and say that, he's so full of shit his eyes were brown. And he most certainly is not correct. Science, by definition, requires the scientific method. Without it, you're just practicing Cargo Cult Science. I almost wish I had been at the debate just to have had the honor of calling him on that ruse. The other half of his statement is just as ridiculous. I've got a far better chance of understanding a paleo-biology paper than I do of understanding a sub-atomic-physics paper (personally, that is, I'm not speaking for the public in general), and yet those crazy sub-atomic-physicists publish details upon details in their papers. If this kook was the best that the Freethinkers could supply for the debate, they deserved to lose whatever credibility they had put on the line.

I've just discovered Reason Online. Some excellent articles on a huge range of topics. I had to post this one though, since I've seen these ads and was equally annoyed by them.

What makes the ads especially galling, however, is that the violence they cite (to the extent that it really is related to the drug trade) would not be occurring if it weren't for the war on drugs. By creating a black market, prohibition replaces peaceful businessmen with violent criminals. It generates artificial profits for thugs, guerillas, and terrorists.

Amen, brother!

I just finished reading the article What Libertarianism Isn’t by Edward Feser, followed by this response by Will Wilkinson. If you're interested in libertarianism, read these two essays, in order, now. They're not particularly light reading, but incredibly informative.

USS Clueless takes on Black Studies, and Megan does a follow-up. Maybe we should just rename them as "Department of Black Group Therapy"?

The NOAA has announced that this last January was the warmest ever in the history of recorded weather. Certainly not a suprise to those of you, like myself, who got out and enjoyed the 70 degree days last month. Of course, this has been taken by the "global warming crowd" as sign of further impending doom. Not being particularly familiar with the issue myself, I poked around for some more information. It turns out that the EPA has an excellent site on the issue for laymen.

Handguns have been illegal in the UK since 1997, when they were outlawed to stem crime. However, as anyone familiar with the story of Washington D.C. can tell you, laws like that just don't work. Since 1997, gun crime in the UK has not gone down. In fact, in the last ten months, it's gone up more than 300% in many urban areas.

Simon Heffer's recent column finally says what so many of us in America have known for hundreds of years: the government can't protect you. Mr. Heffer tells the government:

Given this scandalous situation, it is time for the Government to confer a new right on the people: the right to bear arms. Gun control in this country is in any case a joke. There is far more gun crime now than there was before the idiotic law passed by the Major government to ban handguns after the Dunblane massacre.

He could still learn one important lesson from his American brethern, though. The right to protect yourself isn't "confered" by the government any more than the right to breathe is. The English (or British, if you prefer) need to snap out of their statist meta-context and realize that the entity responsible for protection isn't the state, but the individual. While that will certainly make the state grumpy, it would make it a helluva lot safer for people when the sun goes down.

There's a spectrum of opposition to crime: punishment, deterrence, protection, prevention. And each layer of society (society, state, and individual) has a certain proficiency at those elements. The state can efficiently handle punishment, and can thus play a role in deterrence. It is not very effective at protection or prevention though. Society as a whole can be very effective at prevetion, more so than the state or individuals. But effective protection is only achieved through the actions of individuals. And when society and the state affirm that the individual has the lattitude needed for protection, individuals play a crucial role in deterrence.

David Warren's excellent essay entitled Unpleasantness has instantly vaulted him onto my reading list. Thanks to Glenn for the pointer.

I understand that we, as Americans, are supposed to be thick headed dolts. But could you people please get a fucking clue when you're on a plane!

Ok, I feel better now.

The Washington Post explores the three groups of women found in our society. I certainly remember the Alphas from my high school days. As a matter of fact, one of my fonder memories is returning from college and running into one of them working at the local Gap.

Now that America is clearly a global hegemon, we need to consider how we got here and what the future holds. James Bennett tackles the first point admirably in his article Exceptional America?.

KickIdle.com has migrated to Movable Type. I've got over 200 entries to review for bugs, but the vast majority of the site should be fully functional. If you happen across something that isn't working right, give me an email.

The next item on the agenda for KickIdle.com is a new forum for contributions. If you'd like to write an article on a topic to share with our readers, let me know.

As much as I've loved Blogger, I think I'll be switching to Movable Type in the near future. I've been frustrated, like many others, with the recent problems with Blogger, and I'd also rather keep my content on a local server (for backups and just peace of mind). MT will let me do that, plus get comments on the site (which I've been wanting, as well). So if you happen by and see a big mess here in the next day or two, that means I must have botched something up royally. Otherwise, we'll be getting a face-lift soon.

EXQUISITE CORPSES: Far more interesting than cadavers (at least to me). Although you might catch sight of a dead body or two while you peruse this fine site.

I have passed a critical moment in my life, and once again have found myself experiencing a vaguely disorienting sensation of loss. When a single task consumes me, the completion is always a disappointment. I think of this is my personal version of post-partum depression.

Fortunately, I have a weekend with friends and family coming up, which should brighten my mood considerably.

Space Imaging's Image of the Week is an IKONOS satellite image of the battle damage caused to Kandahar Airfield.

Well, six days into the "Britney Experiment", I have zero hits with those magical words from Google. But I have gotten lots of hits looking for kidnapperguy@hotmail.com.

A first-hand account of how the US Department of Defense will revamp its capabilities to match current threats. "In particular, because deterrence will function less predictably in the future, the United States will need options to defend itself, its allies and friends against attacks that cannot be deterred."

I did my part and took out 350 people.

I'll take Matt Welch up on his challenge. I started at the bottom of the list, with the general guidelines that the person should be in the USA and have a non-common name so as to make it more likely that I've got the right guy. Here's the results.

#1352: Jim Klosterman
Google turned up a real doozie right out of the gate. Hit #3 was http://www.commondreams.org/911b.htm, with the following comment from Mr. K.

The Green Party wants to extend condolences to those families who have lost loved ones in the sad incidences in NY, DC, and Penn et al I want to further mention that the incident could have been averted. From tentative reports or hypotheses, the incidents could be directly pointed to a group sympathy to Palestine. The United States’ foreign policy with Israel and the military aid to them may be the acerbating fact that lead to the sad events. I would like to reiterate to those who do not know that the Green Party has a policy of moving into international problems or conflicts with a peace “card” instead of one of military resolve.

I think we need to understand that those acts do not happen in a vacuum. The use of the term “terrorist” suggest that the person(s) responsible are deranged or are perhaps jealous of the United States. This is surely not the case.

In closing the United States needs to be more conscious of the Human Rights of individuals and in this case the Palestine.
It is trusted that American citizens use wisdom in moving to resolve this situation.

Jim Klosterman Green Party coordinating committee member

I think it's truly moving how Mr. K made it to through the first sentence before blaming the US for bringing this on ourselves. What a big guy. Oh, don't forget to check out the timestamp too: 9/11/01 6:15 PM

Next, check out http://www.greenparty.org/links.html for this line item:

The First National Candidate Training Camp for Green Party Members. This event is being put on by Green Party member Jim Klosterman.

So I guess we can safely conclude Mr K is a Green Party member, eh?

If this is the same fellow, looks like he's a big fundraiser in his community too. http://www.drmci.org/news/news_20011107.htm

Just for kicks, I checked OpenSecrets, too. They turn up this line item:

Contributor	Occupation	Date	Amount	Recipient
KLOSTERMAN, JAMES W ACTON, CA 93510	DOWNEY COMMUNITY HOSPITAL	4/19/1999	$1,000	Kennedy, Edward M

It really is amazing what you can find on the web, isn't it?

A sad ending now seems almost certain in the case of the missing girl in California. The neighbor, long regarded as a possible suspect, has been arrested following test which showed the girl's blood on his clothes and in his RV. There is a website devoted to the abduction at http://www.daniellemissing.com/.

THERE'S A DOUBLE MEANING IN THAT.... Actually, I doubt there is, but how could I resist when seeing this headline: Crack Colombian Troops Retake Enclave; Rebels Flee

HappyFunPundit's post had me rolling in the aisle.

This is like the 12 year olds (European countries) kicking the 16 year old older brother (the U.S.) out of their tree house. I'm starting to think we Americans have better things to do than babysit a bunch of ninnies anyway.

There's been numerous posts in blogdom on the role of game theory in international affairs, and how the US should be proceeding. This recent Washington Times article seems to indicate that the federales aren't oblivious to game theory. This is a good thing.

The best part of the new Department of Education initiative: it's color blind.

NRO has posted the last part of it's five article series on Saddam Hussein.

HokiePundit gives his take on gas stations like Sheetz underselling local shops in Virginia. While I agree with his conclusion, we disagree in some of the details. HokiePundit concludes that

At first glance, this seems wrong to me. You're competing unfairly, since they obviously don't have the resources that you do. Furthermore, there is concern that prices will be raised significantly above cost after the small company goes out of business. ...... Besides, federal antitrust laws would mean that there will always be competition, and so prices should always remain fairly low. While it isn't nice, it's not wrong. Such is the nature of the beast.

Let's look at exactly what the state government proposed as a remedy.

The House of Delegates Commerce and Labor Committee killed legislation yesterday that would have prohibited operators from selling gas for less than they paid for it.

HokiePundit and I agree that the bill should have been killed, but not for the same reasons. This is really a poison pill for the local shops who wanted it. We can presume that they are already selling on as thin a margin as they can reasonably survive on. If they weren't, they wouldn't have any room to complain. So we'll assume the local shops are already as competitive as they can be. Since the proposed bill wouldn't affect the small shops' prices, it must be depending on changing the prices of the large chains to get the desired effect.

How would it have affected the prices of someone like Sheetz? We can assume that it would force Sheetz to raise its prices, since there is an undisputed claim that Sheetz is selling gasoline at a loss. But here's the key, in order for the small shops to regain an economic advantage over the large chains, this bill must force Sheetz to raise it's prices to match or be higher than the local shops. This is vanishingly unlikely. A chain like Sheetz can purchase vast quantities of gasoline from refineries and thus negotiate preferential pricing on high volume, dependable business. Don't forget to add in the fact that Sheetz has had far cleaner facilities and better selection of non-gasoline items (like their MTO subs) than almost every small shop I've been to. A small shop is going to have to either take on Sheetz in the service and presentation arena (not likely from my experience), or actually under-cut Sheetz's prices -- a virtual impossibility even if this bill had passed.

So, since it seems like small shops are doomed, why am I not clamoring for some sort of anti-trust action against Sheetz? For two reasons. One, I've never been to a Sheetz that didn't have incredibly cheap gas. This means that Sheetz isn't acting in a monopolistic manner (hiking prices after they have high market share). And two, small shops being hurt in a sector is not synonymous with the consumer being hurt in a sector. Capitalism, as a system, tends to discover and optimize efficiencies. The small shops that got displaced by Wal-Mart weren't missed by anyone other than the downtown merchants who used to run them for exactly that reason: Wal-Mart does it better, for less. If Wal-Mart started ripping people off left and right, you can bet those same merchants would suddenly have a new crowd of customers. It will be the same way for gas stations.

A goodbye from the WSJ to Daniel Pearl.

The Misanthropic Bitch returns from hiatus with some commentary on Sept. 11. Read them both.

"We were not trying to take Spain and have no plans to do so."

I like to consider myself fairly caught up on military affairs. Not like "military analyst" caught up, but definitely more than "Paula Zahn" caught up. So help me out here, why do our helicopters keep crashing? Is this normal, and we just don't hear about it, or what?

Well, tonight ends a rather pointless weekend for me. Back to work tomorrow at noon (I work Thursday through Sunday). While I barely got anything "useful" done, I did have a great time. Thanks to N & S and their crew for putting up with my company on my days off. I'll see you guys around.

John O'Sullivan takes a look at the House of Saud, and what we should do with them, over at NRO.

FROM THE WACKO FILES: If I were truly a sexist pig, I'd take this as further proof that chicks are wack. Wackiest quote:

When she finally did drag herself to a window and saw the towers collapse, Wurtzel says, "I had not the slightest emotional reaction. I thought, 'This is a really strange art project.' " Then her windows blew in and airplane chunks landed on her roof.

One can only hope that she got a face full of glass, with an attitude like that.

Gah! What am I doing up at 3AM?!?!

Speaking of cool web flix, the film Me and the Big Guy is really great.

Hey, check it out, new XiaoXiao Stick Fighting!

Hmmmm, starting to seriously consider an upgrade to Blogger Pro if it would help stop these interruptions for downtime.

Well, it was a gorgeous day out today, so I didn't stay at the desk and read news (or post here). I went out for a walk in the park, hiked up through the woods and found some railroad tracks and a burned out foundation. After I was done looking at the foundation, a coal train came by and honked his horn at me to get off the tracks. I also saw a hawk of some sort while I was hiking through the woods. I didn't have my 35mm camera, or any binoculars, so I didn't get a good look at him. I did my have my little digital camera (as you can tell from the snaps below), so I might get around to posting some of the other shots from today's adventure later on. But now I'm kinda hungry, so I think I might go get some food.

Heh, HokiePundit and I both got hits from a Google search for Natalija Radic. When I back traced the search and loaded his site, I think he got a little excited.

This blog brought to you by the letter "C", and my neighbor's cute little doggie. (He was afraid of the camera, hehe.)

You know, when I sign up for one of those free webmail accounts, I always end up getting something like daniel56432323445@yahoo.com, so how did those Pakistani kidnappers get kidnapperguy@hotmail.com?

Um, isn't this what conjugal visits are supposed to be for?

Much as predicted, now that the national ID craze has blown over, there's a push to setup a state driver license program that can be used in the same fashion. Bruce Schneier published an informative essay on the matter of national ID cards which applies equally as well to the current debate. One of the things that I find so annoying about these types of proposals is that they totally ignore the Point-Of-Sale implications. For these new biometrics to supply any reasonable amount of trust at binding an ID to a person, two functions must be available at the location of the verifier:

• Equipment to read the biometrics off the card, off the person in question, and render a useful comparision of those two readings (i.e. a "match" or "don't match" indicator).
• Means to verify that the biometrics on the card match biometric information that has been verified when the ID was issued.

The reality is, even simplistic IDs current used by most states (i.e. a text description of things like height, age, race, and eye color, combined with a minimal photo) frequently are not verified, even though all the verifier has to do is look at the ID and look at the person. Even with the miniscule amount of information supplied on current IDs, no one actually bothers to verify the information matches what's on file with the state, except for people like law enforcement, who have expensive and specialized systems to support their needs. Now, with a newly proposed ID, the bouncer at the local club would need to have a special reader to get a finger-print off each patron, and then match it to their ID. And you can bet that people won't take to being finger-printed entering their favorite club....

And you can forget about verifying the new biometric data in real-time. Even for specialized uses like verifying airline passengers, the system will still be impractical. What are you going to do when the system is down? And it will be down. Even if they operate at 99.999% uptime (the holy grail of "Five Nines"), that's over 525 minutes of downtime per year! Nearly 45 minutes per month that the system will un-expectedly be offline. And operating a system this complex at Five Nines uptime would be incredibly expensive. Many critical government systems operate at closer to 98% uptime, which would be over 14 hours per month of downtime.

The lawyer didn't comment on the matter, but I'm sure we'll see this being appealled to the Supreme Court.

Should priests sue churches?

I still have a gut level dislike of the "axis of evil" terminology, but I'm starting to re-evaluate my thoughts on the subject. But even if you don't agree with it, you have to admit that Colin Powell makes a good point about the Europeans.

"My European colleagues should be pounding on Iraq as quickly as they pound on us when the president makes a strong, principled speech," Secretary of State Colin Powell said on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer."

Well, the French have made the ultimate surrender. And before you give me that "the French aren't surrender monkeys" crap, even the Parisien quoted in the article knows better:

Parisien café owner Jean-Claude told The Associated Press news agency: France no longer exists. It's Europe now."

ARGENTINA UPDATE: A World Bank economist told CNN that he expects the current recovery plan to be workable, but that recession is pretty much inevitable for this year, and will affect most of South America. Not that that's a suprise. The recovery plan seems to consist of getting rid of the artificial exchange rate for the peso and easing restrictions on withdraws from bank accounts.

Here's an interesting article about Bush's foreign policy, and how it's been influenced by the writings of Robert Kaplan. Kaplan's latest book is already on my wishlist.

If Natalija Radic is a Euroblogger, what am I? If it's based on geography (Natalija is in the EU, thus a Euroblogger), then I'm probably a redneck blogger. But, much as I'm sure Natalija would protest that logic, I don't think redneck is a good label for me, probably for many of the same reasons as Natalija would give. So am I an Ameriblogger? A East Coast Blogger? A North American Free Trade Association Blogger? Or just A Blogger (for that US-centric feeling of Internet hegemony)?

Beats me, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet I guess.

Well, it's belated, but I think I'll try mentioning Britney Spears on my website. Just to test that theory about her name driving hits through the roof. Now if only I could say I had "totally authentic nude photos of Britney Spears in hardcore xxx action!", I bet that would drive the hits way up. Too bad I don't...

The Czech Prime Minister sure knows how to cut to the chase:

Asked specifically whether Israel should negotiate with Arafat and whether he is a terrorist, the Czech prime minister said, “Any political leader who tolerates political terrorism as a legitimate tool for his political campaign... is a terrorist."

"You know the English expression," he said. "If it looks like a duck, goes like a duck, tastes like a duck, then it is a duck.”

The EU pansies who complain about unilateral action must have shit themselves when they heard that one.

InstaPundit says this is a nice article about Charles Pickering. He's the guy up for Senate approval as a federal appeals judge, but is getting a hard time from many black political groups. Strangely, people in his largely black hometown love the guy.

Here's another story about how Egypt props up it's woefully inadequate economic model using foreign aid.

An interesting article on how risk-aversion may have cost us a victory in Afghanistan.

Damn those French judges!

PBS has a good article on the failure of intelligense and law enforcement to follow-up on pre-9/11 warning signs.

NASA has a cool Olympics from orbit site. Check it out.

Ok, long quiet time due to trip back home. But I'm back now. More tomorrow, after I catch up on mail & news.

(via Cruel Site of the Day) Seanbaby explores the aftermath of the terrorist attack.

Cryptome has provided new documents related to the EU's requirements for telecommunications interception and surveillance. An exerpt from ETSI TS 101 331 V1.1.1 (2001-08) Technical Specification: Telecommunications security; Lawful Interception (LI); Requirements of Law Enforcement Agencies

The present document gives guidance for lawful interception of telecommunications in the area of co-operation by network operators, access providers, and service providers. It provides a set of requirements relating to handover interfaces for the interception by law enforcement and state security agencies. Requirements with regard to telecommunications services provided from areas outside national boundaries are not fully developed yet and therefore only some preliminary requirements have been annexed for information.

Gen. George Patton v. EU Commissioner Chris F. Patten

James Bennett has a good article on globalization. As he points out,

The anti-globalization movement is, at heart, I believe, a pack of idiots without a coherent critique, analysis or program. Paradoxically, the volume of its squawking has made it harder to have a clear-minded discussion about the pace, nature and shape of globalization.

He then goes on to discuss the rate at which we can expect globalization to occur, and some of the side effects we can expect from it. Well worth the read.

Yahoo and CapWiz have a tool available that lets you locate and contact policital officer holders, and media, local to a zipcode and contact them from the web. It also lets you review press releases and bulletins from advocacy groups on a per-issue basis. Pretty nifty.

(via InstaPundit): An excellent article on how the sudden over-emphasis on security isn't doing us any good.

My brother Pat and his friend Ryan worked on a wind tunnel for some eighth graders down in south west Virginia. They even got in the local paper for it.

Well, I'm not posting much serious stuff today, because I'm sitting at work, being bored. But it is noteworthy that Israel and the Palestinians are escalating the situation in the Middle East.

Is this what liberals mean when they say capitalists are "Fat Cats"?

I was scanning MemePool when I came across this:

Children, beware of the evil Keyboard Woman. Got to wonder if she is a relative or self-proclaimed Peter Pan.

"Beware" indeed....

I'm starting to consider writing a plug-in for Netscape Mail to support at least reading PGP/MIME. The PGPsdk is freely available, and Netscape's Plug-in API seems pretty straightforward.

Microsoft has done it again. It being screwing users over in the license agreement. Did you know that Microsoft asserts that it can upgrade your computer w/o notice, and that it may upgrade the content management software at will?

Hehe. I just realized, 'Borg Breasts' ought to lead to some interesting hits from AltaVista and the like.

Uhhh..... Yeah. I wonder what sort of nick names high schoolers would come up with for this. "Borg Breasts" perhaps?

KickIdle.com is in the top ten for the search "camp x-ray" on AltaVista. Bizarre...

Once again, the law of unintended consequences rears it's ugly head. Now that we're irradiating mail to stop anthrax, people are getting sick from the side-effects of the irradiation.

OpinionJournal has a piece by James Evers, a Mississippi radio station manager and brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers, which points out that Judge Pickering has consistently tried to improve race relations in America. This is in contrast to what a many political lobbying groups have claimed. Given the brief overview of some of Pickering's decisions in this article, you have to wonder if the political lobbying groups (largely liberal) are more upset of his conservative views than any supposed racism. Take these excerpts from Pickering's decisions:

• "When an adverse action is taken affecting one covered by [civil rights] laws, there is a tendency on the part of the person affected to spontaneously react that discrimination caused the action. All of us have difficulty accepting the fact that we sometimes create our own problems."
• "the fact that a black employee is terminated does not automatically indicate discrimination. . . . This case has all the hallmarks of a case that is filed simply because an adverse employment decision was made in regard to a protected minority."
• And when confronted with legal precedent from higher courts which he didn't personally agree with, Pickering concluded he was "bound to follow the precedents established by prior controlling judicial decisions."

All these seem like hallmarks of someone who is guided by a systematic world view and a respect for the rule of law -- exactly what I would hope to see in an judge. But many American liberals shudder when they hear someone say "we sometimes create our own problems" -- but what of all the victims of poverty, and crime, and racism, and bed-wetting, and teasing, and on and on. If you think that people are helpless victims and that little Molly deserves a little slack at her job since she skinned her knee when she was 12, then Judge Pickering is someone to fear and fight against. But personally, I think Congress needs to get off its butt and confirm him.

WORD ON THE NET: PayPal may be going public, according to a post on Samizdata.

I'm a little frustrated at my laptop tonight. As you can tell from my little sketch here.

Jonah Goldberg has an excellent article on the tiff between Senator Byrd and Treasury Secretary O'Neill.

Sinfest is on target sometimes. God's Fanboy finally learned what so many men have already known. (The lead-in to this strip starts here.)

It's commonly regarded as "best practice" to not notify someone that they're going to lose their job weeks or months before actually relieving them of their responsibilities and access. So, I guess it shouldn't come as a suprise that some of those airport screeners who know they're going to be out the door when the Feds take over airport security are getting some kicks in before they go.

I'm not sure I can put my revulsion into words. The incredibly bald, vile, hypocrisy of America using torture is just so overwhelming, I can't marshall an argument. How can we rail against an "axis of evil" from one side of our mouths and then advocate torture out of the other?

On the other hand, Mr. Dershowitz is right that we certainly have allies that practice torture. Israel does and I believe France may (don't know for sure). So now we've been hoisted on our own petard, I guess. It's a complex question, and I'm not sure I have an answer. But I do agree with Robert Steele, a former CIA agent, that "torture is a cancer that does more damage to the interrogator and his cause than to the victim".

While Columbia may not have much to be smiling about, the "Day without Cars" ("Dia san Coches"? The article doesn't say.) is a warm fuzzy. Can you imagine if a city like Los Angles or New York did this? That would be wild!

Older link to an article about conditions at Guantanamo Bay and the lunacy of the captured terrorists.

Here's a nice duet of stories on why police aren't necessarily better than civilians (even kids) when handling guns. (By way of InstaPundit.)

I read an article a few months ago (alas, I cannot find it now) about how economic conditions in Egypt's socialist-style economy were so ridiculously depressing that it was driving many well-educated Egyptians to fundamentalists mosques. They spend years in school and then can't find a job in their field, thanks to the government's incredibly naive employment policies. So, they waste away working at menial jobs while becoming ever more bitter, until they grow up to be Mr. Atta (who was well-educated, and flew a jumbo-jet into a building, in case you forgot). Obviously, the thing to do is let Egypt's economy shake-down and get into some sort of reasonable free-market system. Egypt has in fact been trying to do this very thing, but every little bump in the road makes people want to revert to the safety of the old system (in which you could never get fired).

This seems to be an excellent scenario for Ralph Peters' concept of favorable instability. But, as Mr. Peters points out, the US has a knee jerk reaction to keep the status quo, even to the tune of a couple billion dollars. I doubt our return on investment is going to be very high on this.

Another prime example of how the US is changing from "for the people" to "for something else", in this case "government for the government": Dale L. Watson, in Statement for the Record of Dale L. Watson, Executive Assistant Director, Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence, Federal Bureau of Investigation on The Terrorist Threat Confronting the United States Before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Washington, D.C., tells us that

The use of commercially available, non-recoverable encryption products by individuals engaged in terrorist and other serious criminal activity can effectively prevent law enforcement access to this critical evidence. Law enforcement's inability to gain access to the plaintext of encrypted communications and/or computer evidence in a timely manner seriously impairs our ability to successfully prevent and prosecute terrorist and/or other serious criminal acts.

This significant challenge to effective law enforcement poses grave and serious public safety consequences. Unless the FBI enhances its ability for gathering and processing computer data obtained through electronic surveillance, search and seizure of computer evidence, and its ability to gain access to the plain text of encrypted evidence, investigators and prosecutors will be denied timely access to valuable evidence that could be used to prevent and solve terrorist and other serious criminal acts.

Now, I'm not saying that terrorists should get a free ride here, but as of a few years ago, I had heard that the FBI had very few wiretaps which were foiled by encryption. This draws me to consider two alternatives:

1. The FBI is blowing smoke about how dangerous encryption is.


2. The FBI wants to preserve the effectiveness of systems like carnivore.

Either way, I don't think this is a good thing. Historically, the people of the US have had a veil of privacy which the government could pierce if they had sufficient cause and could justify the effort necessary to do so. I'm convinced that the new view of the government is that the veil should be pulled back so they can peek whenever they want to. "Don't worry, we'll only look when we're legally allowed to." they tell us. But such a fundamental shift in socio-political philosophy must not be allowed to occur without direct debate on the issue. These changes, championed in the name of the "war" on terror (much as these same proposals were championed in the name of the "war" on drugs in the 80s and 90s), reflect not the efforts of the FBI to maintain the status quo, but to radically reshape law into a statist tool instead of a shield for liberty.

Perhaps I'm wrong; perhaps the FBI has had constant trouble with wiretaps and other surveillance measures being stopped by encryption. If so, I welcome verifiable evidence, which will be published here if produced. But these debates need to be based on the sound evaluation of objective evidence, not political posturing from high ranking officials in a federal agency.