Updated [Breaking] National Institute to recommend decertification of all touch-screen voting
Wed Nov 29, 2006 at 06:11:56 PM PDT
First time I have used the "Breaking" thing here, but I think it is warranted in this case.
According to Michael Hickins at internetnews.com:
A federal agency is set to recommend significant changes to specifications for electronic-voting machines next week, internetnews.com has learned.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is recommending that the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines.
DREs are currently used by more than 30 percent of jurisdictions across the U.S. and are the exclusive voting technology in Delaware, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland and South Carolina.
More below...
Glenn Greenwald: Bush Officials Can be Charged With War Crimes
Mon Jul 10, 2006 at 08:45:49 PM PDT
The recent decision by the Supreme Court in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, although primarily addressing the issue of military tribunals, also provided some very bad news for the Bush administration. According to
Glenn Greenwald today:
...the Supreme Court in Hamdan deliberately laid at least the theoretical foundation for high officials in the Bush administration to be charged with war crimes. They expressly ruled that the military commissions violate those Conventions, and if any prisoners were to be executed by virtue of commissions which violated Common Article 3, or if detainees are deliberately and systematically mistreated in violation of that provision, that would be a war crime, by definition. I simply don't believe that there are government officials who are subjected to those sorts of suggestions from the U.S. Supreme Court who are not taking them seriously.
(Emphasis added)
Follow me below the fold and see what else Glenn's legal analysis reveals...
Juan Cole Debunks Negroponte's Fake Doc Dump
Sat Mar 18, 2006 at 12:39:48 PM PDT
Yesterday
a recommended diary by Maha revealed that Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte dumped documents onto the internet that purported to be from Sadaam's archives; documents that supposedly gave proof of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection.
Assrocket (from the pissant blog Powerline) as well as
Investors Business Daily zeroed in on one particular document, calling it "a manual for Saddam's spy service". Problem was, the first page is in arabic and the rest was written by the Federation of American Scientists back in 1997.
The mystery was, what did the arabic say? Was it the Iraqi spy agency saying "wow, they sure fingered us but good"?
Arabic translation by Juan Cole on the flip...
U.S. Attorney to The Duke: Stunning Betrayal
Sat Feb 18, 2006 at 08:24:23 AM PDT
The U.S. Attorney has issued the recommendations for sentencing in the case of one Randy "Duke" Cunningham as part of a plea agreement. The "reduced" sentence calls for
10 years in the slammer, plus the payment of
millions of dollars. This is the
reduced recommendation.
This guy is unreal. Those republicans just can't keep their hands off the money! Follow me on the flip to see some tasty excerpts from the memorandum.
Soj, DHinMI, and the Mohammed Cartoons
Mon Feb 06, 2006 at 12:12:24 AM PDT
Earlier today there was a recommended diary by Soj, charging that the Saudi Arabian government was responsible for causing the widespread unrest among Muslims in response to the publication of several cartoons containing depictions of Mohammed - a taboo among some Muslims. The fact that the cartoons were actualy published
last September, but are only causing trouble now made this seem reasonable, or at least made it seem that the media isn't telling the whole story.
Later there was another recommended diary by DHinMI that contested the Saudi linkage and pointed out that the link provided by Soj as proof appeared to be a parody.
It seemed to me that the charges by Soj were serious, and so I called on my go-to guy on the Middle East: Juan Cole. Below is his detailed analysis, just for us :-)
NY Times: Astrology and Cosmology are the same
Sun Feb 05, 2006 at 12:44:12 AM PDT
Apparently the Bush administration's war on science is now being assisted by the New York Times, who were so helpful in facilitating the war on Iraq. From the
New York Times Book Review:
Modern man can choose from a veritable smorgasbord of Type 1 errors: string theory, neo-Darwinism, cosmology, economics, God. Astrology is as good as any...
Oh, now I get it. Science is just a bunch of nice stories, kind of like in the Bible.
But who is this writer, and why did the NYTwits let him get away with such an idiotic statement? More after this mouse-click...
AP Take on SOTU - Bush is Toast
Tue Jan 31, 2006 at 10:46:08 PM PDT
Cross-posted at BoomanTribune and MyLeftWing
It's not that the AP article on the SOTU entitled
Bush Skips Complex Realities in Address actually
says Bush is toast. But try to imagine such a headline a year ago.
More SOTU and Bush evisceration, courtesy of the back-from-death fourth estate, below the fold...
Colin Powell - BushCorp shill extraordinaire
Sun Dec 25, 2005 at 01:03:19 PM PDT
Well now we know. Colin Powell has come out
in favor of the Bush NSA surveillance:
Appearing on ABC's "This Week" Powell said he sees "absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorizing these kinds of actions" to protect the nation.
But he added, "My own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants. And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it.
More after the flip...
The Attack on Craigslist is an Attack on Us All
Sat Dec 03, 2005 at 03:31:35 PM PDT
When I saw the picture of Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.com,
on the cover, I just had to read the article. I really like craigslist.com; I even used it successfully to buy some furniture several months ago.
What I thought would be an interesting article about how Craig (and the internet in general, including bloggers) is changing the media. What I found was a vile and juvenile screed attacking Craig for, get this, taking money away from newspapers and causing job losses in the newsroom.
Follow me on an exploration of one newspaper's descent into irrelevance...
Kennedy's Blogger - The Crystal Patterson Interview
Wed Nov 02, 2005 at 08:33:22 AM PDT
As some of you know, I have been extending my blogging activities into the realm of video, beginning with my interview of Prof. Juan Cole. I have now created a new website:
http://www.RealityBasedTV.com
to provide a focus for this work. Please visit the site and take a look at the interviews of:
Crystal Patterson - 37 minutes (about 10-20 minutes download on DSL)
Cindy Sheehan - 1 minute (very quick download)
Prof. Juan Cole - 7 parts of about 12 minutes each (a few minutes download each)
More info after the flip...
Tom Delay's mugshot coming to a screen near you!
Tue Oct 18, 2005 at 12:12:24 AM PDT
Absurd level of election fraud in Iraq - Juan Cole
Mon Oct 17, 2005 at 01:17:16 AM PDT
Juan Cole reports that the fraud is too obvious to ignore:
Al-Hayat reports that 643,000 votes were cast in Ninevah Province (capital: Mosul). At the time it filed, 419,000 had been preliminarily counted, and the vote was running 75 percent in favor. Ninevah Province was the most likely place that Sunni Arabs opposing the constitution might be able to get a 2/3s "no" vote.
Several of my knowledgeable readers are convinced that the Ninevah voting results as reported so far look like fraud. One suspected that the Iraqi government so feared a defeat there that they over-did the ballot stuffing and ended up with an implausible result.
More below...
Markos and Juan Cole - Fantastic Video Interview!
Sun Sep 25, 2005 at 01:23:10 PM PDT
I just finished watching Kos's interview on
Evolve TV. Kos really does a great job interviewing Cole, and Cole really explains what has gone on, and what is now going on, in Iraq and the middle east in a spin-free and informative manner.
Go watch the interview here. If you don't have Quicktime7, get it here (if you are on Windoze like I am). You will need Quicktime 7 to see this video quality at such a (comparatively) low data rate, for this video as well as more that will be available on the internet in the months to come. The new Quicktime version will not mess up your PC, as some previous versions are said to have the propensity to do.
A brief outline of the interview follows after the click...
Iraq - A Conversation with Juan Cole - Video Interview
Fri Sep 23, 2005 at 12:55:16 PM PDT
As some of you may have read, I was planning to travel to the University of Michigan and do an interview with Prof. Juan Cole, the noted expert on the Middle East and proprietor of the blog
Informed Comment. This was an outgrowth of an email exchange that I had with him as well as some diaries I posted on dKos and on BMT.
Well, I decided to go all out and do a video interview. I was accompanied by fellow dKosser JessicaDrewSW, who contributed her video expertise and was the cameraperson. I have just posted the complete interview video (split into seven parts) at the following locations:
Please click...
Iraq - My Interview with Juan Cole
Thu Sep 22, 2005 at 12:11:04 PM PDT
As some of you may have read, I was planning to travel to the University of Michigan and do an interview with Prof. Juan Cole, the noted expert on the Middle East and proprietor of the blog Informed Comment (juancole.com). This was an outgrowth of an email exchange that I had with him as well as some diaries I posted on dKos and on BMT.
Well, I decided to go all out and do a video nterview. I was accompanied by fellow dKosser JessicaDrewSW, who contributed her video expertise and was the cameraperson. I have just posted, for your preview, an introductory video to the full (over 1 hour) interview at the following location:
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/61748
all you have to do is go there and, after the page loads, click on the "This media file's URL: Link" just below my picture on the web page. Left click if you want to view the video within the browser, or right click and select "Save target as..." (or similar, bepending on your browser) to save the video as a file on your computer. It is a Quicktime file.
More after the click...
Markinsanfran seyz Recommend this diary! [UPDATED]
Wed Sep 14, 2005 at 11:53:44 AM PDT
Not this one,
this one:
Astonishing NYTimes front pg: FAA alerted in '98 on Qaeda.
From said diary:
American aviation officials were warned as early as 1998 that Al Qaeda could "seek to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark," according to previously secret portions of a report prepared last year by the Sept. 11 commission.
Go forth and recommend now!
Update [2005-9-14 15:8:56 by MarkInSanFran]:They say you can call a product "new and improved" if you just change the package label to include the words "new and improved" :-)
Juan Cole Interview - What do you want to know??
Wed Aug 31, 2005 at 07:46:27 PM PDT
Crossposted at BoomanTribune.com
As some of you may recall,
University of Michigan Professor and Middle East expert Juan Cole (whose work I have been pimping shamelessly here for the past few months) has agreed to be interviewed by me. Well, now is the time!
I am presently in Ann Arbor and will be interviewing Prof. Cole on campus Thursday. I will not necessarily be able to ask all suggested questions but I encourage you to let me know your thoughts.
I will be posting the interview as a diary sometime this weekend, so please keep a lookout for it!
Do you wear glasses? [With Poll]
Sun Aug 21, 2005 at 01:00:34 AM PDT
I do, have since 5th grade. I have noticed that many of my fellow students in college and grad school did as well.
Let's get some stats with the poll. Does anyone have info on the fraction of people who wear glasses, contacts, have had their eyes lasered? Basically all near-sighted people. Do glasses make people look smarter?
I can't think of a sexier sight than a hot lady with glasses - except when I take them off of her for a closer look :-)
Please take the poll.
