But we're the open-minded, tolerant ones!

It really is amazing how we keep telling ourselves that in the face of clear-cut evidence to the contrary.

London (MSNBC, April 22) - With the issue of gay marriage still roiling the American political landscape, close ally Britain is quietly setting course for formal recognition for civil unions, following a path carved out by several other European Union countries.

A civil partnership bill was introduced in the House of Parliament earlier this month and the House of Lords was set to consider the legislation on Thursday. According to a government spokeswoman, the bill could become law by November, allowing same-sex couples to legalize their partnership a year later. ...

This legislation follows in the footsteps of nine other European Union countries that have recognized the unions of same-sex couples.

Overall, Britain's Department of Trade and Industry's Women and Equality Unity found 83 percent of the responses to the proposal for civil partnership were in support for the bill. ...

Unlike the United States where the two major political parties seem divided on the issue, the governing Labour Party and the main opposition see eye to eye on civil unions.

However, there is some good news from this side of the big pond as well.

A circuit judge in Multnomah County, Oregon, ordered a freeze on gay marriage licenses to give the State Legislature a chance to formalise them.

Judge Frank Bearden also ordered the state to recognise the 3,022 licenses issued in the county since 3 March.

The move is a first for the entire US....

The judge gave the state legislature 90 days from the start of its next session to pass the necessary legislation; if it doesn't, the county can resume issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Multnomah County, home to Portland, is the state's most populous.

Footnote: And don't forget, folks in Massachusetts: May 21 is only four weeks away.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is Vienna?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Rock Me, Amadeus for $1200

It's the Austrian city where Mozart was born.

TS, Mac

Pentagon Angered by Soldier Coffin Photos

- headline on an April 23 AP story about the publication of photographs of flag-draped coffins being returned to the US from Iraq

The Pentagon's argument is that even though no remains were shown, the pictures are a violation of the privacy of the families.

And here you were, thinking that the Bush administration had no concern for privacy. Shame on you.

Footnote: The photos are found here at The Memory Hole, but right now the site is difficult to access; probably overwhelmed by traffic.

Just in case you had doubts about that "limited sovereignty" business

Paul Bremer said on April 19 that

Iraqi security forces will not be ready to protect the country against insurgents by the June handover....

Bremer's assessment was aimed at defending the continued heavy presence of U.S. troops in Iraq even after an Iraqi government takes over. ...

Bremer said in Baghdad the fighting across Iraq this month exposed the depth of the problems for the security forces.

Depth of the problems indeed, since

[a]bout one in every 10 members of Iraq's security forces "actually worked against" U.S. troops during the recent militia violence in Iraq, and an additional 40 percent walked off the job because of intimidation, the commander of the 1st Armored Division said Wednesday,

AP reported.

Apparently, they don't know whose side they're supposed to be on. Dang locals. Never can trust them.

That didn't take long

What did I say just yesterday about not bringing democracy to Iraq?

Washington, April 22 (New York Times) - The Bush administration's plans for a new caretaker government in Iraq would place severe limits on its sovereignty, including only partial command over its armed forces and no authority to enact new laws, administration officials said Thursday. ...

Asked whether the new Iraqi government would have a chance to approve military operations led by American commanders, who would be in charge of both foreign and Iraqi forces, a senior official said Americans would have the final say. ...

In another sphere, Mr. [Marc] Grossman, [under secretary of state for political affairs,] said there would be curbs on the powers of the National Conference of Iraqis that Mr. [Lakhdar] Brahimi, [the special United Nations envoy,] envisions as a consultative body. The conference, he said, is not expected to pass new laws or revise the laws adopted under the American occupation.

Well, after all, when we said "transfer sovereignty," you didn't think we actually meant for them to be in control, did you?

Footnote: On the other hand, it must be noted that "democracy" can mean different things to different people. The same article notes that a prime task of whatever emerges after June 30 will be to secure the support of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is unhappy with some of the laws enacted by the Iraqi Governing Council. His supporters want Islamic law to govern such matters as family law, divorce and women's rights.

This actually came up back in January when the IGC proposed to give the final say over such areas to religious authorities. Citing a Newsday article, the Christian Science Monitor noted that it would mean those authorities

would be able to dictate the number of wives a man may have, who gains custody of children in divorces, and whether girls and women may inherit property, and how easily a man can get a divorce.

(The link to the original Newsday article seems to be no longer valid. In case the CSM one gets pulled, I referred to the report here.)

At the time, it caused a storm of protest by educated Iraqi women and the proposal went nowhere. But sexism is a powerful force and if the price for getting Sistani on board is jettisoning the rights of women, I frankly doubt there will be much hesitation.

And no, this is not an argument for staying. The counterweight to the sexism will not be tens of thousands of American soldiers but tens of thousands of Iraqi women, who hopefully will refuse to allow their rights to, if you will, go gentle into that good night.

Geek, The Unknown

Gravitational lensing, an effect predicted by the General Theory of Relativity which involves light from a distant oject being focused by being bent by the gravitational field of an object along the line of sight between the distant object and an observer, has been used to locate the most distant known planet.

It's about 1.5 times the mass of Jupiter and is orbiting a red drawf star, a small, cool star, some 17,000 light years away.

The technique will hopefully be able to reveal the existence of Earth-sized planets around other stars.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Richard Nixon?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Rock Me, Amadeus for $400

It's the Austrian city where Mozart died.

Footnote to the preceding

From Maureen Dowd's column in Thursday's New York Times.

The end of "Plan of Attack" says that when Mr. Woodward asked the president how history would judge his Iraq war, Mr. Bush smiled. "'History,' he said, shrugging, taking his hands out of his pockets, extending his arms out and suggesting with his body language that it was so far off. 'We won't know. We'll all be dead.'"

Clearly a man who has carefully thought through the implications of his decisions. Good thing he has Mr. Cheney to handle the tough stuff for him.

Out when?

There are those, including on the left, who say it doesn't matter how we got into Iraq, we're there now and we must not "fail."

Right. Let's forget the phony claims about "threats," let's forget the lies about bioweapons, let's forget the extravagant fantasies about nuclear bombs, let's forget the emotionally-manipulative innuendo about Saddam Hussein and 9/11, let's forget most of all the craven political cowardice of those - such as John Kerry - who gave speeches about all the reasons not to go to war and then voted for it anyway. Let's forget all that. Instead, let's just look at the present moment, at what we have done, what we have created, in Iraq:

A foul and increasingly-bloody mess with only vague hopes and worn cliches of what to do about it.

Look, let's get real here: We can't forget the lies, not even for an instant, because what was born in lies can only be kept alive by lies. And the lies surround us, abetted by the lies we are telling ourselves about "commitment" and "staying the course." And I refuse, even for the sake of argument, to continue with them.

Because the truth is, we are not preventing bloodshed in Iraq, we are causing it.

The upswing in violence has made April the bloodiest month for the American-led military since the invasion of Iraq. At least 100 soldiers and five American civilian contractors have been killed. Dozens of foreigners have been abducted in a wave of kidnappings, with about 15 still captive.

New figures for the Iraqi casualty toll from this month's fighting emerged Thursday, with the health minister saying 576 Iraqi insurgents and civilians had died in fighting since April 1 - sharply lower than earlier estimates. ...

The compilation of Iraqi deaths by Health Minister Khudayer Abbas since April 1 was sharply lower than a U.S. military estimate of about 1,000 insurgents killed and about half The Associated Press tally of 1,170 killed based on statements from hospital officials, police and the U.S. military.

Abbas said 271 Iraqis had been killed in Fallujah since the Marine siege began on April 5. Doctors in the city had given a higher figure of 600 killed, Abbas said, because they had been pressured to do so by insurgents for political reasons.

The minister said he did not know how many were civilians. An official in the ministry, speaking on condition of anonymity, said 19 percent of the dead were women and children.

We are not preventing brutality in Iraq, we are a source of it.

Senior British commanders have condemned American military tactics in Iraq as heavy-handed and disproportionate. ...

The officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen - the Nazi expression for "sub-humans".

Speaking from his base in southern Iraq, the officer said: "My view and the view of the British chain of command is that the Americans' use of violence is not proportionate and is over-responsive to the threat they are facing. They don't see the Iraqi people the way we see them. They view them as untermenschen. They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are."

We are not bringing "security" to Iraq, we're bringing suicide bombings -

A series of bomb attacks in the Basra area of southern Iraq has killed at least 68 people and injured many more.

The first blasts - apparently suicide bombings - occurred outside three police stations in Basra city centre during Wednesday's morning rush hour.

Many of the dead and injured were children travelling in passing buses on their way to school.

A fourth attack south of Basra is said to have killed three Iraqis and wounded five UK soldiers. ...

Iraqi Interior Minister Samir al-Sumeidi said the attacks bore the "fingerprints" of those who carried out the bombings in Irbil and Karbala - in which hundreds died in February and March.

[The death total in Basra was later lowered to 50.]

- and assassinations.

Baghdad, Iraq (AP, April 22) - Masked gunmen shot and killed a South African security contractor working for the U.S.-led occupation administration and severely wounded his translator Thursday. ...

The two men were shot at a neighborhood supermarket....

We are not bringing "democracy" to Iraq, we are bringing destruction, ruin, corruption, cronyism, and sectarian strife, producing an increasingly-likely civil war.

As the situation in Iraq grows ever more tenuous, the Bush administration continues to spin the ominous news with matter-of-fact optimism. ...

But according to a closely held Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) memo written in early March, the reality isn't so rosy. Iraq's chances of seeing democracy succeed, according to the memo's author - a U.S. government official detailed to the CPA, who wrote this summation of observations he'd made in the field for a senior CPA director - have been severely imperiled by a year's worth of serious errors on the part of the Pentagon and the CPA, the U.S.-led multinational agency administering Iraq. Far from facilitating democracy and security, the memo's author fears, U.S. efforts have created an environment rife with corruption and sectarianism likely to result in civil war.

[The full text of that memo can be found here.]

We have not made either ourselves or the world more safe, we have made it less safe -

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (AP, April 22) - Those responsible for Saudi Arabia's latest suicide attack will be "burned in hell," the kingdom's top cleric said Thursday, as investigators searched for clues to the deadly bombing.

Five people, including two senior police officers and an 11-year-old girl, were killed along with the suicide bomber in Wednesday's attack on the administrative building of the General Security, the Interior Ministry said. It said 148 people were injured.

- and we know it.

The number of those who think the military action in Iraq has increased the long-term risk of terrorism in the United States have increased to 54 percent now, up from 40 percent in December, the [AP-Ipsos] poll [taken April 5-7] found.

The people who say the Bush administration made the right decision to go to war in Iraq, 48 percent, are now about even with those who think the administration made a mistake, 49 percent. In December, two-thirds said the administration made the right decision.

We have not improved our image, we have only generated more hatred.

Paris (Toronto Star, April 21) - Arabs in the Middle East hate the United States more than ever following the invasion of Iraq and Israel's assassination of two Hamas leaders, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in comments published yesterday.

Mubarak, who visited the United States last week, told French newspaper Le Monde that Washington's actions had caused despair, frustration and a sense of injustice in the Arab world. ...

"Today there is hatred of the Americans like never before in the region," he said.

We have not tamed terrorists, we have become a recruiting poster for them.

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (Christian Science Monitor, April 16) - Suspected Al Qaeda terrorists have waged a violent campaign in Saudi Arabia since last May's car bombings of a housing compound in the capital. Despite a stiff crackdown against them by authorities, the group continues to gather new recruits and enjoy logistical support from sympathizers, analysts say.

And we are not there out of concern for the welfare of Iraq or its people but out of our selfishness, our greed, our lust for power, our astonishing, destructive, shameful hubris.

We should get out. Now.

Just over a week ago I said that "out now" is not a viable peace slogan if only because it's physically impossible to remove - what is it now, 130,000? - troops immediately. I'm not taking that back. I'm saying we should commit - now - to getting out. Not "sometime," not "after we're through," not "once we've accomplished our goals," but by a specific time. "Set the date," as we put it back in the old days of our last blood-stained quagmire.

First a unilateral ceasefire. Then an announcement that US military forces will be withdrawn from Iraq no later than October 31 (six months from now).

Go ahead, call that "cut and run." I call it refusing to throw good lives (and money) after bad.

Go ahead, call it foolish. I call it facing the reality of what we've done and are doing.

Call it "encouraging terrorists." I call it ceasing to create new ones.

Say it's unrealistic, politically impossible. I say "an intelligent person fights for lost causes, realizing that others are merely effects." (e. e. cummings)

Say that even if it was accepted, the timing (withdrawal just before the election) would aid George Bush. I say that I'm not willing to have thousands more be killed, be maimed, be made homeless, be unjustly imprisoned, just to improve John Kerry's electoral chances.

What was born in lies has been kept alive by lies. It can only be undone by truth, the truth that our invasion was wrong, our occupation was, is, and will be wrong, and it can't be made right by piling up the bodies ever higher.

Set the damn date. And get out.

Update: I'd forgotten to include the link to the story about the CPA memo! Fixed.

Updating a quick question

Last Friday I noted that jobless claims had shot up in the previous week but that economists said to avoid reading too much into a single week's figures, urging instead looking at a four-week average to smooth out natural volatility.

True enough, I said, "but why is that only mentioned when it makes things look better?"

Well, this week's figures are out.

Washington (AP, April 22) - Fewer people signed up for jobless benefits last week, a sign that companies are feeling less inclined to slash their work forces now that the economy is rebounding.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that new applications filed for unemployment insurance dropped by a seasonally adjusted 9,000 to 353,000 for the week ending April 17. The decline, which came after new applications rose sharply in the previous week, left claims at a level that was higher than the 340,000 analysts were expecting.

See anything about a four-week average in there? Neither do I. Interestingly, my very rough calculation indicates that a four-week average would show a 4,000-5,000 increase rather than the one-week 9,000 decrease. But that couldn't have been the reason for not mentioning a four-week average.

Could it?

Literary analysis

Okay, class, listen up. One of the following paragraphs was in a press release from the Republican National Committee, dated April 2, 2004. The other was printed on stationery used by the Office of Public Affairs of the IRS for a press release one week later. Compare and contrast and determine which one was paid for by political contributions to the GOP and which one was paid for with tax dollars.

1) America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the President's policies are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation.

2) America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the President's policies are doing; or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation.

Thanks to BoingBoing via TalkingPointsMemo for the tip.

Sometimes there is nothing to say

It just seems to me there are a hell of a lot of people dying for no damned good reason of late.

Seoul, South Korea (AP, April 22) - North Korea declared a state of emergency after as many as 3,000 people were killed or injured Thursday when two fuel trains collided and exploded at a station near the Chinese border, South Korean media reported.

As of this moment, about 12:30pm, the report is unconfirmed.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who is Elvis Presley?

JEOPARDY!
Penny for Your Thoughts for $1000

In 1977, he told David Frost, "When the president does it, that means it is not illegal."

Just in passing

From today's New York Times.

The Supreme Court appeared distinctly unreceptive Tuesday to the Bush administration's argument that the federal courthouse doors must remain closed to the foreign detainees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. ...

In addition to Justice [John Paul] Stevens, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter, Stephen G. Breyer and Sandra Day O'Connor also appeared unpersuaded by the administration's arguments.

The issue here, to be clear, is not the justice or legality of holding prisoners - excuse me, "detained personnel" - at Gitmo but rather whether or not they can appeal to federal courts about the matter at all. That is, it's about their right to petition for habeas corpus, "the ancient writ by which prisoners in the English-speaking world have for centuries been able to challenge the legality of their confinement," as the Times put it. Success does not mean the courts have made any judgment about Gitmo, only that a judgment can be made.

The White House's position is that because these are noncitizens held abroad, they have no right to petition the courts at all and thus the courts have no ability to question their imprisonment or their treatment. The executive branch is claiming, in the words of John Gibbons, who argued on behalf of the detainees, the existence of "a 'no law' zone where it is not accountable to any judiciary anywhere."

I haven't had much to say about this of late and probably won't have much more to say about this or the case to be argued next week regarding Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla, American citizens held as "enemy combatants" without trial, charge, or access to legal counsel, until a decision is issued. I learned some time ago that trying to predict the outcome of a Supreme Court case on the basis of seeming reactions to oral arguments is a fool's game. But I am, perhaps nonetheless the fool, allowing myself to hope.

Footnote: Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, arguing on behalf of the White House, opened his presentation by saying "The United States is at war," as if that was the perfect slammer. Unfortunately for him, it "appeared to rankle rather than persuade the skeptical justices." We can only hope for more such crushing rejoinders.

Making something safer, anyway

Back on November 13, I gave a quick mention to RFIDs - Radio Frequency Identification chips. Now, CNN has something to say about them.

Most people haven't heard of RFID chips, which can be woven into clothing or stuck invisibly on toothpaste tubes. ...

They have one piece of information on them: a serial number.

When the RFID chip gets a certain radio signal, it perks up and sends its serial number back to the master radio, to be recorded in a database. ...

Does this mean one day some consumer product researcher could drive down your street, take a reading, and get data on all the products in your home, even the things you hide in the back of your closet?

That's what the privacy advocates fear. They want laws for the use of these chips, before they are woven into the fabric of our consumer society.

But regardless of protests, the chips are coming.

Wal-Mart has mandated that its 100 top suppliers incorporate the chips on cartons and pallets by January 2005.

The U.S. military is also going to RFID chips for its complex supply chain.

Wouldn't it be a nice change if once - just once - big media outlets caught on to some corporate attack on our privacy before they also declared it too late to do anything about it?

Check out StopRFID for more.

Making us safer, part two

The next G-8 summit, scheduled for June, is to be held on an island off the coast of Georgia. There are of course plans being made for protests nearby. Local citizen Robert Randall is hoping to bring 10,000 people to a "G-8 Carnival" he wants to organize in the coastal town of Brunswick, the nearest town to the meeting site.

If he can meet the new requirements, that is.

As reported by the Macon (GA) Telegraph on Sunday, last month Brunswick passed a new ordinance severely restricting the ability of protesters to gather. It requires groups of six or more to apply for permits at least 20 days in advance (so much for a quick public response to an event). In addition,

[p]rotesters must now put up refundable deposits equal to the city's estimated cost for clean up and police protection. Demonstrations also can't last but 2 hours, 30 minutes. Signs and banners can't be carried on sticks that might be brandished as weapons. And the signs also can't be larger than 2-by-3 feet.

There is no limit on the size of the deposit.

Perhaps most astonishingly, the law says permits may be denied if a protest is likely to congest traffic, impede commerce or endanger the public.

"This law would not exist if the G-8 was not coming here," said Randall, 51, a local therapist who has attended protests since the Vietnam War. "It makes it impossible to express oneself through assembly or speech on public property unless you have money."

Actually, even having the money isn't good enough unless you can prove, in effect, that no one will notice you. Otherwise, you might "congest traffic" or "impede commerce," provisions that are a wide-open opportunity to deny permits to any disfavored group or activity, since any protest could potentially interfere with traffic or the convenient flow of people into stores and other businesses. (I recall a series of demonstrations outside a naval base near where I grew up. Police started arresting people for "blocking traffic" on the grounds that passing cars were slowing down to see what was going on. I also recall a store manager trying to get a police officer to make me move from where I was giving out leaflets on a public sidewalk because, he claimed, my presence would deter people from coming in even though I was nowhere near the door.)

This is part and parcel of new tactics employed by cities to control and limit dissent. Miami was one of the first to do so in advance of FTAA protests last November, banning a variety of items such as water pistols and balloons. Under threat of a lawsuit, the city dropped the ordinance - but of course the protests it was designed to limit were already over and by repealing it before it could be ruled unconstitutional the city left itself the option the pass it again.

That, too, seems to be part of an emerging pattern: Pass a restrictive law too close to an event for an unfavorable ruling to be issued beforehand, then repeal it after the fact before a suit can be filed or at least before a judgment is issued and then call for the case to be dismissed as moot.

Savannah, 60 miles north and the place were journalists covering the event will be housed, has passed a similar law, except it sets no lower limit on the size of an action requiring a permit. It also says protesters wanting to use public parks will be charged the same fees as those who want to rent them for private functions and for groups of 150 or more a maintenance deposit of $1.50 per person will be required. Together, that means a demonstration of 200 people could cost $1000 in fees and deposits.

Cities "are choosing sides and what they're doing is trying to silence people from speaking out," said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a Washington attorney and co-founder of the Partnership for Civil Justice. "And they're using the law as a political tool to do it."

Back on December 3, after noting that I don't use words like "repression" lightly, I expressed my conviction that

what we are seeing both here and abroad is by any reasonable definition deliberate and conscious political repression, not just of actions but of ideas - and as that repression moves from the covert to the overt, from the subtle to the openly violent, as the brutality of Miami becomes a "model for homeland defense" to be admired and imitated, we have to, first, rededicate ourselves to that image of justice we carry in our heads, second, accept that the personal risks of pursuing that dream are greater than we, in our for the most part comfortable existences, have faced before, and third, realize that the risks of failure are also greater, perhaps much greater, than before.

To that I would add now that the subtle repression of shifting laws and ever-stiffening "reasonable" requirements is no less of a threat than the military-style crackdown that Miami saw. Never forget: Free speech is inconvenient. It is an annoyance. It is a congester of traffic, a hinderer of business as usual, a disrupter of our busy schedules, a disturber of our peace of mind. It could not be otherwise and still be of value.

Footnote: According to the article, Brunswick Mayor Brad Brown

had to crack a joke when his pastor and five others rode bikes past the mayor's house Easter weekend.

"I jokingly said, 'You know, you need a permit to do that.' Technically, you could say that's a permittable event," he said.

The Mayor, apparently, thinks that funny. I guess I was wrong: Sometimes I can't see the humor in things.

Update: Minor edits for clarity.

Making us safer, part one

Proving once again, that given the right frame of mind, nothing is without its humorous side.

Washington, April 16 (New York Times) - The commission investigating the 9/11 attacks has concluded that immigration policies promoted as essential to keeping the country safe from future attacks have been largely ineffective, producing little, if any, information leading to the identification or apprehension of terrorists. ...

It returned a spotlight to programs that have been controversial from the start, aimed mostly at people ... from Muslim or Arab countries. Critics have said the government engaged in a wholesale roundup of these people, kept them in jail for months, in some cases without access to lawyers, and conducted closed-door legal hearings on their status.

Many of the libertarian and pro-immigration groups that have criticized the Bush administration ... hailed the findings. They said that as the first independent assessment of government actions after 9/11, it affirmed their misgivings.

The report also slammed programs to identify "special interest" immigrants, to require extra screening for visas from 26 predominantly Muslim nations, and to delay visa applications from the same countries. The first resulted in more than 700 people, mostly from the Middle East, being held for months before being cleared. None of them uncovered any terrorists or any information useful in antiterrorism efforts.

Here's where the humor comes in.

But a former Justice Department official involved in the development of the programs defended them as critical to counterterrorism efforts.

His name is Kris Kobach, former counsel to John Cinderfarm, and he claims the programs yielded great benefits and that the commission was looking at things too narrowly by

"looking for a terrorism label affixed to an individual. ... But it's failing to realize that just because the F.B.I. hasn't gotten to the point of applying the terrorism label, it doesn't mean the individual is not a terrorist. ...

"In many cases," he said, "we have kicked terrorists out of the country over garden-variety immigration laws."

British readers may know the name Mary Whitehouse. For 30 years she was president of the National Listeners' and Viewers' Association and a persistent campaigner for "decency" in radio and TV. She once complained that the UK's Obscene Publications Act was not strict enough because it requires proof of a "tendency to deprave and corrupt" before it can be enforced. "You've got to," she said, "get away from this silly business of having to prove things."

Kris Kobach clearly has.

Timing is everything

The Iraqi Press Monitor for April 19 quotes al-Ittihad, a daily newspaper of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, this way:

Governing Councillor Ahmed Shya al-Barrak said Coalition forces have finished their investigation of Saddam Hussein whose trial is expected to take place after the transfer of power to Iraqis in order to give more legitimacy to the proceedings. The investigations concentrated on weapons of mass destruction, the international terrorism network and Iraqi money now in foreign banks. Barrak, a member of the GC legal committee, called for the trial to focus on Saddam's basic crimes and not on all of his crimes as that could take years to cover.

And what do you want to bet the prosecution's case will start this summer and extend into the middle of, oh, I don't know, November?

A must read

The Los Angeles Times is running a series of articles on US vs. Reynolds, a case that while it

wasn't familiar to the public, law students everywhere knew it to be the landmark 1953 ruling that formally established the government's "state secrets" privilege - a privilege that has enabled federal agencies to conceal conduct, withhold documents and block troublesome civil litigation, including suits by whistle-blowers and possible victims of discrimination.

Sibel Edmonds, for example.

The article is much too long to summarize easily, but the salient facts are these: The claim arose in the course of the government defending itself against a claim of negligence for the deaths in an airplane accident. The government refused to release its report on the accident, claiming that to do so would damage national security; in fact, it was so secret that it couldn't even be released to the judge to view in chambers.

On March 9, 1953, the Supreme Court delivered its opinion. By a 6-3 majority, it found that the government had made a valid claim of privilege against revealing military secrets, a privilege "well established in the law of evidence." In fact, it was not so established, except in common law. It was this ruling that codified it into practice.

It now turns out that the government case was a complete lie. There was nothing secret in the accident report and the equipment on board being tested did not in any way figure in the crash and was not mentioned in the report. What the report showed, rather, was that the plane had experienced problems before and that it was not properly checked out before the flight. That is, the report showed the very negligence the government was denying.

The whole structure of the "state secrets" privilege is built on lies.

Read the article. Read it.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is talk?

JEOPARDY!
Penny for Your Thoughts for $600

In 1954, Grand Ole Opry manager Jim Denny told this singer "You ought to go back to drivin' a truck."