Peeve

I hate Snap.com.

I don't mean dilike. I mean hate, as in wish it would sink beneath the waves, never to rise again.

Why? Because it interferes with my reading. It slows my machine. It distracts me; and it (for the way I use the web) hinders my use of the web.

When I see a link, I mouse to it, so I can see the address. But people who embed snap then block large chunks of the page I'm reading; and while it's polling to find that miserable little snapshot of illegible presentation it's stealing packet slices which are (more often than not, looking for other things in the background).

If I want to spend the time/energy to look at the page, I click the damned link.

I guess what pisses me off it that it's forced on me. I can't opt out.

Some political links

Dave Neiwert(Orcinus) on the executive order I wrote about last week. He has a reader who points out something I missed... if your assets are frozen how can you afford the civil (because this isn't a criminal judgement) case to fight the case?

Assuming (arguendo) you have assets outside the country, as soon as they enter (even in cash) they are dead. Pay your lawyer, and the account they go into could be frozen (because the lawyer would be aiding you; directly).

A pilot offesrs some thoughts on airline security He's the president of a pilots group on security. None of what he says is new, to me, but the TSA isn't dealing with these issues, and they matter a helluva lot more than lighters and shampoo.

Choice is about just that, choice. The Anti-choice movement is just that, against choice. So "Who gets to choose?" points to places (in the USA) where the courts, and the legislatures are telling women they aren't allowed to have children.

Glenn Greenwald points out, again, the moral bankruptcy, and base hypocrisy inherent in the Right Wing.

James Madison wrote that a "popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both."


Reports that President Clinton may invoke executive privilege to block the investigation into the Monica Lewinsky affair have elements of both. . . .

Mindful of the extraordinary step of keeping information secret in a democratic government, presidents since Nixon have been wary of resorting to executive privilege. Presidents Ford, Carter and Bush formally raised the privilege only once each, and President Reagan three times in two full terms. In less than 1 1/2 terms, Mr. Clinton has claimed executive privilege at least six times, four times before Congress and twice in court. Like the boy crying wolf, Mr. Clinton's regular use of the privilege threatens to dilute its effectiveness for future presidents on matters of true national importance . . . .

A decision to invoke executive privilege in this case would be yet another example of the Clinton administration's failure to understand the distinction between the office of the president and the person who happens to be the president. In democracies, we distinguish between a public office and the person who holds that office; people for whom the office and the person are one and the same are called kings.

That was written in 1998.

By John Yoo.

Who also wrote, just this Monday,(WSJ, Link will go behind a wall) that Bush's claim of Executive Privilege trumps Congress oversight authority.

Rather than run from this fight, supporters of the constitutional system ought to stand firm with the president. Presidents, Congresses, and the courts have long accepted a president's right to keep internal executive discussions confidential. Even when the Supreme Court ordered Richard Nixon to hand over the Watergate tapes, it recognized "the necessity for protection of the public interest in candid, objective, and even blunt or harsh opinions in Presidential decisionmaking."

Without secrecy, the government can't function. No one thinks conversations between federal judges and their clerks, or members of Congress and their staff, ought to be aired publicly without good reason. The same goes for presidents--even if their poll ratings are low...

Presidents can't invoke executive privilege to protect information needed for a criminal investigation, except perhaps if national security is at stake. Kenneth Starr pursued Mr. Clinton not for harassing Paula Jones, or having a relationship with Monica Lewinsky, but because Mr. Clinton apparently committed perjury and obstructed criminal investigations. Senate Democrats have yet to show that the firings have arguably violated a single law.

How, one wonders, if the President gets to invoke national security to shield things, can anyone find out about those criminal acts?

Part of the problem with this argument is they are trying to see if any laws were broken.

Yoo thinks they don't get to do that.

Why? Because he likes Bush.

Greenwald adds:

UPDATE: Several months after he boldly spoke out against Executive Privilege during the Lewinsky investigation, John Yoo returned to the Wall St. Journal Op-Ed page, on July 20, 1998, to argue that impeachment of Bill Clinton for defying a Subpoena issued by Ken Starr -- something which had just been advocated by Orrin Hatch -- "would stand on firm constitutional footing."

Yoo specifically (and solemnly) warned that if Clinton decided to defy Starr's Subpoena, Clinton "would be going beyond even Richard Nixon in abusing the presidency." Yoo then praised Nixon because, unlike Clinton, Nixon "chose not to press claims of presidential power to such extremes." Because if there is one thing which the principled, constitutional "scholar" John Yoo cannot abide, it is pressing claims of presidential power to the extreme.

I have to run, Maia is giving a presentation in fifteen minutes, and I have to leave the coffee shop.

William Shatner is a mensch

Ignore that he stopped to look into SF Fandom after he mocked it on SNL.

Forget that he manages to poke fun at himself in the Priceline adds.

Just look at this.

Having been stranded at Walter Reed, when I had no one in the area whom I could look to for outside succor, and been fortunate to be there before the strain on the system began to really show; I'm willing to let him be an obnoxious ass for the rest of his days.

I may not invite him to dinner if he does, but I'll still stand him a drink at the bar.

"Our" war

H/T to soldiergrrrl

Their War

It's simplistic, and shallow, but it raises some interesting points.

War is one of those things that, if you haven't been, you can't understand.

You can read about it. The Red Badge of Courage, Generals Die in Bed, The Old Breed, Dog Tags, The Soldier Prize will all give you a taste of what it was like.

You can add Birdy, and Catch-22, and Rumors of War, All Quiet on the Western Front, The Odd Shot in Anger, The Good Soldier and any number of history books.

It's a pale shadow of what it's like. Even someone like me who had a "quiet" personal war sees things, feels things knows things that are seen, at best, as through a glass darkly to those who have never been there. "Seeing the elephant" changes you.

I'll offer up this excerpt, from the article.

Col. David Close watches over the training of Marines such as Tuyishimire.

"When I think of patriotism," the colonel says, "I think of selfless service. I think of the people that are dying." Suddenly, his eyes redden. His mouth quivers. "I have a hard time with the families left behind." The words stop coming.

He's a tall, rangy man, hair bristling gray. He looks like a man who should be carrying a sword, not fighting tears. When he speaks again, his voice shakes. "The word patriotism rings hollow with that. There are no words for it. It can't be explained."

His voice steadies as he describes a scene that movies have made familiar: a recent death notification on the base, the official car driving through a neighborhood of enlisted family housing on a Saturday morning, the young women who were outside setting up a yard sale all going still, waiting to see where the car would stop.

"That's patriotism,"