09.10.06
Rather telling: insuring against criminal prosecution
From the Washington Post, we see an indirect acknowledgement of guilt:
CIA counterterrorism officers have signed up in growing numbers for a government-reimbursed, private insurance plan that would pay their civil judgments and legal expenses if they are sued or charged with criminal wrongdoing, according to current and former intelligence officials and others with knowledge of the program.
The new enrollments reflect heightened anxiety at the CIA that officers may be vulnerable to accusations they were involved in abuse, torture, human rights violations and other misconduct, including wrongdoing related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They worry that they will not have Justice Department representation in court or congressional inquiries, the officials said.
The anxieties stem partly from public controversy about a system of secret CIA prisons in which detainees were subjected to harsh interrogation methods, including temperature extremes and simulated drowning. The White House contends the methods were legal, but some CIA officers have worried privately that they may have violated international law or domestic criminal statutes. Read the rest of this entry »
Idiots have taken over journalism
It’s very sad to read about things like this. You don’t know whether the journalists are idiots or are terribly partisan or are easily manipulated and used (see: idiots) or just bored and trying to construct some sort of counter-to-the-facts story for their own amusement.
Top 25 censored stories of 2006
I think they’re rushing it a bit—still a quarter of the year to go—but via Boing Boing here are the top 25 censored stories of 2006.
Overheard in Sand City
Just an hour ago, as we pulled up in front of Starbucks, a couple around 70 were getting out of their car, and The Wife heard the man say, continuing a conversation as he emerged from the car, “… and that’s the argument you should have made.” The woman looked directly at my wife and rolled her eyes.
Lawsuits awaiting?
I got to thinking about the SawStop technology, and wondered this: Now that such equipment is readily available, will (e.g.) schools be liable for negligence or the like if they fail to provide this sort of saw in shop classes? I can see a kid losing half a hand in a circle saw, and his/her parents suing the school district for not having replaced the dangerous equipment with readily available safe equipment.
Worrisome trend: paramilitary police units
Daily Kos reviews a book on an important topic:
Imagine a nation in which hooded, unidentified paramilitary units can storm the houses of citizens with no warning in the dead of night, setting off flash grenades and slaying innocent occupants, all with virtually no repercussions and no oversight.
Welcome to modern America.
Radley Balko’s Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, released by Cato in July, takes an appalling, in-depth look at the entire system that has metastasized as civilian police forces nationwide feed off the frenzy and funding stirred up over the ludicrously declared “War on Drugs.” SWAT teams, sealed warrants, reliance on unreliable confidential informants (”snitches”), Defense Department materiel handed off to local police departments — all have created a convergence of a system and a mindset in which units more suited to the streets of Baghdad than Main Street USA have stripped away the rights of Americans to claims their homes as their castles. Read the rest of this entry »
NY Times praises The Wire
I really like the TV series The Wire, and I’m pleased to see that the NY Times backs me up. Having no TV connection, I have to wait for each season to appear on DVD—and season 3 is now on its way to me. There’s a certain advantage to watching the entire season in a short span of time. For one thing, the story is gripping, so it’s hard to wait between episodes. For another, the story is complex, and having it all together makes it easier to follow. Great stuff. The NY Times:
A good villain is hard to find. To create a truly wicked character, one dastardly enough to be loathsome but complex enough to fascinate, is among the most challenging tasks a writer faces. To slowly twist readers or viewers around until they sympathize with the very same character is a feat only for the foolhardy or the brilliant.
This is the genius of the character Stringer Bell in HBO’s Baltimore crime drama “The Wire.” The cold-blooded drug lieutenant tries to go straight without any tear-jerking change of heart or mystical conversion experience. He plays by the rules of the drug game until he has the resources to try his hand as a business owner and property developer. When violence and ignorance seal off his escape from the world where he made his start, it is tragic despite his own ugly transgressions.
That Stringer Bell barely stood out in the complex ensemble last season is a tribute to the creators of the program. Their Baltimore teems with life, from the lookout kids in the drug trade up to City Hall, with the flawed cops stuck in between, taking abuse from either end. If Charles Dickens were alive today, he would watch “The Wire,” unless, that is, he was already writing for it.
The pay-cable television series is the closest that moving pictures have come so far to the depth and nuance of the novel. Feature films are far too brief, akin to a good short story. The network schedule has traditionally been so long — requiring nearly twice as many episodes as HBO — that it skews strongly toward the formulaic. Read the rest of this entry »
Rumsfeld didn’t want a post-war plan
Via Kevin Drum, this article makes it clear that the Administration did not want a plan for what would happen in Iraq after Saddam was toppled:
Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.
In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said “he would fire the next person” who talked about the need for a post-war plan.
Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure post-war Iraq. Read the rest of this entry »
Should be interesting: beef, sauerkraut, onion, & apple
Just put this into the 200º oven to have about 11 hours from now: beef shank cross-sections that I browned in the skillet—dry, with just a sprinkling of salt. Then I added a largish jar of sauerkraut with juice, about 8 cloves of garlic chopped, 3 small onions chopped, two small apples chopped. (I use all of the apple except the little peel-off label and the stem.) A little salt, a fair amount of pepper, some thyme, some ground cloves, small amount of ground cumin. It will simmer all day, and then we shall see.
The Wife points out that this work work well with pork instead of beef—e.g., fresh pork shanks. But beef is what I had.
— Later. As is so often the case, The Wife was perfectly right: the beef was okay, but the ingredients were sad that it wasn’t pork. Next time I’ll cook extra thick pork shops in this, but simmer them above the stove, not long, slow cooking in the oven.
