Later On

From time to time I’ve heard from readers who were interested in a single strand of this blog (e.g., politics only, shaving only, movies only, food and cooking only, etc.), suggesting that I have multiple blogs, each a single-interest blog.

Certainly that’s easily done: WordPress.com will allow me to have multiple blogs, and then each blog would be separate by category. I do think I’d probably have to have a “Misc” blog.

But what do you think?

Daphne Eviatar of the Washington Independent:

Human Rights USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union are expected to make their case why the United States must prosecute former Bush administration officials for war crimes and grave violations of international law before the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights this afternoon in Washington.

At a special hearing, leaders of each organization will present evidence and testify about why the commission — which is a body of the Organization of American States (and includes the United States) — should issue a recommendation that the United States appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute war crimes such as torture and abuse of prisoners committed and authorized by senior U.S. officials in the Bush administration.

Although these organizations have called on the United States to appoint a special prosecutor before, this hearing takes that request to the international level by seeking a recommendation from a respected international commission that has frequently recommended such investigations and prosecutions in Latin American countries.

“We’re asking the commission to issue specific recommendations to the U.S. government that it conduct an investigation, reform any laws that might provide accountability or reparations . . . and undertake any other institutional reforms necessary to ensure that victims of these abuses are afforded the right to truth and justice,” said Colleen Costello, a lawyer with Human Rights USA during a conference call with reporters this morning.

While the Bush administration had largely ignored recommendations from the Inter-American Commission concerning detainees in the past by arguing that it lacked jurisdiction over U.S. government actions, the Obama administration may find it more difficult to make that case now, given that the president and his cabinet have emphasized the importance of international cooperation on enforcing human rights since taking office.

In February, for example, when the State Department released its 2008 report on human rights practices around the world, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said: …

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Interesting article:

In contrast to most Wall Street trading firms, where traders work hard and the atmosphere is intense, tumultuous, and fast-paced, Andrew and Mark Madoff, Bernie’s sons, ran the operation “like a peaceful valley,” he said. “Cursing or shows of emotion were not allowed. Once, this guy slammed down the phone and after he was reprimanded, the brothers called everyone together and said such behavior would not be tolerated and anyone who damaged equipment would have to pay for it themselves."

"The sons were not around a lot," he continued, "but when they were, they were nice guys, good to their staff.” This employee worked there for four and a half years, and left in mid 2007, before the Ponzi scheme was revealed. Why did he leave? “I wanted more freedom, but also I just didn’t like being part of a firm that didn’t make sense.”

The day after Bernie was arrested, Andrew and Mark came to work, surprising everyone. Staffers who had lost money complained to him and Andrew said, according to a friend of the employee: "I’ve been advised by my lawyer not to make any statements." Then he added "You’re not the only victim here." (Noteworthy, as it suggests the brothers must have gotten a lawyer right away.)

Regulations require a company to preserve all emails and firms normally archive them in the hard drives of their computers. But Madoff, the employee said, had ordered that all emails be printed out and then deleted.

Did he think something was fishy? “It never dawned on me that Bernie was running a criminal operation down on the 17th floor. I thought he was just a quirky guy. Now, in hindsight there are a lot of things that point to illegal activities. The emails, for instance, were clearly handled that way so that nobody could access them. They didn’t want any record if someone got suspicious and wrote so to a colleague, for instance, or you pressed the search bar and the word Ponzi came up.” …

Continue reading.

I’m reading George Leonard’s Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment and finding much that I like. It’s a short book, but will be of particular interest to Steve and Scott and, I think, The Eldest, since the Older Grandson seems to be following this path.

He talks about the importance of beginners and the beginner’s mind. It reminded me of the well-worn story of Ford K. Brown saying that the best students at St. John’s are "freshmen by nature," and the best tutors "freshman by nature willy nilly."

And he talked about the delights of practice: finding fulfillment in the journey. It’s certainly true that we in the US are conditioned to thing in terms of goals and their achievement. The payoff is the achievement, but that’s not true of most things: a meal is great, but selecting the viands, preparing and cooking them, and serving the meal should be of equal value—and the clean-up as well. The idea of getting to the "end" of something as a payoff fails spectacularly when we consider our own lives: are we all eager to get to the final act, dying? Probably not.

I thought about my handwriting—years ago I learned italic handwriting and took great delight in it, but I no longer practice. It occurred to me that this might be the impediment to my letter-writing, which has fallen off sadly. When I wrote letters by hand, the act of writing the letter was itself enjoyable. Not so much when I type the letter. So I plan to return to handwriting my letters and enjoy the practice of my italic.

The GOP seems regularly to pick some outrageous lie (e.g., the Great Depression was due to FDR and his policies made it worse), amply contradicted by readily available facts and history, and then repeat it ad nauseam until the Dittoheads take it as truth. One example is that the current financial crisis was not caused by subprime mortgages and derivatives and default credit swaps bas on them, but by the Community Reinvestment Act, which helped minority homeownership. (This is part of a general racist posture embraced by the GOP.) Mike Lillis debunks the CRA myth here.

The new lie is that there was no financial deregulation. Steven Benen has the story, a video, and an easy refutation.

In one area, that is. ThinkProgress’s Matt Corley reports:

In a stunning reversal, the anti-labor Wall Street Journal editorial page admitted today that one of the key messages in Big Business’s fight against the Employee Free Choice Act is false. “The bill doesn’t remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act,” wrote the WSJ editors today.

The acknowledgment by the WSJ that the legislation doesn’t eliminate the option of a secret-ballot election is surprising given that it has been one of the most aggressive pushers of the false meme:

– “Democrats in the House passed the Employee Free Choice Act, a measure that rewrites the rules for union organizing by eliminating secret-ballot elections.” [WSJ, 3/8/07]

– “Labor wants to trash the secret-ballot elections that have been in place since the 1930s.” [WSJ, 10/17/08]

– “Mr. Pryor knew the GOP would block the bill, which gets rid of secret ballots in union elections.” [WSJ, 1/2/09]

– “Big Labor’s drive to eliminate secret ballots for union elections has united American business in opposition.” [WSJ, 3/11/09]

Just this past weekend, the Wall Street Journal’s editors repeatedly claimed on their Fox News show that the bill was an effort “to eliminate the secret ballot in union elections.” Watch it:

As ThinkProgress has previously noted, the Employee Free Choice Act preserves workers’ rights to secret balloting. However, it also gives workers the option to form a union through a “card-check” system, in which a union would be recognized if a majority of workers signed a petition testifying to their desire to organize. This means that workers get to choose the union formation process — elections or majority sign-up.

Mary Kane in the Washington Independent:

Calculated Risk picks up today on an overlooked outrage we’ve been writing about for a while now — the way banks handle their inventories of foreclosed homes. We’ve pointed out that banks often let those houses sit, vacant and vandalized, or sell them at fire sale prices to speculators.

I’m hearing stories frequently of banks selling REOs far below market prices, only to have local investors flip the properties.

A reader sent me some info on a property in Redwood City that is typical. The lender turned down two short sale offers at close to $649,000, and then, after foreclosing on the property, the bank listed the property at $509,000. The property sold for $493,000 all cash, even though there were other offers above the list price.

What is going on? I think the lenders are swamped, and this is OPM (other people’s money). The money doesn’t belong to the people making the decisions, and it is hard for them to accept a short sale, and after foreclosure, it is probably easier for them to just take a check and get the property off their desk. The result is the banks make a series of less than optimal decisions, and they leave money on the table at several points in the process.

CR also cites a story from the North County Times in California, noting how banks are so overwhelmed by the foreclosure crisis they are dumping properties in bulk.

Maybe now that the furor over AIG bonuses is settling down a bit, this problem will begin to get the attention it deserves. Like so much in the mortgage crisis, it’s felt first in neighborhoods and communities, long before politicians and policymakers see it. They’re already way behind the curve.

Daphne Eviatar of the Washington Independent:

In a rare victory for torture victims, a federal judge yesterday ruled that detainees who claim they were tortured at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq can move ahead with their lawsuit against defense contractor CACI, which t the U.S. government hired to assist in interrogations of Iraqi prisoners.

CNN reports that U.S. District Court Judge Gerald Bruce Lee rejected CACI’s claims that the company was immune from liability for abuse, war crimes and conspiracy because it was under contract with the federal government.

The four Iraqi detainees in the case, represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights, alleged that interrogators on contract from CACI beat and abused them, and destroyed documents and videotapes of the interrogations to mislead officials about their tactics.

Although 11 U.S. soldiers who worked with CACI at Abu Ghraib were eventually court-martialed for their role in the abuses and implicated company workers in the crimes, none of the contractor’s workers have faced criminal charges.

CACI had claimed, as defense contractors often do, that it was not responsible for its workers’ actions because …

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From the Center for American Progress in an email:

As he promised during his campaign, President Obama has laid out a new direction on energy policy with his long-term budget proposal, making polluters pay to reduce global warming pollution, build a green economy, and deliver tax credits to 95 percent of working families. This plan has come under withering attack by conservatives, who have focused on the cap-and-trade carbon market component. After former House speaker Newt Gingrich told the Conservative Political Action Conference that cap and trade is a "code word" for an "energy tax," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called it a "light switch tax" and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said it was a "code for increasing taxes and killing American jobs." Moderate Democratic senators have also expressed concern: Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) worries cap and trade "could have a negative impact on our economy by raising utility rates on consumers," Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) is "against forcing petrochemical companies" to "bear the brunt of new costs," and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) "said that it would be a ‘distant hope’ to expect the climate change plan to pass unless it includes help for industries that would be hit hard by limits on carbon emission production." In reality, Obama’s proposal would directly increase or leave untouched the incomes of most Americans when the system begins in 2012, powering a clean job engine that makes work — instead of pollution — pay.

CAP AND TRADE 101: Because the "future of our society depends on effectively managing and reducing greenhouse gas emissions," the goal of cap and trade is to "steadily reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions economy-wide in a cost-effective manner." The "cap" is an annual limit on total pollution; large emitters (such as power plants and petroleum refineries) must acquire pollution allowances from the government. These allowances can be traded, "rewarding the most efficient companies and ensuring that the cap can be met at the lowest possible cost to the economy." Because the United States has not had an emissions policy, there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit — ways to achieve significant reductions in pollution at low cost or even net gain. California’s experience with greening its economy is perhaps the best model of our national future. Despite higher electricity rates than much of the nation, total energy costs have gone down, allowing "more job creation from Californians for California." Economic models find that any downward economic impact of the transition to a clean economy through cap and trade is dwarfed by the high volatility of fossil fuel prices.

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ThinkProgress’s Lee Fang:

As Roll Call reported this morning, financial services lobbyists “have moved into hyperdrive” in an attempt to soften taxes on bailed-out bonuses. The lobbyists working for the financial industry are organized into a group known as the Financial Services Roundtable.

Last year, the Roundtable lobbied aggressively to prevent “legislation from limiting executive compensation.” Scott Talbott, a senior lobbyist for the Roundtable, told the New York Times, “we are opposed to provisions on executive pay.”

During the debate over the economic recovery package, the Senate passed the Wyden/Snowe amendment, which would have severely limited the bonuses paid by bailed out firms. However, the amendment was removed from the legislation at the last minute in conference. The removal was agreed to by staffers working for Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and the Obama administration. On Rachel Maddow’s show earlier this week, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said that financial industry lobbyists were the individuals primarily advocating the change:

What happened, Rachel, was we got it through the United States Senate and then like, with so many issues, all the lobbyists came out in droves and somehow magically, the amendment disappeared. It seems to me now we‘ve got an opportunity to get this job done right but it didn‘t have to happen.

Watch it:

Protecting bonuses and excessive compensation aren’t the only goals for the lobbyists. They are now working with other special interests to defeat key provisions of Obama’s budget:

– Talbott and Roundtable lobbyists are fighting provisions in the Obama budget to administer “fees on banks and maybe even the entire financial industry to recoup the costs of the U.S. government’s financial rescue efforts.” [Dow Jones Newswire, 3/6/09]

– The Roundtable is taking “aim at the president’s proposal to end subsidies for private student loan providers.” [Bloomberg, 2/27/09]

– The Roundtable is teaming up with mortgage industry lobbyists to defeat provisions in the Obama budget to end loopholes for America’s wealthiest people. [Mortgage Orb, 3/13/09]

The AIG bonuses and the current efforts by Roundtable lobbyists add new weight to the challenge issued by President Obama to special interest lobbyists: “I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this: So am I.”

Rep. Louise Slaughter has again this year introduced legislation to bar the use of antibiotics in meat production. Overuse has seen the rise of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in our food, as described recently by Nicholas Kristof in two columns (here and here). Today, in Ethicurean, I see three related brief posts on the topic:

More squealing from the porkers: The National Pork Producers Council objects to federal legislation introduced Tuesday by Rep. Louise Slaughter (no pun intended, really), the only microbiologist in the U.S. Congress, that would restrict the use of medically-important antibiotics in livestock production. (Brownfield) Parke Wilde comments. (U.S. Food Policy) (See background post on the use of antibiotics and how it leads to superbugs in meat here)

But surprise, a progressive California paper loves it: Despite forgetting to mention that its own State Senator Dean Florez introduced similar legislation several weeks ago, the LA Times editorial board goes whole-hog for Rep. Slaughter’s federal bill. (LA Times) Over on Grist, Tom Philpott takes a close look at the bill. (Gristmill)

Foodborne illness is a growth market: In quintessential U.S. corporate style, Silicon Valley companies are eying the recent rise in foodborne illness… and seeing dollar signs. Valley companies are hoping to jump on the bandwagon calling for electronic farm-to-fork traceability (which, btw, would be mandated under a food safety bill introduced by Rep. Dingell (D-MI), HR 759) by developing the software. (San Jose Mercury News – thanks, Diana!)

Trent Hamm has a good post for sports fans this morning:

Here are the fifty two essays included in Sports Illustrated’s Fifty Years of Great Writing, free for your own enjoyment. You might be surprised at some of the literary heavy hitters here – Steinbeck, Faulkner, DeLillo. Many of these are among the very best sportswriting I’ve ever read. I hope you get as much enjoyment out of these as I have.

The Players
The Boxer and the Blonde by Frank Deford
Yogi by Roy Blount Jr.
The Last Angry Men by Rick Telander
The Year, The Moment and Johnny Podres by Robert Creamer
Gifts That God Didn’t Give by John Papanek
All the Rage by Richard Hoffer
The Ring Leader by Frank Deford

45 more essays at the link.

Simply forgot. Set up the stuff, came and turned on computer, browsed around a bit, showered, shaved, made coffee, and here I am, photoless.

You can picture it anyway, I imagine: Floris London JF shaving soap and aftershave, Simpsons Persian Jar 2 Super, and the Edwin Jagger ivory-handled Chatsworth with a Gillette blade. Extremely good lather, smooth shave, and fragrance. And I do have coffee.

Photos will return tomorrow.

Interesting report in Science News by Laura Sanders:

A new twist on the ancient board game Go may clarify the complicated mathematics behind games like chess, suggests research from the mathematical field known as combinatorial game theory.

Using “coupons” to quantify the value of moves in the game allowed researchers to describe the math behind the game more precisely, mathematician Elwyn Berlekamp of the University of California, Berkeley reported February 14 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Go is a popular game in Asia thought to originate 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. Using a board with 19 squares on each side, players put stones on the grid in an attempt to surround and capture an opponent’s stones. Although the rules of Go are simple, the strategy of the game is very complex.

A chess board has more than 10⁴⁰ legal configurations that the pieces can be in at one time. The Go board has about 10¹⁷¹.

The complicated mathematical fallout of all those possibilities prevents computer programs from seriously challenging top-tier Go players. “For every move, you have to look at its impact on the whole board,” says Berlekamp. Without a significant handicap, no computer program has yet beaten a top-tier Go player, designated 9p.

To understand the mathematical rules that govern Go, Berlekamp turned to some of the best Go players. He wanted to know why the players thought certain moves were good or bad, what Go players call bigger or smaller moves. But Berlekamp ran into a problem. “Go players don’t want to have mathematics discussions,” he says. “They want to play.”

To get around this obstacle, Berlekamp created a version of Go called Coupon Go, in which players have the option of either putting a stone on the board or taking a coupon. The coupons, which have different point values, showed Berlekamp what the most valuable moves were.

Using the resulting map of moves, Berlekamp developed …

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Very interesting piece by Rory O’Connor, which begins:

When Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently called the Internet a “cesspool” of false information, he also claimed that corporate brands such as his own are necessary filters needed to help us sort through the muck. “Brands are the solution, not the problem,” Schmidt said. “Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.”

Leading online credibility researchers such as Eszter Hargittai, associate professor at the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, are now examining the filtering role that brands are playing, and have come to some surprising — and in some cases downright scary — conclusions about their effect. The Internet, as Hargittai notes, “is a source of unprecedented amounts of content… both lauded for its breadth and critiqued for its sometimes free-for-all ethos.” In this information-rich environment, “where traditional gatekeepers such as editors no longer evaluate material before it has the potential to reach large audiences,” Hargittai believes “the ability to find trustworthy content online is an essential skill.” In their attempts to do so, her research shows, “users put considerable trust in the online equivalent of traditional gatekeepers: search engines.”

This would seem to buttress Eric Schmidt’s contention that we should put our trust in Google. After all, as Hargittai and her associates note in one study, “search engine use is one of the most popular online activities second only to email.” According to the report, called “Trusting the Web: How Young Adults Evaluate Online Content,” nearly half of all Americans using the Internet “turn to a search engine on a typical day” — the figure is even higher among the young adults she surveyed — and two thirds believe that “using search engines provides them with ‘a fair and unbiased source of information.’” Search engines, and Google’s is obviously pre-eminent, are a “crucial part of the puzzle of online credibility assessment… They have become the most prevalent tool for information seeking online with the potential to garner large influence… on what material users deem trustworthy.”

While Hargittai’s research showed that “brands were a ubiquitous element throughout our respondents’ information-gathering process,” it also revealed a frightening lack of knowledge as to how brands such as Google actually operate in the information sphere. The study noted, for example, that only 38 percent of Internet users were aware that sponsors pay for their links to appear first on Google’s search engine results page. “Our findings suggest that students rely greatly on search engine brands to guide them to what they then perceive as credible material simply due to the fact that the destination page rose to the top of the results listings of their beloved search engine.” Google’s branding is so powerful, in fact, that more than a third of the study’s participants used its brand name as a verb, regularly responding “I’ll google it” when asked how they would complete an information-seeking task — despite the fact that the company admittedly performs no credibility verification whatsoever of the information links it offers, and features paid sponsored links more prominently than others…

Continue reading. And this article is but the latest in a series:

I spent much of last fall at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government as a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center for the Press, Politics and Public Policy. While there, I researched issues related to journalism, trust and credibility – and in particular what role emerging social media might play in addressing those concerns. Here’s the latest in a series of posts on the topic of emerging media and journalism. (Read Part 1: “Word of Mouse” — Part 2: “The New Breed of New Media Researchers” — Part 3: “Public Displays of Connection” — Part 4: “Brands, Cesspools and Credibility“) – Rory O’Connor

Although, of course, the GOP members of the House and Senate seem to enjoy having government healthcare. But they don’t want others to have it. (I assume they could opt out of the government healthcare they receive and buy their own private healthcare insurance, but I don’t believe any of them do that.) From Congressional Quarterly, we hear again from Sen. Grassley:

The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee says the toughest single issue confronting lawmakers drafting a health care overhaul is whether to create a government-run insurance option to compete with private health insurers.

“This is a deal-breaker for Republicans if it’s in, and it’s a deal-breaker for Democrats if it’s not,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley , R-Iowa, said Thursday. “Is there a compromise in between? I don’t see one today. There might be one. If you’re going to negotiate in good faith, everything’s on the table. But it’s one of the most difficult things, and I don’t see a compromise in that area.”

But it could be worse, he said. “I told you that abortion is about the only issue I know of that’s not compromiseable.”

Grassley voiced optimism about the ultimate goal. “I’m positive we can get health care reform done,” he said.

Many Democrats argue that a public plan that competes with private insurers is the only way to force down overall costs. Republicans contend that a public plan would be unfair competition, eventually driving private insurers out of business.

“I think it’s a step to single-payer,” government-run health care, said Grassley.

Grassley made his comments as part of a roundtable hosted by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Continue reading. Note the GOP contention that, if people have a choice between a government-run program and a program run by private industry, they would overwhelmingly prefer the government-run program. The GOP position is to prevent people getting what they want. That’s always their position.

From the Marijuana Policy Project in an email:

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) criticized the Obama administration and Attorney General Eric Holder today for their decision to stop raiding medical marijuana patients in states with medical marijuana laws. Senator Grassley told the media that this is a bad idea because marijuana leads to harder drug use. Click here for more information on Grassley’s statement.

This “gateway” theory has been debunked time and time again by every major study on the subject. For Sen. Grassley to use this line of attack against medical marijuana patients, who often find that marijuana allows them to stop using more dangerous pharmaceuticals, is ridiculous.

Senator Grassley’s remarks need an immediate response from sensible Iowans. Please call Senator Grassley’s office today and voice your displeasure with his remarks. You can reach his office at (202) 224-3744. Here is an example phone script to get you started.

Hello, my name is [your name], and I’m calling from [your town], Iowa. I heard that Senator Grassley spoke out against President Obama’s decision to end the medical marijuana raids today. I wanted to let you know that I disapprove of the senator’s comments.

Medical marijuana helps people use fewer pharmaceutical drugs like painkillers and appetite stimulants. It mitigates the side effects that the pharmaceuticals have on the seriously ill. I hope the senator will rethink his position and have some compassion for the sick.

In addition, please use MPP’s online action center to send a quick and easy e-mail to Senator Grassley, voicing your disapproval of his attack on medical marijuana patients.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

The awful repercussions for Israel of the assault on Gaza continue. Ethan Bronner paints a grim picture of world opinion, with particular emphasis on the Turkey-Israel relationship. And Haaretz debriefs some Israeli soldiers from the conflict who testify that the excesses of the attack may have been much worse than Israel has let on:

During Operation Cast Lead, Israeli forces killed Palestinian civilians under permissive rules of engagement and intentionally destroyed their property, say soldiers who fought in the offensive…

Another squad leader from the same brigade told of an incident where the company commander ordered that an elderly Palestinian woman be shot and killed; she was walking on a road about 100 meters from a house the company had commandeered.

The squad leader said he argued with his commander over the permissive rules of engagement that allowed the clearing out of houses by shooting without warning the residents beforehand.

After the orders were changed, the squad leader’s soldiers complained that "we should kill everyone there [in the center of Gaza]. Everyone there is a terrorist."

The squad leader said: "You do not get the impression from the officers that there is any logic to it, but they won’t say anything. To write ‘death to the Arabs’ on the walls, to take family pictures and spit on them, just because you can. I think this is the main thing: To understand how much the IDF has fallen in the realm of ethics, really. It’s what I’ll remember the most."

My boss, James Bennet saw this coming:

As this conflict grinds on, Israel will no doubt remain morally alert — morally conflicted, as demonstrated by the soldiers who refuse to serve in the territories — but it will also remain morally compromised in the eyes of the world. Its back to the rest of the Middle East, its face to the Mediterranean, Israel could become ”the largest ghetto in modern Jewish history,” in the words of Ezrahi.

Sharon may be right. This could be the only way to secure Israel’s survival as a Jewish haven. But it may mean a poignant legacy for this indomitable, secular Jew born into the Middle East: an Israel that is increasingly religious, walled off from its neighbors, simultaneously yearning after and fearing a Western community of nations that sees it as more and more foreign.

It profiteth not a man to gain the whole world if he lose his own soul. But for Gaza?

Interesting:

There’s one as yet unremarked constituency increasingly disturbed by some Republican senators’ efforts to block the confirmation of former North Korea envoy Christopher Hill to be the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq: the U.S. military.

Sources tell The Cable that Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus, top Iraq commander Gen. Raymond Odierno, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are frustrated by the delay in getting a U.S. ambassador confirmed and into place in Iraq, and support Hill’s confirmation proceeding swiftly.

Opposition to the Hill appointment has been led by Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Sam Brownback (R-KS), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC). Brownback has called Hill’s past dealings with Congress over North Korea "evasive and unprofessional." In a joint statement last week, McCain and Graham wrote that Hill had a "controversial legacy" on North Korea, and added, "The next ambassador should have experience in the Middle East and in working closely with the U.S. military in counterinsurgency or counterterrorism operations. Mr. Hill has neither."

Since the previous ambassador, Ryan Crocker, left the job Feb. 13, Odierno has complained of doing double duty: serving as the commanding general and the de facto ambassador.

The power vacuum in Baghdad comes at a critical juncture in Iraq’s transition, sources noted. The U.S. mission is becoming increasingly focused on political stabilization and economic development over military missions; Arab-Kurd tensions are rising in the north; struggles for dominance within and across sectarian groups are heating up in the aftermath of January’s provincial elections; the Baghdad government is facing tough budget choices due to declining oil prices; and national elections that will determine whether Iraq can consolidate its democracy are due by year’s end.

Keeping a lid on such political tensions is "crucial to consolidating the security gains from the surge," a Washington Iraq hand said, "yet the advocates of the surge want to slow down the process of getting an ambassador to Iraq." …

Continue reading.

Sherry F. Colb, a FindLaw columnist, is Professor of Law and Charles Evans Hughes Scholar at Cornell Law School. She writes:

A considerable body of research shows that eyewitness identifications of a criminal defendant – the gold standard in courtroom theatrics – are, in reality, quite unreliable. The courtroom setting itself offers a very strong "suggestion" to witnesses about who the perpetrator might be – the man (or woman) sitting with his (or her) lawyer at the defendant’s table. More importantly, the identifications that happen prior to trial, when witnesses look at live lineups or at pictures from "mug books," can also be quite suggestive, in ways that might not be immediately obvious.

Professor Gary Wells of Iowa State University has for many years studied the role of identification procedures in producing erroneous eyewitness identifications. Wells has performed experimental research that demonstrates just how suggestive the seemingly neutral lineup method really is. A recent, high-profile example also proves the point: In their book, Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption, Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton talk about the former’s erroneous lineup identification of the latter as her rapist. Cotton was sentenced to life imprisonment and served over a decade of that time before DNA evidence revealed the identity of the real perpetrator, Bobby Poole. Cotton ultimately spent eleven years in prison for a rape he did not commit, in part because of a lineup procedure that we know produces errors.

In this column, I will examine the implications of Wells’s research through the prism of my own experiences, first as a witness observing a lineup and then as a subject in Wells’s most recent experiment – in which the reader can participate as well here (click where it says "video") before reading on…

Continue reading.