Later On

Interesting. O’Keefe is currently facing trial for another scam he tried to pull. Eric Boehlert at Media Matters:

Last September, when the ACORN scandal that his website helped launch was breaking in the press, Andrew Breitbart wrote a column for The Washington Times detailing the rollout of the undercover, right-wing gotcha. He recalled a 2009 meeting with "filmmaker and provocateur James O’Keefe" that took place in Breitbart’s office in June. It was there that O’Keefe played the columnist the surreptitiously recorded videos he’d made with his sidekick, Hannah Giles, and which captured the two famously getting advice from ACORN workers on how prostitutes could skirt tax laws.

In his Times column, Breitbart was quite clear about what he saw that day in his office: He watched videos of O’Keefe "dressed as a pimp" sitting inside ACORN offices "asking for — and getting — help" from the misguided employees.

But today we know that’s almost certainly not true. Breitbart didn’t huddle in his office and watch clips of O’Keefe "dressed as a pimp" chatting with ACORN employees, because based on all the available evidence, O’Keefe wasn’t dressed as a pimp while taping inside the ACORN offices.

Make no mistake: Last fall, both Breitbart and O’Keefe, with the help of Fox News, did their best to confuse people about that fact. It’s true the duo seemed to purposefully push that falsehood and mislead the public and the press about the ACORN story. And more importantly, they did it to make the ACORN workers captured on video look like complete jackasses for not being able to spot O’Keefe’s pimp ruse a mile away.

But the story was not true.

Fact: On the guerilla clips posted online and aired on Fox News, O’Keefe was featured in lots of cutaway shots that were filmed outside and showed him parading around with Giles in his outlandish cane/top hat/sunglasses/fur coat pimp costume.

The cutaway shots certainly left the impression that that’s how O’Keefe was dressed when he spoke to ACORN workers.

But inside each and every office, according to one independent review that looked at the public videos, O’Keefe entered sans the pimp get-up. In fact, he was dressed rather conservatively. During his visit to the Baltimore ACORN office, he wore a dress shirt and khaki pants. For the Philadelphia sting, he added a tie to the ensemble.

Instead, the ’70s-era, blacksploitation pimp costume was a propaganda tool used to later deceive the public about the undercover operation. It was a prop that was quickly embraced by the mainstream media and turned into a central part of the ACORN story.

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Frank Ahrens in the Washington Post:

The document dump on the Toyota problems continues, damaging now not just Toyota but the Transportation Department’s National Highway Transportation Safety Administration.

Representatives of each will be called before House panels on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In the most recent documents to come out of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, NHTSA is shown to have dropped its investigation of unintended acceleration in Toyotas in 2007 without finding a defect in the vehicles.

This, despite saying that the the problem causes "extremely dangerous" situations for Toyota drivers and saying that more problems are likely to come. In 2009 and earlier this year, Toyota recalled nearly 6 million vehicles to fix unintended acceleration problems.

“Imagine if a doctor gave a patient a clean bill of health because he couldn’t diagnose the illness but recognized there were symptoms," said Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who will grill Toyota and NHTSA officials on Wednesday. "Two years ago, government regulators became aware of consumer complaints of unwanted acceleration and the best answer they could come up with was saying it was a floor mat issue. Now, three years later, we are asking the same questions that should have been answered in the first place. Instead, government regulators closed the investigation."

Some of the highlights from the NHTSA documents obtained by the Oversight and Government Reform committee:

– When NHTSA tested the act of trapping the gas pedal wide open with a floor mat, it took 150 pounds of force applied to the brake to get the car to stop. This compares with 30 pounds of force under normal circumstances. This action increased the stopping distance from less than 200 feet to more than 1,000 feet.

– The Lexus ES350 does not have an ignition switch to turn off. It has a button you push to start the car. If you depress and hold the button for three seconds, the engine will switch off. But finding that out in a panic at 80 mph is not the optimal time.

– 59 of 600 ES350 owners who responded to a NHTSA survey said they had experienced unintended acceleration. That’s 10 percent.

– "Toyota believes the subject vehicles and the all-weather mat do not contain a safety related defect and that the actions they have taken are sufficient to address any future concerns," NHTSA wrote. This line comes in the same report where NHTSA describes five crashes, four of which involved multiple vehicles and one which resulted in a rollover. The report says that Toyota "acknowledges that some of the alleged incidents are likely related to improper installation of driver side all weather floor mat resulting interference with accelerator pedal movement."

– Another report noted a July 2007 fatal crash in which a Toyota gas pedal was stuck open for eight miles on a California interstate, accelerating the vehicle to speeds of more than 100 mph, until it crashed into two other vehicles, killing an occupant in one of the struck vehicles.

He’s losing track of everything. From the Center for American Progress in an email:

Facing a primary challenge from former Congressman J.D. Hayworth, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been “moving starkly — and often awkwardly — to the right,” even reversing his 2008 campaign positions like support for cap-and-trade. In an interview in which he tried to distance himself from the bank bailout he supported in the fall of 2008, McCain told the Arizona Republic last week that his abrupt move to suspend his campaign during the financial crisis in September 2008 came at President Bush’s request. The paper reported that “McCain said Bush called him in off the campaign trail, saying worldwide economic catastrophe was imminent and that he needed his help.” McCain’s new account doesn’t match up, however, with several descriptions of the decision. In their book Game Change, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann report that the decision was in fact McCain’s: “[H]e called Bush and informed him of his decision, and asked if the president would host a meeting at the White House for him, Obama, and congressional leaders to discuss the bailout bill.” In his memoir, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson also made clear that McCain called the meeting. “This was supposed to be McCain’s meeting,” wrote Paulson. “He’d called it, not the president, who simply accommodated the Republican candidates wishes. Now it looked as if McCain had no plan at all — his idea had been to suspend his campaign and summon us all to this meeting. It was not a strategy, it was a political gambit.”

UPDATE: Kevin Drum provides a convincing rebuttal to Jay Rosen’s piece.

A very interesting article by Jay Rosen on journalism as it’s practiced today. Worth reading all the way through and into the comments. It begins:

This is a post about a single line in a recent article in the New York Times: Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right.

Before I get to the line that interested me, I need to acknowledge that the investigation the Times undertook for this article is wholly admirable and exactly what we need professional journalists to be doing. Reporter David Barstow spent five months—five months!—reporting and researching the Tea Party phenomenon.

He went to their events. He talked to hundreds of people drawn into the movement. He watched what happens at their rallies and the smaller meetings where movement politics is transacted. He made himself fully literate, learning the differences between the Tea Party and the Patriot movements, reading the authors who have influenced Tea Party activists, getting to know local leaders and regional differences, building up a complex and layered portrait of a political cohort that doesn’t fit into party politics as normally understood.

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A criminal probe is serious. William Douglas reporting for McClatchy:

Federal prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into Toyota’s safety troubles, the Japanese automaker confirmed Monday, as the company’s leadership braces for tough questions in congressional hearings this week about its recent spate of recalls.

Toyota officials said the company received a subpoena from a federal grand jury in New York on Feb. 8 requesting documents related to unintended acceleration of some Toyota vehicles and the braking system of its popular Prius hybrid.

Toyota said it also received a subpoena and a voluntary request last Friday from the Los Angeles office of the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking documents related to the unintended acceleration of certain Toyota models as well as the company’s disclosure policies and practices.

Toyota, in a written statement, said it would cooperate with the investigations.

The subpoenas come after Toyota turned over documents to committees in the Senate and House of Representatives over the weekend in preparation for three hearings that will focus on the acceleration issue, the role of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in investigating the problem, and whether the system or federal safety standards need to be adjusted.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee holds the first hearing on Tuesday. Toyota Chief Executive Akio Toyoda is scheduled to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Wednesday. The Senate Commerce Committee will examine Toyota’s woes next week…

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They’re hidden inside the pump. I’m paying cash from now on. Bill Lindelof in the Sacramento Bee:

Rocklin police said Thursday that a growing number of people are reporting that their debit card information was stolen by a sophisticated device hidden in two Rocklin gas pumps.

"It’s getting more and more scary," Rocklin Police Lt. Lon Milka. "We are getting more and more victims. They are coming out of the woodwork."

At least two dozen victims have come forward since the devices were discovered Dec. 21 in the pumps at the AM/PM gas station at Sunset Boulevard and Park Drive. One victim had $1,416 taken out of his bank account over three days, and another had almost $1,000 stolen.

In the past, thieves used devices on the outside of gas pumps to get PIN numbers and information from cards. They installed tiny cameras and card skimmers to steal the information and then dip into a victim’s account.

In this case, somebody had placed devices inside gas pumps. Police believe the device intercepts information and sends the PIN number and other debit card information to someone with a laptop.

The criminal then creates a card that allows him to go to an ATM and withdraw money from the victim’s account.

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I’m hoping that every iPhone owner gets the (free) Skeptical Science app, which provides instant rebuttals to all the climate-change denialist arguments. (It helps that denialists just keep repeating the same arguments, even when the flaws in their arguments have been clearly demonstrated.)

You can read about the development and history here.

This is pretty exciting news:

Looking to address the problems posed by high textbook prices, the used textbook market and the threat of digital piracy, Macmillan is launching, Dynamic Books, a new digital publishing platform and line of interactive digital textbooks that can be freely customized by professors, downloaded or accessed online or purchased in print-on-demand print editions. The Dynamic Book line will launch August 1 with 20 titles and will grow to 100 titles initially.

Clancy Marshall, general manager of Macmillan’s new Dynamic Books subsidiary unit, said the new online textbook platform was developed over the last two years in conjunction with digital textbook publisher Vital Source and its sister Ingram company, POD vendor Lightning Source. Marshall said that Macmillan surveyed students, professors and textbook authors looking to develop a new way to deliver instructional material.  "Students are unhappy with the prices of textbooks," Marshall acknowledged, "professors hate revised editions, piracy is growing and e-textbooks currently in the market aren’t really selling."

Marshall said Dynamic Books are designed to be an interactive and downloadable textbook that allows individual professors to rewrite the text, add additional information or comments or even delete unnecessary sections. In addition, professors can upload video or audio components and Marshall said professors can keep their customized versions forever.

Macmillan’s textbook authors do not object to the concept of customized textbooks, Marshal explained, because individually personalized content and revised sections in the Dynamic Book will be clearly labeled as such and marked with the instructor’s name. In addition, Macmillan’s editors and textbook authors will review the best of the revisions and include them in formal updates to the text every six months. "This keeps the material current without having to issue a revised edition," said Marshall, who described the feature as "open source without the scary part of just anybody changing the text."

Most textbook authors have been instructors as well, Marshal said, "and they know that teachers want to personalize these books and teach them in their own way." And Marshall said that professors whose revisions are included in official updates will be eligible to receive  a $1 royalty when texts with their additions are purchased. Dynamic Books also allow students to print out …

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Obviously a prototype, but we’re getting there.

More here.

Take a look at this post, from which I excerpt:

… Presenting at this year’s meeting of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS), University of California Berkeley researchers revealed the results of testing "39 healthy young adults" on recalling facts they had learned that same day.

At noon, all the participants were subjected to a rigorous learning task intended to tax the hippocampus, a region of the brain that helps store fact-based memories. Both groups performed at comparable levels.

At 2 p.m., the nap group took a 90-minute siesta while the no-nap group stayed awake. Later that day, at 6 p.m., participants performed a new round of learning exercises. Those who remained awake throughout the day became worse at learning. In contrast, those who napped did markedly better and actually improved in their capacity to learn…

More at the link, including links to other studies showing the utility of the nap.

Today it’s a vetiver shave. Interesting that the lid of the QED soap doesn’t carry the name of the fragrance—I think this was a one-off run. This fragrance soap is not currently available, though if you’re a vetiver fan, you can’t go wrong with Cyril R. Salter’s Vetiver shaving cream. (Also available at Amazon, though more expensive.)

At any rate, the Rooney Style 3, Size 1 Super Silvertip generated a superb lather, and the Merkur Big Grip (aka “Alu”) delivered a fine shave with its previously used Astra Keramik blade: very smooth and easy. And then a good splash of Royall Vetiver, and I’m ready for breakfast.

I finally made this recipe. It’s quite good—and satisfying. I used French green lentils, which keep their shape better, and I might use a bit more chicken stock next time, but certainly was good tonight. I like that it uses things I don’t generally cook with: fresh sage, pancetta, radicchio.

I never heard of this, but it’s an ingenious application of neurological research.

Steve Benen at Political Animal:

I’m sure these encouraging developments will draw criticism from conservatives; I just can’t quite figure out why.

Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan immigrant who was a key player in what the federal authorities have said was one of the most serious threats to the United States since the 9/11 attacks, is expected to plead guilty to terrorism charges this afternoon, a law enforcement official said.

Mr. Zazi is scheduled to appear before Judge Raymond J. Dearie at Federal District Court in Brooklyn at 2:30 p.m. to plead guilty conspiracy to detonate bombs in the United States, according to the official. [...]

Mr. Zazi, who was born in Afghanistan and was raised in Pakistan and later Flushing, Queens, where he attended high school, was working as an airport shuttle driver in Denver when he was arrested in September 2009.

The federal authorities said he had received weapons and explosives training at a Qaeda camp in Pakistan, bought beauty products that contained the raw materials to build a bomb and traveled to Queens with bomb-making instructions in his laptop on the eve of the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

His arrest was one of the key national security/law enforcement success stories of the last year, which reportedly is paying dividends beyond just preventing a deadly attack — Zazi is apparently cooperating with officials and providing intelligence as part of his plea agreement.

Indeed, Zazi has been sharing quite a bit of late, talking not only about his activities, but also his training, his accomplices, and his associations overseas.

U.S. officials now have all of this information without torturing Zazi, and without throwing him in Gitmo.

Indeed, Josh Marshall noted today, "One of the things that never gets mentioned in the endless praise of military tribunals is that their actual record is really bad." So true.

The Zazi case is a textbook example of a process that works — and it works because it ignores the hysterical cries of Republican hacks. Here’s a case in which we stopped a terrorist through law enforcement and intelligence gathering (which the GOP considers an example of "weakness"), read him his rights and gave him a lawyer (which, again, the GOP finds offensive), gained valuable information through torture-free questioning (which the GOP seems to think is impossible), brought him to a civilian courtroom (another thing the GOP finds outrageous), and will soon lock him up in an American prison (which the GOP considers dangerous for some reason).

By any reasonable measure, the only people who find Republicans credible on these issues are those who aren’t paying attention.

Post Script: I should note that if the White House wanted to shamelessly exploit this success story to prove a larger point, it’d be just fine with me.

So I did the weights this morning, and just now I took my walk. I went the same distance as when I last walked, so it was a little big tiring. Still, it was good to get out again. Today is beautiful. I took the above photo of the philosopher frog on this walk today. Rain tomorrow, though.

So another name surfaces.

Like all their plans, it relies heavily on lies and misdirection—the problem with the GOP is that the public opposes the things they want, so they have to hide or disguise what they’re really doing: if they were honest, they’d be voted out of office at the next election.

Paul Krugman:

O.K., the beast is starving. Now what? That’s the question confronting Republicans. But they’re refusing to answer, or even to engage in any serious discussion about what to do.

For readers who don’t know what I’m talking about: ever since Reagan, the G.O.P. has been run by people who want a much smaller government. In the famous words of the activist Grover Norquist, conservatives want to get the government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

But there has always been a political problem with this agenda. Voters may say that they oppose big government, but the programs that actually dominate federal spending — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — are very popular. So how can the public be persuaded to accept large spending cuts?

The conservative answer, which evolved in the late 1970s, would be dubbed “starving the beast” during the Reagan years. The idea — propounded by many members of the conservative intelligentsia, from Alan Greenspan to Irving Kristol — was basically that sympathetic politicians should engage in a game of bait and switch. Rather than proposing unpopular spending cuts, Republicans would push through popular tax cuts, with the deliberate intention of worsening the government’s fiscal position. Spending cuts could then be sold as a necessity rather than a choice, the only way to eliminate an unsustainable budget deficit.

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Read this story about the judge sleeping with the prosecutor in a capital murder trial.

Interesting article by Deborah Blum in Slate:

It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept telling the nurses, was just behind him, wielding a baseball bat.

Before hospital staff realized how sick he was—the alcohol-induced hallucination was just a symptom—the man died. So did another holiday partygoer. And another. As dusk fell on Christmas, the hospital staff tallied up more than 60 people made desperately ill by alcohol and eight dead from it. Within the next two days, yet another 23 people died in the city from celebrating the season.

Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Although mostly forgotten today, the “chemist’s war of Prohibition” remains one of the strangest and most deadly decisions in American law-enforcement history. As one of its most outspoken opponents, Charles Norris, the chief medical examiner of New York City during the 1920s, liked to say, it was “our national experiment in extermination.” Poisonous alcohol still kills—16 people died just this month after drinking lethal booze in Indonesia, where bootleggers make their own brews to avoid steep taxes—but that’s due to unscrupulous businessmen rather than government order.

I learned of the federal poisoning program while researching my new book, The Poisoner’s Handbook, which is set in jazz-age New York. My first reaction was that I must have gotten it wrong. “I never heard that the government poisoned people during Prohibition, did you?” I kept saying to friends, family members, colleagues.

I did, however, remember the U.S. government’s controversial decision in the 1970s to spray Mexican marijuana fields with Paraquat, an herbicide. Its use was primarily intended to destroy crops, but government officials also insisted that awareness of the toxin would deter marijuana smokers. They echoed the official position of the 1920s—if some citizens ended up poisoned, well, they’d brought it upon themselves. Although Paraquat wasn’t really all that toxic, the outcry forced the government to drop the plan. Still, the incident created an unsurprising lack of trust in government motives, which reveals itself in the occasional rumors circulating today that federal agencies, such as the CIA, mix poison into the illegal drug supply.

During Prohibition, however, an official sense of higher purpose kept the poisoning program in place…

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