Bad Framing

An ad for breast implants!?

Are these people serious?

Are these people still in this world?

*sigh*

(Hat Tip: BitchPhD)

Revisiting Gonzales and Other Fairytales

Remember last week when I wrote about Alberto Gonzales’s testimony? Where I agreed with Dahlia Lithwick’s take that the president was more worried about losing presidential authority than having a spat with congress?

An interesting Op-Ed got in the LA Times gives a slightly different slant to the issue. The president is standing by Alberto because he doesn’t really have any choice. You see, no matter whether Bush likes him or not, the current Senate would attach too many strings to conformation hearings for a new one. It seems Bush is stuck with the remedial recaller.

From (former Democratic congressperson) Elizabeth Holtzman,

No matter how many members of Congress lose confidence in Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales, President Bush is unlikely to let him go. If Gonzales resigns, the vacancy must be filled by a new presidential nominee, and the last thing the White House wants is a confirmation hearing.

Already, the Senate is outlining conditions for confirming a Gonzales successor. Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has said that his panel would not hold confirmation hearings unless Karl Rove and other White House aides testify about the firing of U.S. attorneys to clarify whether “the White House has interfered with prosecution.”

All this is reminiscent of the Watergate scandal. In 1973, as the coverup was unraveling, the Senate imposed a condition on the confirmation of President Nixon’s nominee for attorney general, Elliot Richardson. Richardson’s predecessor had resigned because of Watergate troubles. Concerned that the Justice Department would not get at the truth, the Senate insisted that Richardson would name a special prosecutor to investigate Watergate. Richardson duly appointed Archibald Cox.

I think this gives even more support to the theory that Bush will simply ignore calls for resignation. It goes even further; he would actively try to keep Gonzales from stepping down. It would be a catastrophe. The tone of my original post was that by backing down Bush would show weakness. He thinks keeping Gonzales on the job shows power. The Op-Ed points out it would also seriously weaken his current position. Not something he is likely to do.

On the rare occasions where Bush does appear to make a concession, it never lasts long.

Case in point, un-warranted wire tapping. Bush has said he won’t do it any more. Not because he can’t – just because he’s a really nice guy. From the New York Times,

Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.

Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.

As a result of the January agreement, the administration said that the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program has been brought under the legal structure laid out in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for the wiretapping of American citizens and others inside the United States.

But on Tuesday, the senior officials, including Michael McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, said they believed that the president still had the authority under Article II of the Constitution to once again order the N.S.A. to conduct surveillance inside the country without warrants.

This is a very clear No Trespassing sign. Back off Buster – um – Bessie! Warrants, Schmorrants. I do what I want.

Congressional limits on Iraq? Vetoed. Unfit Attorney General hated by both sides of the aisle. Don’t touch his homie. Listen in on whoever he wants, whenever he wants? If he wants to. Bush trying to out-do Ohmert in getting single digit approval ratings? At the rate he’s going, he might just manage it.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like he’s even broken into a sweat resisting Congress yet.

Does anyone really think this Congress can rein in Bush without a Republican schism? If you believe in that fairytale, I’ve got a good one one about a fisher’s wife who ended up pope…

THANKS loads National Geographic

The kind of image that makes Global Climate Change denialist’s hearts go piddy-pat.

Arctic Ice Melting Much Faster Than Predicted

Kilimajaro’s Glaciers May Last Longer Than Predicted

Look I know both are science, but do they have to be right next to each other? Don’t they look just a bit out of sync?

Couldn’t you headline the second article with “Kilimajaro’s Glacier Loss Linked to Lower Precipitation”. (Check paragraph 4 in the article.) What might be causing the lower preciptiation – hmm?

On the second page of the article -

The scientists say that the Kilimanjaro glacier findings emphasize another way that global warming is affecting the world.

So far many experts have focused on the impact caused by rising sea levels and temperatures. But less has been said about the effects of lower precipitation.

Kilimanjaro’s shrinking glaciers buttress evidence that East Africa is drying out. And that’s a phenomenon that needs to be studied further, researchers point out.

*sigh*

Deep Sixty-Sixed?

Deep Sixty-Sixed?

Occasionally (about once a month) I read military blogs to get a better idea of the morale and status of the US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the blogs I especially enjoy is Sixty-Six.org written by a member of the Minnesota National Guard currently on active-duty in Iraq.

The only problem is that I don’t know how long I will be able to keep reading it. According to Noah Schachtmann at the Danger Room,

The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops’ online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.

Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.

Now the blogs I read are extremely careful not to put a time or a place on anything. Usually you simply get a feel for the emotional rollercoaster these service people are on. And perhaps that’s the problem.

Of course pizza is a bit of a threat as well. Pizza?! Yeah. Pizza.

“It’s true that from an OPSEC (operational security) perspective, almost anything — pizza orders, office lights lit at odd hours, full or empty parking lots — can potentially tip off an observer that something unusual is afoot,” he added. “But real OPSEC is highly discriminating. It does not mean cutting off the flow of information across the board. If on one day in 1991 an unusual number of pizza orders coincided with the start of Desert Storm, it doesn’t mean that information about pizza orders should now be restricted. That’s not OPSEC, that’s just stupidity.”

So sending an e-mail order to the local pizza parlor or telling your wife – “Honey I’ll be late for dinner” if you work at the Pentagon has now become a definite no,no. (Not that it was ever a yes, yes. But still.)

The issue here isn’t having a rule that can be enforced up front but something that can be used later, after the fact, for any ‘problem’ that might occur. It is a sword hanging over the head of anyone in the military. Even the Army doesn’t think these kinds of issues can be handled this way,

“The potential for an OPSEC violation has thus far outstripped the reality experienced by commanders in the field,” [Major Elizabeth Robbins] wrote [in a paper (pdf) for the Army's Combined Arms Center].

And in some military circles, bloggers have gained forceful advocates. The Office of the Secretary of Defense, for example, now regularly arranges exclusive phone conferences between bloggers and senior commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq. Major Robbins, for one, has argued strongly for easing the restrictions on the soldier-journalists.

The theater goes even further, in a classic case of Catch 22, military contractors, family and friends are also effected by the new rules. The catch. They aren’t able to access them.

Active-duty troops aren’t the only ones affected by the new guidelines. Civilians working for the military, Army contractors — even soldiers’ families — are all subject to the directive as well.

But, while the regulations may apply to a broad swath of people, not everybody affected can actually read them. In a Kafka-esque turn, the guidelines are kept on the military’s restricted Army Knowledge Online intranet. Many Army contractors — and many family members — don’t have access to the site. Even those able to get in are finding their access is blocked to that particular file.

“Even though it is supposedly rewritten to include rules for contractors (i.e., me) I am not allowed to download it,” e-mails Perry Jeffries, an Iraq war veteran now working as a contractor to the Armed Services Blood Program.

For all those Minnesotans out there, you might keep your – um – ear on MPR tomorrow. Jon Gordon will be running a story on this at Future Tense.

I really hope my military blogs, including Sixty-Six.org don’t disappear. Deep sixed by the bureaucrats far from the families and the frontlines.

But maybe it’s just the American way. Opsec and Clusterf*ck.