The Precipice

Ever see a sick critter spin in circles?

Mr. Bush, the nominal President of these parts, has begun to spin.

At the start of the Iraq war, Congress wrote a temporary law that exempts the national spy process from having to get warrants from the secret FISA court for every goshdarn wiretap. They used to have to do this within 72 hours after the taps had been set in place. This exemption is set to expire soon. Mr. Bush would like it renewed permanently.

He claims that preventing the court from recording our wiretaps will protect us from terrorists. Whereas the original law didn't protect us. He wants the temporary bill made permanent.

THEN he says that he will veto a permanent bill unless it also includes protection from the law for the phone companies for anything illegal but unspecified that they may have done in wiretapping everyone's phones without a warrant, not just the terrorists.

When the court wasn't looking, they wiretapped everyone's phones. Now they're stuck up a tree.

They could have committed any crime in pursuit of the government's purpose or been responsible for the crimes being done by others. Bush wants a big blanket for his enablers.

So he will veto the bill? He will veto that protects us from terrorists unless it protects his buddies? Does he connect one sentence with the meaning of the next?

He is telling us to set free his friends or we will be attacked by terrorists.

What a choice! What a choice to give the American people.

Bush delivered his final State Of The Union message a few days ago in a slurred voice that suggested inebriation or that he had had a recent stroke. The slurring diminished during the speech, so he healed from his stroke rather quickly. An article about his healing years ago from his alcohol addiction appeared in the press the next day by coincidence.

He made a choice before his speech. He may have made several choices.

Meanwhile, a two-week extension of the current wiretap bill has been put in place. This will move discussion forward, past "Super Tuesday", when many states have their primary elections and a candidate may win early a party's nomination.

Debate on the FISA bill will now be much more public. Candidates may speak before Congress. Ted Kennedy, who earlier promised to help Senator Dodd filibuster the bill if it came before Congress, now will now surely speak, both as a Senator and as a major endorsee of Senator Obama's candidacy. Perhaps Senators Obama and Clinton will choose to speak also.

Fun ahead.


The discussion on whether waterboarding is torture continues to be unresolved, held in limbo by Attorney General Mukasey, who bravely opined today under duress that if it were done to him and it hurt, he might consider it torture. The world can only tighten his screws further and further.

As soon as the fact that waterboarding is torture becomes unarguable, he must indict his President. Not an easy choice.

This will probably happen after Super Tuesday.

Moore's Law Corollary For Self-Instantiation

Being observed. Knowing that you are observed. Knowing that your public acts are of record, as are your choice of companions and perhaps even your words.

Sorta puts a smile on your face. They'll never know my deeps. Every side of the street is the sunny side when the cameras are looking at me.

Watched, I am.

Could There Be A Cheaper Way To Fight A War?

Possibly. Could be.

We are trying to change peoples' opinions in the most expensive way possible.

Is there a cheaper way to change opinions? To gather supporters to our cause, followers into our fold?

How much broader, then, our range.

Both White House Emails and Torture Tapes Now Missing

Not only were the torture tapes destroyed.

Now we learn that millions of White House emails, which normally would be archived with all the rest of the generated data, have been deleted, violating at least two federal statutes. What's worse, the White House spokesman denies that they ever existed!

The only copies of these emails would appear now to be in the hands of the original recipients or senders, people who may need to defend themselves by impugning their bosses.

Any exculpatory emails are gone.

What else is missing?

Easy to find the holes. Changes in data retention policy are not invisible.

Torture tapes, White House emails... What else? Where else has retention policy failed?

The system points the finger. Torture tapes, White House emails and.. and...

We're waiting. We need entertainment. The screen writers are on strike.

Torture tapes and White House, oh my.

Waterboarding Verifiably Torture

Three brave souls have now had themselves waterboarded. All report that it is torture.

There can only be more.

The first was an acting assistant attorney general, Daniel Levin. In 2002, Jay Bybee of the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel wrote a memo saying that whether an interrogation method was torture or not depended on the level of pain. This was just an opinion. Not tested in court. But it guided the administration to break the Geneva Accords.

In 2004, Levin had himself waterboarded to see whether it was torture or not. He reported that waterboarding was torture. He was then fired.

Then another volunteer tester took the plunge, so to speak (they actually pour water down your nose into your lungs. Not a dunking!) Kaj Larsen, a former Navy SEAL who had received waterboarding as part of his SERE training, had himself waterboarded on national television.

Now Scylla, an anonymous blogger, did it to himself.

He reports that he would rather have his hands smashed.

Attorney General Mukasey was unsure, in his confirmation hearing, whether waterboarding was torture or not. If it wasn't torture, then all those who signed off on it were off the hook, including Mr. Bush. On the other hand, we've convicted people of the crime before.

Mukasey has now appointed John H. Durham, a "relentless" assistant prosecutor from Connecticut, to investigate the destruction of the CIA waterboarding tapes and see if a crime was committed. Was evidence of a crime destroyed? Or just evidence of "enhanced stress techniques"?

If waterboarding isn't torture, then a crime wasn't being covered up.

Mukasey's professed uncertainty invites the facts to blossom.

How many more people have to waterboard themselves before common knowledge declares the fact that it is torture?