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This wired article should put our priorities in perspective.

Thanks to popular culture most people are familiar with parts of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.  If my post on due process piqued your interest then you may have done some research and read about grand juries or eminent domain.  An article on findlaw from May of 2004 higlights the importance of the final right guaranteed in the subsequent amendment - the Sixth Amendment guarantees the accused the right “to have the Assitance of Counsel for his defence (sic).”

I started this post several months ago and never had a chance to elaborate.  I’m flying on business tomorrow for the first time since the liquid scare and in checking the TSA website found the following disclaimer: “Bringing a prohibited item to a security checkpoint - even accidentally - is illegal.“

I guess I should bring my lawyer with me to the airport.

The New York Times chose not to publish Bruce Schneier’s way to avoid the next 9/11 so he did.

On this past Sunday’s Meet the Press Vice President Cheney disagrees with the majority of Americans in each poll that Tim Russert shows him.  Surprisingly I agree with Cheney’s main premise:

“The basic proposition for our adversaries—and we ought to take a minute and focus on it—they, they want to re-create the old caliphate that stretched from Spain all the way around to Southeast Asia. They want to topple the regimes that are there today, they want to kick the U.S. out of that part of the world, destroy Israel, equip themselves with weapons of mass destructions, etc. In the course of doing that, their strategy for doing that is to break our will.  They can’t beat us in a stand-up fight, they never have, but they’re absolutely convinced they can break our will. The American people don’t have the stomach for the fight.”

Vice President Cheney is 100% correct.  Unfortunately he believes that by maintaining a 100,000 troop American presence in the region we will somehow manage to hunt down and outlive fundamentalists that have been terrorizing the region for centuries.  The President is correct in his assertion that the people of Iraq (and Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Somalia, Ethiopia…) must stand up (or as Cheney says “get the locals involved”) and create democracies but he is incorrect in his belief that somehow an American presence is encouraging this or can be maintained until it happens.

Here’s the fundamental flaw in Cheney and Bush’s thinking.  Even if Karzai, Musharraf and Talabani put their faith in the US and find that they manage to overcome some “insurgency,” will they feel as strong when we have withdrawn under banners of “Mission Complete” and the jihadists that have been terrorizing them for centuries return?

Finally, some constructive criticism for Mr. Russert: stop beating a dead horse (or the Vice President) for that matter.  He was wrong in his assessment leading up to and during the war and he admits it.  It would be great to hear some constructive discourse on the underlying premise that the Bush administration’s long term strategy on spreading Democracy will not work.

The next President of the United States will be the first person to come out and say that while Iraq is a mess, pulling out would be admitting defeat and the current strategy is not working.  Our next President will be the first person to stand up and say that we need to stop the partisan rhetoric and start working together on what we want to accomplish in Iraq and how we are going to to succeed because right now we do not know.

I’m catching up on Meet the Press and listening to the Casey Santorum “Debate,” which had some promise of being an interesting discussion of views on the important issues facing Americans today. Unfortunately none of them can get past the first 5 minutes: Casey with accountability, Russert and his Iraq vote fetish and Santorum reciting the GOP 2004 platform as written by the post-Sorkin West Wing writers. Do we get to vote for a new media this November?

Another day, another false alarm?  We don’t know yet, but the more planes get turned around for seemingly innocuous reasons the sooner passengers will get tired of it.  At that point we will have taken a step back in security, just as the boy who cried wolf tried the villagers once too many times.  Security is difficult and it is not clear that being overly cautions is effective at stopping terrorists from accomplishing their goals.

McCain also pitched the part line argument that setting a date for withdrawal would encourage the militias in Iraq to lay low and wait for the date before erupting even more violence.  I wonder sometimes how many civilian deaths per day it will take for people to realize that we have no such influence in the region.  If the militias wanted us to leave wouldn’t they just pause the violence long enough for Bush to save face and withdraw?  Before you ask, yes, they are that smart.  The truth is that they do not want us to leave.  The presence of US Armed Forces are a much better recruitment tool for the insurgents in Iraq than they have been here at home.  Maybe if we set a date the insurgents will fear that they will not longer be able to blame us for their suffering and 26 million Iraqis will kick them out.  I wouldn’t count on it though - date or not, the vacuum left in Iraq when we removed Saddam will take years if not decades of violence to fill and will require much more than 100,000 troops to win.

I have been wondering recently about the FISA court (overlooking the fact that the Bush administration usually goes around it) and the method by which warrants are issued and executed ex parte (with the defendant not present or notified).  If one were to frame this as a deprivation of liberty without due process, possibly violating the Fifth Amendment, a reasonable rebuttal (one championed by the Bush administration) is that Article II Section 2 in combination with various laws passed by Congress (the Patriot Act being one often cited) give the President the power to deprive people of their liberty without due process in order to ensure the security of the United States.  Put another way, one may conclude that the President has the power to take a way a little bit of your liberty to attempt to preserve someone else’s based on a perceived threat.

Put in this context, here’s my question: do we want to give our government unchecked power to decide how much liberty we get or give up?

Update: The Bush Administration cites the Joint Resolution Authorizing the Use of Military Force, which authorizes the “use of all necessary and appropriate force” - not the Patriot Act.

After his 2002 re-election McCain had a chance to split with the GOP, take a page from Dean’s 2004 playbook and raise support to run on his true views.  Unfortunately he has taken on the burden of towing the party line in order to have a chance for the presidency.  Listening the McCain on MTP I want to believe that he can make good decisions but then he throws in his mandatory hat tip:

“I have confidence in the president and I believe that he is well aware of the severity of the situation.”

“I know that the president’s committed to win and I know the president’s committed to prevail.”

“I think the president should pick his team and I will support the president’s selections.”

Then there are the hints that the Neo-Con mind-set has overtaken McCain’s better sense of reason:

“We cannot allow that to happen.”

“I believe we can prevent it.”

“We can fix it.”

Here’s a wake-up call to McCain and other Republican’s who have not yet been brainwashed: 130,000 troops cannot fix, save or prevent the strife amongst 26 million people.  They have to decide to put history behind them and move on for their children’s sake.

Drawing a lesson (intended or not) from Bruce Schneier’s recent post on Human/Bear Security Trade-Off, our largest fault in how we go about protecting ourselves from terrorism is that we are impatient.  Meanwhile the terrorists are infinitely patient.  This is the same problem we are experiencing in Iraq.  This is not a statement of support for “staying the course” rather an admission that when Bush says his successor will have to deal with withdrawing troops he understands that it is going to take a long time to achieve a period of stability in Iraq.

Has apparently become a euphemisms for disrobing for the TSA…or am I misinterpreting this political cartoon by Michael Ramirez:

While Bush may be the President of the United States, he is king of wishful thinking.  Claiming that Israel won and Hezbollah lost because “There’s going to be a new power in the south of Lebanon, and that’s going to be a Lebanese force with a robust international force to help them seize control of the country - that part of the country” is not far from the Whitehouse’s PR gaff of 2003 claiming Mission Accomplished after capturing Baghdad.  When 30,000 international and Lebanese troops manage to patrol southern Lebanon without daily attacks from Hezbollah then one may claim that Israel has accomplished its goal.  At this point the odds are that Israel will be back in Lebanon sometime next year.

Update: Dave Winer says it just right.

Even IBD, ever the Bush supporter, suspect he’s being more than a bit premature.

Lieberman was defeated in the recent Democratic primaries in Connecticut recently not just because Democrats in Connecticut disagree with him on the war and just because he is close to Republicans. Lieberman lost his party’s nomination because he has gotten wrapped up in the propaganda that fuels the GOP’s campaigning. Lieberman believes that this is a war that can be won - that terrorists wish to destroy all of us and that we can possibly destroy all of them. The world will go on forever with terrorists and “freedom loving folk” alike in an enduring battle until, as the Israeli Ambassador to the US put it, “they start loving their children more than they hate us.” Sending 150,000 troops into their sovereign territory only makes them hate us more. Telling millions of airplane passengers that they are quite literally going to have to be treated like cattle in order to fly makes us hate our governments. That’s why Lieberman lost.

The BBC is running non-stop stories about the foiled terror plot to blow up 10 planes from the US to the UK leading to “loss of life on an unprecedented scale.” It is difficult to put this into perspective without sounding dismissive - more people were killed in September 11th than would have been on 10 transatlantic planes. If you consider more than one day’s worth of killings, more people die in automobile accidents in a month or due to violence in Iraq in the same time period. As many people die from lung cancer in a week. 8 million people were killed during World War II. In one day in 1915 over 5,000 Armenians were killed by the Turkish government. Unprecedented? How about unhelpful. Let Scotland Yard, the FBI and the CIA do their jobs and let the 1 million air passengers who fly each day do so and take the risks that we have been taking for decades. This isn’t the first time it was dangerous to fly and it won’t be the last. We are still statistically safer on an airplane than in our own living rooms.

After Scotland yard uncovered a plot to blow up more airplanes, the UK government has reevaluated what you can bring on flights leaving from airports in the UK. You could make a mint sending everything via FedEx and shipping the passengers naked.

Follow-up - the TSA has imposed similar restrictions including no beverages. I second Bruce Schneier’s feelings: I’m glad I’m not planning on flying anywhere anytime soon. This is pure craziness - if we can’t fly because our government is paranoid then I’m pretty sure any eager terrorists have successfully accomplished their goal of terrorizing us.

I’m fairly comfortable claming that my displeasure with the thought of being blown up in an airplane equals that of most people.  Thanks to the propensity of our government to overreact I am at least temporarily saved from this possibility.  The American and UK governments have reduced the casualty risk by at least one.  Short Delta, AA - long Amtrak.

Ned Batchelder quotes columnists from the Boston Globe and New York Times (both owned by the NYT) performing reductio ad absurdum using the judges’ arguments in two recent rulings upholding the states right to refuse marriage licenses to gay couples.  Ned makes a very good point, the counter arguments are flimsy at best and the sensible among us will come around.

Robyn E. Blumner of the St. Petersburg Times writes about her dream that Al Gore will run for President in 2008.  She pulls in a choice quotation from Gore’s interview with Rolling Stone and follows it up with a good contrasting point.  Here is what might be a combined pitch line:

The GOP spent the past eight years borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Middle East just to bring it here and destroy the planet that our children will inherit.  And what the Republican’s are worried about today is whether their kids are going to pay any taxes on it.

In a stroke of legislative genius, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to restrict access from any library, school or public building to any social website through which independent internet users can post comments or engage in any social behavior. With so many sexual predators sitting at home soliciting minors through social networking, the legislature sought to remove the possibility that anyone might fall vicitim to the Internet version of free candy while under the supervision of responsible librarians, teachers and government officials. In one simple bill, Congress has brilliantly obviated the need to shield public officials from litigation should some kid get into the car of an adult so long as they first met on myspace. Parent’s have been doing such a great job or monitoring their children’s Internet usage that Congress felt it proper to simply disallow any public Internet access that might be used for socialization. In a bout of paranoia paralleled only by that experienced at the height of the cold war, when asked why they might choose to restrict what is arguably the most useful aspect of the Internet an anonymous Congressman answered, “it’s a series of tubes.”

The only good part of the recent Washing State Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage is the dissent:

“The plurality and concurrence condone blatant discrimination against Washington’s gay and lesbian citizens,” Justice Fairhurst wrote, adding that the 1998 law “was motivated solely by animus toward homosexuals.”

If you have an extra few hours, read through the six opinions, size of which were dissent.