Democrats for...democracy

So, this happened tonight at the second night of the Democratic National Committee's convention in Charlotte, NC.



To put it all into context, there was a lot of hullaballoo about the fact that the DNC's platform, voted on and passed on the first night of the convention, differed greatly from the 2008 platform in leaving out "God" in a section where God was previously acknowledged and on the matter of Israel's security -- one of the U.S.'s strongest allies.

The language that was voted on included a declaration that Jerusalem "is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths." Such language was in the 2008 platform, but the 2012 platform only made reference to a "commitment to Israel's security."

Also, it included a call for a government that "gives everyone willing to work hard the change to make the most of their God-given potential." 

As you can see, they did not have their ducks in line when they took that vote. The change required 2/3 approval by all delegates. Anthony Villaraigosa (mayor of Los Angeles and convention chair) looked almost as if he was trying to convey a *hint, hint, wink, wink* to the crowd as he repeated his call for the votes not once, but twice before making a wholly indefensible decision that the "ayes" had it.

Reports coming in from Twitter suggested either that the "nos" were in the majority or that the vote was too close to call. Some delegates are even questioning whether a quorum was present to make the vote official.

Had the party any integrity, Villaraigosa would have admitted that it was too close to call and requested a roll call vote. Because the party's platform is meant to be represent the guiding principles under which all party members will campaign. What goes into that platform matters most to grassroots political organizations. The delegates who represent party politics on the local level are bound to defend that platform to the people they engage, for better or worse.

The message the Democrats sent tonight was not just about their views or contentions on foreign policy or religion, though they are...interesting, I suspect, to many. In fact, I would say those revelations are subservient to a greater issue. 

No, the greater Voila! moment was the one where convention watchers across the country witnessed a political party's attitude toward the value of a vote.

What fresh hell is this? The administrative subpoena.

Wired's Threat Level blog this week had a great article on the rise in the federal government's use of the administrative subpoena in prosecuting the wars on drugs and terror, two initiatives that have arguably expanded well beyond their initial mandate.

House rules.

An administrative subpoena is kind of like a search warrant-lite. It is an official demand that the recipient produce information, records, data, etc. It does not require a judge's review or approval or a showing of probable cause, and it is not executed by law enforcement. A subpoena is free from the meatier restrictions of the Fourth Amendment, but it is subject to that amorphous legal standard of "reasonableness," which, despite precedent guidelines like "narrowly tailored" and "relevant," means little more than what the judge reviewing the challenge wants it to mean that day.

I won't rehash the Wired article because I think David Kravets did a fine job of reporting and contextualizing the facts, which are sufficiently disturbing with their depiction of government's Stretch Armstrong-like creeping reach. But I cannot emphasize enough how corrosive these practices have become to our Fourth Amendment rights and to the bulwarks of checks and balances.

There seems to be a domino effect of administrative subpoenas that allow the executive branch to go on fishing expeditions, which have historically been detested by courts for their intrusiveness into private lives, even at the risk of not prosecuting a guilty person. But that's the beauty of our system: a man is innocent until proven guilty. And it's a hard thing to prove. It should be a hard thing to prove; not because we want criminals to get away, but because we don't want innocent people socially rebuked or incarcerated.

Instead, we're seeing an odd willingness from courts to abdicate sole responsibility of defending the Constitution to Congress and the executive. I'm not advocating a rash of "activist judges," and I realize that under today's very hostile political climate that it is a fine line for the judiciary to walk, but I do expect the courts to have the fortitude to call a spade a spade.

However, the legislature takes the attitude that its job ends after the laws have been signed on this matter. And now that both courts and Congress have washed their hands of the matter, requiring only the illusion of accountability, the executive administrative and law enforcement agencies are left with carte blanche power. I'm not so cynical as to believe that every bureaucrat or police officer sets out with mustache-twirling intent. But it's not just a platitude that absolute power breeds absolute corruption.

From the perspective of a law-abiding citizen who enjoys her civil rights, this is going to get much worse. Have you ever tried to put a cat back into a bag?

The NSA is probably reading this blog...over your shoulder

Photo from Wired.com.

James Bamford wrote a great article for Wired.com on

the NSA's new spy center being built in the Utah desert.

This wouldn't be so disconcerting except that the NSA, an agency

that historically was tasked with preventing another surprise attack

after Pearl Harbor (and clearly, has done a bang-up job since)

has turned its spies inward.

This new facility will be monitoring the

U.S. telecommunications networks and

storing all the data it collects.

I find this particularly troubling considering

I had to OK a new set of Google privacy terms

just to post this.

Dear Delta, this sucks.

Fix it.

pen·al·ty • noun /ˈpenltē/

President Obama's Solicitor General finally spoke truth this week about the administration's healthcare reform law when he suggested that people who wanted to avoid the mandate could do so by choosing to earn less money.

Let that sink in for a moment.

"It’s a penalty on earning a certain amount of income and self insuring."

Solicitor General Neal Kumar Katyal defending the healthcare mandate

Just so we're clear, the government's STATED aim here is to discourage people from helping themselves as they would by seeking higher education and well-paying jobs, and choosing insurance plans that fit their needs and the needs of their families.

Are you pissed off yet?

Do you feel me?

The Texas legislature caved under federal pressure and pulled their anti-groping bill.

The bill, HB1937 would have made it a crime for security personnel to touch a person's private areas without probable cause, effectively putting a stop to the invasive -- and offensive -- TSA pat downs in Texas airports.

The Department of Justice responded by threatening

to shut down flights to and from the state.

The epitaph on the Fourth Amendment will read:

All I wanted was a little probable cause.

BOOK REVIEW: "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro

I had an ambitious reading list for the winter break between semesters, and this one wasn't initially on it. But, I kept hearing my friend Irene's voice in my head urging me to read "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ishiguro. In fact, she insisted that I read it before I saw the movie, which was my original intention.

I am now tremendously grateful for her advice.

That is not to say that the movie adaptation screwed the pooch -- it really didn't. In fact, the adaptation is one of the most faithful I've seen, with only very minor plot changes and worthy cuts to the length of certain sections of the story.

But, the voice of the narrator in the book is so much more powerful than in the movie. In the book, we are looking at the story solely from Kathy's perspective, a fact of which she reminds the reader frequently. And Kathy is a flawed character, not immune to bias and certainly not omniscient. The movie retains that lack of omniscience, but you get far more of a sense of being an observer outside the story than you do as if you were seeing the events from Kathy's eyes and ears. Changing from first- to third-person perspective is always a little jarring, though not necessarily detrimental to the story overall.

That being said, both the book and the movie affected me profoundly (as you may have guessed since I have now been spurred to write about it). It's been a long time since a fiction novel so moved me -- I think the last 15 pages of Ian McEwan's "Atonement" were the last to reward my rapt attention with such a gut punch.

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, 1) shame on you, and 2) there be some potential spoilers ahead, but I've done my best to keep my observations vague.

This is an incredible novel for book clubs because it is rich with themes to explore. The first very obvious theme has to to with medical and technological ethics. Certainly, this novel provides a fertile field for countless lofty discussions in this arena, but they would all be conducted in the abstract. In fact, I would love to get into a comparison of what it means to be human between this novel and Cormac McCarthy's "The Road."

That's all well and great and tends to make people feel like cigar-smoking intellectuals, but this novel is also deeply personal and deserves some attention to the themes closer to the heart and hearth.

The one theme I keep coming across in discussion circles is that of nature vs. nurture. The children in the book are brought up in a very fatalist environment; their lives are set and there is no need, indeed no encouragement of deep philosophical reflection. Human history, though, is rife with radical individuals who buck the status quo and start asking those questions. Tommy is clearly the closest character to meet this description, but yet he succumbs quietly. And, it's entirely possible that Kathy was simply going along with Tommy's quest knowing full-well the outcome having already resigned herself to it.

Another point I considered is the cycle of a life. When your life is so short, what are the stages of growth and maturity? People today generally have 70-80 years to consider their own mortality, and most would put it off until those last few. The characters in the book get to this acceptance very early in their lives, or perhaps they just never question it (going back to a nature vs. nurture discussion), and it's so painfully tragic to experience through Kathy's observations and Tommy's reactions because their nature -- or their learned submission, depending on how you view it -- is so out of sync with our own.

That's all I really want to say about it because I really don't want to ruin anything for anyone who wants to read the book or see the movie. But I do have to close this note with my favourite passage. The words are Tommy's, as recalled by Kathy. The imagery is beautiful and succinct, and it breaks my heart.

"I keep thinking about this river somewhere, whit the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the ends it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how I think it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever."

Who needs a tissue?

The ways we amuse ourselves

Two questions:

1) What would you do with yourself if stranded at the airport for 10 hours?

2) How big of a laugh do you think airport security got watching this chick?

We live in two different worlds

Everyone knows that China has tight reins on the internet that their citizens see, but most don't realize that the contrast between our internet and theirs is so stark.

Do a search on the U.S. version of Google Images for "Tiananmen," and this is the first result you get.

Do a search on the Chinese version of Google Images for "Tiananmen," and this is the first result you get.

Further search through the Chinese results turns up no images similar to the ones we in America would find.

Understandably, the Chinese government may be embarrassed by the images of the massacre, as most governments would be of their shameful pasts. But do do a quick search for "American slavery" and you'll come up with some pretty honest and harrowing images.

Ain't Democracy great?

The Daily Special 9.1.09

It's September. How did I miss April?

• My state is still on fire. Prayers and love for the families, friends, and firefighting emergency personnel out there battling the blaze.

• Which annoying type are you? My favourite: "The Bad Grammarian. "So sad about Fara Fauset but Im so gladd its friday yippe". Yes, I know the punctuation rules are different in the digital world. And, no, no one likes a spelling-Nazi schoolmarm. But you sound like a moron."

• The tools of modern justice are the same tools that hold your plumbing together.

• Big pimpin' in aisle 3.

• This kid really loves his bacon.

Power Tripping

I don't trust our government to efficiently screw in a light bulb, so I certainly don't think it should have anything to do with policing the internet. But that's just what Congress wants to allow the president to do.

The President. One man. With the power to control our access to information and communication. Think it'll never happen?

S.773 drafted by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.

First and foremost, I want to know exactly what constitutes a "cybersecurity emergency." I can not think of a single doomsday scenario that would justify turning any region of the United States into Burma, even temporarily.

This is bad news.

The Daily Special 8.4.09

• I was so excited about this last week and I'm still excited. Twenty-six episodes of She-Ra are now available on Hulu! Someone promised me a BattleCat, and I'm going to make them deliver.

• I don't know what everyone's so sad about, but the tally of Americans on anti-depression meds has shot up to nearly 27 million.

• People are up in arms about Pres. Obama being portrayed as The Joker, saying it's "mean-spirited," but no one fussed when Drew Friedman did it to Pres. Bush. Perhaps it's the exhaustion after the effort spent on that self-righteous indignation that's got people so down.

• In my personal opinion, former Pres. Bill Clinton has done more good out of office than he ever did in. So, I was happy to see that he's going to try to charm the North Korean government into releasing journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling. Godspeed, sir!

• I keep forgetting one or two at the end of this game.