Agency Files Suit for Cheney Papers on Energy Policy

Turns out the whole reason he's staying in this "undisclosed location" is that he's avoiding a subpoena.

Olympic blast suspect still haunting officials

If you see this face, shoot to kill.

Eric Robert Rudolph is probably America's most successful domestic terrorist. Oh, McVeigh killed more, but he was a flash in the pan, and the Unabomber lasted longer but he was a small-timer. Rudolph's reign of terror included the 1996 Olympic bombing, bombing of an abortion clinic and of a gay bar, and finally another abortion clinic bombing -- one in my hometown of Birmingham in which a police officer was killed.

A lot of people think Rudolph is dead; since he went into the North Carolina woods to hide, he hasn't been seen. If he is dead, we'll probably never know about it. If he isn't... Well, he'll be back.

Gays, others rally for less of Moore

Oh, the Birmingham News headline writers think they're clever!

"Others" include members of church groups -- the Episcopal Church's Diocese of Alabama was mentioned. Of course, I expect that "outside agitators" (does that take you back, or what?) will get blamed; the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force was represented as well.

Moore is not going anywhere. The man has no shame. He probably can't/won't be impeached, either. He's going to be around for three more years, at least, which is good news for reporters if for nobody else.

Kmart campaign has new ads directed by Spike Lee

You can't make this sort of thing up. You think Spike knows about Kmart's (alleged) tendency to shadow minority shoppers around the store to make sure they don't steal anything? Think he cares?

Monsanto Held Liable For PCB Dumping (washingtonpost.com)

I'm pretty familiar with the Alabama civil justice system, so I'll walk through what will happen:

1) In the damage phase of the trial, the jury will come back with a ridiculously large verdict, one possibly larger than the value of the Monsanto spinoff found liable here.

2) This will cause the advocates for "tort reform" to go nuts and write editorials, calling for damage caps.

3) The Business Council of Alabama will raise more money to get more Republicans elected to the judiciary and legislature.

4) Quietly, the damages will be reduced to something more reasonable, either through negotiation or a judge. No one will notice.

CNN.com - Senator: Al Qaeda cells inside United States - February 23, 2002

I just hope that this time this Senator didn't open his big yap before the information was declassified.

There might be 100 al-Qaeda people in the US, but I bet -- judging by the general run of al-Qaeda we've seen since 9-11 -- their effective number is much smaller. Their best and brightest were the men on those planes; what's left over are the Shoebombers and the like.

Of course, a clown can do damage, if we're not careful.

The Miami Herald | 02/23/2002 | Colombian troops retake base; civilian bombing deaths reported

I have no sympathy with the "drug war", which is an insane boondoggle. But this segment of it is something different, and good for the Colombian government that they're taking back their country from the narco-rebels.

Down with Oncle Sam!
Jo Johnson on France’s latest bout of anti-American paranoia

Memo to any French people who for some reason might be reading this:

The idea of an American conspiracy to bring about "the organised cretinisation of the French people" is of course absurd. The real truth? We're not too fond of you guys, but most of the time, we don't think about you at all. I can go days without thinking about France or French people at all, and I'm pretty engaged on foreign policy -- for an American, any way.

Europeans like to decry American parochialism, but they don't seem to realize what that means: for all the time you spend worrying about us, we spend very little of it thinking about you at all. What time we do spend thinking about other countries is mostly concerned with the Mother Country, or Canada, or Latin America, or Japan, or China. France is way down the list, and even when it comes up, it's mostly as a joke. (Jerry Lewis! Mickey Rourke! Mime!)

Accused Nazi's Citizenship Revoked (washingtonpost.com)

This has a terrific side effect, in that it might give Pat Buchanan a heart attack.

CNN.com - FBI increases security for Liberty Bell - February 21, 2002

You know, if I were a terrorist, I think I'd be an ironic terrorist, and the Liberty Bell would be my first target. One day, they'd open up Independence Hall, and they'd see that I'd soldered the crack in the bell. (Next: Groucho Marx glasses on Mt. Rushmore, probably Washington.)

Most of these terrorist warnings are just jokes, I expect. But you still have to take it seriously.

Hi, I'm William Shatner, tonight's guest on "Larry King Live", and I will sing the entire Barry Manilow catalog if you don't admit that Kirk kicks Picard's skinny European ass!

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Insurers to provide $60 million to settle claims of unfairness to blacks

The companies were overcharging black customers -- in this case, small fees for policies to cover burial expenses. I just hope none of these folks went in for cremation.

Daimnation!

Damian Penny has me listed as a "Damn Yankee". Some Southerners would be offended, but not I.

Me, I need to put the links at left in some kind of order, but haven't decided how to do it yet. For now, I point out four new links:

Turned Up to Eleven by Paul Orwin.

Child of the 80s, AKA "Wake Me Up on Judgment Day", by David Tepper.

Capital Influx, by (Alabama native) Elizabeth Spiers.

And Logorrhea, by an (anonymous) co-worker of mine, which isn't remotely a war log but shows the sort of thing I have to put up with around here.

Two Tales of Alabama (washingtonpost.com)

For anyone who came in late: When the word "Alabama" appears in a headline on the Washington Post or New York Times, its is never good news. That goes double for an editorial.

This one actually has its good element; the shocking win in the women's bobsled by the team featuring Alabama native (and UAB track coach) Vonetta Flowers. But mostly, it's about Chief "Justice" Roy Moore and his little tirade against gays and lesbians.

To the editors of the Post: Of course Roy Moore is unfit to serve. I already knew that; the man is a serial violator of the US Constitution. This is just another piece of evidence. But give it all the attention you can. He won't be impeached, but when elections roll around again maybe his paymasters will decide to back somebody else. We have a really bad case of inferiority complex here, and naitonal ridicule is probably only second (to judgments of the US Supreme Court) as a way of actually making progress.

Question to Yankees and other outside life forms: Is "Alabama" the state that works best for a "dumb redneck" punchline? Around here, we tend to make fun of Mississippi, and generally they are even worse, but then they have the Minority Leader of the Senate, and Elvis, and a great literary tradition (Faulkner, Welty, O'Connor). All we have is Harper Lee and a lot of great baseball players who were born here but became famous in New York or San Francisco or Atlanta.

Doctor gets prison, order to heal poor

The good news is, there are lots of poor people in prison, so he won't have to go far!

This Time, the Breaks Go Ohno's Way

So NBC is doing its best to focus all the attention on Apolo Ohno -- after all, Michelle Kwan wasn't skating yesterday -- and they decide to interview his father. Yuki Ohno.

I take one look at this guy, and I shout, "That's not 'Yuki' Ohno! That's Yoko Ohno!" There was a definite resemblance, and he was wearing those silly sunglasses.

I thought it was clever. But then, I was high on NyQuil.

Spy Planes Seek Out Philippine Guerrillas (washingtonpost.com)

This is what we can do to help the Filipino government. They have more than enough troops to handle the insurgents, and they don't want a big US presence on the ground. So we concentrate on training and on locating terrorist camps, and let the Filipinos do the actual fighting. Maybe we'll add some airstrikes. It's basically what we did in Afghanistan, of course.

Bush Begins China Visit; No Accord On Weapons (washingtonpost.com)

Hey, if you were running China, would you stop selling weapons to countries hostile to the US? I wouldn't. I wouldn't sell to Iran, but that's because Iran is a possible danger to me. But if I don't sell to countries hostile to the US, I wouldn't be making many sales. I mean, the US sells to the countries it's friendly with, and American weapons are better than Chinese.

And it's not like the US is cutting off Taiwan or India, is it?

There's not much in it for China. We're not going to impose any sanctions, and with intervention against al-Qaeda in Asia likely we want the Chinese quiet.

Dragonfly Stars Want To Believe

Kevin Costner, who plays a doctor wracked by the loss of his wife in the upcoming supernatural film Dragonfly, told SCI FI Wire that he had to believe in the unexplained as part of his performance.

"It helps that I'm intensely stupid," he didn't add.

BBC News | TV AND RADIO | Weakest Link 'bad for Thai youth'

This is one of those stories that has comedy in every paragraph. Just a few samples.

"'The show is promoting fierce competition and selfishness.' -- Thai National Youth Bureau"

(I think that would be a great blurb.)

"Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said he felt "stressed" after watching it."

"Internet bulletin boards and newspaper letters pages were full of complaints after the show's debut, when a teacher voted off the show wept and begged her pupils not to think she was stupid."

Best of all:

"The format has been a hit in the US."

LP News Online: March 2002: David Brin set to speak at National Convention

How about that? This'll blow the crypto-libertarians' minds.

Godzilla Meets the Capitalists From the Black Lagoon (washingtonpost.com)

Good to see that Joel Achenbach, after vanishing for a couple of months, is writing again...

Israeli Troops Kill 15 Palestinians (washingtonpost.com)

I'm firmly on the Israeli side here. But I don't see that this continual low-grade fighting is doing anyone any good. The Israeli people are getting sick of it, including those in the military. Israel is too small to keep this much of its productive capacity tied up fighting. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's time Sharon got more aggressive.

Limits on Media Ownership Voided (washingtonpost.com)

The ownership limits are not arbitrary; the airwaves are public property, licensed to private enterprise. The government has made the (100 percent correct) decision that the public interest is best served by having a wide variety of views represented. Instead, the DC Court of Appeals has opened the door for the era when all stations will be owned by AOL, Viacom, NewsCorp, or Disney. That is, if they don't gut antitrust law next, in which case Rupert will own everything.

TeeVee Station Break - In Praise of Curling

The Curling groundswell continues. I figure NBC Sports is this close to signing a deal with the professional curling association to broadcast two matches a week during the winter. They have to replace the NBA with something.

President Has Tough Words For N. Korea (washingtonpost.com)

For instance, "despotic". The President's people have a fun way with words. (I have no objection to the description, which is pretty much accurate. I just love words.) Anyway, he says there's "no intention of invading North Korea", though of course if there were he wouldn't say. I'm sure he'd prefer to settle things peacefully, but as long as North Korea is in the arms business, and trying to develop weapons of mass destruction, they're on the list.

Proposal expands teacher reviews

"Teacher reviews" meaning "background checks"; the stunning part of this proposal is that it's been accepted by the Alabama Education Association -- the Teacher's Union. They're extremely powerful, particularly in the Democratic Party (which still controls the Legislature); one year their head was actually the Democratic nominee for Governor. (He lost to a man who never graduated High School.) The union is always looking out for its members' interests, and that's fine, that's what unions do. That it's killed any meaningful education reform in this state is only a side effect. (Full disclosure: I am a [nonpaying] member of AEA.)

All political parties have their blind spots. I'm a Democrat, so I tend to see the Republicans' very well. My own party's are harder for me to see, but one (clearly, to my mind) is the opposition to anything that endangers the teachers' unions -- or rather, endangers their individual members. Education unions are a key Democratic constituency, and we don't want to endanger that. So the Democratic party winds up in opposition to teacher testing, and also to even experimenting with systems outside the usual public school paradigm. I'm not talking vouchers -- which I think is a stupid idea -- but there are other ideas on the "right" that I think are worth a shot.

In the long run, fixing the public schools would be good for the teachers, too. I think they realize that -- you don't become a teacher without some sort of desire for public service -- but they don't want the short-term pain. It would be great for the Democratic Party. The education issue is killing us, especially on the state level. It's a big reason -- maybe the biggest -- that all the big states except California have Republican governors.

ESPN.com - Bakken, Flowers bring home the gold for U.S.

I'm fairly certain that nobody from Birmingham has ever actually won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics before! Vonetta Flowers today became the first black athlete to win a Winter gold medal. Way to do the hometown proud.

CSICOP - Miss Cleo Watch

Thought I'd put this link up. CSICOP is going to keep track of Miss Cleo's legal troubles.

Ready to run
Vonetta Flowers: "We really believe that we can do something special here."

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that there aren't many Birmingham, AL natives on the Winter Olympic team. Vonetta Flowers is a track athlete turned bobsledder. Or "bobsleigher", if I remember correctly how NBC spelled the event in the opening ceremonies.

Yahoo! News - Ala. Court Rules Against Gay Mother

Via Oliver Willis; I don't know how I missed this except I hate hate hate the local TV news and the papers aren't making a big deal of it. (The Tuscaloosa News put the story on the bottom of the front page, and today has the mother's appeal on Page 6.)

I mentioned Roy Moore yesterday; he's the Ten Commandments local judge turned Alabama's top jurist. And he's a nutjob -- like most Alabama Republican politicians -- but even the one or two justices not considered nutjobs voted with him. The father in this case is an abuser; that didn't seem to register with the justices, or maybe they think that's a good thing. I wouldn't be surprised.

Leno's handling of Games gags seems to be more klutz than lutz

"During its first week, it's been unfunny, disjointed and -- at times -- downright irritating."

Sounds like the usual Jay Leno stuff to me.

Scientific American: Feature Article: Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor: February 2002

The first month's cable is free, kid.

For God's sake, GET OFF IT! Addiction is a physiological concept; this ridiculous labeling of everything anyone enjoys (TV, sex, food) as "addictions" only cheapens the real problems of people suffering from real addictions like those of alcohol, tobacco, and cocaine.

I can quit anytime.

State to stop paying court-appointed lawyers' overhead expenses

Alabama doesn't have full-time legal aid lawyers -- anywhere in the state, as far as I know -- and these court-appointed lawyers are all indigent defendants get. And a lot of lawyers are going to stop taking these cases if they can't get overhead expenses paid, and the ones left will be the lowest of the low. This won't keep the state from arguing that death row defendants got fair trials, of course.

Bush Says U.S. Will Pursue Campaign [Against Terrorism](washingtonpost.com)

Good for the President... By the way, since it's presumably a translation anyway, can we call the Japanese legislature something other than the "Diet"? It sounds like a sushi weight-loss program...

Anyway, if the Chinese and Russians are willing to stand by -- and South Korea is willing to cooperate -- I wonder if North Korea isn't going to be an immediate target. The place is a total basket case, and anyone who looks at it rationally (not you, Noam) would have to admit we'd be doing the people of North Korea a favor by taking their government down. And since technically hostilities between the North and the South (and the USA) never ended, we don't even need an excuse to go to war.

President Bush has been great, but he still has his foot-in-mouth moments.

The yen briefly dipped against the dollar Monday following a remark Bush made about "devaluation" during a news conference. Bush meant "deflation," but did not correct himself. On Saturday, he once again referred to the war on terrorism as a "crusade," a characterization that has offended Muslims.

Milosevic Claims Moral Victory in War Crimes Trial

One of the relatively few uses of the words "Milosevic" and "Moral" in the same sentence. And we all know how much moral victories are worth.

Milosevic brought out the conspiracy-theory explanation of the problems he in fact caused; the West wanted to break up Yugoslavia, Germany and the US were propping up independence movements, and so forth. One day I'm going to do a survey of the links between conspiracism and totalitarianism; it's not much of an exaggeration to say that all totalitarian leaders are conspiracists.

Virginia May Collect DNA in Every Arrest for a Felony

I assume this was probably inevitable; I don't know that it's constitutional, though.

Fifth-graders can't name 10, but come close

Be careful kids. If the state had its way, each Commandment would probably be 1% of your final grade.

Can commandments bill sidestep religion?

I love this state.

For several years, the Ten Commandments (the Exodus version, I guess) have been a hot-button issue here. The Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court made his name as a local judge due to his habit of displaying the Commandments in his courtroom; that is, the man charged as the ultimate interpreter of the Alabama Constitution is a serial offender of the United States Constitution.

The legislature, now, is trying to get around the (repeated) knockdowns the Federal courts have given them in their efforts to get religion (meaning, Protestant Christianity) into the schools. Now it's a "Historic Documents Act" that requires -- requires! -- schools to display the Commandments and several secular documents (the list varies between House and Senate versions) in "appropriate and significant places on public school premises". The Feds will strike this one down too. My tax dollars at work.

They say it's because the Commandments are a source of our laws. Well, let's see...

I am the Lord thy God. Thou shalt have no other Gods before Me.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Yep, you can sure see the parallels.

UA's McDonald to retire with own place in history

I took Forrest McDonald's Presidential History course at Alabama, and God did I hate that man. Nothing to do with his "paleo-conservative" (his words) politics, either, just his personality.

Iranian Courts Target Reformist Legislators (washingtonpost.com)

Iran's a lot different from the other members of the Axis of Evil. The other two are governed by cult-of-personality figures and are pretty much absolutist. Iran has essentially two governments running in parallel; the courts are part of the religious authorities, who are still supreme there. And in an effort to remain supreme, the courts are trying to take down members of the civil government.

We can not get involved in Iran right now; this is just about the only element of Administration foreign policy I'm dead set against. History appears to be on the side of the (democratically elected) civil government, and the ayatollahs are fighting a delaying action. But if we start getting involved there, it will strengthen anti-Americanism -- and that means strengthening Islamic extremism.

Oh, we could take over Iran, no problem, if we so desired. The US military is that strong. But eventually, we'd pull out, and Iran will face another two decades or more like the last two.