For the Record

Pass a joint, get mandatory 5 years

according to a new sentencing provision before the House Judiciary Committee.

FYI, while we're waiting (perhaps fruitlessly) for this country to return to its senses: catnip (organic, of course) is almost as good.

Even an idiot can smell a rat

As Chris Hitchens does here, in discussing the suspect Ohio election results.

Louise Antony on the so-called "academic bill of rights"

Louise Antony, philosopher at The Ohio State University, sends along a report (in the form of a kick-ass letter to the editor) from the purple part of a red state.

The background: Larry Mumper, an Ohio state senator from Marion County (home to the Marion campus of OSU), has introduced into the state legislature David Horowitz’s so-called "academic bill of rights." One of the senior editors of the Columbus Dispatch, Joe Hallett, wrote a reasonably good opinion column criticizing the bill (though getting a few things wrong about the wording of the bill). But then the paper published an editorial urging colleges to attend to the "real" problem of liberal bias on college campuses, citing a survey done by Daniel Klein of the Jesuit-affliliated Santa Clara University. The editors allowed that it would not be a good idea to make the bill into law, as it is "unworkable."  Louise responds below:

To the Editor:

I write in response to Tuesday’s editorial, “Challenge to Colleges.” In regard to the so-called “academic bill of rights,” you concede that the bill is “unworkable,” yet allege that “the issue that spawned the bill is real.” This is pernicious nonsense.

Nonsense, because neither the Ohio bill’s sponsor, Larry Mumper, nor his puppeteer, David Horowitz (who authored the bill) has produced a scintilla of evidence either that liberal professors are abusing their authority or that conservative students have suffered for their beliefs. We professors pride ourselves, rightly, on our ability to bring multiple points of view to bear on the issues we teach, and to give each a fair hearing. (This much used to be acknowledged -- rightwingers used to criticize us for being “relativists,” because we encouraged students to make up their own minds about values.) Moreover, there is no evidence that any conservative student has been downgraded or otherwise penalized for his or her beliefs -- certainly not at OSU. There are, in any case, established greivance procedures in place to aid students -- if there were any -- who fear that instructor bias affected their grades.

Which brings me to the pernicious part. There are people in academia who are under siege because of their political beliefs, but they are hardly victims of liberal bias. They are far more apt to be individuals who have had the audacity to criticize U. S. foreign policy, particularly on the Middle East. I’ll mention three such cases. First: M. Shalid Alam, Professor of Economics at Northeastern University, has been made the target of a mail hate campaign and has received death threats because of an essay he wrote in Counterpunch arguing that the 9/11 attacks were part of an Islamist insurgency, but also that (in his own words) “these attacks were the result of a massive political failure of Muslims to resist their tyrannies locally.” Second, there’s the case of Joseph Massad, an untenured professor of Middle East Studies at Columbia University. He is undergoing a “review” by his university because of unsubstantiated allegations by Zionist extremists (not his students) that he is biased against Israel. His own students, Zionist and non-Zionist alike, line up to defend his integrity, but this counts for nothing. Finally, there is the notorious Ward Churchill. What columnist and professional whiner Jonah Goldberg forgot to mention in his pityparty for Larry Summers (2/14/05) is that Churchill is in danger of losing his job because of his political incorrectness, whereas Summers has only to endure polite rebuttals of his ignorant remarks. His job is secure.

The truth is that Mumper’s bill is the work of genuine “outside agitators:” Daniel Pipe’s Campus Watch. This organization has a very specific political agenda, namely, to suppress criticism of U.S. policy toward Israel and the Arab world. (They don’t like feminists or race theorists, either, but that’s another story.) Their Orwellian spin should fool no one -- they are enemies of academic freedom, not champions. True defenders of free speech do not agitate to deprive dissidents of their livelihoods; nor do they try to intimidate into silence those with whom they disagree.

Sincerely yours,

Louise Antony

Professor of Philosophy, OSU

Get your internet blocking talking points here

George Tenet suggests that in the future access to the Internet might be restricted to those "who can show that they take security seriously":

Former CIA Director George J. Tenet yesterday called for new security measures to guard against attacks on the United States that use the Internet, which he called "a potential Achilles' heel."

"I know that these actions will be controversial in this age when we still think the Internet is a free and open society with no control or accountability," he told an information-technology security conference in Washington, "but ultimately the Wild West must give way to governance and control."

The former CIA director said telecommunications -- and specifically the Internet -- are a back door through which terrorists and other enemies of the United States could attack the country, even though great strides have been made in securing the physical infrastructure.

[...]

The way the Internet was built might be part of the problem, he said. Its open architecture allows Web surfing, but that openness makes the system vulnerable, Mr. Tenet said.

Access to networks like the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who can show they take security seriously, he said.

[...]

The national press, including United Press International (UPI), were excluded from yesterday's event, at Mr. Tenet's request, organizers said.

As Benj notes, this may be one place where the demands of corporate capitalism may work to our advantage.  There's no way corporations are going to allow access to their on-line stores to be restricted.

Italy using Fascist-era "crime of opinion" laws to prosecute non-violent anti-capitalist protesters

for intentions to "violently subvert the constituted economic order of the state":

Italy faces what is widely seen as an assault on the right to demonstrate this week after it was announced that 13 members of a flamboyant, although non-violent, radical group are to be tried for "crimes" which could put them behind bars for years.

They make no bones about their contempt for capitalism and consumerism and their desire to change the system. And they were present in strength at the protests against the G8 summit in the northern Italian city of Genoa in July 2002 which ended in bloody violence and mass casualties among police and demonstrators.

But the 13 members of Italy's "disobbedienti" group who go on trial next week are not charged with crimes of assault or vandalism. Instead, they face grave but abstract accusations: "political conspiracy ... with the aim of disrupting the functions of the government"; "making subversive propaganda, and creating an association of 20,000 people to violently subvert the constituted economic order of the state".

Republicans in Congress attempting to legalize "extraordinary rendition"

In other words, "torture-by-proxy": sending suspects to countries that practice torture during interrogation. This is, for example, what happened to Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was grabbed by U.S. immigration in NYC and sent to Syria, where he was tortured and practically buried alive for almost a year. Please read this post on the issue and take action -- the provision is being smuggled into a bill implementing the 9/11 commission report recommendations, and could come up as early as next week.

No doubt your outrage-ometer could use a little comic relief. Hard to believe there is any humor to be found in this situation, but somehow Fafblog does it. Thanks, Fafblog!

And BTW: if you're reading this and you're still a Republican, what's your problem?

Republican Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell violating 1971 Voting Rights Act

This is already on Kos and Eschaton, but it's important enough to reiterate. After all, one of the virtues of blogs is that they, unlike the corporate news media, can emphasize what should be emphasized.

So here's the story, if you don't know it already. Back in the days before voter registration information was electronically stored, Ohio required that voter registrations be on 80 lb paper. Of course the statute hasn't been enforced for decades, but all of a sudden Thuglican Blackwell has decided to implement it, in a transparent attempt to block at least some of the many new Democratic registrees from voting. See the details here.

Too bad Blackwell didn't notice that his gross attempt to subvert democracy violates the 1971 voting rights act:

No person acting under color of law shall - [...]

deny the right of any individual to vote in any election because of an error or omission on any record or paper relating to any application, registration, or other act requisite to voting, if such error or omission is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under State law to vote in such election

This is the sort of thing that is making my blood boil. What's required here is a deluge of Blackwell's office via email and phone calls. Please take the time to let Blackwell know he can't get away with this sort of thing:

J. Kenneth Blackwell-R
180 E. Broad St., 15th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
614-466-3910
E-Mail: [email protected]

UPDATE: ACT is on the job with a petition to Blackwell that you can sign.

It may be more effective to contact the various board of elections supervisers. Sample letters and other contact info for the local boards can be found in the comment thread for the aforelinked MyDD post.

UPDATE: More Thuglican attempts to disenfranchise voters are occurring in Arizona, via Chris Roads, a Republican and a Pima County election official, with the help of the local T.V. station Fox 11, a Fox affiliate. Unbelievable!

The story here is that on August 31, Fox 11 ran a broadcast citing Roads as indicating that students attending college in AZ might be committing a felony (!) by registering to vote. (The transcript from the August 31 broadcast, is mysteriously missing from the Fox 11 site -- who's surprised?) Roads now claims that his remarks were "misrepresented" by the station, though he never offered a clarification, and Fox 11 says that they spoke with him several days after their original broadcast, and he stood by his (correctly interpreted?) remarks.

That's fishy enough. Fox 11 broadcast a repeat of the story (scroll down to see Natalie Tejeda's "Registering to Vote Could be a Felony for Some" here) on September 9, weirdly (or conveniently?) enough the same day that Ann Rodriguez, Chris Roads' boss, released her statement to the effect that any student residing in AZ for 29 days prior to the election can register to vote.

In any case no correction to the information that had been falsely transmitted was made, until Sept 24 (see "Student Voters at UA" here) when they finally noted Rodriguez's clarification.

Please contact Fox 11 to complain about how long it took them to correct their broadcast misinformation after Rodriguez released her statement.

1994 Supreme Court ruling on yard signs

Apropos of recent attempts to inhibit the posting of (anti-Bush) yard signs, this U.S. Supreme Court ruling that an ordinance restricting yard signs violated the First Amendment.

Rightwingers rush vote on the Hate Amendment

in TWO days. If passed, this will be the first constitutional amendment to deny rights to a constituency. This is an outrage of the first order. Please call your representatives and senators NOW!

First, sign the MoveOn petition.

After signing, they'll send you more details about who to contact.

UPDATE (Benj): Seems unlikely it'll get the 60 votes needed to get off the floor in the Senate.

The damage to our souls

Well, U.S. News has obtained the classified sections in the Taguba report on Abu Ghraib. In addition to the sexual humiliation, physical and psychological torture, and lots of unexplained deaths, we've also got inedible food and conditions involving walking around knee-deep in mud and shit... the sort of thing one wouldn't wish on barnyard animals, much less human beings (70-90% of whom are innocent uncharged detainees, recall):

Another classified annex reported that the prison complex was seriously overcrowded, with detainees often held for months without ever being interrogated. Detainees walked around in knee-deep mud, "defecating and urinating all over the compounds," said Capt. James Jones, commander of the 229th MP Battalion. "I don't know how there's not rioting every day," he testified.

Among the more shocking exchanges revealed in the Taguba classified annexes are a series of E-mails sent by Major David Dinenna of the 320th MP Battalion. The E-mails, sent in October and November to Major William Green of the 800th MP Brigade, and copied to the higher chain of command, show a quixotic attempt to simply get the detainees at Abu Graib edible food. Dinenna pressed repeatedly for food that wouldn't make prisoners vomit. He criticized the private food contractor for shorting the facility on hundreds of meals a day, and for providing food containing bugs, rats, and dirt.

Oh, and one hardly needs to ask what "private food contractor" was providing the inedible food... of course it was Halliburton.

And apropos of the horrors of war, do read Body and Soul's discussion of an article in this week's New Yorker, The Price of Valor. Speaking of the misery that accompanies killing, Jeanne says:

This is one of the main reasons for doing everything in our power to avoid war -- we cannot avoid the damage it does to our souls.

Yes, of course. And I found this comment on Jeanne's post particularly noteworthy:

I repeat, see the short film "Let There Be Light" made by John Huston for the Army Signal Corps at the end of WWII. It deals directly with this issue as it is about the treatment given to returning soldiers who suffered from "battle fatigue."

The film is incredibly moving: the soldier who could not speak because the sound of Sss reminded him too much of incoming shells being given a dose of sodium amytol and saying over and over again, "I can talk! I can talk!"; the ending showing soldiers lined up on the parade ground for mustering out while the voice-over asks, "How do you think you should be treated now?" and individual soldiers answer, "We should be treated like anyone else. What we went through is not made to be borne by human flesh or minds. Nobody is strong enough to withstand the force of war."