Hamdan Blog Explosion

I'm not a lawyer and have nothing particularly to add to the enormous burst of electrons flying about the blogospere right now. One opinion I read makes a lot of sense and I suspect it's a lot closer to what the upshot of this decision will be than a lot of the hyperventilation going on right now.

Because, at the end of the day, something has to be done with the detainees.

Andrew Cochran at the Counterterrorism Blog has a thoughtful take on it that sounds right to my ear:

The decision is actually a huge political gift to President Bush, and the detainees will not be released that easily. The President and GOP leaders will propose a bill to override the decision and keep the terrorists in jail until they are securely transferred to host countries for permanent punishment. The Administration and its allies will release plenty of information on the terrorist acts committed by the detainees for which they were detained (see this great ABC News interview with the Gitmo warden). They will also release information about those terrorist acts committed by Gitmo prisoners after they were released. They will challenge the "judicial interference with national security" and challenge dissenting Congressmen and civil libertarians to either stand with the terrorists or the American people. The Pentagon will continue to release a small number of detainees as circumstances allow. The bill will pass easily and quickly. And if the Supremes invalidate that law, we'll see another legislative response, and another, until they get it right. Just watch.

Something does, indeed, have to be done, and Congress will work with the White House to make sure it happens.

Skywatching

The shuttle launch this weekend will provide an unusual opportunity to see the shuttle and the International Space Station flying in formation. (Provided the shuttle launches on time, of course).

With liftoff of the Space Shuttle Discovery planned for Saturday afternoon, skywatchers across much of the United States and southern Canada could possibly be in for a real treat on Saturday and Sunday evenings. 

Should weather conditions permit, first in Florida to allow the launch [updates here] and then where you live to offer a clear view, there will be a spectacular opportunity to see both the Discovery and the International Space Station (ISS) flying across your local sky.

This is a sight that should easily be visible to anyone, even from brightly-lit cities.

Other satellites too

The appearance of either the Space Shuttle or the International Space Station moving across the sky is not in itself unusual. Truth be told, on any clear evening within a couple of hours of local sunset and with no optical aid, you can usually spot several orbiting Earth satellites creeping across the sky like moving stars.  Satellites become visible only when they are in sunlight and the observer is in deep twilight or darkness. This usually means shortly after dusk or before dawn. 

An nice opportunity to do a little skywatching, weather permitting. There are even sites which will tell you where to look and the best times to look.

Chris Peat's Heavens Above (http://www.heavens-above.com/)

NASA's SkyWatch (http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/)

Science@NASA‘s J-Pass (http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/JPass/)

I'll be out there Saturday evening, I think.

The French Are So Amusing

The French have come out firmly and strongly against the arrest of Hamas members. What a great bunch of folks.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy condemned the arrest of the Hamas officials, saying that diplomacy was the only solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that political figures should not be arrested.

Israel stated that the arrests were made as part of a criminal investigation into the Hamas officials' involvement in a terrorist organization. Israeli officials insisted that the detainees would be entitled to legal representation, and would be released if suspicions against them were proved unfounded.

You have factions in the Palestinian territories who have kidnapped people, with Hamas support. You have factions who murder kidnapped students. You have factions who claim to have launched chemical weapons into Israel. You have factions that bombard civilians with rockets. You have factions that send murder bombers walking into fast food restaurants.

And you honestly think negotiations will work?

The French: Terminal rectal-cranial inversion.

Money Can’t Buy Happiness

Researchers have wasted a bunch of time and money completed a study to prove conclusively that money doesn't buy happiness.

Your next raise might buy you a more lavish vacation, a better car, or a few extra bedrooms, but it's not likely to buy you much happiness.

Measuring the quality of people's daily lives via surveys, the results of a study published in the June 30 issue of journal Science reveals that income plays a rather insignificant role in day-to-day happiness.

Although most people imagine that if they had more money they could do more fun things and perhaps be happier, the reality seems to be that those with higher incomes tend to be tenser, and spend less time on simple leisurely activities.

Scaling bad mood

In 2004, the researchers developed a survey tool that measures people's quality of daily lives. Then they asked 909 employed women to record the previous day's activities and their feelings towards them.

The study focused on women because the researchers wanted to study a homogeneous group while the surveys were in the early developmental stages.

Recently, the researchers revisited the data from the 2004 and focused on correlating the amount of income with the percentage of time each participant reported as being in a bad mood each day.

It was expected that those who made less than $20,000 a year would spend 32 percent more of their time in a bad mood than those that had an annual income greater than $100,000.

In reality, the low-income group spent only 12 percent more time in a bad mood than their wealthier counterparts. This suggests that the link between income and mood has been perhaps overstated. 

The researchers once again surveyed another group of women in 2005. In this study, participants not only recorded their overall satisfaction with life but a moment-to-moment account of their contentment.

The results showed that higher income had less of a correlation with momentary happiness than with overall life satisfaction.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard see a distinct flaw in the research methodology. The researchers relied on indirect measurements and surveys. This approach makes the data highly questionable and open to interpretation. We therefore volunteer for a more direct, quantifiable study of the issue. Please send large sums of cash  to us here and we will report on how happy that makes us!

Simple, isn't it? Oh, and small bills with non-consecutive serial numbers preferred!

Americans Deserve Better

Robert Cox has an op-ed in the Examiner that tears into Bill Keller's poor "explanation" of why the New York Times published the details of the money transfer monitoring program.

This past Sunday, The Times’ executive editor published an open letter in which Keller incoherently weaves together disparate threads of past Times coverage of the run-up to the Iraq war, the Bay of Pigs invasion, administration criticism of media reporting of terror attacks in Iraq and other recent disclosures of covert intelligence operations appends a detailed critique of what purports to be the Bush administration’s case for holding off on the SWIFT story and ties up the entire package with the risible assertion that The Times decision was not borne of “any animus toward the current administration.” Nowhere does Keller address the particulars of why he felt it necessary to run the SWIFT story last Friday.

Americans deserve better.

Keller claims, “some experts familiar with the program have doubts about its legality” but the article cites only one expert, L. Richard Fischer, and presents him as unfamiliar with the details of the program. The New York Times quotes a “former senior counterterrorism official,” saying, “The capability here is awesome or, depending on where you’re sitting, troubling “the potential for abuse is enormous” without disclosing whether this former official might have some axe to grind against the administration. Richard Clarke, anyone? The paper claims “Nearly 20 current and former government officials and industry executives discussed aspects of the Swift operation with The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the program remains classified.” Why is it “nearly 20” and not “19.” Will the Times go back to those 19 people and get them on the record now that the program has been made public? The Times’ claims “Some of those officials expressed reservations about the program.” How many is “some?” Fifteen? Two? If two, then which two?

Cox has hit this one on the head. The Times asks us to take them at their word, but has a poor track record on their veracity. Keller believes that the Times is granted an oversight role on the government. Who oversees them, then? An unelected elite telling us what we should know and what the government may not keep secret?

One of the things I find amusing about this situation is that many of the defenders of the Times are fulminating about the "lockstep" the more right leaning bloggers are displaying on this condemnation of the Times' actions. I can only speak for myself here, but unlike Kos and other big name leftwing bloggers, I am on no mailing lists that coordinate messages. I choose what I want to blog about and make up my own mind about my position on things. Methinks they projectith a bit too much.

Read the Examiner, it's a well written critique.

AP Slips Up

I really don't know how this got past the editors at the AP. "Economy zips ahead at a 5.6 percent pace". It's almost like they couldn't figure out any fresh ways to spin this in a negative direction.

WASHINGTON - The economy sprang out of a year-end rut and zipped ahead in the opening quarter of this year at a 5.6 percent pace, the fastest in 2 1/2 years and even stronger than previously thought.

The new snapshot of gross domestic product for the January-to-March period exceeded the 5.3 percent growth rate estimated a month ago, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The upgraded reading — based on more complete information — matched economists' forecasts.

The stronger GDP figure mostly reflected an improvement in the country's trade deficit, which was much less of a drag than previously estimated.

Gross domestic product measures the value of all goods and services produced within the United States and is considered the best barometer of the country's economic fitness.

On Wall Street, stocks got a lift from the good GDP news. The Dow Jones industrials gained 72 points and the Nasdaq was up 23 points in morning trading.

Oh, never mind, here's the spin. But weirdly, they stuck it toward the end. How soon until the rewrite?

Fresher barometers, however, suggest the economy is shifting into a lower gear in the current quarter.

In a separate report, the Labor Department said that new claims filed for unemployment benefits last week rose by 4,000 to 313,000 — a bit more than economists were expecting.

Economists predict that economic growth in the April-to-June quarter probably slowed to a pace of around 2.5 percent to 3 percent. High energy prices and a more moderate housing market will play roles in the expected slowdown in overall economic activity.

If that turns out to be the case, the economy will have registered a seesaw-like pattern of growth in the last few quarters.

VA Laptop Recovered

The laptop computer stolen in a burglary that contained sensitive data identifying veterans and active service members has been recovered.

WASHINGTON - The government has recovered the stolen laptop computer and hard drive containing sensitive data for up to 26.5 million veterans and military personnel, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Thursday.

Nicholson said law enforcement officials were still investigating to determine whether data from the equipment, which included names, birth dates and Social Security numbers, had been duplicated or utilized in any way.

So far, he said there have been no reports of identity theft stemming from the May 3 burglary at a VA employee's Maryland home.

"There is reason to be optimistic," Nicholson told a House committee at the opening of a hearing on one of the worst breaches of information security. "There is not a certainty, but we have to remain hopeful they have not been compromised."

Nicholson offered no immediate details on how the laptop was recovered. He acknowledged that the burglary "has brought to the light of day some real deficiencies in the manner we handled personal data."

"If there's a redeeming part of this, I think we can turn this around," he said.

Newly discovered documents show that the VA analyst blamed for losing the laptop had received permission to work from home with data that included millions of Social Security numbers and other personal information on veterans and military personnel.

This is a good thing. With the new rules being enacted by OMB, there may be better control in the future at least.

Dark Whisperings

Romanian politicians are opening an inquiry in hopes of tracking down the villains who have done so much damage to that country in the past year. The darkest suspicions seem to be aimed at Russia although nobody will actually name that nation quite yet. Instead they use expressions like: "a great power east of Romania which is increasingly annoyed by Bucharest's policies on the Black Sea region". That kind of limits the choices. Nonetheless, the Romanian Senate wants answers and they want them now.

Who is controlling the weather and causing floods.

BUCHAREST (AFP) - The Romanian senate has opened an inquiry into "indications" that floods that have battered the country were the result of a "metereological war waged by a foreign power," a senator said.

"We are planning to check indications and information that the extreme metereological phenomena experienced in July and August 2005 were caused by human technology controlled from abroad," Dan Carlan told AFP on Thursday.

Carlan, who initiated the probe, said officials in the agriculture ministry had suggested that unusually heavy rain that fell in eastern Romania last year resulted from "a pattern of humidity directed from the Black Sea towards this region."

But ministry spokesman Adrian Tibu said the senators had got hold of the wrong end of the stick.

"They have mistakenly interpreted the remarks of our experts, who in no way talked of such a possibility," he said.

Extreme right leader Corneliu Vadim Tudor said however he was convinced that Romania was "the victim of a metereological attack."

Lord, when will all these ludicrous, wild-eyed conspiracy theories end? Russia controlling the weather, indeed.

Everyone knows it's Karl Rove.

Hewitt Slaps The Times Two

Hugh Hewitt has an excellent column up at Townhall taking the New York and Los Angeles Times' to task for their irresponsible reporting of secret programs.

Eric Lichtblau, one of two New York Times reporters who wrote the story on June 23 detailing the country’s use of the SWIFT system to track terrorist financing, told Editor & Publisher that “I don’t think we could reasonably be accused of moving too quickly…We waited so long that the competition caught up with us.”

Doyle McManus, Washington bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, told me in an wide-ranging interview on the story that all thought of restraint vanished when the New York Times posted its story. This despite the fact that McManus, in response to my question whether it was possible that “the story will in fact help terrorists elude capture,” McManus replied: “[I]t is conceivable.”

Mr. Lichtblau told Editor & Publisher:

that in each case the newspaper believed that the information it was reporting would not put anyone in harm's way. ‘I think we came down on the same side in both questions,’ he said of the two stories. ‘That this is not giving away information that is tangibly helping terrorists know what they don't already know.’

You cannot balance what you have not weighed, and you cannot weigh what you cannot measure.

Neither of the Times Two possesses the capacity, background, experience or learning to judge the extent of the assistance they have rendered terrorists.

No “expert” they could consult would be in a position to contradict the government’s strong assertions of the danger they were putting innocents in via their recklessness.

Bill Keller, leader of the New York Times, asserted in a Sunday letter to his readers, that “A secondary argument against publishing the banking story was that publication would lead terrorists to change tactics. But that argument was made in a half-hearted way.”

On Monday, Treasury Secretary Snow, who had met with Keller, fired back in a letter, that “Your charge that our efforts to convince The New York Times not to publish were "half-hearted" is incorrect and offensive. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

In other words, Snow branded Keller a liar, as only lies are that far from the truth.

Hewitt hits the Times Two very hard indeed in this column. It's well worth taking the time to read the whole thing. 

Flipping and Flopping

Experts are warning people that the wearing of flip-flops to work can be detrimental to your career. Orthopedic specialists are also warning that they can be damaging to your feet over a period of time.

An online survey conducted for retailers Old Navy and Gap found flip-flops topped the list of wardrobe items that college and high school students planned to wear to work this summer.

More than 31 percent of women said flip-flops were the single "must have" item for work this summer.

But many companies disagree.

"The dress code says no beach wear and flip-flops are considered beach wear," said a spokeswoman for BNP Paribas.

Style gurus warn that flip-flops, which are worn mainly by younger women, could be harmful to a career.

"Shoes convey the mood of a woman. Wearing flip-flops conveys the mood that you are relaxed and on vacation. That's not a good message in the office," said Meghan Cleary, a style commentator who wrote the book "The Perfect Fit: What Your Shoes Say About You."

Doctors say it's not just careers they could harm.

Physicians at the American College of Foot and Ankle Surgeons say flip-flops are linked to a growing number of heel problems among teens and young adults.

"We're seeing more heel pain than ever in patients 15 to 25 years old, a group that usually doesn't have this problem," said spokeswoman Marybeth Crane in a recent statement.

She said flip-flops with thin soles have no arch support and can accentuate any abnormal biomechanics in foot motion which eventually brings pain and inflammation.

This may provide a clue as to why my youngest girl is having foot problems of late. She likes to wear flip-flops all day, every day. I think we'll try making her wear shoes for a while.

As to flip-flops being damaging to careers, everyone should have already known that. Just look at John Kerry.

Israeli Murdered

The 18-year old student abducted by Palestinians was murdered shortly after his abduction. The body has been recovered and the funeral is already underway.

Shin Bet agents and special IDF troops found the body buried in a field around 2:30 A.M. Thursday morning, and determined that he had been shot in the head soon after he was kidnapped Sunday. Soldiers arrested a militant in connection with the murder early Thursday morning.

Palestinian militants from the Popular Resistance Committees said they executed the teenager.

On Wednesday morning, a PRC spokesman, displaying Asheri's Israeli identification card, told Al-Jazeera satellite TV that the settler would be "butchered in front of TV cameras" if doesn't halt its incursion in the Gaza Strip, which began in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Security officials were, however, almost certain that Asheri had already been killed by then.

He said that the kidnapping was part of an operation called Rider's Rage, carried out by members of the Abu Yusef al-Guga and Abu al-Ataya Samhadane Brigades, a group named after two PRC leaders killed in IDF attacks.

"Our operatives succeeded in following the kidnapped person on his way between the settlement of Itamar and Beitar Ilit," the spokesman said.

Initial reports indicated that Asheri set out Sunday evening to hitchhike from the settlement of Beitar Illit, southwest of Bethlehem, in the direction of the Neveh Tzuf settlement, northwest of Ramallah, where he was completing a course.

He was on his way to a hike with other students from his course, and had been carrying a tent. He had not been heard from since.

This is a terrible strategy for the Palestinians, but then they really have shown they have completely lost any semblance of sanity recently.

Let’s Be Fair About This

Since Berkeley, California has it's own foreign policy, let's put measures on the ballots in other states to expel the People's Republic from the US! Fair's fair.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The municipal council in the liberal California city of Berkeley plans to give voters a say on a measure calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, the mayor said on Wednesday.

A number of local governments across the United States have pressed resolutions urging impeachment, but the Berkeley city council's goal is to be the first to put the issue directly to voters, Mayor Tom Bates said in an interview.

"This is basically giving the people a chance to talk, to join the debate," Bates said. "The issues go way beyond impeaching the president. They go to safeguarding the Constitution. This administration has run roughshod over the Constitution."

Cheered on by globe-trotting Iraq war protester Cindy Sheehan, who has moved to Berkeley, the council voted unanimously Tuesday night to have the city attorney review the measure to place it on the November ballot.

….

Berkeley resident Albert Sukoff said he was not surprised by the council's decision.

"I think they overextend themselves and get into things that aren't their business," said Sukoff. "Berkeley has always had a foreign policy, the national one notwithstanding."

Frankly, Berkeley would be better off attending it's own problems instead of pushing empty gestures into the ballot. I've always thought all these gesture referendums were about the silliest waste of time and effort possible. But "activists" love doing stuff like this because it generates media attention. I think they miss the point that it doesn't necessarily mean that they are getting favorable attention.

Flash Traffic - WMD Launched at Israel?

The al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade announced they have launched a chemical weapon at Israel. If they indeed did this, the Palestinian cause has been lost once and for all.

GAZA (Reuters) - A spokesman for gunmen in the Gaza Strip said they had fired a rocket tipped with a chemical warhead at Israel early on Thursday.

The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the claim by the spokesman from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement.

The group had recently claimed to possess about 20 biological warheads for the makeshift rockets commonly fired from Gaza at Israeli towns. This was the first time the group had claimed firing such a rocket.

"The al-Aqsa Brigades have fired one rocket with a chemical warhead" at southern Israel, Abu Qusai, a spokesman for the group, said in Gaza.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said the army had not detected that any such rocket was fired, nor was there any report of such a weapon hitting Israel.

Major tip of the hat to Michael at Liberty and Justice. Michael say:

If Al Aqsa or any other terrorist organization has WMD's the U.S. Europe and Israel must investigate how they got them. It is completely irrational to believe that, somehow, they were able to develop them by themselves: somebody must have delivered them to the Palestinians. Who else can it be than Syria or Iran?

Playing Politics

The Washington Post has an article up this morning that accuses the White House of seeking to use the media revelations of the financial monitoring program for political advantage.

President Bush rallied Republicans with another attack on the media last night, in remarks that highlighted efforts at the White House and on Capitol Hill to gain momentum from recent disclosures about classified programs to fight terrorism.

Senior administration officials say the president was outraged by articles in the New York Times and other newspapers about a surveillance program in which the U.S. government has tapped international banking records for information about terrorist financing. But his comments at a Republican fundraiser in a St. Louis suburb yesterday, combined with new moves by GOP congressional leaders, showed how both are working to fan public anger and reap gains from the controversy during a midterm election year in which polls show they are running against stiff headwinds.

Democrats, for their part, denounced Republicans for trying to divert attention from issues such as the Iraq war and high gasoline prices, and some terrorism experts said the White House is exaggerating the damage.

First thing, what was the purpose of the leaker(s) of the program? Oh, that would be to play politics. To fail to respond to this would be to give the leaker(s) the political advantage. Which is what the Democrats mentioned above are really complaining about.

"This program has been a vital tool in the war on terror," the president said, receiving a standing ovation. "There can be no excuse for anyone entrusted with vital intelligence to leak it and no excuse for any newspaper to print it."

Hours before Bush spoke, Democrats denounced what they saw as a White House-inspired campaign.

"This is all so people don't realize what else is going on," especially in Iraq, said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), who is heading his party's efforts to regain control of the House in the November elections. "This is disingenuous of both the White House and House Republicans."

The White House dismissed such claims. "This is not press-bashing. This is a clear disagreement about a decision to reveal a classified program," White House counselor Dan Bartlett said in an e-mail exchange. "Are we supposed to just sit back and take it?"

Well, that would appear to be what the Democrats - and the media - would prefer, it seems. The New York Times chose to publish details of a program that appears to have broken no laws, has been effective at catching terrorists and has not been shown to have damaged a single American's rights. All the back-peddling in the world will not put Humpty back together again. This program is dead, and the Times and others who chose to run the story did the damage. There should be some penalty for that.

Bear Left

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard hate to keep being the bearers of bad news, but the animal uprising is simply too important to ignore. We've been warning about the bears being on the march the past few days, and now there is still more evidence. A grizzly bear has just escaped from a resort where he had been living for the second time in a few days.

GOLDEN, British Columbia - A freedom-loving grizzly bear named Boo smashed a heavy steel door and barreled through two electric fences to escape a second time from a resort near this south-central British Columbia town.

Boo was recaptured Friday, two weeks after breaking out of an artificial den at the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, but escaped from tighter confinement within a day, resort spokesman Michael Dalzell said Tuesday.

"It's unbelievable," Dalzell said. "We thought there was no way, it was absolutely impossible, but he found a way. It was basically like breaking out of Fort Knox."

He said the bear bashed a nearly 400-pound steel door off its four bolts, destroyed an electrical box while tearing through two electric fences and scrambled over a 12-foot fence anchored with 2 feet of steel below ground.

"I think he just kept charging it (the door) and charging it until it broke off its bolts," Dalzell said. "Everything was completely trashed. We are dealing with a pretty smart and determined bear."

The search team that caught Boo on Friday went back to work Sunday morning but saw no sign of the grizzly after logging more than 50 hours in a helicopter.

Resort staff had planned to neuter Boo, but he got away first. Once he's located, authorities will decide whether to try to recapture him again, Dalzell said.

"Right now we are in the process of looking for him . . . we are not out to try to trap or tranquilize him," he said. "We are looking at all options. Obviously, we need to just really look at our program and figure this one out."

The bear has lived inside a 22-acre enclosure since his mother was illegally shot by a hunter in 2002. It's unclear if he could fend for himself and, being used to humans, would likely be a problem in the wild, experts said.

That is one motivated bear. Still, this is just more proof that the bears are trying to gather as part of the nefarious plot of the animals. Not that we wouldn't try to escape if we knew about what they had planned for us, too.