I have also asked Jim Lynch from bRight and Early to contribute a few posts - I really am not sure if I will be able to blog at all and hoped to spread the load out a bit. Jim's been kind enough to agree to help. Between Rich and Jim, regulars should have stuff to read.
Many thanks to Jim for his help.
Blogosphere | Gaius Saturday, 25 August , 2007 | 
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Rich posted about Martin Lewis' post over at the HuffnPuff advocating a military coup against the President of the United States. I have taken the precaution of saving every, single word on what is absolutely going to be consigned to the memory hole as soon as the HuffnPuff management realizes that they have allowed what is probably a violation of Federal law to occur on their site. (I am not going to spend gobs of time looking this up, but advocating the armed overthrow of the President is, I'm pretty sure, severely frowned on in the Code of Federal Regulations.)
There are, frankly, quite a few reasonable people trying to point out that Martin Lewis has a severe case of rectal-cranial impaction going on. He is stoutly defending his call to arms for the overthrow of the government. I'm actually surprised by that given the usual nature of the chorus line over there. Martin Lewis' biography states the following:
Starting his career as a protégé of fabled Beatles publicist Derek Taylor – he has had a storied 36-year history as a journalist, columnist, writer, humorist, monologist, comedic performer, radio host, TV host, TV correspondent, Master of Ceremonies, producer (of movies, TV, radio, DVDs, stage shows and record albums), talent manager, record company owner, independent film distributor, film-festival curator, political commentator, pioneering organizer of benefit events, human rights activist - and as an award-winning publicity & marketing strategist. He is also a noted raconteur and Bon Vivant!
So we can state with some authority that the man cannot hold a job. My guess is that the HuffnPuff will find his services are no longer required soon, also. Unless they enjoy visiting with the Secret Service.
UPDATE: Ok, this one is officially going asymptotic. The blogosphere is going completely nuts on this one. Others: Wake up America, Daily Pundit, QandO, Say Anything, The Moderate Voice, Hot Air, The American Mind, A Second Hand Conjecture, Captain Ed, J's Cafe Nette, Patterico, Prairie Pundit, Rusted Sky, Old Controller, Sister Toldjah, NewsBusters, California Yankee, STACLU,
UPDATE: Clayton Craymer did the heavy lifting (and cites the USC, not the CFR - I'm used to the latter from my years in the utility industry - sorry.)
So what has Martin Lewis done? See 18 USC 2385:
Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or
Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates,sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity,desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or
Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof -
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.
Next up: Martin Lewis, Live at Club Fed.
I was going to put up a post letting folks know that Rich Horton had been crazy good enough to help out around the place while I take a short trip with my wife. But he figured out the double secret password thingee too quickly.
Seriously, many thanks to Rich for helping me out here. I will definitely be out of touch tomorrow while we travel then see a few sights. I have no idea what kind of connection - if any - I will be able to get for the few days we are going to be away. If I can, I'll post, but Rich should help keep folks amused. He's off to a roaring start.
Thanks again, Rich.
Blogosphere | Gaius | Comments Off
Hello to all the Crabbers out there.
My name is Rich Horton and I have been asked to lend a hand here at the BCB while the fearless leader is away for a couple days. I thought it sounded like too much fun, so here I am. Some of you might know me from my own blog The Iconic Midwest or from my blogging at The Van Der Galiën Gazette. I promise to be as thoughtless and irresponsible here as I am on my other blogging duties. (Hey, it has gotten me this far.) But I will certainly try to keep everyone entertained.
To that end, I would like to thank the good folks at the HuffPo for providing such idiotic drivel for my very first post here. Aw, guy…you shouldn't have.
Really, you shouldn't have.
Some British born humorist over at the HuffPo is calling for General Pace to remove President Bush from his elected duties as Commander-in-Chief thereby removing the military from civilian control.
Really.
Dear General Pace,
I note with admiration your courage in making clear your private concerns about the safety of the US military and the longterm danger to US national security caused by the President's stubborn refusal to acknowledge the quagmire in Iraq.
Though you are Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the President's principal military advisor - President Bush has shown his disdain for your honesty and wisdom. Though you are a decorated Vietnam war hero - who has served his nation honorably for four decades - the President is dispensing with your services. You have one month left in your position before you are tossed out by the President.
President Bush is going to ignore your advice. Just as he has ignored the advice of other Generals who have had the courage to respectfully point out how terribly wrong he is in respect of the Iraq War and the safety of the US military he is sworn to protect. Highly-decorated colleagues of yours such as General Anthony Zinni (Commander in Chief of U.S. Central Command), General Eric Shinseki (Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army) and General John Abizaid (Commander of the U.S. Central Command).
General Pace - you have the power to fulfill your responsibility to protect the troops under your command. Indeed you have an obligation to do so.
You can relieve the President of his command.
Not of his Presidency. But of his military role as Commander-In-Chief.
I guess we shouldn't be too hard on Lewis. After all, it isn't as if Brits are up to speed on the whole written Constitution thing. But what is HuffPo's excuse?
From 27 May, 1940 until 4 June, 1940 British and French troops were evacuated from the Dunkirk (Dunkerque) pocket by Operation Dynamo. Called by Winston Churchill the "Miracle at Dunkirk" the operation saved some 338,000 troops from capture by the German Army. One of the men who was evacuated was Joseph Nixon, a member of the Coldstream Guards. After the war, Mr. Nixon continued to serve his country as a police officer. While working for the police, he campaigned for alcoholic support groups for prisoners. And honorable man with a career of distinction.
Unfortunately, the British National Health Service did not treat him that way.
A Second World War veteran who survived the Dunkirk evacuation died after contracting a superbug at a NHS hospital following a routine operation.
His daughter says he was dismayed by the dirty conditions he faced at the hospital in the weeks leading to his death.
Former Coldstream Guard Joseph Nixon, 87, survived the battlefields of France and Belgium.
But after a bowel operation he caught pneumonia and superbug clostridium difficile at Maidstone Hospital in Kent at the end of last month.
Mr Nixon, who was also a Met Police officer after the war and a "tireless" campaigner for alcoholic support groups for prisoners, was appalled at how overworked nurses were and the dirty conditions at the hospital.
After spending three weeks in the hospital daughter Jackie Dixon said "hour by hour his soul was being stripped".
She took the war veteran to their home in Maidstone to live his last days in comfort. He died last Friday.
Jackie said: "Joseph was just so miserable.
"One time he was really sad and said 'What did I do that was so evil that I'm trapped in this awful place'.
"I said to him, 'I want to stop this, I want to stop this happening to other people'.
"It was one of the only times he smiled."
His daughter was reduced to changing the bedding at the hospital because the staff never got around to it. This is the socialized medical system that is touted by Michael Moore and so many others on the left as a model.
Still think socialized medicine is a good idea?
Kind of interesting. France has had the third worst summer in recorded history, only 1954 and 1977 were more miserable. Most of the nation has been much wetter and considerably cooler than historical averages.
PARIS (AFP) - It's official: France's rainy, grey and generally cold summer has been the worst for the past 30 years, the weather service said Friday, but tourist arrivals were the highest in five years.
July and August were wet across two-thirds of the country while the Mediterranean region was too dry, said Frederic Nathan, meteorologist at Meteo France.
"Yes we can say that it was a rotten summer," said Nathan. But the summers of 1954 and 1977 were worse, he added……
……Rainfall in northwestern France reached record levels, with cities like Le Havre registering 21 days of rain in July, beating the previous record of 16 in 1980.
In the northern city of Caen in Normandy, the weather service registered 592 hours of sunshine from May 1st to August 21, well below the average of 809 hours.
Temperatures on the Atlantic coast have been on average two or three degrees Celsius below seasonal averages, said Jean-Marc Le Gallic from Meteo France.
Britain has also had a miserably wet and cold summer. Interesting, no?
Not, not the singing vikings. This is about a new strategy to fight the ubiquitous - and ever growing - flood of spam mail (and in the blogosphere, the comment and trackback spam). Instead of trying to block spam messages, there are a couple of people taking a completely different tack: they are taking down the spammers' websites.
For years, spam haters have relied on junk-mail filters and Internet blacklists, but lately, some are saying it's time for a change in tactics.
Their answer: follow the money. And that means going after the Web sites where spammers sell their pharmaceuticals and watches and male enhancement products.
Misguided or not, it's pretty easy to argue that the fight against spam has been a losing proposition of late. At the end of last year, mail administrators noticed a big spike in the amount of spam flooding their in-boxes. Between July 1 and the end of the year, spam jumped to nearly 60 percent of all e-mail traffic monitored by Symantec Corp., and many administrators say it makes up an even greater percentage of e-mail now.
Spam filtering is not the answer, said Garth Bruen, who runs a volunteer project focused on taking down the Web sites run by spammers. Bruen tracks down the ISPs and domain name registrars used by spammers and arranges to have their sites shut down.
"This problem is not going to go away if you ignore it. Blocking and filtering is just a jacked-up technological form of ignoring," he said. "What you want to do is report it and make it difficult for these people to exist on the Net and do their transactions."
Bruen's site, http://www.knujon.com/ is where you can sign up to help or send in your spam so they can kill another spam site. Project Knujon (No junk backwards) has eliminated more than 30,000 of the spammers' websites so far. The other player that has recently gotten into the same mode of operation is Computer Cops LLC, which runs the PIRT (Phishing Incident Reporting and Termination) program. They are now actively trying to kill the spammer's websites.
Sounds like a good thing to me. The experts say that there are actually only about 50 people doing the vast majority of spamming. Believe it or not.
Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, writes an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times entitled California without a Mexican. It's a bit of a scare piece about the crackdown on illegal immigration that is being rolled out by the administration.
The 2004 film "A Day Without a Mexican" was a political satire: an exaggerated fantasy about what would happen in California if all the immigrant workers suddenly disappeared. But now it seems that life may imitate art. Federal immigration authorities are readying a new enforcement tool that could indeed, if applied effectively, all but cripple the California economy.
A new fence? A massive influx of Border Patrol agents? A fleet of airborne drones? No. The new weapon is a simple two-page letter that will go out next month to companies whose employees' names and Social Security numbers do not match those on record at the Social Security Administration.
What makes these letters so potent? The SSA has been sending similar notices for years, but in the past, as long as a company had asked to see a worker's papers and filled out the proper forms, it was off the hook. Now the government is demanding that unauthorized employees be fired and threatening legal action if they aren't. This is expected to trigger widespread layoffs — self-policing by millions of small and medium-sized businesses in California and other states.
The new measure is popular with the public — a recent Rasmussen poll found eight in 10 Americans support it — and understandably so. Voters want to get control of immigration. They're particularly keen to punish employers who hire illegal immigrants. And after years of lax enforcement, they're pleasantly surprised to see the authorities getting tough.
The only problem: Much as we need better enforcement, on the border and in the workplace, that's only half the answer. And without the other half — better, more realistic immigration laws — it will wreak havoc.
Jacoby points out that this could cripple some industries. True enough. But she also admits this may focus the public on the need for a real fix to this mess we have on our hands.
This economic crunch could have a silver lining — it might grab the public's attention and generate an outcry for better laws. Millions of Americans who think we don't need immigrant workers might wise up. Politicians who opposed immigration reform this year or last might have a change of heart. And Congress might overhaul the system in 2009, if not before, combining enhanced enforcement with legal ways for U.S. employers to hire foreign workers. That's the other half of the combination we need. And if a no-match crackdown goads us in that direction, the short-term economic pain might be worth it.
As I have tried to point out many times, there is no reason - at all - why the border cannot be secured and legal immigration expanded simultaneously. There is also no reason that Americans should not have a secure border. I do not believe that the worst case scenario Jacoby predicts - an expanded underground economy - is likely. But if this crackdown finally gets Washington off of top dead center and gets the wheels of legislation turning, it will be worth it.
The first politician who can get it across that we need strong borders, lenient legal immigration policy and that both of those things will help all American citizens - including recent legal immigrants - wins. In a way, Bush almost had it right but he could not make the sale because the priorities were bass ackwards. Get that border fixed and everything else can be worked out by reasonable people.
Immigration Reform | Gaius | Comments Off
Robert Novak is reporting that Fred Thompson will jump into the Republican presidential nomination field using a video - a la Hillary! Clinton. Supposedly, this is on advice from Newt Gingrich.
WASHINGTON — Fred Thompson's decision to announce his presidential candidacy with a video was suggested by Newt Gingrich, who is considered a possible contender himself.
Former House Speaker Gingrich has indicated he will run only if Thompson does not or his late-starting campaign crashes and burns. Actor-politician Thompson plans to follow the model of Democrat Hillary Clinton by launching his campaign with a video, followed by a fly-around to several cities.
Gingrich has expressed contempt for becoming one of many announced Republican candidates at crowded debates. Thompson has decided to be one of many at the Sept. 27 debate at Baltimore's Morgan State University.
I dunno if that's correct or not. It would seem to me that Thompson, arguably the most media savvy person in the field, might have already decided to do that without Gingrich's helpful suggestion.
As in: "I'm not dead yet." It appears as if the rumors that started swirling yesterday about the death of Fidel Castro may have been yet another false alarm.
Marzo did say something interesting, that today's rumors did not come from Havana, but from someone much closer to the exile community, likely in Miami, and that Havana is just fine with the rumors since they make the exile community look foolish.
Take this for what it's worth, and I guess it's still possible that the guy is indeed dead, but it's looking more and more like today's news was yet another false rumor.
It could be disinformation to make people look foolish, it could be he's dead - and has been for a while. It could be he's in a vegetative state. Whatever. Cuba is still playing this one tight and is using the opportunity to bash the Cuban exile community. It does not look real promising at the moment.
After publishing his opinion piece about the situation in Iraq, which he authored with Ken Pollack, Michael O'Hanlon was exposed to the full fury of the unhinged left. The slurs flew fast and furious and much smearing was attempted. Today, O'Hanlon fires back - hard - at the critics.
How can one gather and assess information about Iraq — collected on a trip or from any other source? Information from a war zone is difficult to attain and interpretation is open to many views.
Unfortunately, much of the blogosphere and other media outlets have emphasized the wrong question, challenging the integrity of anyone who dares to express politically incorrect views about Iraq. Last week, Jonathan Finer criticized on this page [" Green Zone Blinders," Aug. 18] a New York Times essay that Ken Pollack and I wrote, as well as the comments of several senators, for claiming too much insight based on short trips to Iraq. Finer suggested that we did not leave the Green Zone, although we frequently did, on this and other trips, and he ignored how critical Pollack and I have been of administration policy in the past.
Worse, Finer and critics such as Rep. Jack Murtha and Salon columnist Glenn Greenwald have suggested that our analyses are based on a few days of military "dog-and-pony shows." Our assessments are based on our observations as well as on years of study. That experience creates networks of colleagues such as military officers whose off-the-record insights can inform ours and who in the past have often told us when they did not think their strategies were working or could work. While hardly making us infallible, this also led each of us to oppose predictions of a "cakewalk" before the invasion and to join Gen. Eric Shinseki in criticizing invasion plans that had too few troops and too little thought given to the post-invasion mission.
Read it all. He lays out what they based their opinions on and how they obtained the information. Not that any of that will stop a fresh round of unhinged attacks. But the fact is that even Democratic politicians who opposed the war from the start are seeing real progress and counseling against withdrawal. So let the unhinged ones destroy their own credibility by trying to destroy others.
Politics, War | Gaius | Comments (2)
Science has made some stunning advances in underwater technology in the past few years. A new expedition by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the University of Rhode Island (URI) and the Institute for Exploration (IFE) is testing a new system designed to be installed in the newest of NOAA's exploration ships, the Okeanos Explorer. The new system will allow virtually any expert real-time access to an ongoing undersea exploration. Dr. Robert Ballard is heavily involved, as one would expect. There is a lot of information on the program and the mission at the NOAA website.
Two Byzantine shipwrecks discovered in recent years off the coasts of Ukraine and Turkey, ‘Chersonesos A’ and ‘Sinop D’, will be investigated in detail to characterize the environment – geological, physical, chemical and biological – to study the preservation of archaeological material in the suboxic and anoxic waters of the Black Sea, where there is very little oxygen. We plan to carry out baseline surveys of the initial environmental conditions at each site, ongoing environmental monitoring to anticipate and mitigate any adverse environmental effects due to excavation, an assessment of the natural and man-made risks facing each archaeological site, and an analysis on how the wreck sites can be used for studying the surrounding environment. In addition to scientific studies of the shipwrecks, we hope that the results from this project will help further knowledge about in situ (on site) preservation of archaeological material for the development of underwater museums.
Here's an example of the stunning video images the new equipment is capable of:
Photo Courtesy of NOAA and the Institute for Exploration and Institute for Archaeological Oceanography
Here's an Associated Press article on the expedition.
Ballard is testing a system planned for use aboard NOAA's new vessel Okeanos Explorer, scheduled to go to sea next year as the first U.S. government vessel dedicated to exploring unknown parts of the ocean.
"Its mission, literally, is to go where no one has gone before on planet Earth," Ballard said.
"That means that the exploration could encounter a biological discovery, a geological discovery, hopefully for many of us an archaeological discovery. So there is no way of knowing in advance what the discovery is going to be," he said.
The plan is to have dozens or hundreds of scientists participate without ever having to leave their homes and universities.
The ship will be in high-speed communications with a center at the University of Rhode Island, and from there via Internet2 to universities and science centers across the country, calling on whatever expertise is needed.
Ballard likens it to a hospital emergency room.
"An emergency room has no idea what the ambulance is going to deliver at 3 o'clock Sunday morning," he explained. "They don't know if it's going to be a head injury, a mother having a baby, a heart attack or whatever," so the hospital has a system for doctors to be on call.
"Now we're doing the same sort of thing in support of NOAA," he said.
Science | Gaius | Comments (1)
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