Giving The Politicians The Finger

Generally speaking, giving the finger to politicians is a highly symbolic act. However, sometimes it is quite literal. Just ask French Justice Minister Rachida Dati. She received a package containing a severed finger – and would kind of like to know who sent it and why.

A package, containing the finger and a letter addressed to Justice Minister Rachida Dati, was opened by the ministry's mail service after it was received Friday, spokesman Guillaume Didier said. He gave no information about what the letter said.

"The minister asked her services to look into this person's situation, to see what could have driven him or her to carry out this act," he said.

One French media outlet reported that the detached digit belonged to a former hair-salon owner from the western part of France, but did not exactly explain why the figurative bird-flipping was considered necessary. What the heck is it with Europeans and their apparent need to bob themselves to protest something or other?

Near-Naked Politics

A small town in Eastern Oregon is experiencing a political tempest in a D-cup, so to speak, over their mayor's racy photographs. It seems that Mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist's MySpace pictures of her posing on a town firetruck wearing only her black underwear is causing a bit of a stir.

ARLINGTON, Ore. (AP) – Mayor Carmen Kontur-Gronquist's name is sure to be mentioned when Arlington holds its annual town meeting Wednesday.

Some of the mayor's roughly 500 constituents will want to know her views on the issues affecting the Eastern Oregon community; others will want to talk about her underwear.

The mayor's lingerie is a hot topic here, with some residents upset that she posted pictures of herself wearing only a black bra and panties on her MySpace page. She was on one of the town's fire engines.

Kontur-Gronquist's MySpace page is blocked to all but her friends, but the pictures were at one time available to all users. Someone sent the following picture to KATU last week:

Kontur-Gronquist thinks it is no big deal and that people should "get over it." Some of the other local officials are having real problems with her stance – and state of undress:

And at least one city council member is speaking out, saying the photos are inappropriate and send the wrong message to kids.

"It gives the impression that it's just OK to do whatever you feel like doing, whenever, and not have any kind of concern about how it might affect other people, and that is a big concern I have," council member Alice Courtney told KATU.

Like it or not, the standards for politicians are somewhat different than for the population at large. They need to consider that. Like it or not, the relative state of undress of Kontur-Gronquist in her photo does reflect back on the town and on the fire department. That said, if she had posed in a bikini instead of her bra and panties, most people wouldn't care at all. Interesting, isn't it?

Site Problems

My hosting company made some changes to the server this site is on and it led to some problems. Those seem to be corrected at present, but the Crabitat was knocked offline for a short time today, then had some further problems a short while later. I will say that this company has always had good techs ready to help when things go wonky on the site – as they did today.

Things should be back to normal at this point – or at least I hope so.

Gentlemen, We Can Rebuild Him…

…We have the technology. That comes from the old television show The Six Million Dollar Man, of course. But now, the real world has caught up with that television show that went off the air in 1978. Because they can, indeed, rebuild someone. At least the hands.

The cutting edge headquarters of a Scottish firm behind the world’s first commercially available bionic hand was officially opened today.

Government ministers toured Touch Bionic’s plant in Livingston and met the first recipient of the firm’s pioneering i-LIMB hand.

UK Minister of State for Competitiveness Stephen Timms, and Scotland Office Minister David Cairns, went on to officially open the plant.

More than 70 of the hands are now being used by amputees around the world after the product was launched last July.

About half of these are in the US although there are no plans at the moment to make the hand available on the NHS.

They have pictures of the hand in use. Here’s the Touch Bionics website. It is amazing when the real world catches up with science fiction, isn’t it?

And Bingo! We Have The Second Act!

The hot topic in the blogosphere right now is the Drudge report that Hillary! Clinton was thinking about withdrawing from the race. I smelled a Carvillian rat as did many others. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Politico and act 2 of this little political kabuki theater: Poor little Hillary! fighting back the tears.

The question was innocuous:

"As a woman I know it’s hard to get out of the house and get ready," asked Marianne Pernold, a local freelance photographer. "Who does your hair?"

Clinton began by talking about her hair — she has some help — but moved to talk more generally about the campaign.

"It’s not easy, it’s not easy, and I couldn’t do it if I just didn’t passionately believe it was the right thing to do," she said.

"I have so many opportunities for this country. I don’t want to see us all fall back," she said, her voice breaking in the last phrase.

"This is very personal for me," she said to supportive applause from the small gathering, at which she'd been discussing policy around a table for an hour. "It’s not just political, it's not just public — I see what's happening. We have to reverse it."

"Some people think elections are a game — it’s about who’s up and who's down," she said. "It's about our country's future, it's about our kids' future — it's really about all of us together."

"And some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some pretty difficult odds, and we do it each one of us because we care about our country," she said.

"Some of us are right and some of us are wrong. Some of us are ready and some of us are not. Some of us know what are going to do on day one, and some of us haven’t thought that through enough," she said.

"When we look at the array of problems that we have, and the potential for it really spinning out of control — this is one of the most important elections America's ever faced," she concluded.

The questioner, Pernold, said she'd come to the event "smitten" by Obama, but that she's now torn. "Showing that emotion — I really find it refreshing," she said.

I hate to say I told you so. Heck, no I don't. I told you so. This is theater designed to roll out that poor little me act and act out having emotions. She's now cast herself as the underdog with principles, bravely fighting back tears, who is forced to bear up under crushing odds because her cause is so noble.

Dan Riehl said it best: You have to die before you're reborn. She's baaaaack.

UPDATE: Yep, multiple outlets carrying the same weepy Hillary story all at once. Hillary and Carville had Baron Samedi on hot standby for the revival, baby.

UPDATE: The Anchoress saw the tears coming.

UPDATE: Ariel Alexovich from the New York Times The Caucus blog links (thanks, Ms. Alexovich!) but kind of irks me with this offhand comment:

It’s hard to tell if the blogs are being so hard on Mrs. Clinton because of her sex or her party.

For the record, I do not do identity politics at all here. I would write exactly the same things about any candidate or politician regardless of any particular physical/religious/ethnic/whatever characteristics they might possess. Period. Just as I would support any candidate/politician I agree with without any regard to those characteristics.

Yet Another Thing To Worry About

How about your laptop testifying against you in court? That, says the New York Times, appears to be the way the legal precedents are heading.

A couple of years ago, Michael T. Arnold landed at the Los Angeles International Airport after a 20-hour flight from the Philippines. He had his laptop with him, and a customs officer took a look at what was on his hard drive. Clicking on folders called “Kodak pictures” and “Kodak memories,” the officer found child pornography.

The search was not unusual: the government contends that it is perfectly free to inspect every laptop that enters the country, whether or not there is anything suspicious about the computer or its owner. Rummaging through a computer’s hard drive, the government says, is no different than looking through a suitcase.

One federal appeals court has agreed, and a second seems ready to follow suit.

There is one lonely voice on the other side. In 2006, Judge Dean D. Pregerson of Federal District Court in Los Angeles suppressed the evidence against Mr. Arnold.

“Electronic storage devices function as an extension of our own memory,” Judge Pregerson wrote, in explaining why the government should not be allowed to inspect them without cause. “They are capable of storing our thoughts, ranging from the most whimsical to the most profound.”

Computer hard drives can include, Judge Pregerson continued, diaries, letters, medical information, financial records, trade secrets, attorney-client materials and — the clincher, of course — information about reporters’ “confidential sources and story leads.”

But Judge Pregerson’s decision seems to be headed for reversal.

The case in question is, of course, about as distasteful as it can be. Child porn is utterly depraved. But the precedents here could be problematic for many people.

An interesting supporting brief filed in the Arnold case by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives and the Electronic Frontier Foundation said there have to be some limits on the government’s ability to acquire information.

“Under the government’s reasoning,” the brief said, “border authorities could systematically collect all of the information contained on every laptop computer, BlackBerry and other electronic device carried across our national borders by every traveler, American or foreign.” That is, the brief said, “simply electronic surveillance after the fact.”

Another case – unfortunately also involving child porn – does give a hint how constitutional protections can help out. Encrypting one's files – and refusing to give the decryption key to an official – may invoke the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination:

“The core value of the Fifth Amendment is that you can’t be made to speak in ways that indicate your guilt,” Michael Froomkin, a law professor at the University of Miami, wrote about the Boucher case on his Discourse.net blog.

But Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at the George Washington University, said Judge Niedermeier had probably gotten it wrong. “In a normal case,” Professor Kerr said in an interview, “there would be a privilege.” But given what Mr. Boucher had already done at the border, he said, making him provide the password again would probably not violate the Fifth Amendment.

There are a number of encryption programs out there, both freeware and paid software. One freeware program that CNET rates as a five-star is TrueCrypt. I have not tried it, can't vouch for its ease of use and anyone who does try it should read all the cautions carefully. I have no idea where these legal precedents are heading. It might be a good time for people to start paying attention, though. One thing that troubles me about this is that a warrant would be required to search your computer in your home, but customs is arguing that it is fair game if you carry it with you. I am not comfortable with that at all. And out of a sheer sense of contrariness, I plan on encrypting even my grocery lists.

Doubtful

Drudge has the big, raging headline: TALK OF HILLARY EXIT ENGULFS CAMPAIGNS. I rather suspect that this is a ploy – likely by the Clinton campaign itself.

Facing a double-digit defeat in New Hampshire, a sudden collapse in national polls and an expected fund-raising drought, Senator Hillary Clinton is preparing for a tough decision: Does she get out of the race? And when?!

"She can't take multiple double-digit losses in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada," laments one top campaign insider to the DRUDGE REPORT. "If she gets too badly embarrassed, it will really harm her. She doesn't want the Clinton brand to be damaged with back-to-back-to-back defeats."

Meanwhile, Democrat hopeful John Edwards has confided to senior staff that he is staying in the race because Hillary "could soon be out."

"Her money is going to dry up," Edwards confided, a top source said Monday morning.

That's twice the money problems rumor has surfaced just today. But James Carville is mentioned in the story as well. This story reeks of Carville and his media manipulation. I'm not the only one throwing the flag on this, either. Dan Riehl sees the Carville fingerprints on it:

…One cannot be re-born until you die. What better way to do it than to plant the story of your demise, eventually pinning it on the underhanded dealings of a presumably noble competitor's campaign? Nothing like sucking the wind out of your competitions headline grabbing success with a staged funeral that doesn't take place….

Sorry, it is too soon and the Clintons simply do not give up this easily. Look for a resurrection report very soon about Clinton's reborn campaign. She isn't done yet.

UPDATE: Others: (Not buying it):  Hot Air, Outside The Beltway, PoliGazette, Ann Althouse, Pundit Guy, Captain's Quarters, Wake Up America, Real Clear Politics, Blogs of War, Bits Blog, Gateway Pundit, Fausta,

(Sort of buying at least part of it): Daily Pundit, The Gun Toting Liberal JammieWearingFool, Daily Pundit, Powerline, Atlas Shrugs, Mac's Mind,

I expect that I'll be updating this list rapidly as more weigh in over at Memeorandum.

The Magic Fades

Ouch. The New York Times reports that the rock star of the Hillary Clinton campaign, Bill Clinton, is not packing in the crowds in New Hampshire. In fact, he is drawing less-than-capacity crowds of mostly unenthusiastic people at his stops there.

Former President Bill Clinton has been drawing sleepy and sometimes smallish crowds at big venues in the state that revived his presidential campaign in 1992. He entered to polite applause and rows of empty seats at the University of New Hampshire on Friday. Several people filed out midspeech, and the room was largely quiet as he spoke, with few interruptions for laughter or applause. He talked about his administration, his foundation work and some about his wife.

“Hillary’s got good plans,” Mr. Clinton kept saying as he worked through a hoarse-voiced litany of why his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, is a “world-class change agent.” He urged his audience to “caucus” on Tuesday for Mrs. Clinton, before correcting himself (“vote”). He took questions, quickly worked a rope line and left.

Maybe the sluggish day was a blip. It was, in fairness, the day after Mrs. Clinton finished third in the Iowa caucuses, behind Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and John Edwards of North Carolina. Mr. Clinton was working on 30 minutes’ sleep. He traveled to New Hampshire from Iowa in the wee hours, and the university was on winter break.

But there was a similarly listless aura at the previous stop, in Rochester. And again, on Saturday in Bow, at just the sort of high school gym that the master campaigner used to blow out. Only about 225 showed up in Bow — about one-third the capacity of the room — to hear Mr. Clinton hit his bullet points on the subprime lending crisis, $100 barrels of oil and how “10 of Hillary’s fellow senators have endorsed her.”

“The crowd seemed very passive,” Arthur Cunningham of Bow said after the speech. “Maybe they were tired.”

Maybe they are finally tired – tired of the Clintons, that is. Maybe they really have worn out their political welcome. That Bill Clinton is not packing every campaign stop is probably the surest sign yet that things are really heading south for the campaign. That he is now increasingly trying to tinker with how the campaign is run indicates that some folks in the current organization might be unemployed soon.

Last Chance To Kill The Pork

John Fund notes that President Bush has a chance to make a lasting change in the way Congress has been playing the pork game. He has a chance to issue an executive order that would effectively end the "airdropping" of pork projects into bills – permanently. Because his successor would have to actually cancel that order – opening up a can of worms with the voters who are rightfully sick and tired of the excesses of Congress.

What Mr. Bush knows, and Congress doesn't want the taxpayers to know, is that the vast majority of the offending earmarks–the ones that aren't part of the actual budget law and were instead "air-dropped" into the committee report–aren't legally binding. A Dec. 18 legal analysis by the Congressional Research Service found that most of the committee reports have not been formally passed by both houses and "presented" to the President for signing, and thus have not become law. "President Bush could ignore the 90% of earmarks that never make it to the floor of the House or Senate for a vote," says Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who has read the CRS report. "He doesn't need a line-item veto."

Federal agencies would still be obligated to spend the dollars appropriated by Congress. But they could use the money higher priorities that would benefit all taxpayers, rather than on favors for special interests or political donors. For example, the $700,000 for a bike trail in Minneapolis could be used to rebuild the collapsed bridge in that city and to strengthen others. In addition, under such an executive order, future earmarks would likely have to go through committee hearings and would receive much greater scrutiny and publicity than they do now.

This possibility led Old Bull members of Congress to call the White House, complaining that such a move would threaten its relations with the legislative branch and threatening retribution. But none of those complaints or threats were made publicly. Members know how unpopular earmarking is with voters, and they also know that Mr. Bush could easily turn the tables on them if they actually engaged in petty revenge over the loss of their budgetary toys.

Congressional appropriators pooh-pooh the importance of any earmark reform. They note that earmarks represent less than 1% of the federal budget and are often worthy projects. But earmarks have a budgetary impact far beyond their dollar cost. "They are a gateway drug on the road to spending addiction," says Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

Earmarks have other damaging effects. Many members feel compelled to vote for bloated spending bills, fearing their local projects will be stripped out. They also have dramatically expanded lobbying. Lobbyists go client-hunting, telling municipal officials they can virtually guarantee an earmark. In 2006, more than 4,000 companies or local governments hired lobbyists to pursue earmarks, up from 1,865 in 2001. And as the cases of Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham demonstrated, earmarks by the thousands result in scandals by the dozens.

The White House is at a crossroads. "If Bush were to do the right thing on earmarks it would an attention-getting precedent that could make other budget reforms possible," says Alison Fraser, who heads up economic policy for the Heritage Foundation. "It's a legacy-building moment."

Would such an executive order lead to some retaliation by Congress? Of course it would. Neither party is clean on this issue. Some of the veteran porkers would be livid if "their" money gets taken away. The problem is that it is not "their" money – it is our money. All voters should be angry about pork.

Sign that order, President Bush.

Let The Obituaries Begin

Robert Shrum writes a pre-obituary for the Hillary Clinton campaign in today's New York Daily News. It is not at all pretty. He sees one final chance for Clinton to recover – but doesn't think it will work. Given all the times she has shifted and recalibrated any change she makes now is just going to be seen as still more shapeshifting.

The Clinton industry, encrusted with the beneficiaries and acolytes of the first and probably only Clinton presidency, has turned Hillary into a product whose sell-by date has passed. In a year of change, she has been positioned as the establishment candidate. The relentless appeal to "experience" reinforces that – and too often elides into a dubious attempt to take credit for some of Bill's accomplishments.

More fundamentally, Hillary seems to be making an argument about herself, not the future or the voters. No wonder she is losing to a young senator who comes across as the leader of a revolution in our politics.

There could still be a Clinton miracle, but by tomorrow night she is more likely to be the KOd Kid than the Comeback Kid.

She will have to get off the mat and recast her case. Contrary to the caricatures, Hillary Clinton is a real person, often funny in private, with engaging qualities that have been well-hidden in this campaign. But the hour is late and even if the real Hillary emerges, voters might see it as just another contrivance.

He makes one very startling remark in the piece. He says the Clinton machine is starting to hurt for cash and may actually be struggling to reach the February 5 giant primary day. I had not heard that before – but it doesn't surprise me a lot, either. Donors don't want to see their money dragged under when the candidate's ship sinks.