Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?

News outlets both right and left are going to be giving you the big numbers (41% approval rating across party lines, 55% view presidency as a "failure" across party lines, 54% believe Iraq war was a mistake, 53% believe Bush deliberately lied to the public) but here at Memestreams we give you the raw figures and let you observe the trends!

There is a nice battery of questions here from Supreme Court Nominees to Iraq to the Plame scandal, with several months of polling samples for the big issues. The only thing lacking that I wanted to see were hurricane questions. Good read.

USATODAY.com - Bush poll raw stats

Libby resigned Friday after a federal grand jury indicted him on charges related to the leak probe, including one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements.

While their were no indictments for revealing Plame's identity, I think there can be no doubt that White House officals did do something they shouldn't have or perceived they had done something they shouldn't have to the point they were willing to lie about it.

Cheney's top aide Lewis Libby indicted, resigns - Oct 28, 2005

Everyone is making such a big deal about Iraqi as an "island of Democracy" in the Middle East. Conservatives are using it to justify a losing war. Liberals are using it to attack the president.

But how many people have actually read it? Well I have, and while it is not the doom and gloom some people are pushing Iraq most certainly will not be an "island of democracy."

The Constitution is full of nice American-like language and statutes:
-Iraqis are equal before the law
-Every individual has the right to life and security and freedom and cannot be deprived of these rights or have them restricted except in accordance to the law and based on a ruling by the appropriate judicial body
-Double Jeopardy
-Freedom to travel
-No exile
-Freedom of religion
-Freedom of thought
-No discrimination based on color, race, gender (but not sexual orienation)

Sounds pretty good right? So some laws define the limits of rights and freedoms just like in the US. Where does this law come from?

Well, after the preamble and a statement defining the government, the very first thing in the Iraqi Constitution is:

1st — Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation:
(a) No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam.

So for the freedoms defined in relation to the law are really subject to the law, specifically Islamic law.

Now some of these right are just absolutes like:

The state is committed to protecting the individual from coercion in thought, religion or politics, and no one may be imprisoned on these bases.

Some of them are entirely conditional to, again, Islamic law:

Article (36): The state guarantees, as long as it does not violate public order and morality:

1st — the freedom of expressing opinion by all means.

2nd — the freedom of press, publishing, media and distribution.

3rd — freedom of assembly and peaceful protest will be organized by law.

Morality is left underdined in the Constitution. Persumedly it is left to Islamic law to define morality.

What happens when someone doesn't respect the constitution? What happens when someone stones their daughter to death for allowing herself to get raped because that's in accordance with Islamic law? Well, then the case can be appealled to a Supreme Federal Court, much like our Supreme Court. So who is allowed on this court?

The Supreme Federal Court will be made up of a number of judges and experts in Sharia (Islamic Law) and law

Of course! Who better to resolve the conflicts between Islamic law and statements like "Every individual has the right to life and security and freedom and cannot be deprived of these rights" then someone who is an Islamic iman?

Take a good hard look at this document. This is the fruit of $200 Billion and 2000 dead Americans. You tell me if it was worth it. You tell me if you will ever trust this administration again.

Text of the draft Iraqi Constitution

Harriet E. Miers withdrew her nomination for the Supreme Court this morning after her selection by President Bush led to criticism from both conservatives and liberals.
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Shawn Thew/European Pressphoto Agency

During meetings on Capitol Hill since her nomination, Harriet E. Miers failed to gain the support of key senators.
Related Bush's Statement | Mier's Withdrawal Letter (pdf)

Go to Complete Coverage

In recent days, several prominent members of the Republican Party had begun to publicly question Ms. Miers's nomination, suggesting was not conservative enough on issues such as abortion. Others, including Democrats and Republicans, have questioned Ms. Miers's lack of judicial experience since her nomination was announced on Oct. 3

But who will be nominated in her place? Bush has lost a lot of political capital over the last 3 months.

She's out: Miers Withdrawls

Less than 48 hours after the release of TinyDisk, someone uploaded goatse.cx into TinyURL. HAHAHAHA! Wow! Technology for the masses!

Less than 48 hours after its release...

The Hubbert peak theory, also known as peak oil, concerns the long-term rate of conventional oil (and other fossil fuel) extraction and depletion. It is named after American geophysicist M. King Hubbert, who created a model of known reserves, and proposed, in 1956, in a paper he presented [1] at a meeting of the American Petroleum Institute, that oil production in the continental United States would peak between 1965 and 1970; and that world production would peak in 2000.

U.S. oil production peaked in 1971 [2], and has been decreasing since then. Global production did not peak in 2000, but Hubbert's model did not account for the 1973 and 1979 OPEC oil shocks, which effectively reduced global demand for oil and delayed the peak.

Hubbert Peak Oil Theory

There is more to this. When it is revealed that you were a NOC, foreign intelligence services begin combing back over your life, examining every relationship you had. Anyone you came into contact with becomes suspect. Sometimes, in some countries, becoming suspect can cost you your life. Revealing the identity of a NOC can be a matter of life and death -- frequently, of people no one has ever heard of or will ever hear of again.

In short, a NOC owes things to his country, and his country owes things to the NOC. We have no idea what Valerie Plame told her family or friends about her work. It may be that she herself broke the rules, revealing that she once worked as a NOC. We can't know that, because we don't know whether she received authorization from the CIA to say things after her own identity was blown by others. She might have been irresponsible, or she might have engaged in damage control. We just don't know.

What we do know is this. In the course of events, reporters contacted two senior officials in the White House -- Rove and Libby. Under the least-damaging scenario we have heard, the reporters already knew that Plame had worked as a NOC. Rove and Libby, at this point, were obligated to say, at the very least, that they could neither confirm nor deny the report. In fact, their duty would have been quite a bit more: Their job was to lie like crazy to mislead the reporters. Rove and Libby had top security clearances and were senior White House officials. It was their sworn duty, undertaken when they accepted their security clearance, to build a "bodyguard of lies" -- in Churchill's phrase -- around the truth concerning U.S. intelligence capabilities.

Why the Plame Affair is far more important than no talent ass clowns like Boortz would have you believe.

The Importance of the Plame Affair

Dolemite wrote:

Yes, yes, I just put that title up there to bring more attention to the meme. Yes, I'm a shameless whore when it comes to garnering more publicity for the convention.

Acidus wrote to me asking to change the content of his presentation to what you see here. Looks very interesting, so if you want to hear more, come to PhreakNIC!

Oh, and you might also notice that I "fixed" Dementia's code so that we can now reference specific pages.

My brother once described me as "like a ferret in a glitter shop." The thing with conferences is I tend to discover something cool, do the research, write an app, and then submit it to a con. 3 months later, when the con is just around the corner I'm normally excited and working on something new.

Its not that the other top topic wasn't cool. It is and I highly suggest people download my Toorcon talk, The Phuture of Phishing, as it touches on what my original Phreaknic talk was to be on. I just came across something so awesome that I'm sure will get slashdotted and wanted to present it at Phreaknic, who has treated me so nicely these past few years.

Acidus, like a woman, changes his mind

A videotape made by the Associated Press Television News crew shows two patrolmen repeatedly punching a man identified as 64-year-old Robert Davis. The tape shows a third officer grabbing and shoving an APTN producer.

The Video CNN has of this is amazing. I don't have speakers at work, for all I know this old guy is cussing up a storm, but he is hardly fighting the police when they start punching him in the back of the head.

Video: NOPD beating up 64-year old

Hendon is also adamant: "The really important point is that the EU doesn't want to see this change as bringing new government control over the internet. Governments will only be involved where they need to be and only on issues setting the top-level framework."

Will a new UN sanction be knocking someone off the DNS tree? Or assigning the TLD to whoever the UN feels should control it? I have very very bad feelings about the UN controlling the root servers and acting on "top-level" issues regarding the Internet.

Breaking America's grip on the net