The new Obama flavor laptop border search policy makes an interesting statement about reasonable suspicion and terrorist watch lists:

The presence of an individual on a government-operated and government-vetted terrorist watch list will be sufficient to create reasonable suspicion of activities in violation of the laws enforced by CBP.

Objectively, I'm inclined to agree, and I'm glad they drew this line in the sand, as its an important negotiating point with regard to when searches should and should not be authorized. If you think about the way that reasonable suspicion is used by police officers in deciding whether or not to stop someone, clearly "suspect matched the description of a wanted felon" is sufficient to establish that, even if it later turns out of be a case of mistaken identity. A terrorist watch list is a similar kind of thing. If the United States had a real process for flagging people who are genuinely suspected terrorists, I'm sure that being flagged by that system would meet the criteria for reasonable suspicion.

I think that employing terrorist watch lists and passenger screening systems in making determinations about reasonable suspicion in the context of border searches is a good thing. It eliminates the rhetorical argument that if we constrained border searches of laptops to contexts where reasonable suspicion exists, we might miss a terrorist. People who are likely to be terrorists are going to be flagged by these systems, and so reasonable suspicion is going to exist in those cases. Therefore, requiring it would not hamper our anti-terrorism efforts.

However, it is possible to imagine a "terrorist watch list" that is so mismanaged that it is not objectively reasonable to suspect that people on the list might be involved with terrorism. Unfortunately, it sounds like that is exactly the kind of list that we have right now. A list with 1.2 million names on it including people who are dead, vague entries that seem to only include common place names, and people who are obviously not involved in terrorism. If the ACLU's characterization of this list is anywhere near accurate, the list is a complete joke. It simply is not objectively reasonable to suspect that someone on this list is dangerous.

Two implications follow from that:
1. If the list is ever used in a real prosecution to establish reasonable suspicion of someone who does not turn out to be a terrorist but is prosecuted for some unrelated crime, that person might be able to challenge the reasonableness of that suspicion because the list is too unreliable.

2. It would behoove those who wish to make use of these lists in this fashion to make sure that they are reliable, so the courts will take them seriously when they are relied on in a context where they run up against Constitutional rights.

The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology predicts that as many as 120 million people are likely to exhibit symptoms of the H1N1 virus. Half of these people will seek medical attention, exposing countless healthcare workers to the disease, the panel reported. Furthermore, it expects that up to 300,000 patients could require intensive care services. Seasonal flu typically leads to 36,000 deaths and 200,000 hospitalizations, up to 90% of which occur in the elderly population. The science advisors predict up to 90,000 deaths and 1.8 million hospitalizations from H1N1, also known as swine flu.

Half of Americans could catch swine flu, healthcare workers still reluctant to get vaccinated - McKnight's Long Term Care News

This will be the most important political conflict of the medium term future.

Can we really balloon the deficit to $1 trillion and expect business as usual in 4 to 5 years given the precedents and given the low savings and high debt?

My answer is no. The U.S. economy cannot possibly work itself out of the greatest financial crisis in some 70-odd years in a mere 4 years and then expect to raise taxes on the middle class without a major recessionary relapse.

So, when you hear policy makers talking about reducing the deficit as soon as possible, what you should think is 1938 and continued depression.

Beware of deficit hawks - Credit Writedowns

# Recovery of some sort seems to be at hand.
# However, we may be seeing an inventory correction and nothing more.
# America could be headed toward a Japanese-like decade or more long period of stagnant growth aka the modern Depression.
# After all, consumers are not coming back to the party.

naked capitalism: Stephen Roach: The case against Bernanke

The new study of sick bees disclosed fragments of ribosomal RNA in their gut, an indication of damage to the ribosomes.

New clue found to disappearing honey bees - Yahoo! News

The American government -- which we once called our government -- has been taken over by Wall Street, the mega-corporations and the super-rich. They are the ones who decide our fate. It is this group of powerful elites, the people President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "economic royalists," who choose our elected officials -- indeed, our very form of government. Both Democrats and Republicans dance to the tune of their corporate masters. In America, corporations do not control the government. In America, corporations are the government.

Rule number one of actually calling for a national strike - set the date before writing the oped piece.

I thought Krugman's sentiment yesterday was also resonate:

But it’s hard to avoid the sense that a crucial opportunity is being missed, that we’re at what should be a turning point but are failing to make the turn.

Thats exactly right.

Larry Flynt calls for a national strike

We had a John Huges party on Sunday morning and given the collection of movies at hand the group selected 16 candles. Nevertheless it was determined that Pretty in Pink had a better soundtrack, inspite of its overwhelming chickflickness, including this song which was recorded years earlier and is now stuck in my head. The Furs don't suck.

This is the original video, for the darker, more snarling original recording from the second Furs album, TALK TALK TALK.

YouTube - The Psychedelic Furs - Pretty In Pink (original version)

Renowned documentary photographer Tomas van Houtryve entered North Korea by posing as a businessman looking to open a chocolate factory. Despite 24-hour surveillance by North Korean minders, he took arresting photographs of Pyongyang and its people—images rarely captured and even more rarely distributed in the West. They show stark glimmers of everyday life in the world’s last gulag.

The land where its illegal to smile at a camera.

Foreign Policy: The Land of No Smiles

Criminals have a wide variety of clever devices available to swipe your ATM card data and your PIN right at the ATM itself. No software compromise is necessary.

Some nice pictures of ATM card skimmers if you haven't seen one. A coworker literally plucked one off an ATM in Sandy Springs earlier in the summer.

How ATM Card Skimming and PIN Capturing Scams Work - Security Watch

Acidus wrote:
About a month ago, Lord Tivo (PBUH) willed me to start watching Bones. It's not as good as Law and Order but it's a solid show.

Totally disagree. Bones is way better than L&O. In fact Bones is the only thing I'm watching on TV right now. I'll fully admit that is a generationally biased opinion and YMMV.

L&O smacks of authoritarianism at times. The system does bad things in L&O but usually to people who are guilty. Its black and white boomerthink. I don't usually find myself identifying with the characters and it doesn't have the political dimensions of something like the Shield. It doesn't feel real to me. Its an idealization. You wish things were that clear cut all the time. They aren't.

Bones is not a cop show - its more about science and characters than laws. Its more encyclopedia brown than dragnet - the drama comes from trying to figure out the puzzle moreso than from wondering if the bad guy will escape punishment through careful legal maneuvering. The characters are quirky Gen-Xers with difficult pasts. The main scientist uses hyper-rationality as a way of escaping difficult emotions. The FBI agent listens to Social Distortion and reads comic books. You know people like them. They're a lot like your friends.

RE: Suspect in model's murder found dead in Canada - CNN.com