This paragraph is from the Washington Times:

] The CIA's chief weapons inspector said he cannot rule out
] the possibility that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
] were secretly shipped to Syria before the March 2003
] invasion, citing "sufficiently credible" evidence that
] WMDs may have been moved there.

Sounds like WMD probably went to Syria from Iraq...

This text is from the Washington Post:

] Although Syria helped Iraq evade U.N.-imposed sanctions
] by shipping military and other products across its borders,
] the investigators "found no senior policy, program, or
] intelligence officials who admitted any direct knowledge of
] such movement of WMD." Because of the insular nature of
] Saddam Hussein's government, however, the investigators were
] "unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited
] WMD-related materials."

Liberal Bias?

The Times doesn't respond to this quote:

] Iraq's ability to produce nuclear arms, which the
] administration asserted was a grave and gathering
] threat that required an immediate military response,
] had "progressively decayed" since 1991. Investigators
] found no evidence of "concerted efforts to restart the
] program."

But

] Hussein "retained the intent and capability and he
] intended to resume full-scale WMD efforts once the
] U.N. sanctions were lifted," Pentagon spokesman Bryan
] Whitman said yesterday. "Duelfer provides plenty of
] rationale for why this country went to war in Iraq."

Thats the key question isn't it?

The times says:

] Clearly, the media needs an object lesson in an old
] truth: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Yeah, but is it ok to actually launch a war based on a total absence of evidence? Is a sentence like "Years later, there is still absolutely no evidence that the Bush administration's justification for the Iraq war was accurate." a reasonable enough headline for you? You really have no idea whether or not you were right. You've grabbed onto the tinyest thread left to uphold your position. This is the kind of crap I expect from silly online debates. This is not something that I want to hear coming out of the US Government.

There is absolutely no proof that bunny rabbits don't have tea on pluto. However, its extremely unlikely, and most people would tend to beleive that it isn't true. At what point to you admit that the idea that there was an imminent threat that Saddam would give WMD to a terrorist organization is extremely unlikely, and start asking objective questions about whether or not it actually made sense to re-elect a political team that sent thousands to their graves based on what was most likely a bad call? Oh no. We couldn't do that... That might involve voting for a (blech) liberal. Fuck Liberals. They suck. Conservatives rule!

Links:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-10-06-wmd_x.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12115-2004Oct6.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/25/AR2005042501554.html
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050427-121915-1667r.htm
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20050427-110457-2216r.htm

Liberal Bias or Crazy Moonies

] File-swappers who distribute a single copy of a
] prerelease movie on the Internet can be imprisoned for up
] to three years, according to a bill that President Bush
] signed into law on Wednesday.

Now the law of the land.

Bush signs law targeting P2P pirates | CNET News.com

] Microsoft Corp. is paying social conservative Ralph Reed
] $20,000 a month as a consultant...

Thats interesting...

Microsoft defends ties to Ralph Reed

] "You can be spiritual. You can meditate as long as you
] don't have a book that says something about right and
] wrong," she said. "There seems to have been no time since
] the Civil War that this country was so bitterly divided.
] It's not a shooting war, but it is a war . . . "

This post is making rounds on the blogosphere because this is one of Bush's judicial nominees (Brown) essentially declaring war on secular humanists. However, I'll underline this for a different, and perhaps more challenging reason.

] U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Bridgeport, attended the
] event but declined to discuss the filibuster debate.
]
] After Brown's address, Shays said in an e-mail, "Justice
] Brown made a very thoughtful presentation speaking to the
] fact that morality and spiritual values are a basic part
] of the decision-making process for all of us, including
] judges. I agree with her."

OK, so those who claim that the recent death penality decision was "based on international law" obviously haven't read the decision in question and they are spinning it pretty hard. The reference to international opinion (the U.S. was the last country to abolish the death penality for minors) was provided after the fact. It wasn't the "basis" for the decision. It was provided to place the analysis in context. I.E., BTW this conclusion we've reached here (by other means) is obviously not completely off base as literally everyone else already reached it.

What is at issue, however, is whether justices are tasked with determining objective truths, or whether they are bound to analyse questions only within the framework of the law. Here-in lies a catch -22. If justices are tied directly to the law, then the reference to everyone else's conclusions is irrelevant, as it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. It doesn't matter if everyone says its not ok to exterminate jews so long as the Constitution doesn't explicitly prohibit it. On the other hand, if justices are tasked with finding universal truths then there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to look for them in the Bible. Stoning people to death for adultery? A-OK!

The subtleties of this question are likely to be lost in the political debate, but this appears to cut both ways. One side will ultimately accuse the other side of hypocracy in advocating one form of objective analysis and opposing another.

The reason, in fact, is that this isn't really about how the law ought to work, but how morality ought to work, and the justice system is just a pawn in the game. Neither side can present consistent views with respect to how it ought to work because neither side has an objective interest in the law per say. Get your war on!

The Advocate - Red Mass breakfast visited by filibuster controversy

] To prevent that, the special electronic passport readers
] used by Customs officials in the United States and their
] counterparts around the world would use data printed on
] the new passport to effectively unlock the radio chip
] before it would transmit the personal electronic
] information it holds, Mr. Moss said.

In case you missed this yesterday. Its good that they are listening. Its slightly less good that they are running another "well, if we put this peice of duct tape here..." solution instead of replacing this crap with a technology that is actually suited to their application.

The New York Times - Bowing to Critics, U.S. to Alter Design of Electronic Passports

Craigs list Google map surfer. I'd heard about this, but now that I've played with it it actually seems pretty useful.

Housing

] Google currently does not allow outsiders to gain access
] to raw data because of privacy concerns. Searches are
] logged by time of day, originating I.P. address
] (information that can be used to link searches to a
] specific computer), and the sites on which the user
] clicked. People tell things to search engines that they
] would never talk about publicly -- Viagra, pregnancy
] scares, fraud, face lifts. What is interesting in the
] aggregate can be seem an invasiion of privacy if narrowed
] to an individual.
]
] So, does Google ever get subpoenas for its information?
]
] ''Google does not comment on the details of legal matters
] involving Google,'' Mr. Brin responded.

This shit is going to come to a head eventually.

The New York Times - Postcards From Planet Google

] With Google having released its new Google My Search
] History feature yesterday, I wanted to spin back around
] and look at where we stand in terms of search history
] offerings across a number of major search engines. I've
] done so in chart format below.

I have no idea why FURL is being catagorized as a "search history" system, but this comparison of different personal search history systems is likely of interest to many readers.

Comparing Search History Features

] Initially, police will place six cameras in the Cleveland
] Park area of east Nashville and also downtown in the
] tourist-heavy Second Avenue and Broadway district.
]
] If the system works out, the department plans to buy more
] cameras and build a more expansive network throughout the
] city.

There were planning to record audio as well, but apparently they couldn't defend that politically. Soon everywhere you go outside the police will be watching you. Better be carefull about loitering in a parking lot. Especially if you look like you might be young or not sufficiently white or otherwise undesirable. I wonder if they'll start following people from bars back to their cars and radio dispatch to pull them over?

This isn't going on in Nashville because it is particularly needed in Nashville. Its going on in Nashville because people in Nashville aren't willing to resist it.

Nashville Police to install city wide video surveillance system.

] The Ambient Office Dashboard is one of those desktop
] gadgets you didn't know you needed.

I really like this. Its three analog dials that are controlled by the pager network. I hope they release an SDK.

First Look at Ambient Devices Office Dashboard - The Wireless Weblog - wireless.weblogsinc.com _