A WikiLeaks supporter and friend of accused leaker Bradley Manning filed a federal lawsuit Friday accusing U.S. border officials of violating his rights by seizing his laptop without a warrant as he re-entered the country from a vacation in Mexico last year.

Bradley Manning Friend Sues DHS Over Seized Laptop | Threat Level | Wired.com

I've read a number of oped pieces now on the death of OBL and none that I have seen really reflects my thinking on the matter. Some commentators might make a few points that resonate but inevitably they make others that do not.

First, I'm relieved that Bin Laden is gone and thank the men and women who worked hard and put their lives at risk to bring him to justice.

However, I don't get the frat party atmosphere that broke out after the announcement was made - there were cheerleaders making pyramids in the crowd outside the Whitehouse. What the hell is wrong with these kids?

What I felt when I heard the news was a sense of relief, but its not as if terrorism is no longer a threat because he is gone. I mourn all the death and destruction that he wrought and the high cost of combating the movement he created. I'm glad that he can no longer perpetuate that destruction. But, we shouldn't have to be in a position where we have to hunt people down and kill them and the business is a grim one. Why would you celebrate that? You shouldn't feel that way.

These kids must have been in elementary school when this happened. Perhaps they don't grasp the reality of it - perhaps it's too abstract for them. Perhaps I just know too much.

What bothers me is what this all means for our justice system. Its not clear that they intended to capture Bin Laden. Killing him outright sends the wrong message. This is how western movies end, not how mature civilizations create justice. We tried Nazis, but we can't try terrorists. Maybe its not Obama's fault - maybe a trial would have been an absolute circus - but that doesn't make it OK. The question of the vitality of the principals of our system in the face of terrorism is now closed.

I'm tired of conservatives whining about reading Bin Laden the miranda warning. Its not about miranda rights. Its about hauling these fuckers before the world and forcing them to take responsibility for their actions, and making it clear that all of the good people of the world, regardless of race, religion, or country, absolutely condemn the things that they have done, and there is no room for questions about whether or not that is really true. Its about discrediting them. That would have been justice.

Instead, we've sent a message about power and revenge that does little to undermine those who advocate that this act should be answered in kind. We've perpetuated the cycle of violence here. There is a kid in the middle east who saw those cheerleaders on TV and is very angry about it. Some day that kid is going to kill a lot of people. If he'd seen jurists rather than cheerleaders things might have been different.

A false statement that keeps getting repeated no matter how often it has been refuted.

Zombie Lie | The Big Picture

We are not ignorant of the fact that some of those who can afford an FF – together with legions of the less wealthy who aspire to simpler pleasures like a BMW xDrive model or some such thing – have been exuberantly vocal (usually in writing, huddled away in their computer lairs) about what an atrocity the FF is to the Ferrari brand and heritage. We have only one thing to say before we say more things: stick it in your ear.

I find the FF strangely alluring. Its the fact that you could actually use this. Its a practical car. Its comfortable. Most Ferraris are totally impractical things - beautiful but you'd never drive one every day or on a long trip and you figure they spend more time in the shop than on the road. You might get a few hours in one on a Saturday afternoon for your money. This is a totally different kind experience. Its a totally different idea for a car.

I love it.

Unfortunately I can't even afford the 1:43 scale model. Seriously.

First Drive: 2012 Ferrari FF — Autoblog

possibly noteworthy wrote:
While some analysts have argued that home prices need to fall to "clearing prices" that will attract more buyers, price declines could also complicate any recovery by pushing more borrowers under water.

I'm starting to get annoyed with the analysts who are talking about how prices are too high.

I felt fairly confident buying my place because at the time, the mortgage payment was comparable to the rent you'd pay on a similarly sized place in the area.

Not anymore. Zillow provides a suggested rent payment and an estimated mortgage payment at current interest rates given their sales price estimate for the place.

The suggested rent is nearly twice the estimated mortgage payment.

What this means is that you could buy my place at the current market price and then rent it out for a yield of 80% or more!

Anyone currently renting stands to save a significant amount of money buying at these prices. Anyone looking for an investment opportunity stands to make a handsome profit.

This means that prices are not too high. Prices have fallen way, way below where they are supposed to be. Commentators who talk about the need to reach "clearing prices" are not providing useful insight into the situation.

We're way past any reasonable concept of a "clearing price" in this market. And prices are still falling.

There are several factors:
1. Economic growth: Atlanta is not growing right now, so there is less need to consume homes.
2. Gridlock: People stuck underwater in their house can't move and so the whole market gets gridlocked.
3. Availability of credit: There are perfectly responsible potential home owners who are not allowed to buy right now because credit restrictions have become more strict than they should be.
4. Fear: No one wants to try to catch a falling knife.

But the number one factor in my mind is foreclosure sales. They are a race to the bottom - past the bottom - with each bank trying to offer their places cheaper than the next bank in an attempt to avoid the load associated with holding onto the properties through a normal sales cycle. This process feeds itself - they've driven the prices so low that the prices are a catalyst for more foreclosures - people who need to leave end up foreclosing because they cannot compete with bank prices. Ultimately, it is the banks that suffer. They're going out of business at unprecedented rates.

The banks aren't going to change tactics until the people who run then - the economists - recognize the reality of the situation for what it is and start making useful recommendations. Instead there is this constant drum beat of "prices are too high" and so financial institutions act accordingly.

Its madness.

RE: Home Market Takes a Tumble

The fascists are out in force today claiming that BL could not have been obtained without warrantless wiretapping and torture. Lots of details about the intelligence operation have been disclosed. This post has a good round up of different links.

John Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the brief legalizing the techniques adopted by the George W. Bush administration, writing in the Wall Street Journal, claims bin Laden's death as vindication for those policies: "President George W. Bush, not his successor, constructed the interrogation and warrantless surveillance programs that produced this week's actionable intelligence."

There seems to be a dispute about the underlying facts there. One's version of the facts seems to hinge on one's partisan allegiances.

Does bin Laden's death revive the torture debate? | MLive.com

noteworthy wrote:
One frustrated counterterrorism official, in 2006:

There's nobody in the United States government whose job it is to find Osama bin Laden! Nobody!

Peter Baker, Helene Cooper, and Mark Mazzetti, today:

Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the most devastating attack on American soil in modern times and the most hunted man in the world, was killed in a firefight with United States forces in Pakistan on Sunday, President Obama announced.

Is it literally true that the Bush administration was not operating a hunt for BL and when the Dems came into power they kicked it off, resulting in very rapid turn around if you consider the 2 year timeline being reported about this operation?

This fits far too neatly into a simplistic partisan narrative for me to take it seriously and yet the facts seem to point in this direction. Is there any reason I shouldn't think this?

Al Q might be a scene but that doesn't mean there is no value in taking out their most important figure.

Perhaps I can lull myself back to sleep with the idea that they felt that they had to marginalize Al Queda to a certain extent before taking BL out because they didn't want to risk civilian lives in a retaliatory terrorist attack. Was there some other domino that fell a few years ago that needed to fall first?

RE: Bin Laden Is Dead

"When we saw the compound where the brothers lived, we were shocked by what we saw -- an extraordinarily unique compound," one senior administration official said. "The compound sits on a large plot of land in an area that was relatively secluded when it was built. It is roughly eight times larger than the other homes in the area."

Noting that the courier and his brother had no discernible source of wealth to live at such a property, intelligence analysts concluded the compound was "custom-built to hide someone of extraordinary significance," the official said, adding: "Everything was consistent with what experts thought Osama bin Laden's compound would look like."

Let me get this straight.

Experts thought Osama was living in a large compound and they had an idea about what that compound would look like.

A compound fitting that description had been constructed many years ago in Pakistan.

The compound is visible on Google Maps.

The compound appears to have been custom built to hide someone of extraordinary significance?

Is it unreasonable to ask why this building wasn't investigated sooner? How many private compounds like this could there possibly be in Pakistan?

How U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden - CNN.com

Its good to see that people are still doing research on this. This study provides some useful feedback as well as a number of references I was unaware of.

This article in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology directly challenges the notion that the age of an edit can be used to evaluate it's reliability. I'd like to be able to read this article (particularly as I'm referenced in the abstract) but like a lot of scientific scholarship the article is not available to the general public.

On the other hand, this study seems to indicate that the age of an edit could be used to evaluate its reliability.

I think the reason for the split in the results might relate to how easy it is for a layperson to identify that a given piece of information is incorrect. Some kinds of vandalism are more subtle than others. Subtle vandalism is more likely to survive.

RE: Evaluating WikiTrust: A trust support tool for Wikipedia

Probably the best video of the tornado that hit Tuscaloosa - If you look carefully you can see large objects that were picked up and are spinning around in the storm.

4-27-11 Tornado Tuscaloosa, Al on Vimeo