While you were busy focusing on the financial crisis another massive power grab is going down.

The new legislation before Congress would "reaffirm" that "the President is authorized to detain enemy combatants in connection with the continuing armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces, regardless of the place of capture, until the termination of hostilities."

Congress is considering explicit authorization for the President to indefinitely detain US citizens on US soil without charges.

Why Congress shouldn't give the president more power. - By Neal Katyal and Justin Florence - Slate Magazine

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Another crisis, another massive power grab.

naked capitalism: Why You Should Hate the Treasury Bailout Proposal

"If the surge had truly 'worked,' we would expect to see a steady increase in night-light output over time, as electrical infrastructure continued to be repaired and restored, with little discrimination across neighborhoods," said co-author Thomas Gillespie, an associate professor of geography at UCLA. "Instead, we found that the night-light signature diminished only in certain neighborhoods, and the pattern appears to be associated with ethno-sectarian violence and neighborhood ethnic cleansing."

Mike the Usurper memed this study here but this UCLA press release has more information and a link to the actual study. This raises a number of questions that are likely to be promptly ignored.

UCLA study of satellite imagery casts doubt on surge's success in Baghdad / UCLA Newsroom

Palindrome wrote:

A scene from the airport of the future: A man's pulse races as he walks through a checkpoint. His quickened heart rate and heavier breathing set off an alarm. A machine senses his skin temperature jumping. Screeners move in to question him.

Seriously?

This program has been going on for months with human screeners. The addition of automated technology doesn't change the basics. Many of the positives aren't "false," they just have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism:

Since January 2006, behavior-detection officers have referred about 70,000 people for secondary screening, Maccario said. Of those, about 600 to 700 were arrested on a variety of charges, including possession of drugs, weapons violations and outstanding warrants.

The airports are quickly becoming an excuse for general criminal investigation.

RE: Anxiety-detecting machines could spot terrorists

Did Kraftwork do the soundtrack for this?

YouTube - Sesame Street - How Crayons Are Made

Someone build giant dominoes from dominoes. You can see the flexion and movement within the dominoes that you normally couldn't see. Quite neat.

MAKE: Blog: 30,000 dominoes make a U-turn

Best 2 day the Dow has seen since 1929 -- and how'd that work out for ya?

The Big Picture | Industrials: Biggest 2 day rally since 1929

“They say there are no atheists in foxholes.   Perhaps, then, there are also no libertarians in financial crises.”

Quote of the Day

More hand wringing about the need for comprehensive repudiation of America’s culture of civil liberties. I figured the tone of this kind of talk would be winding down these days.

Our Constitution, Dershowitz writes, “was designed with the ‘reactive state’ in mind.” But now the state has taken on an ever-more-important preventive function, stopping terrorism before it can occur. Our legal system, however, has not caught up with this new function.

Torture warrants, Dershowitz insists, are one way to shine law’s light on this darkness, especially if one believes there are times when torture should be permitted.

“We need to develop a jurisprudence for the emerging preventive state. … Black holes in the law are anathema to democracy, accountability, human rights and the rule of law.”

How realistic is the specter of nuclear terrorism?
Are these changes necessary to prevent it, or is this just facism feeling around for a rationalization?
It seems to me that surveillance is more central to this preemptive law enforcement system than torture. Does Dershowitz also think we should have warrantless surveillance warrants?

To Torture or Not to Torture - Paper Cuts Blog - NYTimes.com

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed suit against the NSA, President Bush and Vice President Cheney on behalf of AT&T's customers to fight illegal wiretapping.

I know this is totally beside the point, but don't you wish that this actually was the NSA logo?

EFF sues Cheney, Bush, and the NSA to stop illegal wiretapping - Boing Boing