Since van Gogh's murder, the Dutch have embarked on a vigorous and often impolitic debate on what it means to be Dutch, with some demanding of immigrants not just an ability to speak Dutch, but a detailed knowledge of Dutch history and culture that many Dutch people do not have themselves. But national identity has to be a source of inclusion, not exclusion; nor can it be based, contrary to the assertion of the gay Dutch politician Pym Fortuyn who was assassinated in 2003, on endless tolerance and valuelessness.

Messy. As recently as 1995 it was the predominate view of the U.S. Embassy to Canada that Canada would break into multiple separate countries within 20 years. Today that outcome is no longer considered likely. The reason is that from the 50's through the 90's the Canadian government engaged in a serious effort to make its various constituants feel as if their national identity represented them. Canada is a lesson in both how to succeed at this, and how difficult it is. This is why I don't have great hopes for Isreal. The jewish identity of Isreal as a state cannot provide a meaningful identity to it's muslim citizens. This will inevitably and perpetually cause tension, unless all of the muslims move out, or the state changes it's identity to become more inclusive, or the state is destroyed. Unfortunately, I don't think Isreal has the cultural maturity to choose the middle path, and I think the other outcomes are terrible in terms of their human costs, and I don't find the status quo acceptable either. I see problems in every direction there.

Can Holland create an inclusive national identity like the United States? I think so. I think England can too. I'm more worried about France.

On the other hand, I bristle at the thought of people being exhiled for preaching. If they advocate violence, then yes, but to attack tolerance as the issue is to invite the requirement that a national identity requires that 3rd generation Englishmen have the same culture as 50th generation Englishmen. This is impossible, and it will create more strife, not less. At the same time I don't think that people who are citizens of a country should operate their own "cultural" legal system. Democratic states should not allow communities to practice Sharia. It is the legal system of the country, and the people's equal footing before it, that makes a binding national identity meaningful. This is the lesson of American history. The constant accumulation of federal power in American history happen precisely because one nation could not exist with radically different legal systems in different regions. There is a balance. Its important for states to be laboratories of democracy, and to reflect slight regional differences, but American history has consistently shown that erring on the side of too much "legal diversity" results in significant tension and perhaps war.

The result must be that what it means to be English must be defined by who England's citizens actually are today. Not who they were 200 years ago, and not who they would like to be, but who they actually are. That identity must be one which every citizen can accept as his or her own identity.

It took Canada 5 decades to get French and English people to live together as a single nation and the project is far from complete. I fear getting Islamic fundamentalists to feel French is a far more daunting task.

Francis Fukuyama - A Year of Living Dangerously

Security company F-Secure says it is expecting to see viruses exploiting the rootkit technology used in Sony's DRM software anytime now.

F-Secure's Chief Research Officer Mikko Hypp�nen said that the company was already in discussions with Sony before the news broke on Monday, but because of the huge security risks that this information poses those talks were behind closed doors.

'We didn't go public with the info at the time as we were worried with the implications (especially with the info on how outsiders can hide files which have names starting with "$sys$"),' he said. 'We're waiting for the first virus which uses filenames like that.'

[ And we move one step further... now Sony feels they have the right to root my box in order to keep me from ripping audio tracks. This is all going to end badly for everyone. There's gonna have to be a compromise at some point, because the road paved with heavy duty DRM leads to the utter destruction of the industry, in my opinion. And that's not just the music industry, but the better part of the entire entertainment industry unless lessons are learned. Ridiculous. -k]

PC Pro: News: Sony rootkit DRM to spark copycat viruses

The entire experience was frustrating and irritating. Not only had Sony put software on my system that uses techniques commonly used by malware to mask its presence, the software is poorly written and provides no means for uninstall. Worse, most users that stumble across the cloaked files with a RKR scan will cripple their computer if they attempt the obvious step of deleting the cloaked files.

While I believe in the media industry’s right to use copy protection mechanisms to prevent illegal copying, I don’t think that we’ve found the right balance of fair use and copy protection, yet. This is a clear case of Sony taking DRM too far.

I smell a lawsuit.

Mark's Sysinternals Blog: Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far

Why its a bad idea to dress up as an RIAA or MPAA lawyer for halloween.

Welcome to uComics Web Site featuring FoxTrot - Online Comics, Editorial Cartoons, Email Comics, Political Cartoons

Taken together, Justice O’Connor’s opinions reveal that an undue burden does not exist unless a law (a) prohibits abortion or gives another person the authority to veto an abortion or (b) has the practical effect of imposing “severe limitations,” rather than simply inhibiting abortions “‘to some degree’” or inhibiting “some women.”

Looking at previous restrictions that Justice O’Connor had approved, which “almost certainly were substantial enough to dissuade some women from obtaining abortions,” Judge Alito wrote that “it appears clear that an undue burden may not be established simply by showing that a law will have a heavy impact on a few women but that instead a broader inhibiting effect must be shown.”

A number of liberal sources are in full "screaming bloody murder" mode over this guy. I don't get it. I don't see the fire. This is not Janice Rogers Brown.

I don't think the above line of reasoning in unreasonable, for the exact same reason I don't think the 9th circuit was being unreasonable when they struck the pledge requirement. These guys are responsible for applying precident. They are not responsible for reaching the outcome you'd prefer. If you don't like the outcome, you should pressure the legislature unless you can demonstrate that the judge is unreasonable. I haven't seen one commentator argue that his reasoning is flawed or unprofessional. They seem focused on results, not how they were reached, and that seems like so much political bullshit.

If the left really has a problem with this guy they are going to have to provide an explanation that has meat. Until such time my official position on this nomination is: "Did you expect a Republican controlled government to nominate a liberal?"

Patterico’s Pontifications - Alito’s Dissent in Casey

Some information on Alito. Thus far I'm not terribly concerned, but I haven't heard enough yet. The only decision that I've heard of that might be objectional is Planned Parenthood vs. Casey. You can expect a great deal of debate about that in the coming weeks.

My thinking on this is that I agree that there are cases in which women have legitimate reasons for not wanting to notify their husbands that are not covered by the exceptions in this law. I think its a bad law and I'm not troubled that the supreme court struck it down. Even if it were well crafted, I think it puts the state's nose way too far into people's personal business. This is not my kind of law.

However, I do not think its entirely irrational on its face that a husband might have a legitimate interest in notification of his wife's pregnancy. Marriage legally requires shared responsibility. To the degree that society thinks that it ought to put the state's nose into people's business, and it certainly does, left, right and center, I don't think upholding the constitutionality of this law would be way out of line were it well crafted. Certainly, the legislature should not have passed this law. I think this would be better handled with a requirement for counselors to advise spousal notification, but this would not be the first time the government issued a requirement where it should have issued a warning. Its not unconstitutional for the government to do stupid things.

Basically, this is not the smoking gun that makes me opposed to Alito. There is no judge that has never issued a ruling I don't agree with.

I am, however, troubled that the exact same situations that caused the supreme court to call this law "repugnant" exist as well for minors, and yet the supreme court showed absolutely no concern in that context. The idea that the court could claim that constitutional rights are terribly infringed by a notification requirement on the one hand, but not be at all bothered by a consent requirement on the other is bizarly hypocritical. Minors should not be treated as property by the state. If one is unconstitutional the other obviously must be. This point, of course, has nothing to do with Alito.

Samuel A. Alito, Jr. - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"When the government seeks to turn a mobile telephone into a means for contemporaneously tracking the movements of its user, the delicately balanced compromise that Congress has forged between effective law enforcement and individual privacy requires a showing of probable cause," wrote federal Magistrate Judge James Orenstein of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

FBI Dealt Setback on Cellular Surveillance

Like a lot of monsters, zombies have their roots in folklore and -- according to some researchers -- in real events in Haiti.

Howstuffworks: How Zombies Work

Delcan NET, a Canadian company, developed the system which triangulates the location of each driver by monitoring the signal sent from the cell phone as it is handed off from one cell tower to the next. Each phone is uniquely identified and the information is compared with a highway map to record on what road each motorist is traveling at any given time. The system also records the speed of each vehicle, opening up another potential ticketing technology.

A pilot program in Baltimore only tracks Cingular cell phones on 1,000 miles of road. AirSage Inc. has contracted with Sprint to spy on motorists in Norfolk, Virginia and Atlanta and Macon, Georgia.

Wow thats fucked up. AirSage says identifying information is stripped from the data in their pilot in Georgia.

Missouri To Track Through Cell Phones

Acidus wrote:

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

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

Technically, these two exceptions exist in U.S. law as well, despite the fact that they aren't spelled out in the Constitution. You can be charged inciting a riot (public order) or with obsenity (immoral speech). Of course, violating the public order could easily be defined as criticising official policy. The actual application of these things will be defined over time by the government and the courts. The liberal stance of the Supreme Court in the 60s and 70s is really what allows people in America to say things like "fuck the government" without going to prison. A different time and place would (and did) offer different results from the same law. The nature of Iraq will be defined by Iraqis.... with one huge gapping problem:

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

I don't think you can have a democracy with an establishment of religion. If the law is the law of god, then to question it is heresy. If you cannot question the law you cannot decide whether or not you agree with it, and you cannot express choices at a ballot box that you are not allowed to make. Maybe it will appear to work in the beginning, as some laws are questioned and others are not. However, over time, the religion will take hold, as in such a state religious justifications for actions are much easier to formulate then political and pragmatic ones, and once reached, nearly impossible to defeat. Theism is the path of least resistance, for both the courts and the government. Eventually the state will resemble nothing we could call democracy.

Of course, I used to think that totalitarianism was incompatible with capitalism. I was wrong. See Singapore...

In many ways Iraq represents exactly the sort of state Conservative Christians in America would like to build. If it is successful, even for a time, look for it to be held up not just as a model for the middle east, but as a model for us as well...

RE: Text of the draft Iraqi Constitution