Holy shit - an intelligent, actionable idea:

The effort by the Fed to drop long-term interest rates won’t do much for housing if too many people can’t refinance because the value of their home has declined.

That has to change. By regulatory fiat, where possible, more people who are current on their mortgage payments have to be able to refinance their mortgages to take advantage of rates near 4%.

That savings for many would go into additional spending, a stimulative measure, and would boost their economic psychology, which is important. Even if they used the savings to pay down their own debt it would do long-term good.

We Can’t Ignore Housing Anymore - Real Time Economics - WSJ

Matthew Yglesias on Lessig's new book.

The disappointing experience of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance effort should remind us that it’s extraordinarily difficult to get money out of politics in a manner consistent with freedom of association and expression.

I sure wish I found Lessig's proposal compelling, but I don't. People voting with dollars are going to be just as subject to manipulation as people voting with votes.

I DO like Yglesias's comments about the need for more and higher paid Congressional staff. Part of the problem is that the legislature is approving bills written by lobbyists rather than doing their own research and their own bill writing.

Cleaning Up the Capitol

Brennan: Well, as you know, covert actions are designed to be covert, and therefore. . .

Wizner: And therefore you only read about them in the newspaper.

Lawfare › More on Releasing the Legal Rationale for the Al-Aulaqi Strike

At the height of the Cold War, a hill in West Berlin known as Teufelsberg (Devil's Mountain) served as the perfect spot for U.S. and British intelligence agents to turn an ear on East Berlin and Soviet communications. In its glory days, state-of-the-art listening towers and rotating antennas at the Teufelsberg spy station exposed the Communist Bloc's secrets to analysts and linguists from the U.S. Army and the U.K.'s Government Communications Headquarters. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Teufelsberg was abandoned to decay, graffiti artists and weekend partiers.

Devil’s Mountain: NSA’s Abandoned Cold-War Listening Post | Threat Level | Wired.com

The phytoplankton in this red tide off a California beach are bioluminescent. Their cells produce a chemical reaction that creates a soft, blue-green glow. It's basically the same thing that makes lightning bugs light. In this video by Loghan Call and Man's Best Media, you can see plankton light up in the beach (and a few surfers).

Surfing the red tide – Boing Boing

This article includes a JavaScript utility to help you identify the moons of Jupiter in your telescope's eyepiece. You'll find instructions for its use below.

I've been visiting this page regularly of late.

Jupiter's Moons Javascript Utility - Interactive Observing Tools - SkyandTelescope.com

I wish you allowed comments on your blog. Your analysis of this has been very interesting. I think you make a credible argument that the killing of Al Aulaqi was both legal and reasonable under the circumstances.

What I'd like to suggest, however, is that you consider the framework you are arguing in a different context. How would things work differently if Al Aulaqi were actually innocent?

Lets say you're a radical muslim. You think everyone needs to practice your religion. You think America is the great satan. You endorse terrorist attacks. But, you haven't been directly involved in them. You're merely exercising your right to freedom of speech.

Lets say, the U.S. Government goes out and makes a bunch of allegations about you that aren't true. They claim you've recruited terrorists. They claim you've planned attacks. And they say they are going to apprehend you. They are either lying about you because they don't like the things you are actually doing or maybe they have misinterpreted some information or maybe they are being misled by an unreliable witness. Whatever - its not true.

What do you do? You can either surrender or you can run.

If you run, we end up in exactly the same place we're it now with Al Aulaqi, don't we? The US ends up killing you.

The questions is, were you to surrender, can you expect your due process rights to be respected? What can you expect?

I think a lot of the hand wringing regarding Al Aulaqi is the result of reasonable questions that people have about whether or not the current processes would adequately enable an innocent person to deal with a situation where the US government had made false allegations about their involvement with terrorism.

There are two problems:

One is process.

The long military detention of Jose Padilla without due process of law leaves some question as to what process US Citizens might expect. Perhaps these days you'd get a Military Commission? I don't think most Americans understand what grounds can be used to hold people as enemy combatants. Association with people who are terrorists seems sufficient, although association is also a first amendment right.

The other problem is Torture.

A US Citizen surrendering under current policies may be subjected to various kinds of "stressful interrogation" which may or may not be considered torture depending upon your perspective. They could also be rendered to another country where they might be tortured. Given that the US Government hasn't taken responsibility for the Maher Arar case, an innocent person should have no reason to expect the US Government to take responsibility for them either.

Its not clear why an innocent person would rationally choose to subject themselves to these processes. Any rational person would run.

Email to Benjamin Wittes

Remember, this is a person who:

is believed to be “part of” enemy forces within the meaning of the AUMF;
has been on notice for a lengthy period of time that he is regarded as such, is clearly aware of that, and has not only not denied it but actively taunted U.S. forces about their inability to get him;
has not made any attempt to surrender;
is believed to be playing an active, operational role in attacks against the United States; and
is camped out in a country that is unable to exercise civilian authority in the region in which he is located.

I don't think hand wringing is required here.

Lawfare › What Process is Due?

The nation’s major mobile-phone providers are keeping a treasure trove of sensitive data on their customers, according to newly-released Justice Department internal memo that for the first time reveals the data retention policies of America’s largest telecoms.

Good charts here.

Which Telecoms Store Your Data the Longest? Secret Memo Tells All | Threat Level | Wired.com

Government is about rules. There are three things that a system of Government consists of:

1. A system for figuring out what the rules ought to be.
2. A system for figuring out whether or not someone has violated one of the rules.
3. A system for taking action to respond when one of the rules has been violated.

What REALLY makes a Government a Government is the third part - what kind of actions are taken to respond when a rule is broken. Certain kinds of actions, such as taking people's property, imprisoning them, or killing them, are only taken within the realm of Governments or those who aspire to be Governments. Those actions make a Government a Government.

Systems of Government should be evaluated on the fairness and reasonableness of these three processes.

When Anarchists take "Direct Action" to "Get the Goods," such as a situation where someone releases animals from a pharmaceutical testing lab, they are engaged in an act of Governance.

1. They have decided on a rule: "No Animal Testing."
2. They have decided that a particular pharmaceutical company has broken that rule.
3. They have taken action to respond which involves depriving people of their property.

When you ask "Anarchists" what kind of system of Government they want, they tell you they don't want a system of Government. Of course they don't, they're Anarchists.

1. They want no system for figuring out what the rules ought to be.
2. They want no system for figuring out whether or not someone has violated one of the rules.
3. They want no system for taking action to respond when one of the rules has been violated.

But wait, they do take action. In reality, they are not Anarchists. They do not want Anarchy. They want Action. They want a system of Government to take Action. That system of government works as follows:

1. They decide what the rules are.
2. They decide who has violated the rules.
3. They take action when the rules are violated.

In other words, they want a Totalitarian system, run by them. And in history, when Anarchists have become powerful, they have become totalitarian. Totalitarianism is power without a system of checks and balances. Today's Anarchists are no different from those 100 years ago.

A true Anarchist does not support a system of Government. Therefore, a true Anarchist does not believe in taking action to respond when one of the rules has been violated. A true Anarchist doesn't have rules. If you are not comfortable with that, if you have rules, if you want to take action, you are not a true Anarchist.

Most people who call themselves Anarchists are not Anarchists.

Often, people are angered by the fact that the rules that exist in our system aren't the right rules. There are many examples of rules in our system that aren't right rules. The length of copyright, for example. Often these rules are the rules because corrupt interests want them to be the rules - because the system doesn't work properly.

The challenge when faced with this situation is to ask yourself, what aspects of our system cause it to create and uphold the wrong rules? What kind of system would produce better rules? How could we change our system to make better rules?

These are challenging questions - too challenging for most people.

Many declare that there is no system that could produce the right rules, and become anarchists, but this is a cop out, and truly an embrace of totalitarianism. Some are so eager to find a solution that they latch on to any suggested alternative without giving it careful consideration. This is madness. We must not just strike at the root - we must strike at the root precisely, lest the changes we make cause more problems than they solve.