... Until the president is willing to employ carrots as well as sticks, he will make little headway in changing Iranian or Syrian behavior. The president's lack of initiative on this point is especially disappointing.

... and now you know the rest of the story.

Why Libya Gave Up on the Bomb

The linked video is an extended remix of an Apache Longbow helicopter attacking several enemy combatants (they are carrying guns) in some unknown event/location in Iraq. Its more of this remix culture type thing I'm always ranting about..

I had a range of reactions watching this.. There is the whole getting blasted to pieces thing. Regardless of application, it never really sits right to me. However, one thing I am sure of.. This beats the shit out of carpet bombing. I just really dislike war. None the less, that guy feels busted. Lets hear it for precision weapons!

Links to a this, other various music videos, and a Windows Media format can be found at:
http://www.2c-i.org/index.php?command=video

I also found the original footage in the wild via Google: http://katarn3279.shackspace.com/224helicopter_kills.mpeg

2c-i | VDS-5 | Mechanized Killing [DiVX]

This is a backdrop made from the high-resolution press image of the rover looking back at the landing pad, sized to fit widescreen 17" LCD monitors.

UPDATE: URL fixed..

Mars Rover Landing Pan | 'Empty Nest' Photo | 1440x900

] Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary
] Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a
] year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically
] passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The
] Globe.
]
] From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003,
] members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer
] glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic
] communications without a password. Trolling through
] hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points
] and accounts of private meetings discussing which
] judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what
] tactics.

This should invoke Watergate style outrage, by reflex alone..

] "There appears to have been no hacking, no stealing, and
] no violation of any Senate rule," Miranda said. "Stealing
] assumes a property right and there is no property right to
] a government document. . . . These documents are not
] covered under the Senate disclosure rule because they are
] not official business and, to the extent they were
] disclosed, they were disclosed inadvertently by negligent
] [Democratic] staff."

Unbelievable...

Boston.com / News / Nation / Infiltration of files seen as extensive

] Anyway, for this we also needed something moving or
] changing very fast, so we decided to build a bolt gun. Of
] course, bolt guns aren't very fun unless you can see, in
] great detail, the object they are hitting explode, so
] these two projects seemed like a match made in nerd
] heaven. With the aforementioned micro-controller, we
] simply had no choice but to build a flash timing
] mechanism to capture images of hot bolt-on-food action.

The tale of what evils can occur when 3 nerds from MIT are bored over winter break. They build a bolt gun power by a BASIC stamp, that takes cool bolt-traveling-through-fruit-at high-velocity photos

Fruit Killing bolt gun powered by BASIC!

] The Economist magazine, hardly an anti-American
] newsweekly, called Rumsfeld's remarks "unworthy of a
] nation which has cherished the rule of law from its very
] birth."

The Christian Science Monitor rounds up several articles on the military tribunal's in Cuba. In short, the precedent of giving the president this type of open ended power is bad. This administration doesn't seem to like any kind of civilian review or consent process for anything..

News round up on Cuba detainees

There is now an Elections topic under Current Events.

Thomas Friedman is on a roll with his "War of Ideas" series of articles. Every one has been short, to the point, and smack full of great insight. This one is no different. Only this time around, I beat Jeremy to Meme'ing it. :)

In this one, Friedman focuses on the Dems and Iraq. Here is a taste:

My hope is that Iowa will embolden the Blair Democrats to shuck off their intimidation, by Mr. Bush and Mr. Dean, and press their case. It is the only way to build a national consensus for what's going to be a long cold-war-like struggle to strengthen the forces of moderation and weaken the forces of violent intolerance within the Arab-Muslim world — which is what the real war on terrorism is about.

War of Ideas, Part 5

] "Internet voting presents far too many opportunities for
] hackers or even terrorists to interfere with fair and
] accurate voting, potentially in ways impossible to detect,"
] the computer experts said in a statement. "Such tampering
] could alter election results, particularly in close contests."

] "Not only could a political party attempt to manipulate
] an election by attacking SERVE, but so could individual
] hackers, criminals, terrorists, organizations such as the
] Mafia and even other countries," the report said.

... but it seems they are continuing with plans anyway.

I don't get the logic in play here.. If you had asked me several years ago what I thought would happen if these situations came up, I would have said that I'd expect the government to be very conservative when it came to the voting system. I would have though that they would have resisted all this Internet/electronic based voting system stuff way beyond the point where security professionals had given it a clean bill of health.

Why is it so important to have Internet voting systems? If there is reason to believe they are flawed, why still push? There is either a complete disconnect of logic, or other motives in play. I don't see how Florida changed the logic you'd apply to the problem..

Integrity of the voting system should take precedence over connivence, in all cases. No one seems to think any of these systems are secure, except for the people who make them.

Yahoo! News - Pentagon Stands by Internet Voting System

I just noticed that C-SPAN has live streams available of all their channels.

Yes, C-SPAN can be boring as hell.. However, Washington Journal is one of the best things to watch in the morning for a review of all breaking news that effecting US politics. Its all caller driven, the anchors keep their opinions out of it, and they tend to have interesting (or at least relevant) people interviewed every day. Highly recommended if you find yourself needing some useful and informative background noise between 7-10am EST.

C-SPAN.org - Public Affairs on the Web