Point: Civil Liberty

John Poindexter, the retired Navy Admiral who lost his job as National Security Adviser under Ronald Reagan and was convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government, and destroying evidence in the Iran Contra scandal, is quitting his sweet Bush Administration job.

Admiral Poindexter is the architect of two of this Bush Admin's biggest embarrassment. Oddly, he didn't get run out of office for creating one of the greatest modern threats to civil liberty (the Total Information Awareness system), but rather for his work crafting one of the STUPIDEST ideas we've seen in the fight against terror: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's abandoned futures-trading market for predicting assassinations, terrorism and other events in the Middle East.

Questions I have include:

1) Why is a convicted felon in a position to access all personal data from all US citizens?
2) When are folks going to start holding Bush Admin folk accountable for their stupidity?
and
3) Seriously, dude, how did he think that the terror futures market was a winning idea? Seriously.

NOTE: All of the above links were found by simply typing "fuck [BLANK]" in to Google. For example, "fuck John Poindexter"

Honeymoon Plan Comes Together

Thanks to Cathay Pacific and its "Everything is OK now, please comeback" Sale, Maggie and I have selected our honeymoon plan. We'll spend a week in Penang, Maylasia, then a few days in Cebu, Philippines and finish with a few days in Bali, Indonesia.

If you have any suggestions for us, please drop me a note!

Commonwealth Parody

A call to protest the Commonwealth Club of California last week, from Nestor Makhno at the San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

Protest Tom Ridge and the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday, July 23rd at 11:30 a.m.

Secretary Ridge

I have a great deal of respect for the years of public service that Tom Ridge, Secretary of Homeland Security, has to his credit. His work is honorable and his commitment is enviable. He's working with great discipline and purpose towards a seeming insurmountable goal; the safety and security of the United States - 280 million people, from Alaska to Puerto Rico.

But the devil is in the details, and the devil is getting the better of him. His vision and strategic goals are great. His tactical execution and willingness to let tools like the PATRIOT ACT, TIPs, and US VISIT (what he described as "essentially a "virtual border" that will use biometrics to confirm the identity and status of all travelers, both to and from the United States") be used to victimize and harass the people they are meant to protect.

I went to hear Secretary Ridge speak at The Commonwealth Club of California yesterday. At the end of his prepared remarks [text], I liked his energy and his attitude towards pooling resources. The section that was clearly drafted by the white House as a "unified message in support of the Iraqi war effort" was graceless and out of place, but I understand why he/his staff shoved it in the middle of his monologue. It was certainly just dropped in there by the West Wing communication office and Sec. Ridge jerked in-and-out of it like a 15-yr-old driving a stick-shift.

The Q&A, however, is where he really disappointed:

When asked about dissent in America, he said "It must be tolerated" and "sometimes dissenters may, after a long while, actually sway some opinions." The Secretary is forgetting that he works for his critics every bit as much as he works for his supporters.

When asked who exactly was making sure that the 180,000 folks employed by the DHS understand and observe the civil rights of the people they need to investigate. He said, "well, there's always a struggle between freedom and security." He then went on to describe the two men in his agency that are charged with insuring that folks in his department not abuse their authority. TWO GUYS!?!

When asked why Saddam's sons being captured makes the US a safer place, he gave such a contrived, long-winded, meandering answer, that I still don't know what he said... but, apparently, we're safer.

In short: I like him. He scares the piss out of me. Good man - bad job.

43 vs. Me

The White House still manages to surprise me.

I work at a company, Adaptive Path, that tries to make the world easier, at least online. We're making the NPR and PBS websites more user-friendly. We're working on the United Nations ReleifWeb website, helping the humanitarian relief community transfer data around the world faster. And sometimes we work for enormous financial institutions, making it easier for us to get info about our money.

So, when the White House began a campaign to make it as hard as possible to communicate with them, I came to realize that this administration really represents the polar opposite of everything I believe. It's actually refreshing to see the what the *exact* opposite of my dreams looks like.

For those who think I'm exaggerating: from the New York Times:

"Under a system deployed on the White House Web site for the first time last week, those who want to send a message to President Bush must now navigate as many as nine Web pages and fill out a detailed form that starts by asking whether the message sender supports White House policy or differs with it.

Just another brick in the wall keeping the people alienated and disengaged from the democratic process.

Right On, 43!

Lightening Strikes Twice

I was riding my bike home from work on Wednesday when I came up to a police barricade in a pretty residential part of our neighborhood. As I slipped around it, I could see what all the commotion was about.

Half way down the street was a car that had entirely flipped over. Like an A-Team stunt, they had managed to roll a car in a 30 MPH zone. I look at the scene and could not figure out how they could have done this by accident - and didn't really understand how they might have done such a stupid thing if they'd intended such reckless idiocy.

That same night, Maggie and I went to go see Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, and lightening struck twice. How in the hell did someone with that many beautiful, talented-enough actors, that much money, and that many capable stunt/special effects staff "accidentally" make such a train-wreck of a movie? There wasn't a single plotline, line of dialogue, or undercover ruse that was either funny or imaginative.

Hard to belief that a movie about hot chicks kicking ass could be so utterly without merit.
Oh, McG.

Tuscany

Maggie and I spent a week doing very, very little in Tuscany. The lovely Jen Robbins put together a cool little album.