July, 2006 archive

The state Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday that Californians’ privacy rights are violated when their telephone conversations are secretly recorded by out-of-state callers.

The justices sided with plaintiffs who sued Salomon Smith Barney Inc., now Smith Barney Inc., for secretly recording phone conversations between Atlanta-based brokers and California customers.

No brainer.

The company I used to work for–this was eight years ago–had several call centers to serve the nation. They were well aware that taping calls for “quality control” or “training” purposes was subject to the laws of the state from which the call originated.

(Aside: training was the primary reason they taped calls–they would record them and then play them back to the agent in private coaching sessions to help the agent do a better job of bambooz up-selling.)

That’s why, when any of us calls an 800-number, we hear the warning that “this call may be recorded blah blah blah . . .”

Guess Smith-Barney couldn’t figure it out.

“Very Interesting.”

Valerie Plame Wilson, her husband Ambassador Joseph Wilson and their counsel, Christopher Wolf of Proskauer Rose LLP, will hold a news conference at 10 a.m. EDT on Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, DC 20045 to explain the filing of a civil lawsuit today against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, according to a statement by the lawyers.

(snip)

The suit accuses the defendants of violating the Wilsons’ constitutional and other legal rights as a result of “a conspiracy among current and former high-level officials in the White House” to “discredit, punish and seek revenge against” Joseph Wilson for publicly disputing statements made by President Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address justifying the war in Iraq.

This should be fun to watch.

This case originates near Pine View Farm, though I do not know the family:

In all, the judge heard 11 hours of testimony before the hearing concluded late Tuesday. At issue is if the teen can make his own medical decisions and whether he can keep living with his parents and four siblings on Chincoteague, an island off Virginia’s Eastern Shore.

The judge is expected to issue a written decision by July 18.

The teen, who goes by Abraham, has Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymph nodes.

Three months of chemotherapy last year made him extremely weak. So when he learned in February that his cancer was active again, he turned — against doctors’ advice — to a sugar-free organic diet, herbs and visits to a clinic in Mexico.

I nearly wrote, “I make no judgements.”

But I do. And I know this sounds harsh, especially in our culture, which likes to pretend that everyone is immortal and death is not part of life.

The track record of Mexican alternative cancer clinics is pretty much identical to the track record of the current Federal Administration: Fraudulent, abysmal, and incompetent.

But if the kid wants to die, rather then get competent medical attention, well, I just don’t know. Who has the right to put a value on his life?

Whose choice is it to make on his behalf: death or discomfort?

What would you, dear reader, recommend? Should the Commonwealth protect him from himself?

I’m just glad I ain’t the judge.

(aside) Maybe Senator Frist can diagnose him over a television broadcast and get Congress to pass a law. He tried it once; will he try it again?

Eugene Robinson said it well (from an online chat):

Laurel, Md.: One reason to applaud a $296 billion deficit is that Bush is actually ahead of schedule to fulfill a campaign promise to halve the budget deficit’s portion of GDP by the end of his term. About $260 billion in FY ’09 is the final goal.

Eugene Robinson: But he created the deficit! If I took a hundred dollars out of your bank account and then called a press conference to announce that I had put twenty-five dollars back and was ahead of schedule on my plan to repay you, would you applaud?

Bush.

Lies and spin. Spin and lies.

’nuff said:

The Army is discontinuing a controversial multibillion-dollar deal with oil services giant Halliburton Co. to provide logistical support to U.S. troops worldwide, a decision that could cut deeply into the firm’s dominance of government contracting in Iraq.

In Georgia:

Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed, whose campaign for Georgia lieutenant governor has been clouded by questions over his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff, is promoting himself as the candidate with “stronger values.”

His opponent, state Sen. Casey Cagle, has responded by calling Reed’s campaign ads the “height of hypocrisy” and questioning publicly whether Reed could be charged with wrongdoing during the run-up to the November general election.

Hey, Ralph! One comment:

Mark 11:15.

Americans’ attitudes on lying:

OVERALL: About four in 10 think lying is justified sometime, while just over half, 52 percent, said it is never justified. Asked whether lying is OK in a number of circumstances, about two-thirds, 65 percent, said it is at least sometimes OK to lie when trying to protect someone’s feelings. About four in 10 said it’s OK at times to exaggerate a story to make it more interesting, and lying to a child about a parent’s past misbehavior. About a third say it’s OK at times to lie about one’s age and lying about being sick to take a day off of work. Very few thought it was OK to lie on a resume, lie about cheating on a spouse or cheat on your taxes.

I couldn’t find anything in the story about lying to start a war.

There’s an experiment going on.

The Suburban Guerrilla, whose RSS feed I pull into my sidebar (over there, to the right—->) is on Huffington Post today discussing bloggers, how they are mean and they suck.

Last month’s tenfold increase in broadcast indecency fines has sent radio and television stations and media giants scurrying to protect themselves, as the cost of uttering a dirty word over the air has turned a minor annoyance into a major business expense.

The new law is a boon for companies that make time-delay machines for broadcasters, which are designed to catch offensive language before it hits the airwaves, and a potentially powerful reason for performers, directors and producers to take their talent to cable and satellite outlets, where federal decency standards do not apply.

Sooooooooooooooooooo . . . (looking for indecency on the airwaves)

what’s the fine for reading press releases from the current Federal Administration?

Good thing they ain’t fining stupid or almost nothing would be left to watch.

I listened to this show yesterday. It is an amazing tale of injustice, courage, justice, and redemption. It is worth an hour of anyone’s time:

After four lawyers fail to get an innocent man, Collin Warner (pictured, left), out of prison, his friend, Carl King (pictured, right), takes on the case himself. He becomes a do-it-yourself investigator. He learns to read court records, he tracks down hard-to-find witnesses, he gets the real murderer to come forward with his story. In the end, he’s able to accomplish all sorts of things the police and the professionals can’t. King now runs an organization, called Success to Freedom, devoted to helping wrongfully convicted inmates.

You can find the audio here.

Not sure of the purpose of this, but it sure looks like a metaphor for the reasoning of the far right wing.

Here.

I recommend this post to everyone who blogs, even occasionally, on politics and the polity, wherever on the spectrum of the political rainbow you might fall:

I generally re-post what’s already out there, and then add some short commentary or snark to it. Yeah, perhaps it’s not news, but this isn’t your site either. This is my site and I’ll say, expectedly, whatever I want.

Yet sometimes the echo chamber itself becomes a very dangerous thing and in fact, this was made quite obvious over the weekend with the right-wing outrage over a Travel section piece in the NYT regarding the location of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney’s retreat homes, I guess, in St. Michael’s, MD. The right seized on the article as if it were a threat to the security and safety of Donald Rumsfeld, and furthermore, a deliberate attempt by the NYT to put their lives in jeopardy.

(snip)

And so when it became known that the photographer had gotten Rumsfeld’s permission, it made no difference. And then when it was later confirmed with Rumsfeld’s office permission was given, as well as with the Secret Service that the article posed no threat, it made little difference.

(snip)

Given the fact that it has now been confirmed that the story in the NYT was not, never was, and never will be a threat to the safety of Rumsfeld and/or Cheney, I have to wonder – with all the attention the Right put into pushing this story, riling up the freaks into writing all about this non-story, how many people, notwithstanding Rumsfeld and Cheney, but employees of the Times, the photographer who had permission to take the photograph of Rummy’s house, as well as the children who some suggested should be hung as bait for sexual predators, they may have very possibly put at risk themselves.

I received this in my email this morning. I have Googled it and can find no evidence that it is copyright. If anyone can show me that it is, please let me know, so I can take this down or provide a proper link.

Update: Opie has been kind enough to let me know that this is an updated version of a Clinton-era satire. Regardless of whom it’s directed at, it’s a damned good piece of satire. See the note at the end.

Dear Friends and Relatives:

Thank you.
George W. Bush Monument Committee
P. S. The Committee has raised $1.35 so far.

Note (added July 5, 2006): Opie’s post led me to think about the differences between Bill Clinton’s lying and George Bush’s lying.

Bill Clinton lied about personal misconduct. I believe that there are two reasons the Republican Party’s impeachment attempt never gained traction with the American public:

Clinton’s personal life, as strange as it may have been, was not seen as affecting his public decisions as a steward of the nation, and

Persons looked at the situation and said to themselves, “He had an affair; who the heck wouldn’t lie about that!”

In contrast, George Bush’s lies are part of his public life. He lies continually, reflexively, almost habitually, everytime he gets a chance, but not about his personal life–rather, he lies about what he is doing to undermine, circumvent, and otherwise destroy the very Constitution that he swore to uphold–and note that his oath of office is to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, not to provide for the physical safety of the citizens of the United States of America, for, without the Constitution, the citizenry is lost.

God help us all.

From the New York Times (follow this link to Raw Story to see the full article).

The terrorist tracking unit, known inside the spy agency as “Alec station,” was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned to other offices within the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, the officials said.

The decision is a milestone of sorts for the agency, which created the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name (Note: This means the CIA knew he was important, even as the current Federal Administration ignored warnings about him before the World Trade Center attack–ed.) and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring bin Laden to justice “dead or alive.”

He ain’t caught, and the Administration’s actions speak louder than words, at least to those who haven’t stuffed their ears.

I always preferred the wines of Rothschild:

A French court on Tuesday convicted respected wine exporter Georges Duboeuf Wines of fraud after one of its wineries mixed a variety of grapes in its Beaujolais.

The court in Villefranche-sur-Saone in southeast France fined the vintner 30,000 euros ($38,370) — well below the 150,000 euros ($192,000) the prosecutor had requested.

While the small quantity of impure Beaujolais wine never made it to market, prosecutors were pushing for big fines to ensure that such practices don’t spread in the struggling French wine industry.

From the Annenberg Institute:

The conservative Free Enterprise Fund (FEF) continues to push for permanent repeal of the federal estate tax with one of the most blatantly false advertising campaigns we’ve seen this year.

One recent TV ad repeats an utterly untrue claim that the estate tax can “rip away 55 per cent of what you save for loved ones.” In fact, the tax takes zero per cent from all but a very few. Even multimillionaires pay an average effective tax rate estimated currently at less than 22 per cent of their estates.

The ads are particularly nasty in their tone as well. One portrays Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington as a carrion bird, saying “she voted with the vultures” to oppose consideration of estate-tax repeal. Another attacks Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas for supposedly going back on a promise to support repeal, saying “Pryor is a liar.” Actually, Pryor is on record opposing total repeal, though a statement on his website can easily be read to imply the opposite.

Follow the link for the full, dispassionate analysis of this campaign to make the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

On the other hand, go here to read about an equally scurrilous ad from proponents of a different side of this issue.

While cruising the Christina today, we got a glimpses of the Kalmar Nyckel, which was open for tours and cruises in celebration of Independence Day. Here she is approaching the I-495 bridge headed downstream to the Delaware River.

And here is the Half Moon, a full-sized replica of Henry Hudson’s ship, also in town for the festivities.

Note that both of these ships, both the same size as the originals, which brought settlers and explorers to the New World, are only slightly larger than a Chevy Tahoe.

Food for the ear:

Commentator Judy Muller makes this point about tyranny: “Once it pulls up a chair and makes itself at home, it develops an enormous appetite.” It’s part of our ongoing series of commentaries on civil rights and national security.