The Green[e]house Effect: a Weblog

Time: A Grudge’s Greatest Foe

Let me continue in an apolitical vein for a sec, ant tell you about something that happened to me over the weekend when I went to Whole Foods. [Come on — all the cool people go to Whole Foods. =, ]

I stopped there on the way back from the airport post office, where I had gone to drop off Christmas cards — mostly to pick up onions, rice, and a few basics before Christmas. [Should have picked up a bottle of riesling while I was there … but like I said, I was there for basics. Or my wallet was, at least.]

Anyhow, after I got in line, I looked at the next aisle for a sec … and spotted someone I went to college with. She looked the same; I’d just forgotten that she lived in town.

Thing is, how she made her mark — among my friends, at least — was by having my debating society thrown out of its meeting hall for a semester. The cause for that punishment was pretty serious, but it still left sore feelings among those — myself included — who didn’t believe that the entire group should have taken the fall for it.

I’d spoken with a few members of that coterie [known to my college friends as the ‘Gang of Four’] since then, and had fairly cordial conversations with them — but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a twinge of irritation over the whole sodden history surrounding them, even a few years later. This time, though, they were well, bygones; I don’t think those old controversies even came to mind until I was halfway home.

Which strikes me as just as it should have been. The passing of a decade puts college life into perspective — and from where I sit, I just can’t get worked up over ten-year-old controversies anymore. Sit me down in Whole Foods with a lawyer [she got a law degree around the same time I did] and her husband and kid, and I can have all sorts of conversation — about local politics, careers, even about blogs — that ends up far more worthwhile and rewarding than any sour thoughts I might have about the past.

So yeah — just like a friend from the debating society told me once, I can’t hold a grudge. But that suits me fine; at the end of the day, I’d rather have a friendship.

New Year’s Resolutions

Fellow ’Bama expat Clancy Ratliff writes about making resolutions for next year — which, come to think of it, is something I haven’t done for a while.

As someone who doesn’t bother much with superstition or stand on ceremony, I never really saw the point of picking out some arbitrary date and saying, “Aha! Here is when I’ll change my ways.” It makes more sense to view self-improvement as a continuous process — right?

That said, I can see the merit in making an explicit challenge to yourself — throwing down the gauntlet, and giving yourself a concrete goal to measure yourself by. Clancy went pretty gently on herself, and she might have the right idea; hey, I could be down with flossing every night. But the little perfectionist in me wants me to shoot higher, to push harder … and Lord knows I can.

I could end up doing something as simple as getting a mountain bike to start working out on, or signing up for a jiujitsu class — or who knows? I might get even more ambitious. Give me a few days to mull it over.

I’ll get back to you once I’ve thought up a good one, assuming I decide to go through with making one. [Suggestions? Bring ’em on.]

My Annual Bout with Technical Difficulties …

… came right on schedule this year. My Mac got a case of the heebie-jeebies in the wake of a crash by the Acrobat installer, and before I knew it, the system was so screwed up that I had to wipe one of my hard drives.

By good fortune, I happened to have a PC with 35 gigabytes of spare hard disk space at the other end of my in-home network — enough room to handle the 18 gigabytes or so of data that I wanted to rescue. A few hours in a backup program called Retrospect, combined with a little time in a program that helps Windows handle Mac drives, gave me enough confidence that I could get my data back that I went ahead and erased the disk, instead of going to a technician at the local Apple store.

As luck had it, I got most everything back. If you want to know what disappeared, it’s pretty weird — nothing essential, but the fickle finger of fate apparently didn’t want me to keep my OutKast music library. Go figure. I should mention that wiping the drive screwed up my iTunes preferences — so in spite of getting almost all my songs back, the playlists and usage history were all hosed.

That aside, I could be in a world of hurt right now, rather than having my machine in better working order than before. So I shouldn’t complain — but really, it’s hard not to get a little sore over having two workdays get flushed down the toilet , or over having to kick off your weekend with a giant technical snafu. So indulge me — and thank your lucky stars that I let you get by for this long without making you listen to me vent.

Sticky Fingers on Your Ballot

I get leery of trafficking in conspiracy theories about electronic voting machines — I feel weird chalking up to malevolence what someone could just as easily blame on incompetence. Stories about felons working in senior management at an e-voting booth vendor, though, might be worth getting alarmed over.

Voter advocate Bev Harris alleged Tuesday that managers of a subsidiary of Diebold, one of the country’s largest voting equipment vendors, included a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records.

The programmer, Jeffrey Dean, wrote and maintained proprietary code used to count hundreds of thousands of votes as senior vice president of Global Election Systems, or GES. Diebold purchased GES in January 2002.

According to a public court document released before GES hired him, Dean served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that “involved a high degree of sophistication and planning.”

It could be me, but does that strike you as, oh, mildly more significant than the latest dish about Michael Jackson?

Culling the Herd

I’m with Julia on this business about the Democratic primary candidates. The more they open their mouths this week, the more of them take themselves out of contention for my support.

Lieberman, you know how I feel about. Gephardt and Kerry have alienated me just as much, though, by chucking their intellectual honesty in the name of getting an advantage over Dean. Look at this statement from Gephardt:

“We can’t beat George Bush by playing politics with foreign policy,” Mr. Gephardt told reporters in a campaign swing in Ecorse, Mich. “We’ve got to stand up for what we think is right. That’s what I’ve always done and that’s what I’ll always do.”

Huh? “We can’t beat George Bush by playing politics with foreign policy,” says the man who stabbed Tom Daschle in the back last year, struck a deal with the White House on the resolution to go to war in Iraq, then promptly lost seats in the House? What does he want me to think — that he’s learned from experience?

Kerry tries to sell us another howler:

“In a world where terrorist threats loom large, and they do, our fellow Americans are looking for real leadership,” Mr. Kerry said. “To earn your trust, we have to show through our own actions, and our own experiences, that our approach to national security and foreign policy is credible, legitimate, and the best way to defend our nation.”

Okay, I can buy that. We do need a president with proven good judgment on foreign policy. Problem is, that pitch probably shouldn’t come from a candidate who admits that, when it comes to the biggest foreign policy decision of the last 20 years, he made a mistake — especially not in a campaign against a frontrunner who made the right call.

These guys can yammer all they want. But until they can explain their own foreign policy misjudgments, I don’t give a whit about what they have to say about someone else. Considering that the field has other worthy candidates of sound temperament, I have to wonder why I should give a whit about Kerry or Gephardt at all.

DLC=Dems for Lieberman Council?

Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), Dec. 14, after the Army captured Saddam Hussein:

If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison, and the world would be a more dangerous place.

The New Dem Daily e-mail from the Democratic Leadership Council, Dec. 15:

Lest we forget, had those who opposed the war gotten their way, Saddam would still be in power, would still be tormenting the Iraqi people, would still be financing Palestinian terrorists, and would still be threatening peace, human rights, and democracy,
along with America’s vital interests, in the Middle East.

Coincidence? I report — you decide.

Batter Up!

Time to pick your favorite people and moments of the last year in the left precincts of the blogosphere — Dwight Meredith needs them, because he’s opened nominations for the 2003 Koufax Awards. Go and toss in your two cents.

My nominations, in case you have an interest:

• Best Group Blog: Crooked Timber
• Best New Blog: The Decembrist
• Best Writing: Slacktivist
• Best Single Issue Blog: Blog for America
• Best Design: Crooked Timber
• Most Humorous Blog: Norbizness
• Most Humorous Post: 20 Most Annoying Conservatives of 2003, at Pandagon
• Best Series: Off the Kuff, for coverage of the Texas redistricting controversy
• Best Blog: Talking Points Memo

I had to scratch my head a little about the most humorous post category — really, that one should be wide open, and I don’t have much of a memory for posts more than a week old. [Hey — this is an ephemeral medium, you know.] Mill through the comments from Dwight’s announcement post to see some worthy contenders.

Words of Caution

From Iraq, the Riverbend blogger sounds skeptical about the insurgency cooling off after Saddam’s capture:

The question that everyone seems to be asking is the effect it will have on the resistance/insurgence/attacks. Most people seem to think that Saddam’s capture isn’t going to have a big effect. Saddam’s role was over since April, many of the guerilla groups and resistance parties haven’t been fighting to bring him back to power and I think very few people actually feared that.

Political analysts and professors in Iraq think that Saddam’s capture is going to unite resistance efforts, as one of them put it, “People are now free to fight for their country’s sovereignty and not Saddam.”

That’s only one opinion, but we should still count that as one more reason to steer clear of triumphalism — at least for now.

Far Out

When an old friend, Mark Noel, smoked out my profile on Deanlink a couple of months back, it never occurred to me that there was a small irony in two ex-Republicans from Alabama hooking up through a Democrat’s campaign. Small world, eh?

Neither of us makes a great bellwether for Alabama at large. We left, after all, plus we’ve both spent more time in grad school than the average Bible Belt-er. Still, it’d be nice to fantasize that we’re part of a trend — as though Alabama has truckloads of liberals, just waiting to bust out.

I can just see it: disillusioned Republicans from all over flocking to the Dean banner, one after another. Mark and I could get together and form a support group. I already have a name, in fact — Former Alabama Republicans for Dean, and for short, you could call it FAR …

On second thought, I might need to ponder that a while longer.

When the Cover-Up Is the Crime

I stayed clear of the conversation about cover songs last week — not because the topic bores me, but because even after racking my brain, I couldn’t think of enough examples worth mentioning. Not enough good covers, at least.

If you want bad covers, though, I can talk about those for days, no thanks to my friend Robert Drake. He thought so well enough of me once that he burned me a disc of covers gone horribly, horribly wrong. A man couldn’t ask for a more … er, unique gift.

How bad, you ask? It haunts my nightmares. The thought of Tom Waits groaning through “Somewhere” like he’d just been made the victim of a war crime [*.ram] makes me want to curl up in the fetal position to this day.

A track listing, for those strong enough to stomach it:

1. David Sedaris, “The Oscar Meyer Song”
2. The Mike Flowers Pops, “Wonderwall”
3. Tom Waits, “Somewhere”
4. The St. Benzedrine Monks, “Theme from The Monkees”
5. Dwight Yoakam, “Train in Vain”
6. An unidentified Richard Nixon impersonator, “Folsom Prison Blues”
7. Johnny Cash, “One”
8. Mojo Nixon, “The Star-Spangled Banner”
9. Tom Lehrer, “Clementine”
10. The Dead Kennedys, “Viva Las Vegas”
11. Barry Kirwin, “I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore”
12. The Kings Singers, “At the Copa”
13. Ruben Blades, “The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul”
14. The Vandels, “Summer Nights”
15. Gwen Hughes, “Annie’s Song”
16. Sandra Bernhard, “Little Red Corvette”
17. David Sedaris, “The ’70s ‘Love’ Theme of Coca-Cola”
18. Robert Reich, “Chain Gang”
19. Bluegrass All-Stars, “One Love/People Get Ready”
20. Steve Lawrence and Edie Gormé, “Black Hole Sun”
21. Pat Boone, “Crazy Train”
22. Pat Boone, “Stairway to Heaven”

He skimped on Star Trek tracks, I know — but I think he left those out because of the mercy rule. Songs by Star Trek cast members sound so awful [*.ram] that comparison with a song by a mere mortal looks flat-out unfair.

Shut Up, Joe

There’s celebrating, and then there’s gloating … and then there’s dancing in the end zone until even your fans want a flag thrown on the play. Joe Lieberman went with option three [emphasis added]:

This news also makes clear the choice the Democrats face next year.  If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison, and the world would be a more dangerous place.

Wait a sec, Joe — if Howard Dean had his way, America would have gone into this war with a coalition of serious allies, rather than trampling over international opposition in a way that left our international reputation and foreign policy in tatters. Don’t start with this “objectively pro-Saddam” business; most every Democrat, Howard Dean included, regards Saddam Hussein with as much contempt as you do.

Lieberman could have handled himself with grace by highlighting the celebration among the Iraqi people, which arguably shows the merit of going to war against Hussein. Rather than take the high road, though, he made an argument that ought to insult every sensible war opponent; he pretended to see no moral difference between people who opposed any war on Hussein and people who opposed the time and manner of this war.

That’s a cheap shot — beneath contempt, really, and beneath a man of Lieberman’s onetime reputation. Then again, Lieberman has made himself a connoisseur of cheap shots ever since he found himself in a tough race:

Lieberman has been the race’s most negative candidate. Others have attacked Dean, and fought amongst themselves, in a variety of ways. But almost all of these feuds have been substantive and confined to particular differences. Only Lieberman has said — or strongly, unmistakably implied — that another candidate (he meant Dean) was unelectable. No candidate should say that about another candidate in his party. Lieberman was in essence saying that if Dean is the nominee, he might not be able to endorse Dean.

That’s great, Joe. Really great. But at some point, you might want to explain why people should vote for you — because right now, with you carrying on like this, I can’t see a reason to.

How Does This Hurt the Democrats?

… who cares?

I don’t pretend that this story has no political ramifications. In this world, every sneeze and footstep has political ramifications. But making this story fodder for spin profanes the suffering of the Iraqi people. Let them celebrate their new freedom, while we congratulate our troops for a job well done.

Beyond the crassness of searching for political angles rather than celebrating, it looks weird for Democrats to mope over the capture of a tyrant. Senator Joe Biden put it this way:

On with Dan Rather a few minutes ago, Joe Biden said [when asked about how this affects the Dem race] that if we can capture Osama and Mullah Omar and stabilize Iraq and the president gets re-elected, that’s just fine with him, and best for the country.

Amen to that. And really, I have no worries, even after today. The president still botched the execution of our foreign policy, no matter how the results turn out — and going beyond that, he mismanaged the country into a half-trillion dollar deficit, shredded laws protecting the environment, stood aside while corporate plunderers swindled investors, and followed an economic course that will make him the first president since Herbert Hoover to shrink the job base.

If Democrats look at those facts and still think they have no arrows in their quiver, they deserve to lose.

What Happens Next?

Talk has already shifted to questions about where and how to hold a trial — surely a necessity if we hope to bring people’s experiences with Hussein’s régime to some sort of closure.

I have no doubt that some form of trial will take place, but if past behavior by the Bush administration is any guide, we should worry about the format. My concern? The White House has a penchant for secrecy, and it seems to hate any form of international trial.

That second issue would probably rule out any sort of proceeding at the Hague — and given the gravity of the crimes he perpetrated against the Iraqi people, it’s probably for the best to have him stand trial before his countrymen first. I have doubts, however, about whether Bush gets the importance of letting all Iraqis, and people around the world, look on while justice is served.

More important than what happens to Hussein — because he, after all, is just one man — is what this trial does for the people of Iraq. Having the truth of Saddam’s injustices laid out for all to see — where Iraqis can learn from it, debate about it, absorb it — would lay the groundwork for common understanding in the future. That model worked for South Africa, East Timor, and Peru, and can work in Iraq.

If the White House draws a veil of secrecy around the trial, however — whether to stop disclosure of inconvenient facts, or out of simple compulsion — that could ruin the Iraqi people’s best chance to discover for themselves the truth about the old régime. It makes no sense for us to throw that away; in fact, we could undermine our hopes for a secure and free Iraq by throwing that away. But with the Bush administration showing little attention to such concerns — look at the Slobodan Milosevic trial, where just this week the White House muzzled testimony by retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a presidential candidate — I feel less than optimistic.

About Saddam Hussein

… what she said. Colored me pleased to have Saddam Hussein in custody, so he can pay for his crimes — but the president still led the country to pursue an ill-advised policy that he sold on false premises. No amount of crowing about catching a dictator can change that.

Aside from that — not to break into the jubilation, but let’s keep focused on the basic facts — it looks a little ridiculous to make a great prize of checking off one item on a list. As Amy Sullivan puts it:

Congratulations are indeed in order. But is it really necessary to point out that this was one of the main objectives of going to war in the first place? As Chris Rock says, you don’t get a cookie for doing something you’re supposed to do. We wanted to capture the VBM [Very Bad Man], we did, that’s great, there’s still a lot of work to be done. And yet, as the much smaller-scale Jessica Lynch rescue operation told us, this administration will not shy away from making as big a deal out of this as possible, with our sheriff-in-chief strutting away and his compatriots high-fiving each other amid choruses of “oh, yeah, we bad, we bad.” September 11 may now have competition as the main theme of next year’s GOP Convention.

The Iraqi people deserve every opportunity to savor getting out from under Hussein’s shadow. As Americans, though, we still have work to do and promises to keep — and pointed questions that deserve answers.

Desperation

That’s what this ad [*.wmv] reeks of. [See Blog for America for the details.]

That ad proves the thesis behind Bob Herbert’s column from Friday in spades — too many Democrats seem more intent on attacking other Democrats than on attacking Bush. It also raises a character issue.

A presidential candidate worth a darn would keep his campaign focused on what’s good for the country. This is a conversation among Democrats at this point; we have the same fundamental goals in mind. I just want specifics on how each candidate plans to lead us to a better America; that information will tell me who deserves my vote.

Instead, this ad stoops to making the same connection between a Democrat and Osama bin Laden that the Republicans used against former Senator Max Cleland last year. In the process, it says something telling about the candidate [or candidates?] behind it.

Whoever bankrolled this arguably believes what we need to know, first and foremost, is why not to vote for Howard Dean. The ad makes no pitch about health care, no statement about jobs, no comment about how badly the president has screwed up Iraq; instead, it trains fire on another Democrat while advancing no positive agenda.

To me, that’s a mark of bankruptcy. It tells you something damning about a candidate’s ideas when the best he can offer is criticism of some other guy. Whoever is found responsible for this ad — Blog for America offers some suspects — has just lost my vote.

Dean in Town Tomorrow

If you live around Atlanta and have an idle curiosity about the current frontrunner for the Democrats, head over to Fulton County Airport tomorrow to see him in the lesh. The Georgia for Dean volunteer organization says that Howard Dean plans to make a public appearance there around noon tomorrow, with a fundraiser to follow soon after.

Click here for details.

Chronic Procrastinators Anonymous

I meant to spend time the other day writing about this article on people who always run late, but for some reason I never got around to it. Such is the story of my life — I start with the best of intentions, and they get buried under the avalanche I call a to-do list.

Part of that probably owes to my putting too much on my plate. Most of my old friends can tell you that I can have a hard time saying no to people, and that can leave me saddled under so many responsibilities that I end up completely flustered. [On the other hand, having an urge to please can make you a pretty good politician.]

My other Achilles’ Heel: I do better on concepts than execution. When it comes to thinking up ideas, I have days when I’m just about unstoppable. Ask me to carry them out, though — and I know I need to work on this — some days, I feel just about unstartable.

So a little of me identifies with that article. [I’m sure a few friends of mine will tell you it’s the part that shows up at the Bagel Palace every Saturday for brunch.] But enough of that — I need to spend a few more minutes on a project. =)

Dishing Out Political Haiku

A few people know that I lapse easily into a five-seven-five frame of mind — more easily than I should, as a matter of fact. That didn’t keep me from thinking up a few lines today as I walked into the grocery store, though — and I like these so much I might make them my mantra for 2004.

Anyhow, here goes:

Karl Rove, bagging clothes
at a Wal-Mart checkout line:
This is my Zen koan.

Like it? Yeah, I know you do.

Administrative Folderol

Yeah, so I’ve been slack with the blogging lately. Go ahead, dock my pay for it.

Seriously: I need to update the blogroll at some point, and I know there are some links to my page that I’ve missed. If you’ve given my name the honor of gracing your blogroll, and I haven’t returned the favor, leave a note in the comments so I can rectify the situation ASAP.

Thanks a mill. You guys are the best readers in the whole darned world. =)

Hot Air on Gas

Then:

• “There’s a lot of money to pay for this that doesn’t have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people…and on a rough recollection, the oil revenues of that country could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years…We’re dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.”
  
  — Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz

• “If you [Source: worry about just] the cost, the money, Iraq is a very different situation from Afghanistan…Iraq has oil. They have financial resources.”
  
  — Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

Now:

• The United States government is paying the Halliburton Company an average of $2.64 a gallon to import gasoline and other fuel to Iraq from Kuwait, more than twice what others are paying to truck in Kuwaiti fuel, government documents show.

… [A] breakdown of fuel costs, contained in Army Corps documents recently provided to Democratic Congressional investigators and shared with The New York Times, shows that Halliburton is charging $2.64 for a gallon of fuel it imports from Kuwait and $1.24 per gallon for fuel from Turkey.

…  In recent weeks, the costs of importing fuel from Kuwait have risen. Figures provided recently to Congressional investigators by the corps show that Halliburton was charging as much as $3.06 per gallon for fuel from Kuwait in late November.

… Iraqi’s state oil company, SOMO, pays 96 cents a gallon to bring in gas, which includes the cost of gasoline and transportation costs, the aides to [U.S. Rep. Henry] Waxman said. The gasoline transported by SOMO ? and by Halliburton’s subcontractor ? are delivered to the same depots in Iraq and often use the same military escorts.

The Pentagon’s Defense Energy Support Center pays $1.08 to $1.19 per gallon for the gas it imports from Kuwait, Congressional aides said. That includes the price of the gas and its transportation costs.

… In the appropriations bill signed by Mr. Bush last month, taxpayers will subsidize all gas importation costs beginning early next year.”

—  ”High Payments to Halliburton for Fuel in Iraq,” N. Y. Times, Dec. 10, 2003

Tell me: can we trust Halliburton to provide much of anything, aside from fuel for controversy?

Adventures in Journalism

This dispatch from the Associated Press about the Democratic debate last night in New Hampshire— should make even the most jaundiced reader apoplectic. If this reporter made a stab at some semblance of neutrality, I can hardly tell. It looks like a hit piece, through and through.

Some choice examples:

• Facts got most blurred Tuesday night when the Democrats took on President Bush’s record, such as when Sen. John Kerry criticized the administration’s environmental policies by telling the story of [the Denuccios, a] Salem, N.H., couple.

  As he told it, the Denuccios can’t drink their water or shower because they live next to a lake contaminated with the gasoline additive MTBE.

  But in a post-debate telephone interview, Lisa Denuccio said the couple now showers with the water from their town rather than the old polluted well. “We can’t do without that,” she said of the showers. However, she says, they still drink bottled water.

  Let me see: Kerry said the couple can’t shower with its own water … and one of the people in question says she had to switch to the town’s water. Wow, what a paradox.

• Several of the nine candidates criticized the tax cuts Bush pushed through Congress. But none mentioned that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, who has served both Republican and Democratic presidents, has cited those cuts as a reason for the recent economic growth.

  Think that might be because of how even more observers cite the tax cuts as a reason for recent half-trillion dollar deficits? I dunno — could be, don’tcha think?

• Using a favored attack line against Bush, Lieberman said “3.5 million people have lost their jobs” and Howard Dean commented twice on the 3 million jobs lost under Bush.

  While it is true that about 3 million jobs were lost during the early months of the Bush presidency, that trend has been reversing for several months as the jobless rate has dropped from a peak of 6.4 percent in June to 5.9 percent last month.

  So let’s see: the Democrats said 3 million people have lost their jobs … and hey, look! Nearly three million people have lost their jobs! Those Democrats, stooping to telling the truth — I tell you, what won’t they do?

It kills me to see tripe like that coming from the Associated Press, of all places. If the pros can’t do any better than this, sign me up for the National Enquirer.

Darl McBride Is a Big Fat Idiot

Some of you know that I work as a technology lobbyist, and in that capacity I’ve been a keen spectator of the holy war that the SCO Corp. is waging against purveyors and users of Linux — a free and open-source operating system with a growing user base in corporate environments and among the geek set.

SCO has taken to filing lawsuits against Linux solutions providers such as IBM, on the grounds that Linux actually contains code that SCO wrote, and thus has a right to profit from. At least I thought those were the grounds — dubious as they were, considering that SCO wouldn’t identify the code in question to anyone without having them sign a non-disclosure agreement, those charges still seemed to form the crux of the company’s argument.

An open letter today by SCO chief executive Darl McBride, however, shifts the argument to different territory altogether. Now, he paints himself not as defender of his company’s right to earn a profit, but as defender of the entire notion of a profit motive.

No, really. I’m not making this up.

McBride premises his position — such as one can dignify it with the word — on what can only be described as a heroic mischaracterization of his opponents’ arguments. In his worldview, free software users amount to pirates, as far outside of the law as people who use music file-sharing services. Just as no one gets a direct profit from file sharing, no one earns a direct profit from Linux — and therefore, McBride’s argument goes, someone must be getting wronged.

Where does he get that from? The letter has him scuttling for scraps of legal writings to back his arguments, and — irony of ironies — he wound up reaching into Eldred v. Ashcroft, a 2003 case argued at the Supreme Court by one of the chief advocates of more flexibility in intellectual property laws.

I, being the silly lawyer/lobbyist that I am, read Eldred [*.pdf] as holding that Congress had the right to extend a copyright term to as much as a century — and maybe even more — as long as the law still allowed it to expire at some specific point. McBride, however, applied his acute legal skills to identify a splotch of dicta — that’s a legal term that loosely translates as “meaningless bulls––– with no precedential value whatsoever” — from the majority opinion, which he promptly recruited into service as the new fulcrum of his case.

Take it away, Darl:

According to FSF [the Free Software Foundation], Red Hat and under the GPL [the “general public license,” defined here], private benefits are impediments to the general advancement of science and technology, and need to be eliminated entirely from the software industry and the process of software development.

But, unfortunately for the FSF, Red Hat and others, this dissenting view was squarely rejected in the majority opinion delivered for the Court by Justice Ginsberg. The majority position specifically acknowledges the importance of the profit motive as it underpins the constitutionality of the Copyright Act. In expressing this position, the majority opinion stated as follows:

Justice Stevens’ characterization of reward to the author as “a secondary consideration” of copyright law understates the relationship between such rewards and the relationship between such rewards and the “Progress of Science.” As we have explained, “[t]he economic philosophy behind the [Copyright [C]lause is the conviction that encouragement of individual effort by personal gain is the best way to advance public welfare through the talents of authors and inventors.” Accordingly, “copyright law celebrates the profit motive, recognizing that the incentive to profit from the exploitation of copyrights will redound to the public benefit by resulting in the proliferation of knowledge. The profit motive is the engine that ensures the progress of science.” Rewarding authors for their creative labor and “promot [ing] Progress” are thus complementary; as James Madison observed, in copyright “[t]he public good fully coincides with the claims of individuals.” The Federalist No. 43, p. 272 (D. Rossiter ed.1961.) Justice Breyer’s assertion that “copyright statutes must serve public, not private, ends” similarly misses the mark. The two ends are not mutually exclusive; copyright law serves public ends by providing individuals with an incentive to pursue private ones.

123 S.Ct. at 785, fn. 18; emphasis in original.

… We take these actions secure in the knowledge that our system of copyright laws is built on the foundation of the U.S. Constitution and that our rights will be protected under law. We do so knowing that the voices of thousands of open source developers who believe “software should be free” cannot prevail against the U.S. Congress and voices of seven U.S. Supreme Court justices who believe that “the motive of profit is the engine that ensures the progress of science.”

Wait — did he quote a footnote? Did he really just quote a footnote? Jeez o’ pete! Unless he thinks that excerpt amounts to the new famous footnote 4, he really ought to lay off.

Adventures in dubious citation aside, let me tell you what the arguments against SCO actually say, in terms even Darl McBride can understand. They don’t contend that no one has a right to profit from software. They say that SCO has no right to profit from software that it didn’t write. Which sounds like a pretty solid case, to me — especially since the people making it seem amply capable of backing it up.

My suggestion? McBride should have his legal team shift to a career of writing comedy. That might earn ’em a profit.

The Gift of Hope

In the mailbox the other day, I found a magazine that I hadn’t been sent in a while: The Marrow Messenger, the regular newsletter of the national bone marrow donor program. I joined the program’s database in 1995, when I visited a friend in California who took me with him to a marrow testing drive for a leukemia patient in his neighborhood.

I remember him telling me that didn’t have to take the test, because the patient was white, and matches usually take place within the recipient’s ethnic group. I suppose two things led me to go ahead anyway: the principle of shared sacrifice — after all, why should I have stood aside when I could at least do something symbolic to help — and the fact that African-American donor candidates turn out to be pretty thin on the ground, which makes it that much more likely that black patients who need help don’t get it.

My test may not have helped anyone that day; I don’t even know what happened to the patient who needed the transplant. Still, I didn’t mind giving. If it turns out that I can be a lifeline to someone in the future who needs a transplant, after all, that morning I spent in line to give a blood sample will have been more than worth it.

Anyhow, I consider the marrow program a worthwhile cause, and anyone in a position to give should consider how much good they might do by signing up. You can learn more about the program by reading its frequently asked questions page, or by browsing through its website: www.marrow.org/.

You Have Got to Be S–––ing Me

This disgusts me:

Yesterday, the President informed Robert L. Bartley of his decision to award Mr. Bartley the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Nation’s highest civil honor.

The citation will read as follows,

Robert L. Bartley is one of the most influential journalists in American history. As a reporter, author, editorial page editor, and columnist, he helped shape the times in which we live. A champion of free markets, individual liberty, and the values necessary for a free society, his writings have been characterized by profound insights, passionate convictions, a commitment to democratic principles, and an unyielding optimism in America. The United States honors him for his contributions to American journalism and to the intellectual and political life of our Nation.

I know that I shouldn’t blog angry, but screw it. This has me angry as hell, and I’ll be damned if I don’t say so.

I know, I know — what’s the big deal? For those of you who don’t play inside media baseball, here’s the breakdown: suppose you gave Oliver Stone a newspaper. And made him Republican. Robert Bartley is more or less what you would get.

As an editor, he made a great propagandist. Bartley made the op-ed pages of the Journal the house organ of the conservative movement, and he used them to spread the supply-side gospel and pound away at people who threatened the cause.

That would make fodder for high comedy, if we weren’t talking about granting him one of the nation’s highest honors.

His paean to President Reagan — Seven Fat Years — credits supply-side tax cutting as the cause of the ’80s boom. That view totally writes out of the script the post-tax hike boom in progress when he wrote the book — a boom inconveniently brought about by the president who balanced the budget that Reagan knocked out of whack. Late in his tenure he became a man obsessed with Whitewater, writing seven books [you can see two of them here and here] about a scandal so grave that it … never … produced … the indictment … of a single … significant … White House … official. Seven books. Countless editorials. All about the biggest washout of an investigation since Geraldo Rivera broke open Al Capone’s vault.

Did he claim blood? You bet. After one scandal-hunting editorial — called “Who Is Vince Foster?” — insinuated that the man in question, a deputy White House counsel, had committed a grave breach of legal standards by refusing to send the paper his photo, Bartley and the Journal all but stalked the man. Bartley worked him into two more editorials in short order, one of which insinuated that his defense of the Clinton administration’s efforts to keep the minutes of its health-care task force private showed that he hardly had more scruples than Ollie North.

Vincent Foster killed himself not long afterward, leaving a note that said that the Journal “lies without consequence.” In Washington, he wrote after mentioning Bartley’s accusations, “ruining people is considered sport.”

How did Bartley react? With contrition? Nope — not unless contrition includes running an editorial asking whether “[his] death was somehow connected to his high office.”

That man, the Bush administration tells us, deserves the nation’s highest civilian honor. Not Bob Woodward or Helen Thomas. Not Walter Cronkite or William F. Buckley. Bartley — the man who used the Journal editorial page as the Pravda of the right — somehow deserves more credit for “shap[ing] the times,” showing “commitment to democratic principles” or making “contributions to American journalism” than any of the four journalists I just mentioned.

Well, screw that. This is a joke, and it makes a joke of the Medal of Freedom.

The White House ought to be ashamed of itself. In a sane world, it would be. But this crowd has long since shown itself incapable of that.

Fightin’ Words?

There’s a contretemps at my alma mater, the University of Virginia — land of Thomas Jefferson, free speech and all that — over someone who used the n-word in an awkward-but-innocent context. The Cavalier Daily has the scoop:

University President John T. Casteen III issued a statement yesterday responding to allegations that a Medical Center employee used a racial epithet during a conversation at a recent staff meeting, calling the usage “offensive” and “insulting.”

Following reports of the alleged Nov. 10 comment, Medical Center CEO R. Edward Howell conducted interviews with the person’s supervisor and the four other employees who were present during the remark to ensure a consistent interpretation of events, Casteen said.

[The] conversation between employees about football teams they each favored … [reportedly] turned to a discussion of controversial team names, including the Washington Redskins.

Howell reported that the offender “said something like this: ‘I can’t believe in this day and age that there’s a sports team in our nation’s capital named the Redskins. That is as derogatory to Indians as having a team called N–––––– would be to blacks.’”

Though Howell said no staff members said they were personally offended by the remark, they said they would have preferred if the word had not been used.

“They also reported no previous indication that the individual’s language or behavior to suggest racial insensitivity,” but rather that the comment was “an unfortunate, one-time use of language,” Howell said in his report.

In response to the alleged remark, the Staff Union at U.Va. is sponsoring a “Protest Against Racism at U.Va. and the U.Va. Medical Center After a Recent Racial Incident” today at noon.

I applaud anyone who opposes racism, but … gosh, I think people might be overreacting here. The man should probably have chosen a different word, but he said it in the context of an anti-racist comment. No one took offense at it — not in the beginning, at least — and the people who heard the statement seem to see it as a simple case of foot-in-mouth. Since when has this been the kind of event that calls for protest rallies?

The university has seen all manner of racial incidents in the last year or two: the assault of a student council candidate, blackface costumes at two fraternities, assaults by black teenaged town residents on white and Asian-American students. Does it strike anyone else that the community might have bigger issues to deal with than some poor schmoe and his slip of the tongue?

More Music Madness

What with all the fun had after I tossed out my list of most influential albums, I figured that I should roil the waters some more with another music post. This time, though, I want to take a different tack; I want you to name the worst albums of all time.

My thoughts on this are a work in progress, although I have a personal favorite for worst album cover and a few thoughts in mind about the worst album title. But you can probably trump those; after all, we have so many albums to choose from. So — feeling ready to atone for that impulse buy of Color Me Badd? In a mood to wax nostalgic over Sigue Sigue Sputnik? Now’s your chance.

It Depends on What You Mean by ‘Support’

During the 2000 campaign, President Bush made a big to-do about the Democrats’ supposed inattention to the military. In one attention-getting moment, he told the Republican National Convention — incorrectly, it turned out — that if called to act, two of the Army’s ten divisions at the time would have to report “not ready for duty, sir.”

It doesn’t take much, then, to see the irony in a new report [cited here by the Center for American Progress] that the Bush administration looks set to toss concerns about military readiness by the wayside. Pentagon sources tell The Wall Street Journal that thanks to — you guessed it — the war in Iraq, “the Army has decided to allow combat units returning from Iraq and Afghanistan to temporarily fall to readiness levels at which they won’t be prepared for combat.”

Why take that risk, and count on the North Koreans and Iranians not to take advantage of the opportunity to cause mischief? Because we have no choice. With the army left stretched to near the breaking point by the need to keep troops deployed to Iraq, thanks in no small measure to the spectacular diplomacy of the Bush administration, the White House has backed the country into a corner — either we cut into our troops’ readiness for combat, or we cut and run on Iraq.

Worries about whether the military can protect vital national interests aside, though, that was one fine turkey the president served the troops in Baghdad over Thanksgiving, wasn’t it?

Life in These United States, ca. 2003

It must be nice to have been born without a conscience.

That’s the only explanation I can come up with to make sense of this news from Guantanamo, which has somehow only now come to light. If the revelation that our leaders have kept known innocents imprisoned at Guantanamo for political expediency doesn’t tell you how much of a carbuncle on our national ideals the crowd in the White House has become, I’m not sure what could.

But don’t take my word for it. Check with the ex-assistant attorney general who gave us the Patriot Act [emphasis added].

[Yale law professor Viet] Dinh said he believed the president had the unquestioned authority to detain persons during wartime, even those captured on “untraditional battlefields,” including on American soil. He also said the president should be given flexibility in selecting the forum and circumstances — such as a military tribunal or an administrative hearing — in which the person designated an enemy combatant can confront the charges against him.

The trouble with the Padilla case, Dinh said, is that the government hasn’t established any framework for permitting Padilla to respond, and that it seems to think it has no legal duty to do so.

“The president is owed significant deference as to when and how and what kind of process the person designated an enemy combatant is entitled to,” Dinh said. “But I do not think the Supreme Court would defer to the president when there is nothing to defer to. There must be an actual process or discernible set of procedures to determine how they will be treated.”

Due process under law? In America? What a radical concept.

Thanksgiving Wrap-Up

If you’ve wondered where I’ve been for the past few days, I have two words for you: tryptophan hangover. This year’s turkey knocked me out so thoroughly that I still I have a cup of tea at my side to get me through the yawns. Combine that with butterflies over whether I would have my lobbying contracts renewed [no need to worry — they have been], and you can see that I had plenty on my plate. So to speak.

That said, I have enough free brain waves now to make a few comments:

• I know that I need to list all the good stuff I’m thankful for, but since I’m late with this, let me incorporate this list, provided courtesy of the Vodkapundit, by reference. [Which reminds me that I should thank Tim Berners-Lee for making it possible for me to get away with this sort of laziness.]
• If you ever need the secret to good pecan pie, let me give it to you now: Jack Daniels.
• I know others have said this, but Alton Brown’s brined turkey recipe rocks.
• As much as some have pitched a fit about the president’s surprise trip over the weekend, I have a hard time getting worked up about it. The critics might have a case on the merits, but that doesn’t erase the facts that:
  1. Like him or not, he did the right thing here; and
  2. In terms of politics, the nitpicking comes across as sour grapes.
  That’s not to part company with the smarter comments I’ve seen. I just don’t see much point in belaboring the issue.
• Private memo to Virginia QB Matt Schaub: all is forgiven.

Time to get back to work for a few minutes. Tell me, though — how was your Thanksgiving?