I just saw “Sideways” which is a remarkably good movie. Googling around to try to find out the origin of the title, I found this outstanding review:
Entertaining? Definitely, although this is a very subtle movie. It's got NO explosions in it whatsoever.
Says it all, really.
The first section of my brother's column today for WashingtonPost.com is a must-read on Social Security.
And there I was thinking he was just into the 'I am a camera' thing. But no, this is hard-hitting stuff.
You know, I can just vaguely recall when the press cared when the White House had an enemies list. But that was another time, another country.
So here's the latest on the Fargo do-not-admit list. The official white house position is that it was all a mistake, by a volunteer, but no one knows who it was, and there has been a policy decision taken that it will not be possible to find out.
I kid you not.
· IN-FORUM ·: “It was the result of an overzealous volunteer,” said White House spokesman Jim Morrell of the list. “We weren't aware of it here at the White House.”
Republican Party officials and Morrell said they do not know the identity of the volunteer.
“I don't know if we'd ever be able to find out what overzealous volunteer it is or anything like that,” said Jason Stverak, executive director of the North Dakota Republican Party. “We'll talk to people and stuff, but it will be impossible.”
Got that folks back home? Be sure to keep your mouths shut tight.
If there were Democratic talk radio, it could milk this for weeks — I imagine live callups of various people associated with the event, asking them if they saw the list, who gave it to them, etc. etc. Plus calling on various White House officials to repudiate the practice, to make promises that future events will be open, to describe how tickets are made available.
Indeed, it's not just a partisan opportunity: A real press would be all over this at least prospectively for the next events, looking at how tickets are distributed.
It's not just the wench that's dead.
Yesterday the Senate confirmed Alberto Gonzales to be the Attorney General of the US. That is the same man who both commissioned and approved the torture memos. Who could not bring himself to say torture is always wrong when quizzed live by a Senator. Who probably committed obstruction of justice in sabotaging the investigation into the Plame affair. Who may have lied to Congress about his shielding the boss in the Texas jury affair.
Yet all the Republicans — including POW torture victim John McCain — and six Democrats (including the quisling-like Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) and, sadly, our own Bill Nelson from Florida) voted to confirm. The final vote showed only 36 against, too few to sustain the filibuster which was thus not attempted, a tactical decision that I will not second guess.
A vote for Bush, I said before the election, is a vote for torture. We reap now the bitter fruits of what our fellow citizens then sowed.
May they (and the rest of us too) not get what they deserve.
The Identity Corner is a new blog by Stefan Brands, who is one of the top applied cryptographers in the world, yet also a very fluent writer on the social policy implications of cryptographic systems.
Brands's book, Rethinking Public Key Infrastructures and Digital Certificates: Building in Privacy remains one of the best works on digital certificates and the policy questions that surround them.
I'm sure this will be interesting for anyone who cares about the technological version of 'identity politics'.
Don't Mind Me. I'm Just Doing My Job is really funny until you think about it. Then it's not so funny.
Jotwell Blenderlaw