Mark A. R. Kleiman nails part of the Schwarzenegger mendacity: A governor whose word is his junk bond. The other part, of course, is that (never plausible) the promise to balance the state budget and protect school funding is already inoperative.
Politicians used to have to pretend to be honest. I miss shame. How do we bring it back?
The Miami Herald | 12/10/2003 | Pentagon, press wage war over coverage is a nice but fairly conventional op-ed piece by Reuven Frank, the former President of NBC News, concerning just how tightly the Pentagon and the White House try to control news coverage coming out of Iraq. If you read papers and blogs regularly you won't learn anything new; if you don't this is a great catch-up. Its conclusion, however, is priceless:
President Kennedy said after the Bay of Pigs fiasco that victory has a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan. In Iraq today, victory has a hundred press officers; defeat is classified.
Prosecutors Say It's Unclear Papers Chaplain Carried Were Classified. You can never be sure about a legal case you read about in the papers. There's so much texture and detail that gets lost in even the best newspaper report. That said, the case against Capt. Yee is giving off a certain stench of shambolic military CYA.
Would a white Christian chaplain get smeared with accusations of being a spy, get threatened with the death penalty, get locked up in solitary for three months, all over documents that the government isn't even sure are classified? As for the adultery charge, note that it's an offense only if it interfered with discipline—and apparently the affair was neither in the chain of command nor at all public. And by getting that testimony in first, then recessing the trial, the government manages a second round of strafe-and-smear.
Based on the news coverage, it sure looks like some combination of three things is going on: (1) Major government vindictiveness against someone who was effectively ministering to the Gitmo detainees and/or major government anti-Muslim bigotry [plus shades of Wen Ho Lee?]; (2) All that, plus the government is now throwing up whatever charges it can to cover up the fact that it smeared an officer without reason; (3) the prosecutors really think he's guilty but cannot prove it and/or are totally incompetent.
The information that is public makes the 'really guilty' story seem much the least likely alternative.
Once in a while I intend to post either the answer to a question that comes up in conversation, or — if I can't find it anywhere — a plea for someone to tell me where to find an authoritative source. So when I say 'FAQ' I don't mean about this site. The first of this very occasional series has to do with tax rates. Total tax rates — federal plus state. Now, obviously this is very much an average since local taxes vary a lot. But it's still much more informative, I think, than just looking at the (seemingly more progressive) federal income tax alone. Throw in all taxes, and the picture looks quite different, practically flat.
Click to see Average marginal total federal and state tax rates.
Source: NY Times, Jan 20, 2003
And note that this data pre-dates the latest round of Bush tax cuts for rich folk.
Apparently, if the BBC is to be believed, this DIY Cruise Missile is not a spoof, but a real project.
A New Zealand man who built a cruise missile in his garage claims the New Zealand government forced him to shut down his project after coming under pressure from the United States.
Bruce Simpson says he built the missile using parts bought off the internet to show how easily it could be done.
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