Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Alien & Sedition Acts Redux?

Posted on February 13, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Ann Bartow points to this very odd and worrying incident: VA Nurse Investigated for ‘Sedition’ for Criticizing Bush:

Laura Berg is a clinical nurse specialist at the VA Medical Center in Albuquerque, where she has worked for 15 years.

Shortly after Katrina, she wrote a letter to the editor of the weekly paper the Alibi criticizing the Bush Administration.

After the paper published the letter in its September 15-21 issue, VA administrators seized her computer, alleged that she had written the letter on that computer, and accused her of “sedition.”

That’s right: writing a letter to the editor accusing the administration of “criminal negligence” gets you investigated for sedition in today’s USA.

Posted in Civil Liberties | 1 Comment

Two Neat Things I Learned from Ed Bott

Posted on February 13, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Two neat things I’ve learned from Ed Bott recently:

  1. What refresh rate should you use with an LCD monitor?
  2. In private e-mail Ed pointed me to Openwide:

    OpenWide was written to avoid a few [more] minor annoyances with Windows. This program allows you to specify the position and size of Windows’ Open and Save dialog boxes, and also to specify where the initial focus should be and which view will be the default.

    3. So far it works flawlessly and fixes one the most frustrating features of Windows.

Thanks Ed!

Posted in Sufficiently Advanced Technology | 1 Comment

Annals of Mind Control

Posted on February 13, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Via Slashdot comes news that Mind Control Parasites in Half of All Humans:

According to a Yahoo News story, half of the world’s human population is infected with Toxoplasma, a parasite shown to alter the brain function of rats, inducing them into behavior that benefits the parasite but is suicidal for the rat. So what affect does it have on humans?

The research is by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey — a name of some controversy for his earlier research in schizophrenia — so it’s not surprising that he suggests there may be a link to it. (According to the Wikipedia article linked above, Dr. Torrey “told The New York Daily News his wife thinks he is going to be assassinated by cat lovers.”)

Myself, I’d like to see a whole set of correlations of Toxoplasma infection to various behaviors, such as spending, eating, and — why not? — voting…

Posted in Science/Medicine | 4 Comments

Historical Parallels and the Cheney Shotgun

Posted on February 12, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Probably the best historical parallel for Vice President Cheney’s shotgun accident while quail hunting is Talking Point Memo’s remark that,

Dick Cheney now joins Aaron Burr as one of the two vice presidents to shoot someone while in office. Are we leaving anyone out?

That said, questions swirl around the incident, including just how severe the injuries are, and why the Veep’s office waited 24 hours to acknowledge the incident.

TalkLeft has some background on the legal issues. It appears lawyers were not in season…

Posted in Politics: The Party of Sleaze | 4 Comments

This Sounds Scary

Posted on February 11, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Bird flu has been identified in Greece, Italy and Bulgaria as well as Nigeria. Which means it’s Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.

Yikes.

Posted in Science/Medicine | Comments Off on This Sounds Scary

Decreasingly Hypothetical Questions

Posted on February 10, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Here are three genuine, not utterly hypothetical, questions inspired by the revelation that Libby fingered Cheney as the person who instructed him to leak information from a National Intelligence Estimate hyping Iraq’s supposed efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction. I really don’t know the answers; all I have are guesses at best.

  1. Does Vice-President Cheney have the legal authority to declassify material single-handedly?
  2. And even if he does, if Cheney proved also to be the source of an instruction to leak information about Valerie Plame, does his legal authority extend to the exposing the identity of a covert CIA agent?
  3. And if the answer to either question above is “no” does that amount to an impeachable offense?

My guesses–and they are only guesses–below. Make your own before peeking.

Continue reading →

Posted in National Security | 13 Comments