Daily Archives: September 16, 2003

Late Night Reading

This entry was posted in bush Constitution Economics Intellectual Property Late Night Reads on by

More D-Squared. This time on the microprobabily of micropayments. Which leads to:
Micropayments: First Clay Shirky and then Scott McCloud.
Reading Update (9/18): Kip, Longstory; shortpier, thinks micropayments for the right stuff will fly and suggests we also read Dirk Keppey’s supportive discussion at The Comics Journal.
Brian at Samizdata writes at leeennnnggth to suggest we all check out the new blog from the Adam Smith Institute. It may seem too free market for some but if they adhere to free market principles they will be an anathema to bush, et al.
Good Night!

WMDs Long Gone

This entry was posted in Iraq on by

Blix believes Iraq destroyed its WMDs 12 years ago:

“I’m certainly more and more to the conclusion that Iraq has, as they maintained, destroyed almost all of what they had in the summer of 1991,” Blix said.

If this is true just what will it take to reestablish the credibility of any intelligence agency that told a different story to the British, US or Australian administrations over the last decade?
Via the Daily Kos.

Recall the Recall

This entry was posted in California on by

The fun may not be over in California. Commenting on this post at Hit and Run Gene Berkman notes the following:

The same Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to hear a lawsuit by the Desert Area Libertarians (east Riverside County,CA) which challenges the touch screen voting machines because of security issues, and because with no paper trail, recounts are impossible to verify.Perhaps the Ninth Circuit will declare that all voting methods fail to meet Constitutional standards.
I was getting bored with politics anyway.

Until there is a good audit trail that will allow a proper recount I prefer them old fashioned paper ballots.

ashcroft on NPR

This entry was posted in ashcroft Constitution Domestic Terrorism Patriot Act War on Terrorism on by

NPR did a segment today on ashcroft’s Patriot Act tour. He sounds just like Lis describes him:

Ashcroft came across so smug and smarmy that I had a fingernails across the blackboard reaction and may have yelled back at the radio.

You can find the audio links at NPR (down toward the bottom….and you might want to listen to the preceding music button after the ashcroft segment to relax a bit) or go directly to the recording: WM……RA.

staffing, bush style

This entry was posted in bush Republicans on by

David Niewart questions L’ Jean Lewis’s appointment as Chief of Staff of the Defense Department’s inspectors general office as follows:

It should be clear that any normative candidates for top staffing positions at any Inspector General’s office should be persons with spotless records and unquestionable reputations for professionalism, ethical behavior and personal integrity. That someone like L. Jean Lewis even made it past the door raises serious questions about just what standards were used. This goes well beyond mere cronyism.
Second: At no point in her career as a low-level RTC investigator did Lewis exhibit any level of managerial capability. Nowhere in her resume is there even an inkling that she possesses any personnel-management skills. What in God’s name could have qualified her to, out of the blue, rise through the ranks to suddenly oversee a staff of 1,240 people?
The only real quality that L. Jean Lewis exhibited at the RTC was her naked, almost psychotic eagerness to participate in partisan skulduggery.

David, in his usual thorough style, has multiple posts and lots of detail. See more at Atrios, Seeing the Forest, and many others.
If you aren’t already up on this story it will not make your day.
Via The Sideshow.