Monthly Archives: September 2003

Recall the Recall

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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

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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

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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.

Late Night Reading

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

Tim Dunlop analyzes the post-war situation in Iraq.
Kos likes the latest NY Times Bestseller standings.
D-squared reviews the fall out from Cancun:

When push came to shove, the rich nations were not prepared to give an inch to the poor ones on agriculture unless they got their quid pro quo in the form of progress toward an agenda which has nothing to do with trade and everything to do with massively undermining the ability of democratically elected governments to set the terms on which the ownership of the means of production is decided.

Apparently it is getting more difficult for the public to access academic journals. This is not a good thing: check out Scientific American, The Invisible Adjunct and Relevant History who notes:

But just what is it that publishers think they’re protecting? Do they think that members of the general public could constitute a potential new revenue stream that can be tapped if only free public access to journals is eliminated? Were they thinking, “Gee, I would spend $9,000 a year for a subscription to Letters in Neuroscience, but since I can read it for free, I won’t”? And now they will?

Good Night!

ashcroft rests

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Tonight ashcroft is doing something he is marginally qualified for:

John Ashcroft’s nationwide tour to defend the government’s new surveillance powers in terrorism probes has stopped for the night. The U.S. attorney general is settling in at Comerica Park to watch some baseball

Remember that this is the guy who was so down and out that he could not even beat a dead man:

Two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the conservative Republican from Missouri has become the most powerful attorney general in decades.
Since losing his seat in the U.S. Senate to a dead man in the 2000 elections and barely surviving Senate confirmation hearings for his current job, Ashcroft emerged after 9/11 as one of the most formidable members of the Bush administration. At the heart of Ashcroft’s influence, and his awakening from what senior Justice Department officials describe as an unfocused first few months in office in 2001, is the increased surveillance authority granted to federal agents by the Patriot Act.

Overall this USA Today article is pretty decent.