Politics

The Secular Coalition of America is throwing its support behind the one member of Congress who has expressed a willingness to be identified as not having a belief in God or gods. It’s Rep. Pete Stark (D-California, District 13, which covers the east Bay–Oakland, Fremont, Alameda, Union City, etc.). Stark, born in 1931, was first elected to Congress in 1973. He earned a B.S. in general engineering from MIT in 1953 and an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley in 1960. Prior to entering politics, he served in the Air Force and was a bank executive. He is currently a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee and chairman of the Health subcommittee. He’s pro-choice, anti-war, he opposed making the USA PATRIOT Act permanent, he supports medical marijuana, opposes the death penalty, and opposes Internet gambling bans. He’s unfortunately also a big advocate of regulation, opposes free trade, advocates gun control, supports network neutrality, and appears to oppose both legal and tax reform. A list of his positions on issues as of 2000 may be found here. His Wikipedia entry gives the following ratings that he’s received from various groups on the basis of his voting record, from Project Vote Smart: American Civil Liberties Union-100% for 2003-2004.Americans for Democratic Action-90% for 2004 and 2005.AFL-CIO-93% in 2005.Drum Major Institute-100% for 2003-2005League of Conservation Voters-100% for 2005.NARAL Pro-Choice America-100% for 2003-2005.National Education Association-100% for 2005.National Journal-Composite liberal score of 98% for 2005 and 91% for 2003.National Organization for Women-100% for 2005.Population Connection-100% for 2000-2005.Republican Liberty Caucus-41% for 2005.The Center for Public Integrity’s “Well Connected” project has a record of contributions Stark has received from media companies. (Via Pharyngula.) UPDATE: Wonkette offers snarky comment.

A Justice Department review of 293 National Security Letters issued by the FBI found 22 instances (7.5%) of apparent violations of FBI and Justice Department regulations. The FBI issued more than 19,000 National Security Letters in 2005. UPDATE: This story has now hit CNN, which has more details. The Justice Department’s inspector general says the FBI is guilty of “serious misuse” of National Security Letters and that use of them may be underreported by as much as 20%. The audit found that more than half of NSLs were used to get information about U.S. citizens. CNN reports 26 violations, of which 22 were the FBI’s fault and 4 were caused by errors by the recipients of the National Security Letters. UPDATE (March 10, 2007): FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have acknowledged that the FBI broke the law, apologized, and promised to stop further such intrusions. Gonzales left open the possibility of criminal prosecutions against FBI agents or lawyers who misused their PATRIOT Act powers. UPDATE (June 14, 2007): An audit has discovered that the above-reported 26 violations were the tip of the iceberg. 10% of National Security Letters have been reviewed, and the total number of violations is now over 1,000. UPDATE (March 7, 2008): This year’s audit has shown that the NSL abuses continued through 2006 and that the FBI underreported to Congress the number of NSLs by more than 4,600. UPDATE (January 20, 2010): Yet further evidence of FBI abuses in collecting telephone records has been uncovered.

Alberto Santos, the mayor of Kearny, New Jersey, has spoken out on the David Paszkiewicz affair, with a cogent statement. Historical Comments Einzige (2007-03-09): I note with some dismay (but no real surprise) that the Mayor's recommendations don't seem to include any sort of disciplinary action against Mr. Paszkiewicz.

The blogosphere has been making fun of absurdities at Conservapedia, Andrew Schlafly’s attempt to create a conservative-oriented version of Wikipedia. Orac points out that Conservapeia promotes the anti-vaccination Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (Schlafly is their legal counsel). Mark Chu-Carroll points out that even math has a liberal bias, according to Conservapedia. P.Z. Myers looks at some of Conservapedia’s coverage of evolution. Perhaps most entertaining is Jon Swift’s coverage of Conservapedia, which contains links to many of the Science Bloggers’ commentaries. ...

Ed Brayton points out Jesselyn Radack’s account of the Bush administration’s dishonest and sleazy retaliation against her whistleblowing about the Justice Department’s deception in the so-called “American Taliban” case of John Walker Lindh. Radack was an ethics advisor for the Department of Justice who was called about whether Lindh could be interrogated without an attorney present. She pointed out that Lindh’s father had already retained counsel, and that counsel needed to be present. The FBI interrogated him without counsel anyway, so she advised that that interview would need to be sealed and used only for national security purposes, not for criminal prosecution. She was ignored, Attorney General John Ashcroft lied about Lindh’s rights being respected, and the DOJ tried to destroy evidence of Radack’s correspondence. She recovered her emails and submitted them in a memo with her resignation. As the DOJ continued to lie, Radack went public. The DOJ responded by applying pressure on Radack’s law firm to fire her; they put her on an unpaid leave which turned into a constructive discharge, which the DOJ assisted her law firm in contesting. The government placed her under a bogus criminal investigation (later dropped with no charges), brought multiple state bar complaints against her (one of which she’s still fighting), and put her on the no-fly list (she’s still on it). She finally managed to find a law firm willing to hire her, after three years. Her story is a horrifying tale of an out-of-control government. Now that the Democratic Party runs Congress, will they take some action with respect to this case?

The ACLU and People for the American Way held a press conference today regarding the David Paszkiewicz situation at Kearny High School. On Tuesday, February 13, a tort claims notice was filed with the federal court to preserve the LaClair’s right to file a civil suit should the district not resolve their complaints. Predictably, Kearny education board president Bernadette McDonald was quoted as saying, “It is unfortunate that public dollars will be spent in defending our school district when this matter is already being addressed through dialogue and action.” Those actions included banning taping in the classroom without the teacher’s permission (which would have prevented Paszkiewicz from being caught lying about what he said in the classroom) and switching Paszkiewicz’s U.S. History class with another (so that he no longer has Matthew LaClair in his classroom). More information at the Jersey Journal and 1010 WINS web pages. The Jersey Journal story emphasizes the education board’s position, while the 1010 WINS story emphasizes Matthew LaClair’s. UPDATE (February 20, 2007): The audio of the ACLU/PFAW/LaClair press conference and the text of the Kearny education board’s response may be found at Kevin Canessa’s Corner at The Observer blog. UPDATE (February 21, 2007): Looks like CNN picked up the story yesterday. ...

Arizona Senate Majority Leader Thayer Verschoor (R-Gilbert) is at it again, with a bill that prohibits any public school or college instructor from advocating or opposing a political candidate or issue. This is the same legislator who last year proposed a bill that would have required colleges and universities to “provide a student with alternative coursework if the student deems regular coursework to be personally offensive” where “a course, coursework, learning material or activity is personally offensive if it conflicts with the student’s beliefs or practices in sex, morality or religion." While it is appropriate to define limits on partisan advocacy in public primary and secondary schools (where state educational standards define the curriculum and individual school districts set policy on appropriate classroom behavior), it doesn’t make sense to do it at the college level, where professors have much broader freedom to create their own course curricula. Verschoor was also one of several legislators accepting gifts from the Church of Scientology and sponsoring legislation for Scientology’s Citizens Commission on Human Rights last year.

A Freedom of Information Act request has yielded a 2002 plan from U.S. Central Command about the invasion of Iraq. A planning group convened by Gen. Tommy Franks under the coded compartment POLO STEP (a coded compartment created under Clinton for counter-terrorism plans including the targeting of Osama bin Laden) produced this PowerPoint of briefing slides. The slides show that “key planning assumptions” included that “a broad-based, credible provisional government” would be in place “prior to D-Day,” that “Iraqi regime has WMD capability,” that “co-opted Iraqi units will occupy garrisons and not fight either U.S. forces or other Iraqi units,” and that “Operations in Afghanistan transition to phase III (minimal air support over Afghanistan." According to the plan, there would only be 5,000 U.S. troops left in Iraq as of December 2006. (Hat tip to Jacob Sullum at the Reason Blog.)

The Bush administration is trying to use innuendo and statements carefully crafted to imply falsehoods (or at least, things not known to be true) in order to justify war against Iran. Where the Department of Defense presented evidence that explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) used in Iraq were manufactured in Iran, Bush has made statements designed to imply, without explicitly stating, that the Iranian government is behind them. Reporters are also being told that the U.S. government has some solid evidence, but that it cannot be shared. For specific details and criticisms, see: Talking Points Memo (February 14, 2007) TPM Muckraker (February 14, 2007) Outside the Beltway (February 12, 2007) The Pentagon’s briefing PowerPoint on the EFPs can be found here. Interesting that the labels on the weapons shown in photographs include English wording, but that’s not a sign that they weren’t made in Iran, but only a consequence of the fact that English is the lingua franca of the arms trade. UPDATE (February 27, 2007): A factory producing EFPs has been captured in Southern Iraq–and the parts that have identifiable origins did not come from Iran.

I’ve been awarded a Thinking Blogger award, courtesy of Larry Moran at Sandwalk: Strolling with a Skeptical Biochemist. Thanks, Larry! As per the rules of this award-meme, I must tag five other blogs that make me think: 1. Glen Whitman and Tom W. Bell at Agoraphilia 2. The Technology Liberation Front 3. Martin Geddes at Telepocalypse 4. Ed Felten at Freedom-to-Tinker 5. Kevin Carson at the Mutualist blog