Politics

The latest ApostAZ podcast is now available: Episode 013 Atheism and Shit-Free Thought in Phoenix! Go to meetup.com/phoenix-atheists for group events! All Music from Greydon Square- CPT Theorem, Ten Things the Pope Hates About Reality, Some Obama Topics, Family Planning and Stem Cell Research, REBT: Self-Downing. Jan. 31: Filming for ArizonaCOR welcome video (happened today). Feb. 13: Phoenix Atheists meetup new member welcome at Baby Kay’s. Feb. 15: SMOCA 10th anniversary, Phoenix Atheists will attend. Feb. 18: Daniel Dennett speaking at ASU on “Darwin’s Strange Inversion of Reasoning.” Phoenix Atheists will attend. Comments on this episode: I don’t think the difference between a religion and a cult is just the number of members, though growing large enough certainly tends to change social perception. As I’ve written previously at this blog, I think the characteristics that make a group a cult are something like Steve Hassan’s BITE model (Behavior control, Information control, Thought control, Emotional control) or better yet (since it doesn’t depend on questionable notions of mind control), Isaac Bonewits’ Advanced Bonewits’ Cult Danger Evaluation Frame (ABCDEF).

Obama’s inauguration speech was censored in China. They didn’t like these two sentences: “Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.” The words “and communism” were removed from the Chinese translation by the state-run Xinhua news agency. “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history.” That whole sentence was removed from the Chinese translation. Rick Warren’s invocation speech was the low point in the career of a U.S. Army officer who gave in to pressure to conform when his commanding officer expected everyone to applaud, saying “God Bless him for having the courage to pray for all of the lost souls in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ!" On Obama’s first day in office, he issued executive orders to suspend military commissions for 120 days, close Guantanamo Bay in the next year, require all government agency interrogations to comply with the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation, freeze salaries for the 100 top executive branch officials, reverse George W. Bush’s executive order allowing former presidents and their relatives to keep presidential materials out of the National Archives beyond the 12-year statutory limit, close all CIA secret prisons, and call for a review of all U.S. government detention procedures. The Obameter is tracking Obama’s campaign promises. So far he’s kept five, compromised on one, stalled on one, taken no action on 488, and broken none. He will need to delay, if not break, some of his spending promises… UPDATE (February 17, 2009): So far, it appears that Obama has no intention of keeping his promise to post all bills to the web for five days of public comment prior to signing them. He’s broken that promise repeatedly already.

The Sunlight Foundation, promoting transparency in government, has issued an invitation to check out the beta of Little Sis, a wiki described as “an involuntary Facebook of powerful Americans,” created by the Public Accountability Initiative. You can sign up for an account to edit the wiki at http://www.littlesis.org/join, or just check out the site at http://www.littlesis.org.

The creation of jobs in the economy is neither the president’s responsibility nor within his power to do anything other than influence through policy, but it’s still interesting to look at the record of job creation under the last eleven presidents (Truman to Bush Jr.), as presented at Barry Ritholtz’s blog (from the Wall Street Journal’s Real Time Economics): ...

The cases continue to mount–when police officers come to search property and they are confronted by dogs, they often shoot and kill them, even if they are puppies. A Milwaukee resident whose Labrador-Springer Spaniel mix was killed by police in 2004 has filed a lawsuit against the city, and she requested a list of every dog killed by city policy for the last nine years. There were 434–a dead dog every seven and a half days, and that’s just one city. In Oklahoma, a police officer pulled into a driveway to ask a woman for directions, and when the woman’s Wheaton Terrier came bounding toward him, he shot and killed it. The police refused to do anything about the woman’s complaint, and tried to pay her off to shut her up when she let them know that her security cameras had captured the incident. She also sued. Radley Balko at The Agitator has been doing a great job of collecting and reporting on cases of unwarranted police killings of dogs. His latest summary of cases, from which the above two cases were taken, is his 16th “puppycide” blog post.

In Montgomery County, Maryland, teens have found a new use for speed cameras–getting revenge on people they don’t like or who have wronged them. Since the tickets from photo radar cameras are issued to the owners of the cars whose license plates are captured, they print out fake license plates on glossy photo paper, stick them over their own license plates, and then go out speeding. This shows yet another flaw in the photo radar ticket process. I’ve speculated that registering your cars in the name of an LLC or trust is probably sufficient to make it difficult to assign individual responsibility to a speeding incident. UPDATE (December 23, 2008): In Australia, an even more creative revenge against a mobile speed camera–have it issue tickets to itself! They could have just noted the plate number and followed the example of the Maryland teens, rather than stealing the actual plate… (Thanks, Adam, for the link.) ...

Four people associated with the anti-Arpaio group Maricopa Citizens for Safety and Accountability, were arrested on Wednesday for standing and applauding a speaker at the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors meeting. The East Valley Tribune notes that: A double standard clearly was in effect during the Board of Supervisors meeting Wednesday. At one point, public-transit advocate Blue Crowley used part of his public-comment time allotment to sing a birthday song to [MCBoS chairman Andy] Kunasek. Kunasek blushed and several people applauded, but none was ordered to leave or threatened with arrest. However, Kunasek, deputies and security officers refused to tolerate applause after the anti-Arpaio speech minutes later.The criminal clappers were charged with “suspicion of disorderly conduct and trespassing." This brings the arrests of MCSA members to eight for the week and nine for the last four months. Four other members of MCSA were arrested on Monday, after a group of 20 went to Andy Kunasek’s office to talk with him and he refused to meet with them. Sheriff’s deputies asked them to leave and arrested the four who refused. The other arrest was MCSA co-founder Randy Parrez, who was arrested on September 29 outside a Board of Supervisors meeting on similar charges–suspicion of trespassing and disorderly conduct. All but one of the members of the Board of Supervisors are Republicans. The Tribune article quotes Supervisor Max Wilson (R-District 4) as saying, “I don’t tell the police how to do their job. I don’t instruct them to do it or when to do it. They’re professionals at it and that’s the way they handle it.” The lone Democrat, Mary Rose Wilcox (D-District 5), however, stated that she thought the arrests were excessive and that she would talk to security about it.

For a second time, a U.S. appeals court has found unconstitutional the provision of the USA PATRIOT Act which forbids recipients of National Security Letters from disclosing that they have received them. After the first time around, Congress amended the law to introduce some minimal judicial review, but maintained the burden of proof on the recipient if the government claimed there were national security reasons for the NSL to remain secret. The courts have ruled that this burden needs to fall on the government. If this continues to stand, then perhaps the rsync.net warrant canary will become superfluous.

The award appears to be well-deserved. (Hat tip to Schtacky.) Historical Comments Hume's Ghost (2008-12-20): He deserves it, but to be fair, there would be no contest if they gave it to the person who flat out misinforms the most. That would be Sean Hannity's idol Rush Limbaugh - and he would win every single year he's on the air. The amount of idiocy across a spectrum of subjects he is able to disseminate on a sentence to sentence basis is staggering. ...

The Center for Public Integrity has published a slew of new investigative reports: “Global Warming: Heated Denials” – reporting on climate change denialism pseudoscience from the Heartland Institute. “The Shadow Government” – 900 little-known federal advisory committees wielding influence over public policy. “Divine Intervention” – how the Bush Administration’s initiative to fight AIDS abroad is hampered by conservative ideology. “Broken Government” – an assessment of 128 executive branch failures since 2000. Check them out, and consider providing financial support for this organization, which is one of my top organizations to support. ...