Electronic Darwinism - The Week in Review

For the third time, I have a collection of random links, some funny, some serious to post here and at Daily Kos.

Yes, just to practice - I don't expect too many readers at weird o'clock Sunday morning.

Okay then. Let's kick off this week's review with David Neiwert's Swiftboating of American Journalism, from which I obtained this quote:

Chicago Tribune Editor Charles M. Madigan says: “If you are a journalist, you should probably just assume that you come across as a liar.”

Like me, he points out this story in Salon. Want to know how to turn two men who shot a fleeing, unarmed suspect and lied about it into martyred heroes of the Right? That story will tell you.

Noted anti-videogame crackpot attorney Jack Thompson, at the hearing for his disbarment, has subpoenaed none other than the Chimp in his defense. Oh, and Jeb! too, for good measure. That can't help but to go well.

The Rude Pundit reports on yet another humiliation the Chimp has inflicted upon our international standing. God, can we just amend the Constitution to put "Not an idiot" in the qualifications for President already?

Glenn Greenwald tells us of the new tough guy over at National Review - Mark Hemingway. And before you ask, of course he's too tough and manly to, you know, pick up an M-16 and drive a truck in Iraq.

Okay, so maybe Giuliani is the proper heir to the Bush administration. After all, his first response is to lie.

I don't have any Linux news handy - but I do have the weather.

Good news - the ACLU wins and takes down the part of the Patriot Act authorizing national security letters. Thanks, Firedoglake and thanks ACLU.

One has to wonder about te minds that can produce Realtime ASCII Goggles. No, really. Just seeing those three terms together gives me a headache.

Oh, and Prim Perfect, the Second Life magazine that Ms. Korobase writes for, has been mentioned in the New York Times and the Daily Telegraph. It would be darkly humorous in a story-of-Moody's-life way should her writing grow more popular and famous than mine.
Yes, I always have a hard time ending these. Until next time -

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.
Friedrich Nietzsche

They Just Don't Get the Whole "Rule of Law" Thing

Here, let's let Glenn Greenwald lead it off:

The Wall St. Journal online has today published a lengthy and truly astonishing article by Harvard Government Professor Harvey Mansfield, which expressly argues that the power of the President is greater than "the rule of law."

The power of the President, Mansfield says, is greater than the rule of law. And he says it like it's a good thing.

When Benjamin Franklin, when asked what kind of government the fledgling United States had famously replied, "A republic, if you can keep it", this was what he was talking about.

Oh, and in case you're writing this off as the bloviating of a pundit, let me assure you that it is, in fact the policy of this Administration:

Administration Pulls Back on Surveillance Agreement

By JAMES RISEN
Published: May 2, 2007

WASHINGTON, May 1 — Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.

Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.

The Chimp has the authority to decide for himself whether or not he needs to follow the law?

Did I miss the coronation?

Moody Loner gets a Second Life.

Yeah, like I needed something else to eat my free time.

I'm in-world as MoodyLoner Korobase. Avatar subject to change without notice.

Naturally, because I brought up Second Life in the title and led off with it, I'll now talk about something completely different.

So, yeah - about the last story, turns out Mulally was just making shit up.

Relevant quote from the story I found to back it up in the Australian:

The No.2 US carmaker apologised yesterday after Mr Mulally said his claim of intervening to prevent Mr Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of an experimental Ford vehicle had been meant as a joke.

Ford said Mr Mulally never expected the story he told journalists in New York last week would be taken seriously.

The CEO found himself in an embarrassing situation when the story was featured on blogs and even in mainstream media like the Financial Times, which said "he may have saved the incumbent of the Oval Office from blowing himself up".

Of course, I found a journalistic source to back up the first story, too. Naturally, this is all the bloggers' fault.

Now, if I wanted to go all Glenn Reynolds on y'all, I'd point out that while the story is in itself false, that the CEO of a major automaker is mocking Bush to journalists gives the story a sort of "meta-truthiness"...ah, but fuck it.

God, it IS Like Trying To Follow a Five-Year-Old

Yes, I came across this little tidbit in the Detroit News:

Plug it in, fire it up, Mr. President

The Detroit News

Credit Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally with saving the leader of the free world from self-immolation.

Mulally told journalists at the New York auto show that he intervened to prevent President Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of Ford's hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid at the White House last week.

Read the article for the rest. Now, I sincerely doubt - unless Ford's designers are hitting the crack pipe even harder than usual - that the electrical cord would even fit into the hydrogen tank, much less set off a conflagration that would immolate the leader of the free world.
No, Mulally was worried about the Smacktard-in-Chief looking any more like the idiot people are beginning to believe he is, so he took steps to cover Bush's ass. Naurally, Bush took steps to resist:

"I just thought, 'Oh my goodness!' So, I started walking faster, and the President walked faster and he got to the cord before I did. I violated all the protocols. I touched the President. I grabbed his arm and I moved him up to the front," Mulally said.

I submit that his thought was closer to "Fucking hell!" than "Oh, my goodness!", but that's just me, as is the emphasis above.

Yeah, you might want to look at that, Mulally. It could be catching, and you'll be snortin' blow, driving while drunk, and avoiding military service. Then comes the dress-up phase, and it's all downhill from there.

Hiatus in Review:

Sneaking some time and bandwidth to update. Nope, just can't stay away from y'all.

First off, let's look at some of the current Republican heir apparent, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's comments regarding presidential power (from the National Review, via Glenn Greenwald):

Then he began to muse about, after a veto, "would the president have the constitutional authority to support them [the troops], anyway?" He said he's a lawyer so he wouldn't offer an opinion "off the top of his head," then he proceeded to do just that. He seemed to suggest that Bush could fund the Iraq war without Congress providing funding, but it was confusing. In an interview with a New Hampshire TV reporter after his remarks, he seemed more categorical and said, since the war had been authorized by Congress, the president has "the inherent authority to support the troops." But he added, "You have to ask a constitutional lawyer."

You might also want to read Cintra Wilson's article in Salon about him. Here I was worried that I might have to end Electronic Darwinism's run afther the Chimp leaves. If ol' Rudy weasels his way into the White House, he'll provide me material for four more years or until I piss him off and he disappears me, whichever comes first.

And he said he'd do it, too.


What else? Oh, looks like those 15 sailors captured by Iran were released. Purely coincidentally, Iranian diplomat Jalal Sharafi was released, and the five Iranians captured on January 10 get to get a visit from Iran's ambassador to Iraq. These coincidences boggle the mind.

And speaking of coincidence, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was in Syria. I'm sure that the reports that Syria brokered the release are coincidental as well.

Looks like the Chimp is whining about the supplemental spending bill funding his Iraq occupation. Once again he rails about Congress actually having the temerity to submit a bill that isn't a rubber-stamp of his previous four years of failure. God, just because 70% of the public wants out of Iraq. Who do those Congresspeople think they are, members of a co-equal branch of the government with oversight authority or something?

Oh, and he stuck Swiftboatin' Sam Fox in as ambassador to Belgium. After, of course, he withdrew Sam's nomination from the Foreign Relations Committee. It's like making a five-year-old eat his vegetables, isn't it? On the bright side, it's not like Belgium is going to nuke us for this. I was going to say "What else could we do to piss the world off at us?" but the Chimp always manages to find an answer to that somehow.

That's it for now, I'll try to catch up with you next week at the latest.

TorquemadAlberto in Hot Water

Looks like having the Chimp refuse to grant clearances to investigate Torturin' Al has caught up with them both.

Remember this story from the Times last July?

WASHINGTON, July 17 — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that President Bush had personally decided to block the Justice Department ethics unit from examining the role played by government lawyers in approving the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program.

What happened? Well, nothing - because, at the time, the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee was Arlen Specter, who talks a good fight when it comes to the rule of law.

After all, it's not like it would ever surface again - like, for instance, if the Democrats won the midterms and took over the chairmanships of the committees.

Oh, wait. Look what's back:

3-16-07, 9:18 am

(APN) ATLANTA – At least four Members of US Congress and four US Senators today raised concerns about a breaking report in the National Journal that US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appears to have known he was going to be negatively implicated in a review at the US Department of Justice’s (USDOJ) Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) when he advised President Bush regarding the review. The review was later squashed when Bush denied security clearances OPR needed to investigate Gonzales.

So, would blocking an investigation into yourself be considered impeachable? How about covering the ass of your lackey when some well-deserved accountbility is coming his way by blocking the investigation for him?

I Get a Certain Rats-Fleeing-Sinking-Ship Feeling

Looks like Halliburton has moved their corporate HQ to Dubai.

Yes, that Dubai.

Coupled with El Rancho del Chimp in Paraguay, one begins to get a certain rats-deserting-sinking-ship feeling. The one thing the two countries have in common is a certain lack of extradition treaties with the United States.

Looks like Shooter gets oil and the arms trade, while the Chimp gets water, the arms trade, and a hell of a lot of brush to clear. And here we were thinking that they didn't have an exit strategy.