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Funny story about this article. I was asked to write it before the IR Center’s meeting tonight. So, at 5:55pm, I sat down and pounded it out; took me an hour. Got to the meeting room at 7:10. That’s when I realized that the IR Center meets at 6. So I fucked up doubly. Ah well…

JUSTICE Act Summary

Text of the Bill (S 1686)

Track the Bill

A Battle Looms Over the Patriot Act

“Remember, to make reform work we have to have an individual mandate. And everything I see says that there will be a major backlash against the idea of forcing people to buy insurance from the existing companies. That backlash was part of what got Obama the nomination! Having the public option offers a defense against that backlash.

What worries me is not so much that the backlash would stop reform from passing, as that it would store up trouble for the not-too-distant future. Imagine that reform passes, but that premiums shoot up (or even keep rising at the rates of the past decade.) Then you could all too easily have many people blaming Obama et al for forcing them into this increasingly unaffordable system.”

—-Why the Public Option Matters

He’s absolutly right. With the idea of an individual mandate the most likely part of the reform package to pass, the public option is the only thing seperating a sensible attempt at healthcare reform from a massive handout to insurance companies. If there is no public option, there is no incentive for insurance companies to become more competitive price-wise, and yet they will still recive an influx of 50,000,000 customers.

Torture

White House to Declassify “Holy Grail” Torture Report that Could Undercut Cheney: A redacted version of the Special Review can be found here. I cannot find a more complete version online.

Hoekstra: Congress Knew

The Unbalanced: Sullivan on Cheney on Torture

Thiessen’s LA Tower Canard:

Bush OLC Torture Memos: Bybee and Bradbury

Army Human Intelligence Collector Operations: The Army’s Interrogation Field Manual

Waterboarding

Still torture, but these all were supposed to go in the same post.

Hannity Offers to be Waterboarded for Charity

Why we shouldn’t waterboard Sean Hannity: The guys kind of got a point.

Olbermann Rescinds Charity Offer For Cowardly Hannity, Donates $10K For Mancow’s Waterboarding

Conservative radio hosts gets waterboarded, and lasts six seconds before saying its torture: Not Hannity, different guy

Man Waterboards self, says it’s torture

Wiretapping

New and worse secrecy and immunity claims from the Obama DOJ: from Glenn Greenwald

Obama Administration quietly expands Bush’s legal defense of wiretapping program

Obama

What exactly has “changed” under Obama?: A thread about this article, which sparked this hysteria on Reddit.

Obama’s 100-day-mark Press Conference

Baracknaphobia: from The Daily Show

You Gotta Protect the Ones you Serve

Other/Misc

John Stewart interviews Cliff May: I can’t play video on dial-up, so I have no idea what this is regarding.

Right-Wing Harassment Strategy Against Dems Detailed In Memo: ‘Yell,’ ‘Stand Up And Shout Out,’ ‘Rattle Him’

Town Hall Mob

‘Grassroots Protester’ Actually GOP Official

Todd Akin Jokes About Activists Lynching His Democratic Colleagues

Democrats Gird for Town-Hall Protests: Contains a mention of a democratic lawmaker being “physically assaulted.”

[EDIT 12-August-2009: Added the below]:

Florida Town Hall Turns into Violent Scuffle

The Best Health-care Town Hall Confrontation So Far

[Via Wild Ammo]

Yesterday,  users of AT&T found that their access to certain 4chan boards had been blocked. As can be expected, this did not sit well with the sort of people who like unrestricted speech. Reddit  had an extremely long thread on it, wence the “beginning of the end of the internet” was proclaimed. Of course, AT&T claimed that it was only a mistake and was trying to defend itself against a DDoS attack. The post advertising this on Reddit is far less popular than the one about the original incident (not surprising, considering this is the place that falsely accused someone mildly critical of Obama as a Republican operative paid to smear him on social media sites).

The Implications

There are two ways the 4chan affair can be viewed. First, one can believe that AT&T is really telling the truth, and this was a giant clusterfuck resulting from a DDoS attack. Or you can believe that this was the Lexington of the War for Internet Neutrality that was valiently won when public opinion turned against AT&T. The latter is complete and utter bullshit; this can reasonably be assumed due to the fact that, when this thing was brought to light, AT&T reversed itself instead of pulling out some bullshit reason having to do with child pornography (as many had suggested). If AT&T had meant to censor 4chan, they would have; the backlash would have been minimal (the average internet user isn’t going to feel any sympathy for the /b/tards; I only care on principle), so no lost revenue, and they would even play up the fact that they’re a “morally responsible” web provider, who will protect your kids from bad things on the internet (so as to free you from doing your jobs as parents).

So, we’re pretty much on the same ground when we say this was an honest mistake on the part of AT&T. But this, coming shortly after the mass deletions of copies of a pirate version of 1984 off of Amazon’s Kindle devices (a very Orwellian move from a company that has apparently never heard of irony), brings the question of internet neutrality to the forefront by showing that the companies have the technical capability to alter/suppress data. The only thing that keeps, say, the government from creating a tiered internet, or censoring “potentially dangerous” sites (always to protect the children!) is to keep public opinion firmly against it. Unfortunately, public opinion among most Americans falls within the “protect the children(!)” camp, not realizing there isn’t neccessarily a contridiction. It would perhaps have been better for the Net Neutrality movement if this had been an attempt by AT&T at censorship that was valliently beaten off by our Scientologist-harassing, pedophile catching “friends*” over at /b/. The media would probably have latched on, and there’s a 50% chance they’d side with Neutrality, a victory would be won, and the politicians would be scared-off of trying any moves at internet censorship (for a short time). But alas, we get this non-issue which raises many concerns but doesn’t lead, in and of itself, to any solution either way.

*Calling them by an accurate name, like “troglodyte,” would have broken the mood and flow of the sentence.

Other

In one of the Reddit posts on this, someone mentioned how mutually interfacing wireless networks could potentially get around the grip of the big telecom companies on internet service provision. I wonder how a system like that would work out? How powerful of a wireless transmitter would you need to give service to a small town? If the actual house-to-house infrastructure wasn’t all controlled by one company, then there would be more competition in the market, and less chance that the actions of a few companies could imperil the entire internet.

Links

The Reddit Thread

The 4chan Status Blog

The Encyclopedia Dramatica Page

Amazon Secretly Removes “1984″ from the Kindle

House Vote on Illegal Images sweeps in Wi-Fi, web sites

First They Came… (Neat, but unrelated)

Eternal September (Neat, but unrelated)

Also in the news were the report covers delivered to our former President on war related issues. Apparently, the Department of Defense liked to spruce them up with still images of military things and Bible quotes. This brings forth two reactions:
1. Well, looks like we got ourselves into a Holy War, boys!
2. Why the hell did the Secretary of Defense have to “spice up” reports to the president on the war that he had started? Could they not capture his interest in any other way? Did he start to float away during briefings unless the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made pew-pew sounds when illustrating the newest offensive in Iraq? The man in charge of a country should be able to concentrate on something as vital as a national security document without it being “spruced up.” No wonder the man had “handlers.” (”What is he, a BEAR?” — Lewis Black)

Glenn Greenwald pats Keith Olbermann on the back for calling Obama out on his dangerous continuation of Bush-era policies vis-a-vis secrecy, security(-theater), and military tribunals.

Everyone remembers when some conservative pundits went absolutely apeshit over the release of a memo detailing the growth of “right wing extremist activity”? How they howled that this new liberal administration was going to crack down and hunt them down? And how that memo was actually commisioned by the Bush Administration? And how there was a corresponding report about liberal extremists?

To be fair, there is some room for criticism all around. While it may be useful for the FBI to compile information on potential domestic terrorist groups, how to determine which groups are simply nuicences, and which are capable of violence can be hard to see. On the one hand, as the commander of the VFW says, “A government that does not assess internal and external security threats would be negligent of a critical public responsibility”; on the other, too broad of investigations can lead to government infiltation of “ groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty, and poverty relief.” The trick is drawing the line between being able to investigate potential terrorists, and engaging in a sort of Orwellian spying on all non-government organizations. Personally, I would err on the side of protecting our rights and not wasting resources by limiting surveilence.

An another note, I object to Greenwald’s tone in this article. He almost seems to be defending the spying on right-wing groups as their just deserts after the excesses and abuses of the Bush years. It is ironic that the same people who applauded, say, domestic wiretapping threw a shitstorm when they thought they were in the crosshairs. Nonetheless, it has been used as political cannon-fodder by the right, with talking heads claiming that they are being targeted, when any moron can see that they were not the intended target. They thrive on their persecution complexes, or so it seems. Nobody deserves to be spied on by their own government, by their representitives and guardians. Wishing it on someone as a kind of poetic justice is, in fact, unjust. While it may reveal the depths of the pimping out of truth to “spin” in politics, I hope that we can, in the course of the next four years, move out of this surveilence society we seem to be inching toward.

Right-wing Memo

Left-wing Memo