Three years ago, John McCain had this to say regarding the United States’ discriminatory policy on homosexuals serving in the military:
“The day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy,’ then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to.”
Today, the leadership of the military – Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen – testified to the Senate Armed Service Committee that it is time to change the policy. McCain’s response to the military’s highest leadership?
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell has been an imperfect but effective policy. And at this moment, when we are asking more of our military than at any time in recent memory, we should not repeal this law.”
Admiral Mullen testified, “It is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.… I cannot escape being troubled in the fact that we have in place a policy that forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.” But apparently that’s not good enough for Senator McCain any more.
John McCain has been an interesting character to me, and my coverage of him on this blog reflects that. I’ve given him high praise for his sometimes unpopular stand on torture, and endorsed him in the Republican primaries. But despite the noble values the Senator sometimes espouses, this is not the first time he has made a complete political about-face – check out his argument for troop withdrawal from Haiti in the early ’90s compared to his unflinching support of our current extended occupations in the Middle East.
It’s one thing to be a “maverick” and express your views even when they conflict with political convenience. It’s another thing to actually follow through on those views as an honest man. I honor your opinions, Senator McCain, but I question your integrity when you won’t stand by your own commitments.
In short, the Supreme Court ruled today that proprietors of corporations are entitled to more freedoms than non-proprietors.
Does anybody remember the three-fifths compromise?
When considering this case, did the Supreme Court consider Section 2 of the fourteenth amendment? It states:
Representatives shall be apportioned …counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed…
A corporation is now a “whole person” under this interpretation. It is owned by “whole persons” who are already guaranteed representation, making them count more than once. This is literally a revival of the three-fifths compromise, as some are entitled to more representation than others. It’s unjust and tyrannical.
One last thing, for those who would argue that corporate personhood is fair because corporations are taxed: taxation does not a person make. I’d actually argue that double taxation should not exist for this same reason; as corporations are collective property of real people, those people should pay personal taxes on their capital gains instead of the corporate “entity” being taxed instead. This preserves the concepts of “no taxation without representation” and “one person, one vote” equally.
I’ve long disapproved of American companies’ willingness to go along with oppressive regimes’ human rights abuses. Some companies have given information on dissidents to governments and helped in the apprehension of political prisoners. This has attracted significant attention over the years, both in the media and in Congressional inquiries.
For years, Google has censored search results on their Chinese domain, Google.cn, in an effort to keep their site from being blocked by the “Great Firewall of China,” which blocks access to countless sites on an unpublished Government blacklist.
Today, Google made public their findings of targeted malicious break-ins to Google accounts of various activists for Chinese human rights, both within China, and in the U.S. and Europe. The attacks weren’t exclusive to Google, but widespread across other major companies.
Amazingly, after finding this, Google has made the decision to fight back and stop participating in China’s self-censorship mandates:
These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
I applaud this policy decision by Google. It’s a shame that American companies benefit so often from doing their business in ways that support corrupt governments, and our own country should do more to prevent it from happening to others.
China is growing and has the potential to improve the quality of life for people worldwide, but it has some very disturbing issues that it needs to address as it matures
Well, this isn’t good. According to an official White House review, the intelligence community failed to notice red flags about the underpants bomber. Why? The software that would have correlated intel and raised alarms was rendered ineffective by a one-letter misspelling of the would-be bomber’s name.
From the White House’s review of the government’s failures in the Flight 253 debacle:
Mr. Abdulmutallab possessed a U.S. visa, but this fact was not correlated with the concerns of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father about Mr. Abdulmutallab’s potential radicalization. A misspelling of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s name initially resulted in the State Department believing he did not have a valid U.S. visa. A determination to revoke his visa however would have only occurred if there had been a successful integration of intelligence by the CT [counterterrorism] community, resulting in his being watchlisted.
According to Talking Points Memo, Abdulmutallab’s name was misspelled by just one letter.
Via TPM
Google announced the HTC Nexus One today. On paper, it’s just about everything I want: a touchscreen-only HTC device with a 1GHz Snapdragon processor. It’s headed to Verizon sometime in the first half of this year.
I returned my Droid last week and put my unlocked iPhone onto T-Mobile, which has a great lower-price plan for contract-free customers. I told myself I’d wait until better devices come along, and the Nexus One almost grabs my attention. Engadget posted a very thorough review of the device, and I’d say it meets 90% of what I’m looking for. There are but a couple of issues that give me pause:
These issues are hardly dealbreakers for almost anyone. For myself, though, it’s enough to make me feel OK waiting to see what future phones offer, especially the next iPhone, which will likely have a boosted screen resolution, and possibly carrier support for Verizon.
After testing the Droid for a month and then reactivating my 2007 iPhone, I’m struck by just how well the original iPhone has held up to the competition of devices that are a full two and a half years newer. Other phones are just now catching up, and three major OS revisions are more than most could hope for. (Year-old Android phones are already missing out on new OS updates.) I could happily switch to an Android phone like the Nexus One now, but my financial situation as a student and the status of American GSM and CDMA networks just before the 4G LTE transition make me feel like having some patience will really pay off for me. Hopefully my geeky, impulsive side will be OK waiting until I’m on a real income later this year before jumping onto the new device train again.
These were the fruits of my Christmas haul:
I got a 1973 Yamaha FG-260 12-string acoustic (same kind recorded on Boston’s “More Than a Feeling”) from my stepdad and a 1986 Washburn G-IV electric from my uncle Dan Sweeney. They’re both great guitars, definitely more than a beginner could hope for. The electric is fresh from a tune-up at the luthier’s, so the action is great all over, and it’s in great shape.
So now comes learning the darned instrument, which is going well so far. It’s definitely intimidating going back to the absolute basics with one instrument after being a drummer for 13 years, but I’m already to the point where I can have fun with stuff instead of wondering how the heck this thing is supposed to make music.
I’ve got the electric set up to interface with my MacBook Pro, so I can mess with all of the amp modeling and effects in Logic and GarageBand. My roommate Eddie let me borrow an old amp of his as well.
So I’m set up pretty well as far as learning guitar goes. In addition to that, my roommate Eddie and I converted our seldom-used dining room into a music room, because we and our other roommate Jeff want to start playing blues together on a regular basis. So we now have one room with V-Drums, a piano, and rigs for both guitar and bass. The room’s nice and spacious, so it’ll be accessible for practice and for parties and such. And having the V-Drums in there will be a total lifesaver for everyone’s ears, just like they were for Deliver Me Seven rehearsals.
I just finished my last trip of the year. I just realized how much time this year I’ve spent sitting on some form of transportation, and there’s been a ton. Here’s every trip I’ve taken, ordered by transit method:
Air:
Denver-Philadelphia
Philadelphia-Madrid
Granada-Liverpool
Liverpool-Amsterdam
Amsterdam-Barcelona
Barcelona-Granada
Madrid-Dusseldorf
Dusseldorf-Prague
Prague-Frankfurt
Frankfurt-Madrid
Madrid-Dublin
Dublin-Chicago
Chicago-Denver
Denver-Cleveland
Cleveland-Harrisburg
Harrisburg-Cleveland
Cleveland-Denver
Bus:
Madrid-Toledo
Toledo-Granada
Granada-Sevilla
Sevilla-Córdoba-Granada
Granada-Rónda-Málaga
Málaga-Granada
Granada-Morocco-Granada (60+hours on the bus in a week)
Granada-La Taha, Alpujarras
Granada-Madrid
Prague-Terezín-Prague
Madrid-Granada
Valencia-Barcelona
Barcelona-Madrid
Ferry:
Spain-Morocco and back
Train:
Granada-Valencia
Metropolitan transit:
Madrid
Granada
Liverpool
Amsterdam
Prague
Valencia
Barcelona (way too many hours in the metro with 150 lbs+ of bags)
Dublin
Fort Collins
Denver
I definitely got around, but I’m looking forward to a more… Stationary 2010.
Airport security yet again failed to catch a person’s improvised weapon aboard a plane yesterday. Passengers yet again proved that they aren’t going to let shit happen on a plane in the first place. The cabin of a plane is no longer a viable place from which to carry out a terrorist act.
The American government responded by adding more “security” measures.
I’d feel a lot safer if my government focused on making less enemies in the world instead of treating us all as if we are the enemy ourselves. That isn’t the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy I like.
Google’s SVP of Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg has a very, very good piece on open technologies and how they make serious business sense, contrary to the popular idea that products must be proprietary in order to be profitable.