derivative work

Ross Douthat’s op-ed in the NYT is a showcase for the deceptive rhetoric of the right. The piece is a long paean to the supposed reasonableness and willingness to compromise of the anti-choice movement. He wraps up by attempting to lay the “blame” on Roe and Casey for the “failure” of Americans to reach peace on safe and legal abortion:

But no such compromise is possible so long as Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey remain on the books. These decisions are monuments to pro-choice absolutism, and for pro-lifers to accept them means accepting that no serious legal restrictions on abortion will ever be possible — no matter what the polls say, and no matter how many hearts and minds pro-lifers change.

Wow. Where to begin.

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Obama has appointed the next US Trade Representative, current U.S. Representative Xavier Becerra (D-CA 31); see also Becerra’s House site. Unfortunately, it looks like he’s going to be in the pocket of tank for Hollywood, just as prior USTR’s have been.

A few notes from some fast research (”googling”):

* He’s a Dem from LA. That’s almost saying enough right there.
* The Washington Times (crazy! but it’s what news.google.com pointed me to) reports:

With strong ties to Hollywood, Becerra fought to have the film industry included in the $137 billion tax bill. He wanted to stem the exodus of film production overseas and to Canada with tax-code changes.

* Google shows him on many, many events with, for, or about Hollywood, P2P, etc.
* He’s taken money from copyright maximalist PACs, e.g., $3000, Jan-June 1995, which went waaay up over the next decade: $38,750, 2005-06 (plus $3000 printing, for a total of $41,750 from copyright industries, against $12,000 from telcos & Internet companies). In ‘07-’08, he took $47,500 from Hollywood, plus $5,000 from printing & publishing. Cost-of-lobbying increases, I guess. open secrets

But, while it may be bad on the copyright-front (did we expect anything good?), it’s not necessarily all bad. Like I’ve noticed before, Hollywood copyrightists who can’t see the public interest in copyright can definitely see it in patent law. Becerra cosponsored the “Genomic Research & Accessibility Act” to ban gene patents. Michael Crichton, Patenting Life, NYT, 2/13/2007

Last Friday, Xavier Becerra, a Democrat of California, and Dave Weldon, a Republican of Florida, sponsored the Genomic Research and Accessibility Act, to ban the practice of patenting genes found in nature. Mr. Becerra has been careful to say the bill does not hamper invention, but rather promotes it. He’s right. This bill will fuel innovation, and return our common genetic heritage to us.

He’s also done some pro-librarian work, for example, seeking to add librarians to loan forgiveness plans, e.g., by introducing the Librarian Education & Development Act of 2003 (HR 2674).LIS News 2004/6/9

And of course in other areas — human rights not dealing with access to knowledge — he’s pretty good. So, the task is to get the access to knowledge message to him …
update 12/19 So Becerra turned down the job on Monday (12/15), and instead Obama has appointed Ron Kirk, former Mayor of Dallas, and supported by tech. tech daily dose, from private list

I’m contemplating Bush’s potential pardon of his various underlings for their roles in torture or other illegal actions, and I’m angry.

The Presidential pardoning power can be and should be used for humanitarian reasons — for mercy, or for justice, when for whatever reason those are not available through ordinary means. There’s also a good argument for using it for “national reconciliation” — e.g., pardoning the Viet Nam draft dodgers, or (gag) pardoning Nixon. (Those situations are clearly distinguishable, obviously, but even though I firmly disagree with the Nixon pardon, it’s a reasonable argument.)

But the pardoning power should not be available for use to eliminate responsibility for one’s own misdeeds, and for members of the government that includes actions committed on orders. Members of the government already receive a wide variety of protections for “following orders”. Use of the Presidential pardon power to pardon those who followed one’s own illegal orders is the worst kind of self-dealing, and it places the President above the law. Since “[t]he President, Vice President and all Civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors,” it’s clear that impeachment for such crimes was envisioned. Yet pardoning one’s underlings for their illegal activities render it virtually impossible to prosecute the superior that ordered the actions — the President thus protects himself from any such impeachment or other prosecution.

It’s regularly stated that the Presidential pardon power is “plenary” and virtually unlimited, but there must be some level of absurdity. Can the President pardon himself for, say, ordering the massacre of Congress and the suspension of the Constitution? Or bribe an investigative commission and then pardon himself for doing so? Well, yeah. Bush I showed us that they can, with his Iran-Contra pardons. So here we go again. There is just no fucking justice or accountability for members of this administration. God that makes me angry.

Lately annoyed by all the (conservative & mainstream) pundits asserting confidently that the US is “a center-right nation”. What? When did that happen? As long as I’ve watched these things, people’s positions on issues trend ever leftward — although the Right has successfully managed terminology such that feminists hate the “f-word”, liberals hate the “l-word”, socialists hate the “s-word”. (Anarchists and atheists are apparently so lost to reason that they can’t even be brought to disavow those terms.)

And happily David Sirota noted the same thing:

[Conservatives] contend that no matter how big progressives may win on election day, this is nonetheless a center-right nation. Indeed, a LexisNexis search shows this poll-tested term — “center-right nation” — is lately among the Punditburo’s most ubiquitous Orwellian buzzwords. From a Newsweek cover story by conservative dittohead Jon Meacham to a Wall Street Journal screed by former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan to a Politico.com diatribe by former Rudy Giuliani aide John Avlon, the “center-right nation” phrase is being parroted with the propagandistic discipline of Cuba’s Ministry of Information.

The proof of this center-right nation? Republicans cite polls showing more Americans call themselves conservative than liberal. While that data point certainly measures brand name, those same surveys undermine the right’s larger argument because they show majorities support progressive positions on most economic issues.

Sirota, Mandate ‘08: Reagan vs. FDR, SF Chronicle, 2008/10/31.

Yes, not only are these pundits wrong, but indeed, there is a concerted push this year on this term — the latest conservative talking point. Has anyone tracked the origin and dispersal of these phrases? I’d really like to know.

eta 2008/11/09: Lots of other folks have noticed this as well. See, e.g., Frank Rich 11/9, ….

oh, sure, there are lots of interesting goings-on in the world of copyright / IP / info / intellectual freedom / privacy / tech law / policy / librarianship / etc.

plus of course the endlessly fascinating polling data on the various elections. (i’m voting YES on questions 2 and 3 in massachusetts: ban dog racing and (sort of) decriminalize mary jane.) (could sarah palin be any more freakin’ clueless about science? dozens of nobel laureates think not.)

but i can only be dragged online to post by evidence of copy-editor cluelessness:

“a noodle monster”??? Come on! This is the flying spaghetti monster !!! Pastafarianism is, like, one of the biggest new religions in centuries! Waaay bigger than LDS despite their legions of black-nametagged youthful proselytizers.

oh well — the article (on mad scientist cooking experiments) was fun despite this glaring impiety.

(hat tip to michele, as ever)

doing some old school css & cackling about ted stevens. still. even after 24 hours.

Of course, it’s never surprising when the EFF takes on the most challenging issues in technology law, but it was particularly gratifying to see them arguing to overturn the odious telecommunications immunity passed last year. The Machinist at Salon — a blog I’ve been appreciating more and more lately — has a great summary & recap of the issue.

And two for two for Salon.com today, because Glenn Greenwald, who now also blogs for Salon, highlighted today something that did surprise me: Georgia Democratic Senatorial candidate Jim Martin’s principled critique of that legislation.

Go figure. Political candidates can surprise me with something other than the depths of their ignorance and/or pandering and/or willingness to lie outright.

The entertainment industry has succeeded — at least theoretically — in passing off more of their enforcement costs to the federal government — i.e., the taxpayers. Nice use of government dollars at a time of financial crisis, Congress! Bush signed the “Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act” (”PROIPA” ?) which, besides shelling out a lot of money to make the Dept. of Justice hunt down copyright infringement, also creates the office of the Copyright Czar.

Will the Copyright Czar be as effective as the Drug Czars? One can only hope.

Variety 10/13

* PS — double points if you can identify the source of the phrase “military-entertainment-industrial complex”, without Googling it. Hint: It’s from a pop culture source in 1996.

Apparently, Dayton, Ohio, officials think that tossing pepper spray* into a mosque nursery, filled with infants and directly in the face of their ten-year-old babysitter, is nothing more than a random chance chemical irritant attack. Certainly not a hate crime. In fact, it was probably motivated by love — James Dobson-style “tough love” for those youthful infidels. It should be called a “love crime” but our politically correct bureaucrats would never consider tracking crimes of love.

* a pepper-spray-ish substance, anyway

By some bizarre coincidence it happened after the DVD “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” was mailed to local homes and inserted as an ad in the Dayton Daily News and 70 other newspapers in the midwest. It’s weird how coincidences happen like that, but it certainly doesn’t suggest the mosque was targeted after locals were inundated with anti-Muslim information.

According to the Dayton Daily on Monday (9/29), a cop still had to determine if a crime even happened. Three days after the attack incident, which took place Friday 9/26. There’s no need to rush because, you know, who even knows if a crime took place? I mean, so often people sneak up to open windows where religious minorities have gathered and spray cans of noxious substances directly into the faces of children. Heck it happens all the time that cans like that just happen to fall into people’s hands when they’re standing by open windows, and they’re so startled they just accidentally press the button, and somebody’s gonna get sprayed. By accident. Or out of love. Or whatever, but certainly not out of any malicious motive. And if you’re standing by an open window of a mosque and a can falls into your hand — by accident — what the heck else is going to happen?

Dayton Daily News 9/27 via daily kos via pharyngula

Ah, generally I am always happy to read a Dahlia Lithwick piece. She’s insightful, and a clear writer. But she blew it on her recent piece on affirmative action, “The Downsides of Diversity: What Clarence Thomas might have to say about Sarah Palin” (Newsweek; Slate, 2008/8/29).

In the article, she reminds the reader, bemused by McCain’s obviously demographically-influenced selection of Palin as his VP candidate, of Clarence Thomas’ position on affirmative action. Thomas has repeatedly excoriated affirmative action as a humiliation for its intended beneficiaries, placing a permanent mark of stigma on them. He couches his opinions in the strongest language possible, deliberately echoing the stirring phrases that condemned the injustices of segregation and Jim Crow.

Lithwick then looks at Palin’s selection by the McCain campaign, and her treatment both by the campaign and the media at large. No surprise that she observes that this appeal to diversity is better called tokenism, and correctly equates tokenism with (in this instance) sexism. The irony of the Republicans’ copping to the language of diversity is not lost on her, as she observes, “[Diversity is] certainly a noble goal, but it’s one most conservatives have disparaged for decades.”

And then the conclusion:

Liberals inclined to blindly support affirmative action would do well to contemplate the lessons of Sarah Palin and Clarence Thomas. Although the former exudes unflagging self-confidence and the latter may always be crippled by self-doubt, both have become nearly frozen in a defensive crouch, casualties of an effort to create an America in which diversity is measured solely in terms of appearance.

Ah. Oh, no. Christ. This completely confuses the actual goals of affirmative action and diversity with conservative critics’ misapprehension of those goals.

The effort to measure diversity solely in terms of appearance — that’s the conservative myth about diversity. And McCain’s gambit exemplifies the conservative myth about affirmative action: substituting “diversity” concerns for good judgment and a well-rounded selection process that is merit-based. This kind of diversity is better described as an ugly tokenism. It’s certainly not affirmative action, a process of selecting qualified candidates by including considerations of past discrimination that may disguise actual abilities, experience, and potential; as well as considerations of the larger social realities of the harms and goods that flow from perpetuating or failing to remedy past discriminatory behaviors.

As my partner observed, no wonder conservatives hate affirmative action, if they think this is what it is.

But I’m disappointed to see Dahlia Lithwick accepting this strawman’s affirmative action.

A Louisiana state Representative is considering a plan to pay poor women to have their tubes tied, to stave off additional reproduction by undesirables.

One wonders just how bad history classes have to be in Louisiana for John LaBruzzo to have actually failed to learn about the many, many times governments have tried programs like this based on bizarre ideas about biology and economics — and let’s please not forget the unbelievably asinine and heinous beliefs about race and class and gender that underlie such proposals. (My partner points out that actually this history wasn’t in any of our primary school history classes — she learned about Puerto Rico, Native Americans, laws of dozens of American states, and on, and on, from independent reading. “And you too, Laura — you didn’t learn that shit in Alabama.”)

Honestly it just makes me tired. What the fuck is wrong with people? Why do people not have any more self-knowledge and/or humility than to at least understand how pig-ignorant they are, before attempting to set social policy?

seen on broadsheet

Damn you, rich people who own really giant homes. I have been designing libraries for my dream home since I was, like, ten — and now I find out that the home library is now trendy among the wealthier folks. Who, natch, like them for décor.

Sarah Palin recently made a strange and nearly incoherent comment about US energy policy when asked about keeping domestic oil production in the US (WarRoom 9/19):

Of course, it’s a fungible commodity and they don’t flag, you know, the molecules, where it’s going and where it’s not. But in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first. So, I believe that what Congress is going to do, also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it’s Americans who get stuck holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here. It’s got to flow into our domestic markets first.

WarRoom linked to Obsidian Wings’ interpretation of this comment, which appears to be (mostly) a suggestion that Congress would ban exports of oil. There’s good analysis of why this is a bad idea — such a bad idea that it really ought to be obvious to our energy “experts”.

Of course, according to McCain, his VP candidate is an expert (but not one of those elitist experts) who “knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America”, probably because her state is in charge of producing 20% of the nation’s energy needs — no, that’s not right: 20% of the nation’s oil and gas production — no, not quite: 20% of the nation’s oil? — no, try again: around 18%, but falling to 13% during the first two years of Palin’s gubernatorial administration. Yes, there we go. Which is of course a decent amount, if only the McCain team didn’t lie about it.Gary Farber’s comment on same post.

Anyway, MaryL on the comments thread had this retake which I thought deserved a bit more attention:

This is Just to Say

I have flagged
the molecules
that were in
Alaska

and which
you were probably
saving
for Canada

Forgive me
they were fungible
so sweet
and so cold

Chortle. I love WCW and literary mashups and political absurdity — to have all together at once made a very pleasant start to a Saturday otherwise full of work.

Siva is shutting down Sivacracy. From the inside, it feels right. There are lots of voices talking about copyright and information policy now, and all of us Sivacracy bloggers have enough other balls to juggle.

From the outside, though, the other part of me is saying, “hey but I’m going to be reading blogs again, sometime! and when I do I won’t have Sivacracy!!! Dammit!”

It’s true that all good things come to an end and it’s such a rare pleasure to find closure on the Internet and someone who knows how to wrap things up (god knows that’s not my strength). But no Sivacracy. Damn. The Internet will be a poorer place.

Below is my farewell to Sivacracy, cross-posted, of course, on Sivacracy:

see you all at the sivacracy reunion

It’s just like Siva to wrap things up in style. Book-ending the blog officially.

Over the years, Sivacracy has been literally one of the only blogs that I read every day — multiple times a day — and starting my day at Sivacracy brought new insights, new ideas, new analyses, new arguments. It has always been such a pleasure to have a place to read cutting-edge opinion and news on issues that mattered so dearly to me: information policy, feminism, culture, education, science, politics.

And always quirky and humorous, and open. Many blogs have comments enabled, but few blogs are truly open for dialog. Sivacracy was, for me, a model of committed, activist academic blogging.

So I was truly honored when Siva asked me to participate, and although I joined the blog just as my blogging energies were waning, every time I made a post I felt a warm glow. Posting to other Sivacracy readers felt like an “oh by the way” to other people — not an anonymous blog readership — but intelligent, questioning, curious folk, who share a lot of peculiar passions, and would be fun to have dinner and a few drinks with.

It’s been a pleasure. Let’s have that dinner party sometime. A Sivacracy reader/blogger reunion sounds like a blast.

Cheers,

Laura Quilter

Looks like a McCain-Palin supporter was busy at work cleaning up the Sarah Palin wikipedia entry — the day before the announcement was made. The editor claims no conflict-of-interest, although included fact-based information like, “Sarah Palin kept her campaign promises.”

California has followed Oregon in claiming copyright over its state statutes.

Reading this account of a large “Alaskan Women Reject Palin” rally — reminds me of the massive anti-Gulf War protest in San Francisco in the early 1990s. Almost no media coverage for that protest. Almost no media coverage for this one. And yet, apparently the smaller pro-Palin rally did receive media coverage. I get “if it bleeds it leads”, but are there reasons beyond naked bias and politics for these kinds of disparities in coverage of protests?

This is un-fucking-believable: Amy Goodman and producers were arrested at the RNC protests. Arresting an award-winning journalist for inquiring about her arrested producers. The video of Goodman’s arrest (”Update II”) should be watched along with the SF Chronicle’s interview of her on her release (”Update VII”). See also Washington Post. An AP reporter was arrested later, and there were various other police actions against journalists.

Glenn Greenwald said at the beginning of this column:

Beginning last night, St. Paul was the most militarized I have ever seen an American city be, even more so than Manhattan in the week of 9/11 — with troops of federal, state and local law enforcement agents marching around with riot gear, machine guns, and tear gas cannisters, shouting military chants and marching in military formations.

See also this video of a peaceful protester being tear-gassed at close range (second video; at pharyngula).

As with the Chicago DNC in 1996, and many other political party meetings in the intervening years, activists’ homes were raided before the protests began.

Reporting of interest:
* Glenn Greenwald at salon.com
* The Revolution Will Be Twittered - firedoglake / jane hamsher
* raid on an anarchist art production in a theater - The Uptake
* ColdSnap Legal Collective - updates on arrests etc.
* house arrests of journalist group “iwitness”
* interview with st. paul officials - mayor, chief of police, police PR
* Minnesota Independent coverage
* cell phone video of police firing what may be smoke bombs & in general acting like the protesters are enemy combatants — following after a retreat
* “inside an RNC raid” - a house of legal observer coordinators was raided & folks detained.

optical communicationsPeter Dizikes writes about a number of right-wing myths about oilландшафт in today’s Salon.com.

Unbelievably enough, there are people who believe:
# There’s more oil in Alaska than in the Middle East
# The Chinese are about to start drilling — or are already drilling — off the coast of Florida (the Cuba/China menace — Russia/Cuba 2.0 — new and improved!)

and — wait for it —

# Oil is not a “fossil fuel” but a nearly infinite non-organic resource like, I guess, rocks.

It’s like they just cut and paste the weather forecast — every goddamn day.

WEATHER FORECAST

This Afternoon…Mostly cloudy with a slight chance of showers and thunderstorms early…then partly sunny with showers and thunderstorms likely. Some thunderstorms may produce frequent lightning and small hail…then some thunderstorms may produce gusty winds…frequent lightning and small hail. Highs in the upper 70s. West winds around 5 mph…becoming north. Chance of rain 60 percent.

Tonight…Mostly cloudy with a chance of showers and thunderstorms in the evening…then mostly clear after midnight. Some thunderstorms may produce gusty winds…frequent lightning and small hail in the evening. Lows in the lower 60s. West winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40 percent.