Monthly Archives: February 2005

Firefox Exploit Update

Posted on February 8, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

That “fix” I blogged about yesterday for the Shmoo Group's Firefox exploit gets unfixed when you close and re-open your browser.

Information on a more permanent but alas more complicated fix can be found at tech.life.blogged.

UPDATE: This item was originally posted at 7:22am this morning. Some time between then and now, Firefox posted an update which fixes the problem. Quick work! [For the windows users who wrote me with their worries, the file you want is: firefox-1.0.en-US.win32.installer.exe . Just download it, then run it.]

Posted in Software | 9 Comments

A Reader Writes In About Yoo and Torture

Posted on February 8, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

A reader writes in to say,

You MUST read Jane Mayer's “Outsourcing Torture” in the New Yorker. Get a load of what Yoo's saying now:

Yoo also argued that the Constitution granted the President plenary powers to override the U.N. Convention Against Torture when he is acting in the nation¡'s defense—a position that has drawn dissent from many scholars. As Yoo saw it, Congress doesn't have the power to “tie the President's hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique.” He continued, “It's the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can't prevent the President from ordering torture.” If the President were to abuse his powers as Commander-in-Chief, Yoo said, the constitutional remedy was impeachment. He went on to suggest that President Bush's victory in the 2004 election, along with the relatively mild challenge to Gonzales mounted by the Democrats in Congress, was “proof that the debate is over.” He said, “The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum.”

In other words, “a vote for Bush is a vote for torture.” Jesus H. Christ, he actually SAID it.

As Constitutional doctrine it's not just offensive, it's also fairly silly. Congress has several Article I powers, not least the power to regulate the armed forces, which make it clear that it has the power to prevent torture. And then there's the power to implement treaties, which the Constitution itself says are the highest law, equivalent to the Constitution itself….

(Note to fellow lawprofs — who ever thought the right wing would be embracing Ackerman's theory of amendment via 'constitutional moments' so quickly?)

Posted in Law: Constitutional Law | 13 Comments

Juan Cole Outdoes Himself

Posted on February 8, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Juan Cole lives up to the title of his blog, Informed Comment, but it's sad it needed to be said.

One of those “just read it” links, as Cole demolishes some Goldberg person who apparently is a conservative pundit sponsored by the louche National Review.

Posted in The Media | 2 Comments

YATA

Posted on February 8, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

BBC News reports Moroccans claim Guantanamo abuse:

The five defendants claim that on numerous occasions while in detention at Guantanamo Bay, they were stripped naked and handcuffed before having dogs set upon them.

…

All five defendants plead not guilty to having links with al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, or to having undergone military training in Afghanistan.

When asked by the judge at Rabat's appeal court why they had signed testimonies to the contrary, they replied that they had been blindfolded for much of their time at Guantanamo and were still blindfolded when they were told to sign testimonies once in Morocco.

The Moroccan judge, the article makes clear, doesn't want to hear about it.

Posted in Guantanamo, Torture | Comments Off on YATA

Count Me Among the 10%

Posted on February 8, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Citechecking Just Got A Little Easier reports that a majority of the major law reviews have agreed in principle to try to limit articles to 70 pages after a web-based survey of law faculty found that 90% of the almost 800 responding faculty “agreed that articles are too long”.

I think the survey, which I filled out, was a very blunt instrument and this conclusion verges on a mistake. While it's true that some, maybe even many, law review articles are needlessly long — most often because they reinvent the wheel for the benefit of student editors — I think it's also true that some of the best articles are long for a reason: they describe something complex or genuinely new.

So, while I agree that one might wish to have a presumption that articles should be shorter than they are, I think a blanket rule of this nature would be unwise. (Of course, having written this and this and this, I would say that….)

I'm glad the law reviews haven't committed themselves to an iron-clad rule, but I'm worried that this will become an insurmountable bar in practice — especially for more junior scholars, who are the ones most likely to have something genuinely new to say, and who have the most need to say it in a way that is fully footnoted thus preemptively insulating themselves from certain types of criticism by their more senior colleagues (and believe me, I've been there).

Full text of the statement from the flagship law reviews at Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Georgetown, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, Texas, U. Penn., Virginia, and Yale follows.

Continue reading →

Posted in Law School | 4 Comments

Coral is Doomed? And Fish With It?

Posted on February 8, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

It seems somewhat strange that an effect this basic would only suddenly be noticed. There's no doubt the coral around here is dying, but that's thought to be caused by pollution, boats, and divers. This sounds altogether more serious:

Acid seas 'will kill off coral within 70 years': Coral reefs could be dead within two generations and cod replaced by jellyfish because of the acidification of the sea, scientists said yesterday.

The potentially disastrous problem, discovered only recently, is being caused by the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

…

Carol Turley, the head of science at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, told a conference in Exeter that the acidity of the sea was rising through chemical processes that turned carbon dioxide into carbonic acid.

She said: “It is happening now; nobody is saying it is not happening. It is O-level chemistry but no one noticed until 15 months ago. This is a rapid change that the world – and the organisms in the sea – have not seen for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions. …

Ms Turley said that cod and other fish ate plankton and shellfish that relied for their growth on calcium carbonate. If fish were not there, the sea would fill up with organisms such as jellyfish, which could eat other kinds of plankton.

“In cartoon form, you could say that people should be prepared to change their tastes from cod and chips to jellyfish and chips,” she said. “The whole composition of life in the oceans will have changed.”

Add in the already severe issue of the exhaustion of fish stocks from overfishing and profligate use of drift nets and I wonder if ocean collapse won't be the major environmental crisis of the mid-21st century.

I don't think I will like jellyfish sandwiches.

Posted in Science/Medicine | 1 Comment