Monthly Archives: April 2006

Let’s Hear it for the Archivist

Posted on April 17, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Secrecy News reports that the current Archivist of the United States is not only distancing himself from the secret re-classifications of his predecessor, but he’s saying good stuff,

The resulting firestorm of criticism that has been directed at the National Archives is “absolutely fair,” said Archivist Weinstein in a meeting with historians and public interest groups today.

He took responsibility for the affair (which originated prior to his appointment as Archivist). More significantly, he repudiated the underlying practice.

“There can never be a classified aspect to our mission,” Weinstein said. “Classified agreements are the antithesis of our reason for being.”

“If records must be removed for reasons of national security, the American people will always, at the very least, know when it occurs and how many records are affected.”

Yay!

(Previous post on the re-classification of public materials: No Institution Left Behind.)

Posted in National Security | Comments Off on Let’s Hear it for the Archivist

Who Got Rolled?

Posted on April 17, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

In the old days, I’d bet on AP to get it right and pretty much ignore some web site I never heard of. Nowadays… well, I don’t know who to believe. But I’m prepared to accept the idea that the AP’s reporter didn’t know what they did last year.

AP reports,

Thousands of children, including some brought by gay and lesbian parents, braved chilly rain at the South Lawn of the White House Monday to roll colored eggs across soggy grass as part of an event dating to the 19th century.

About 16,000 tickets were distributed for the day-long event, and about a hundred gay and lesbian parents lined up for the passes handed out on a first-come-first-served basis.

But PageOneQ (which I’ve never heard of before), says it wasn’t first-come first-serve at all, at least not like in previous years,

After waiting outside overnight to be among the first to enter this year’s White House Easter Egg Roll, families in line were surprised to learn that the White House had changed the ticketing policy for the annual event, PageOneQ has learned.

The unannounced change means that the families who waited in line the longest, in one case for twenty-four hours, will not be among the visitors at the event’s opening ceremonies. The first families in line, who were not part of the LGBT family group, received tickets with an 11:00am entrance time, two hours later than the opening time listed in the White House press release.

If PageOneQ is right, the goal, I imagine, was to keep Laura Bush from being pictured with gay couples. Indeed, AP reports,

The Bushes posed for pictures with families at the event, which was closed off to the public in the early morning hours. Attending at the event’s start were White House staff, youth volunteer groups, kids from the Gulf Coast region and other invited guests.

Posted in The Media | 1 Comment

Human Rights Watch Links Rumsfeld Directly to Torture

Posted on April 17, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

The latest from Human Rights Watch: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may be criminally liable for torture of a Guantanamo detainee in late 2002 and early 2003. (Incidentally, remember when Rumsfeld lied about this stuff on camera? Maybe it wasn’t a slip — maybe it was conscious cover-up due to a guilty conscience?)

The other day I attended a UM Law School Federalist society meeting at which a nationally respected scholar spoke on the proper role of foreign law in the decisions of the Supreme Court (he doesn’t think there is much of any). I went because I’ve met him, and thought well of his work, but it was a very disappointing talk, far below the standard one would expect of such a serious scholar. One almost suspected him of dumbing it down for the Federalists.

During the talk there were a number of quite amazing claims (e.g. that US would be doing a favor to other countries — all of them, apparently — to export its laws to them because ours are better; that the US as world hegemon has the greatest interest in having good law because its law has the widest impact and good laws everywhere are in our interest; that foreign countries’ interests have a form of virtual representation in the US due to the presence of emigrant former citizens and their descendants) but surely the low point was the claim that the US does not torture people.

When challenged on it, the visiting scholar said that while there were obviously some low-level people who had acted wrongly, he’d “seen no evidence” that there were any pro-torture policies directed from the top. Although he didn’t use the actual words, it was the “few bad apples” theory in all its glory.

As regards the non-CIA torture incidents, if one parsed words carefully to distinguish between mere “cruel inhuman and degrading” conditions on one hand, and “torture” on the other, and if one further accepted the Torture Memos’ distinctions that place things like waterboarding outside the definition of torture, in short if one took two rather outlandish things as one’s starting point, this “no clear evidence” argument was perhaps a credible position as the actual public evidence of a national torture policy was primarily circumstantial although not unpublicized. (As regards the officially sanctioned CIA torture, prisoner killings (and US ‘renditions‘), it’s much harder for me to see how a reasonable person could make this claim, although these too were not as publicized as they should have been.)

Anyway, maybe this latest Human Rights Watch report will go some ways towards plugging the gap.

Posted in Torture | 5 Comments

Animals Behaving Badly

Posted on April 17, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

The silly season is starting early this year, and there are lots of Florida animal stories in the news, notably Fla. Island Town Overrun With Iguanas (Boca Grande, far from here) and Florida’s newest problem: Burmese Pythons (not far from here at all).

Florida’s newest problem is roughly the circumference of a telephone pole. It has no toes. It snacks on rabbits. It’s the Burmese python. And in South Florida, the problem is growing in number and in feet.

“Last year, we caught 95 pythons,” said Skip Snow, a biologist with Florida Everglades National Park. That’s not counting the 13-footer that exploded after trying to eat an alligator, or two others that got loose and ate a Siamese cat and a turkey.

Actually, despite the headline, it’s not that new, but it does give me an excuse to link to the old story about the python-alligator death match.


Caption: The hind legs and tail of a two-metre alligator protude out of the body of a dead, four-metre python in Everglades National Park in Florida.

But back to the new python scare story for a minute:

Pythons have also discovered suburbia, said Capt. Ernie Jillson, who helps run the Miami-Dade County fire department’s snake squad. They catch around 20 pythons a year.

Miami-Dade County Fire Dept. has a “snake squad”??? And they’ve caught no local politicians? This requires an investigation. (Also, does the Fire Dept. have a ‘cat up tree squad’ or is that just part of normal duties?)

Posted in Florida | 1 Comment

The Great American (Liberal) Novel?

Posted on April 16, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

The Carpetbagger Report asks an interesting question:

A long-time regular, R.M., recently raised an interesting question via email. A conservative friend recommended that he read “Atlas Shrugged,” which the friend thought would help open his liberal eyes and lead him to the embrace poorly-written novels contrived plots conservative thinking.

Setting Ayn Rand aside, R.M. asked a good question: If the situation was reversed, and a liberal wanted to recommend one book to a conservative, which book should he or she pick?

Some of the more recent books that came to mind are preaching-to-the-choir kind of texts, which a) have their place; and b) when it comes to Al Franken and Molly Ivins, can be fun to read, but wouldn’t necessarily be the first thing I’d recommend to a conservative or politically-neutral reader.

The point isn’t to pick your favorite liberal book, or the one that has had the most impact, but rather the one that can speak to a broad audience and help present a liberal ideology in a persuasive way.

Fiction or non-fiction, recent or “classic” — which book would you pick?

For fiction, I was thinking along the lines of Grapes of Wrath, but it’s a bit dated.

For non-fiction, Simple Justice? Or is that too dated too? If so, really any decent account of the Bush administration ought to do…

Posted in Politics: US | 26 Comments

Good Slogan. Quixotic Campaign.

Posted on April 15, 2006 by Michael Froomkin

Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel is running for President. Sounds hoplessly quixotic, but “Gravel Rocks” will be a nice campaign button.

Posted in Politics: US: 2008 Elections | 2 Comments