Little Green Footballs reports that photographer Bryan Denton was an eyewitness in Lebanon to, in Denton's words, "the daily practice of directed shots, one case where a group of wire photogs were choreographing the unearthing of bodies, directing emergency workers here and there, asking them to position bodies just so, even remove bodies that have already been put in graves so that they can photograph them in peoples arms."
And Tim Rutten, media columnist for the L.A. Times, thinks that the MSM is not paying sufficient attention to bloggers' revelations that many photos from Lebanon were digitally manipulated, staged, posed, captioned incorrectly, or were otherwise fraudulent. He concludes:
That brings us to the most troubling of the possible explanations for these fraudulent photos, which is that some of the photojournalists involved are either intimidated by or sympathetic to the Hezbollah terrorists. It's a possibility fraught with harsh implications, but it needs to be examined thoroughly and openly. [Charles] Johnson [of LGF] and his colleagues have done the serious news media a service. Failure to follow up on it would be worse than churlish; it would be irresponsible.
UPDATE: Washington Post photographer Michael Robinson-Chavez, who was there, says of Qana: "Nothing was set up. There was no way photos could have been altered with a dozen photographers there." Yet we have video of "Green Helmet" apparently directing photographers and rescue workers, an AP report (in a puff piece) of Green Helmet holding up a dead body for the cameras, and some pretty persuasive (warning: and gory) circumstantial evidence from EU Referendum. Even the Post ombudsman thinks that one photo from Reuters looks staged. I guess it depends on what Robinson Chavez means by "set up", and also exactly where he was and how much of everything he witnessed (given that only a few images out of hundreds, maybe thousands, shot at Qana are at issue).
[UPDATE: A reader points out that, read in context, Robinson-Chavez may only be denying that the children were trucked in from somewhere else, or that some of the "dead" bodies really weren't, both allegations circulating on the internet. The full quote is "Everyone was dead, many of them children. Nothing was set up. There was no way photos could have been altered with a dozen photographers there." As the reader points out, this falls rather short of a direct denial of "staging.")
Meanwhile, Robinson-Chavez "explained why readers don't see pictures of suspected Hezbollah guerrillas, whose stronghold is southern Lebanon. They are recognizable because they're young and bearded and have walkie-talkies — and don't want to be photographed. He said they intentionally are not armed when photographers are around. He was detained by several one day and then released." Personally, if I were "detained" by an anti-American terrorist group, I'd be scared out of my wits, and would go out of my way not to make nice to that group so long as I was in the territory they controlled. And that would include what photos and reporting I chose to send to my bosses back in the U.S.
In Which Publication and Which Year Was This Cartoon Printed?
Why, in 2006, as the editorial cartoon in the alt-weekly Sacramento News & Review. I should note that Si Frumkin, who alerted me to this, reports that the News & Review responded to a complaint with this:
We have received your letter to the SN&R; thank you for your input. As a result of the outpouring of Emails that have come to us related to the Kloss cartoon of August 3rd, we'll be running a special full page of letters on the topic in our issue of 8/17/06, as well as an editorial statement about the decision to publish the cartoon.
Should be interesting to see what that editorial statement says.
A McDonald's wrapper informs us, "In space, you can jump six times higher." Only in those parts of space (which are often not even thought of as quite "in space," though I suppose under some definitions they qualify) where the gravitational field is quite right.
Thanks to this site for confirming the text (I failed to save the wrapper, so I'm working from a two-day-old memory), and for getting there first.
American Airlines tells us — and my sense is that this is the general TSA policy — that
All liquid and gel items must be placed in checked baggage only....
Exception: Baby formula or breast milk if a baby or small child is traveling; prescription medicine with a name that matches the passenger's ticket; and insulin and essential other non-prescription medicines.
I must be missing something here: Seems to me that a terrorist who wants to smuggle aboard explosives precursors just needs to fake a prescription label, no? Or if that's somehow too hard (I can't imagine how it can be), he can fake some symptoms, get a prescription for a liquid or gel medicine (granted, that might involve a day's delay), empty it out and refill it with the bad stuff.
Or is it that the prescription-bottles-only rule will diminish the number of bottles to be checked, and TSA will actually check each one to make sure that it's not filled with explosive precursors? That's the one sensible explanation I can see for the "no liquids and gels, but prescription bottles are OK" rule — but is TSA really geared up to perform this sort of checking?
Incidentally, I can see the prescription-bottles-only rule working for a few hours, if it's not announced — that way, if terrorists are then trying to execute a plan, they might be foiled because they hadn't anticipated the need to use a prescription bottle. But once we're talking about plans that are even a few days or perhaps even several hours away, and the prescription-bottles-only policy is announced, the terrorists can easily adapt themselves to that change, it seems to me. What am I missing here?
UPDATE: Some commenters suggest that it would take some pretty large bottles to make enough explosives to bring down a plane. My understanding from press accounts is that it only takes a little of the right kind of explosive, and a prescription bottle or two of cough syrup could fit what's needed. But if that's not so, or if the TSA is actually closely examining all the many prescription bottles that it's likely to run across, then the policy may make more sense than I thought — though I'd still wonder about the breast milk / baby formula exception (necessary as it is), plus also the ability to smuggle liquids and gels in various other ways (not hard in body cavities, I'd guess, though again that depends on how much you need).
FURTHER UPDATE: Perhaps the breast milk / baby formula exception might work because it's limited to people traveling with small children; I expect that even some would-be suicide bombers wouldn't find it easy to find babies whom they could enlist in their suicide squads. As to one commenter's note that mothers are being asked to taste their children's milk, I can say that Thursday morning we flew with a bottle of milk in our carry-on, and no-one said a word; maybe they just didn't notice it, or maybe they didn't have a tasting requirement to enforce.
Fauxtography in the Service of Hezbollah Propaganda:
Over the past two weeks, David Bernstein has been bringing VC readers some of the story about the staging and posing of photos of supposed "civil defense workers" and dead children at Qana, Lebanon. My media column today for the Rocky Mountain News/Denver Post also looks at the issue, and reports some of the evidence, brought forward by the blogosphere in the last two weeks, about the many faked, dishonest, or staged photos from the war in Lebanon.
Conclusion: "Notwithstanding the media critics, Hezbollah has, in the war for Western public opinion, sometimes succeeded in subverting Western news organizations into organs of its own propaganda. At Qana at least, it appears that the media may have been complicit in the production of controlled, staged images using dead children as props, which were falsely presented to the public as authentic, spontaneous photos of a rescue operation."
Some commenters on Prof. Bernstein's posts have raised the argument "who cares about staging; all the matter is that the Israelis killed the children." That argument is wrong on two levels: first it is a gross violation of journalistic ethics to present a posed/staged photo as if it represented spontaneous activity; there is little doubt, at this point, that the media at Qana perpetrated this violation, and have been attempting to cover it up ever since.
Second, we don't really know how/why the children died. Some bloggers have suggested that they were hauled into the scene for the rescue. The Lebanese newsmagazine Libanoscopie quotes a source that Hezbollah placed handicapped children and a rocket launcher in the same building, hoping that the children would be killed, and that the media would use the incident against Israel.
We do know, as my article details, that the media were forbidden to examine or inspect the building where the children were allegedly killed; A.P. spokeswoman Linda Wagner, in response to a question from me, did not deny this fact, but instead sidestepped the question.
The question of why the western media at Qana are passing off Hezbollah propaganda as the truth is a question which I leave to other analysts; I suspect that there are several answers, not just one explanation.
Word from Israel, from both the English-language media and my relatives there, is that folks are very unhappy with various aspects of the cease-fire deal that the U.N. Security Council has just passed, to wit (I haven't seen the final version of the resolution, but this is what I picked up from the media):
(1) The operative U.N. resolution before now, still in force, required all Lebanese armed factions to disarm. The new resolution does not require the Party of God (Hezbollah) to disarm, except below the Litani River.
(2) The new resoultion does not call for the immediate release of the kidnapped soldiers.
(3) The new resolution states that the Shaaba Farms controversy, which provided the Party of God with a pretext to fight Israel by claiming Israel was "occupying" Lebanese land, is to be resolved soon. The old resolution confirmed that Israel had pulled out completely from Lebanon, because according to the U.N. Shaaba Farms, captured from Syria in 1967, was part of Syria, not Lebanon.
(4) The Israeli government had sworn it would not accept U.N. peacekeepers to separate itself from the Party of God. The U.N. itself is incredibly hostile to Israel, and U.N. peacekeepers on Israel's borders have proven themselves to at best be ineffective, and at worst in league with Israel's enemies. The new resolution provides only for U.N. peacekeepers, albeit with some enhanced powers (which they can, theoretically, use as much against Israel as against the Party of God. I wouldn't wager on the more likely target.)
(5) The U.N. resolution calls for the Party of God's fighters to withdraw behind the Litani River. But given that the Party's fighters are nonuniformed and most have day jobs, how can this possibly be enforced?
(6) The resolution puts the issue of Lebanese prisoners in Israel, another POG pretext, and the most prominent of whom are brutal terrorist murderers, on the table.
(7) Is the U.N. and/or the Lebanese government really going to stop Iran and Syria from resupplying the Party of God? Hard to imagine.
All of this seems like strong evidence that the Olmert government is incompetent. So many lives lost, so many wounded, so many displaced, so much political capital used, all for a diplomatic "solution" that seems very likely to lead to another war rather soon, except that U.N. enhanced peacekeepers will be there to interfere with Israel's freedom to act.
But perhaps Olmert has one of two tricks up his sleeve: (1) Once the U.N. resolution is passed and enforced, the Lebanese government will face severe U.S. and French pressure to sign a peace treaty with Israel, which would be a huge blow to the Party of God/Syria/Iran axis; or (2) The U.S. has promised Israel that it will not allow Iran to get nukes, but the price of this is having to agree to this resolution, to retain French support for pressure on, and potentially military action against, Iran.
Perhaps. But meanwhile, the Olmert government looks way beyond its depth, having launched a war [yes, the Party of God provoked it, and Israel had every moral right to escalate] to "finish off" the Party of God that it was not prepared militarily, psychologically, or diplomatically to fully execute.
[I should add that the fact that the Olmert government announced its military moves in advance, giving the Party of God notice to prepare for them, that the squabbling at extremely important and secret cabinet meetings was leaked all over the media, that leading generals were openly questioning the government's strategy, and various politicos were making important public pronouncements well outside their authority (in what other country does the "Justice Minister" announce the government's military strategy?), hardly has created an aura of competence around the government.]
UPDATE: Here is the text of the resolution. I'm running out for the day, but a quick looks suggests that the resolution does call on the Party of God to disarm entirely, but that U.N. forces will only help enforce disarmament below the Litani River. And one more quick note, I've mostly refrained from commenting on Olmert's military strategy; as a law professor, I can speculate on these things, but I don't really know anything about them, nor do I have access to the kind of information that Olmert does. But it did strike me from my ignorant vantage point that going around Party of God fortifications and surrounding from the North made more sense than directly attacking them from the South. According to this interesting article, the IDF did have such a strategy (and more) in mind but it was vetoed by Olmert. Also of interest: the claim that the U.S. gave Israel the go-ahead to go after Syria, even at the potential risk (and potential payoff) of a face-off with Iran, but Olmert rejected this.
FURTHER UPDATE: The IDF is FINALLY airlifting soldiers behind Party of God lines. It is now racing against time to pull a military victory out of what, at best, was a diplomatic draw, if not defeat.
Angelo Frammartino, a 24 year-old [law] student from Italy who arrived in Israel as a human rights organization activist, was stabbed to death Thursday by an Arab knifeman.
"He believed in what he did and was always ready to help others," a friend described him.
The website of Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported that Frammartino was working for the setting up of a children's supper camp for Palestinians in Jerusalem's Old City, and was supposed to return to Italy on Friday.
The youth was stabbed in the back while walking with four friends in the Sultan Suleiman street in the capital, near the Prahim Gate.
The attacker left the knife at the scene of the crime and fled. Police set up checkpoints in the area and arrested three suspects for suspected involvement.
It is believed that the attack was . . . not an attempted robbery. . . .
Frammartino was a law student. "He was very interested in politics and in the issues of society, like his father," said [his hometown] Mayor, Anonino Lopi. "Something so beautiful ended in such a tragic way," he added.
In a letter sent a few months ago to a local newspaper, Angelo expressed his world view:
"We must recognize that in a situation with no violence is a luxury in many parts of the world, but we are not seeking to prevent legitimate self defense operations. I never dreamt of condemning the resistance, the blood of the Vietnamese, the blood of nations under colonial occupation, or the blood of Palestinian youths from the first intifada."
Poignant--and like so many deaths in the Middle East today--very sad.
Another Important Ninth Circuit Case on the Fourth Amendment and Computers:
The Ninth Circuit has handed down a slew of important cases in recent weeks applying the Fourth Amendment to computer searches. The latest case was handed down just today; I blog about it here at my solo blog.
Attorneys for the estate of Jessie Lee Williams Jr. have filed a motion asking a federal judge to determine if the Harrison County jail has presented false reports to the U.S. Justice Department and, if so, that the federal government temporarily take over the jail.
The motion, filed early Thursday evening, alleges the jail has filed false reports to the Justice Department regarding the fatal beating of Williams. The jail has been under a federal consent judgment since 1995 and must submit quarterly reports to the Justice Department to show how the jail is run and what happens in the jail.
The motion claims the quarterly report for January through March contains "intentionally misleading and possibly fraudulent reports" involving Williams' beating in the jail booking room Feb. 4.
The motion also claims Monday's guilty plea of ex-jailer Regina Rhodes to criminal acts stemming from the beating is "further evidence... as active efforts to cover up blatant abuses and illegal activities" and that the report "failed to identify all of the individuals known to it at the time the report was filed."
This kind of appeasement mentality towards radical Islamist terrorism is usually associated with the more myopic elements of the political Left. In this case, however, it has emerged from within Israel's version of the religious right:
Shas mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Rabbi Yehuda Leib Steinman, a leading Ashkenazi haredi spiritual leader, have given their blessing to a meeting with Hamas aimed at reaching a hudna (Arabic for cease-fire) that could save Jewish lives.
The plan approved by Yosef and Steinman calls for three rabbis representing Sephardi, Ashkenazi and religious Zionist Orthodoxy to meet with Hamas representatives. The three rabbis are: Rabbi Shmuel Jakobovits, son of former chief rabbi of Britain Immanuel Jakobovits; Rabbi Zion Cohen, rabbi of the Sha'ar Hanegev region; and Rabbi Menahem Fruman of Tekoa, a veteran interfaith dialoguer who is the driving force behind the initiative . . .
The proposed hudna would be between Hamas and the Jewish people - not with the state of Israel - to circumvent Hamas's refusal to recognize the Zionist entity . . .
[According to Rabbi Jakobovits], "[t]he Islamic world has deep concerns about the penetration of liberal, secular values and lifestyles into the Middle East. A major factor in the conflict between radical Islam and the Western world is Islam's opposition to secular lifestyle and ideology.
"The haredi community understands their sensitivities and mentality and feels threatened by the same phenomena. The haredi community could play a key role in dialogue between the West and Islam because we live in two worlds, one deeply religious and the other liberal and pluralistic. We understand that the secular mind is different from the religious mind.
"Today in the West the assumption in dealing with Muslim extremism is that moderation and tolerance are the keys. But what the West does not understand is that there is something threatening in that approach, both to the haredi mind and to a deeply Islamic mind. Both haredim and Muslims see multicultural society as an anathema.
"The West, which has the power, needs to assure Islam that no one is going to try to force a multicultural worldview on them. Otherwise the clash with Islam will only get sharper and sharper," Jakobovits said.
For those VC readers who may not know, the haredim are a highly traditionalistic branch of Orthodox Judaism. Some of them do not recognize the legitimacy of the state of Israel part because they consider it to be excessively secular, and not governed by their interpretation of Jewish religious law.
These particular haredi rabbis have clearly deluded themselves about the nature of Hamas and other radical Islamist terrorist groups. Among other things, there is absolutely no reason to believe, as the rabbis seem to, that radical Islamists are any less hostile to highly traditional Jews than they are to more secular Jews and Westerners. Hamas and other terrorists have repeatedly made it clear that their goal is to kill all Jew - especially all Israeli Jews - without distinction (see, e.g., here). As the Hamas Charter says:
The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:
The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.
Other parts of the Charter blame the Jews (again without distinction as to religiosity) for virtually all the problems of the world, including the French Revolution and the outbreak of both world wars (Article 22), and make clear that Hamas intends to expel all Jews (again without distinction) from all parts of "Palestine," including pre-1967 Israel.
Finally, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, "liberal values,""tolerance," and a "multicultural society" are among the most important of the principles that the West should be fighting for in the struggle against radical Islamism. Sometimes, even the most shopworn of cliches is appropriate: to sacrifice these values in order to make a deal with the enemy is truly to let the terrorists win.
The misguided thinking of these rabbis would be insignificant were it not for the fact that some of them are major figures in Israeli politics and society. Rabbi Yosef, for example, is a key leader in the Shas Party, which holds 12 of 120 seats in the Israeli parliament and is part of the current Israeli coalition government.
UPDATE: To avoid misunderstanding, I should make it clear that by "multicultural society," I mean a society where people from a wide range of backgrounds and cultures can find acceptance and coexistence. I do not mean a radically relativistic society under which any and all cultural practices, including those that go against fundamental liberal principles are considered "equal." I suspect however that the haredi rabbis are opposed to this limited formulation of multiculturalism and not just to the extreme moral relativist version.
Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided Northern California River Watch v. Healdsburg, the first case in which a federal appellate court has applied the Supreme Court’s decision in Rapanos v. United States. In Healdsburg, the Ninth Circuit upheld the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ assertion of regulatory jurisdiction over “Basalt Pond,” a rock quarry alongside the Russian River in California. This outcome was not a surprise, but the ruling seems to rest on a misreading of Rapanos.
As readers may recall, in Rapanos the Court split 4-1-4 on the scope of federal regulatory jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Due to the unusual nature of the split, there is some uncertainty as to how courts should apply the decision. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the solo opinion concurring in the judgment, so his opinion should be controlling, insofar as it provides the narrowest grounds upon which the Court’s judgment may be upheld.
The core of Kennedy’s opinion is that wetlands must have a “significant nexus” to navigable-in-fact waters in order to be included in the definition of “navigable waters,” and thereby subject to federal jurisdiction, under the CWA. The key to determining the scope of federal jurisdiction post-Rapanos is untangling what this "significant nexus" test requires.
The Ninth Circuit sought to follow Justice Kennedy’s opinion in upholding federal jurisdiction over the Basalt Pond. It was undisputed that the Russian River is a navigable water, and, the court noted, “the district court made substantial findings of fact that the adjacent wetland of Basalt Pond has a significant nexus to the Russian River” due to various physical, hydrological, and ecological connections. This analysis was required, according to the Ninth Circuit, because “the mere adjacency of Basalt Pond and its wetlands to the Russian River is not sufficient for CWA protection.” Admittedly, Justice Kennedy’s concurring opinion in Rapanos is hardly a paragon of clarity, but it seems to say the precise opposite.
Justice Kennedy’s opinion explains that the federal government can presume that wetlands adjacent to actual navigable waters have a “significant nexus” to such waters, and that additional evidence of an ecological connection is unnecessary for CWA jurisdiction.
As applied to wetlands adjacent to navigable-in-fact waters, the Corps' conclusive standard for jurisdiction rests upon a reasonable inference of ecologic interconnection, and the assertion of jurisdiction for those wetlands is sustainable under the Act by showing adjacency alone.
This, Justice Kennedy noted, was “the holding of Riverside Bayview, and he took pains to stress that he sought to base the Court’s holding on its prior precedents in Riverside Bayview and SWANCC. It is only where wetlands are adjacent to non-navigable waters, as was the case for the wetlands at issue in the Carabell case, that additional evidence is required.
Healdsburg is not the only post-Rapanos decision. On June 28, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas held, in United States v. Chevron Pipe Line Co., that Chevron Pipe Line was not liable for the discharge of oil into a nearby creek and stream bed that lacked a “significant nexus” to navigable waters of the United States. Interestingly, the district court largely relied on pre-Rapanos decisions within the Fifth Circuit for its holding:
Because Justice Kennedy failed to elaborate on the ‘significant nexus’ required, this Court will look to the prior reasoning of this circuit. The Fifth Circuit . . . has interpreted “waters of the United States” narrowly . . . . Without any clear direction on determining a significant nexus, this Court will . . . feel its way on a cases-by-case basis. . . . Thus, as a matter of law in this circuit, the connection of generally dry channels and creek beds will not suffice to create a “significant nexus” to a navigable water simply because one feeds into the next during the rare times of actual flow. . . .
[A]bsent actual evidence that the site of the farthest traverse of the spill is navigable-in-fact or adjacent to an open body of navigable water, the Court finds that a “significant nexus” is not present under the law of this circuit.
As with the Ninth Circuit’s decision, I believe the result is defensible under Rapanos. What is odd, however, is the district court’s explicit reliance on pre-Rapanos case law without any attempt to harmonize those cases with Rapanos (something that is likely possible to do).
These two cases are two of the first interpretations of Rapanos (the Middle District of Florida also applied Rapanos in U.S. v. Evans, issued August 2), but they won’t be the last. Courts, regulators, and litigants will be sorting through this one for a while.
For those who want more on the meaning of Rapanos, I testified on this subject before the Senate Environment Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Water, August 1. My written statement is here. The remaining written testimony from the hearing is here.
In reading the essay Message from Room 101, I agree that it is indeed powerful and well written, marred only by its naive views about how easily redistributive economics can work.
Scialabba fans: Is there another essay of his that is both online and worth reading?
This Los Angeles Timesarticle quotes some reactions to Wednesday's ruling that individuals who receive and retransmit classified national security information may be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
"It's a momentous ruling with radical implications," said Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy for the Federation of American Scientists. "A lot of people who are in the business of gathering information, such as reporters and advocates, are now going to have to grapple with the potential threat of prosecution. The dividing line has always been between leakers, who may be prosecuted, and the recipients of the leak, who have never been. Now that dividing line has been erased." . . .
Prosecutors have said that for the espionage law to be invoked, an individual possessing secret information must intend to cause harm to America. But they have not ruled out the possibility of charging journalists.
Some legal experts are skeptical of the judge's reasoning that safeguards are sufficient to prevent abusive prosecutions.
"It is predicated on an idea that the executive and judicial branches will operate with rectitude and only prosecute cases where there is a genuine risk of harming national security" rather than political considerations, said Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota. "It presumes a degree of honest government that, sadly, does not always exist."
Aftergood and Kirtley said they knew of no other case where the United States was seeking criminal charges against someone other than a government employee who clearly violated a nondisclosure agreement.
The story also notes that there is a federal grand jury looking into the leaks relating to NSA surveillance activities reported in the press.
Howard Bashman rounds up more press coverage here.
The Associated Press reports that the two men will face an additional charge for committing acts supporting terrorism. Meanwhile, the Columbus Dispatchprovides more information on their arrest and their defense:
The men were stopped while driving for failure to signal a turn Tuesday after a clerk at a RadioShack called deputies to report the two acting suspiciously while buying three disposable, prepaid TracFones. The men bought six more phones from a Wal-Mart at the same strip mall near I-77.
Inside the car, deputies found nearly $11,000 in cash, a dozen cell phones, instructions on accessing and altering computerized passenger and baggage information from Royal Jordanian Airlines, and some airline-flight manifests.
Assistant Prosecutor Susan Vessels accused the men of "very serious crimes" in detailing the suspicious items found in their car and their admission that they bought 600 cell phones in the last month and were after another 300 on a trip south from Dearborn, Mich.
Attorneys for the two men said authorities are overreacting to a legal purchase of phones by two men who are working for a legitimate businessman. He resells the cheap phones at a profit and has been cleared of any terrorism links by the FBI, the attorneys said.
Agent Dawn Clenney, spokeswoman for the FBI in Detroit, could not confirm what the lawyers said. The Marietta case is a matter for Ohio lawenforcement agencies, she said.
The airline-related documents found in the car owned by Houssaiky’s mother belong to her, the men’s attorneys said. She works for a company that provides ground support for Royal Jordanian Airlines and others at the Detroit airport, they said.
The attorneys suggested the men were stopped and arrested as targets of racial profiling.
UPDATE: Police are looking into more mass cell phone purchases here and here.
'Mass Murder' Foiled
A terror plot is exposed by the policies many American liberals oppose.
As we approach the fifth anniversary of 9/11 without another major attack on U.S. soil, now is the right moment to consider the policies that have protected us--and those in public life who have fought those policies nearly every step of the way.
It's not as if the "Islamic fascists"--to borrow President Bush's description yesterday--haven't been trying to hit us. . . .
British antiterrorism chief Peter Clarke said at a news conference that the plot was foiled because "a large number of people" had been under surveillance, with police monitoring "spending, travel and communications."
Let's emphasize that again: The plot was foiled because a large number of people were under surveillance concerning their spending, travel and communications. Which leads us to wonder if Scotland Yard would have succeeded if the ACLU or the New York Times had first learned the details of such surveillance programs.
And almost on political cue yesterday, Members of the Congressional Democratic leadership were using the occasion to suggest that the U.S. is actually more vulnerable today despite this antiterror success. Harry Reid, who's bidding to run the Senate as Majority Leader, saw it as one more opportunity to insist that "the Iraq war has diverted our focus and more than $300 billion in resources from the war on terrorism and has created a rallying cry for international terrorists."
Ted Kennedy chimed in that "it is clear that our misguided policies are making America more hated in the world and making the war on terrorism harder to win." . . . And if the Iraq war is a diversion and provocation, just what policies would Senators Reid and Kennedy have us "focus" on?
Surveillance? Hmmm. Democrats and their media allies screamed bloody murder last year when it was leaked that the government was monitoring some communications outside the context of a law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA wasn't designed for, nor does it forbid, the timely exploitation of what are often anonymous phone numbers, and the calls monitored had at least one overseas connection. But Mr. Reid labeled such surveillance "illegal" and an "NSA domestic spying program." Other Democrats are still saying they will censure, or even impeach, Mr. Bush over the FISA program if they win control of Congress. . . .
The real lesson of yesterday's antiterror success in Britain is that the threat remains potent, and that the U.S. government needs to be using every legal tool to defeat it. At home, that includes intelligence and surveillance and data-mining, and abroad it means all of those as well as an aggressive military plan to disrupt and kill terrorists where they live so they are constantly on defense rather than plotting to blow up U.S.-bound airliners.
As the time since 9/11 has passed, many of America's elites have begun to portray U.S. government policies as a greater threat than the terrorists themselves. George Soros and others have said this explicitly, and their political allies in Congress and the media have staged a relentless campaign against the very practices that saved innocent lives this week. . . .
The Sun has a series of stories on the backgrounds of the terrorists arrested yesterday. As I read the accounts, for some reason I kept thinking that Mark Steyn (or someone with his satirical skills) could write a great column on the quotes from family and friends.
Again and again, family or friends expressed surprise that the suspects could be terrorists because they liked football or cricket.
And one of the suspects who had converted from Christianity was described as "always very naughty" (he had been expelled from school):
“His mum is a PE teacher who regularly attends a local Methodist church. She is going to be devastated.
“He married recently but we don’t know much about the wife and hardly ever saw her.
“She would appear in the street from time to time wearing a scarf round her head.” . . .
The owner of a nearby restaurant who has known Stewart-Whyte since he was a boy added: “He went to school with my daughter. He was always very naughty.”
Among the other suspects arrested may have been a mother (along with a young child):
Among those arrested was a woman in her 20s who was taken into custody with her baby, claimed Muslim community leader Imtiaz Qadir last night.
He said: “A young Muslim lady was arrested and they have taken the child too, because it needs to be with its mother.”
He added that he expected “an uproar” among the local community, once news of her arrest became known. . . .
Minutes later plain-clothes cops swooped on nearby 104 Queens Road and arrested biochemistry student Waheed Zaman, 23.
He had been watching TV with elder sister Safeena minutes before being led to a van in handcuffs.
The devout Muslim, who prayed five times a day, is well known in the Islamic community.
He was the head of the Islamic Society of Metropolitan University, London, and regularly spoke at Muslim rallies.
Last night Safeena, 24, said her brother was proud of being British and being born in Britain.
She said: “He loves fish and chips and Liverpool Football Club and his favourite TV programme is Only Fools And Horses.
“He even wanted to join the police as a forensics expert.
“As part of his work with the Islamic Society at university he would organise Muslim events and would often give talks. He is a great believer in the importance of integration between our community and the Western world.”
But pal Nasser Fazal, 23, revealed: “I spoke to Waheed about the September 11 attacks a few times. He told me he was convinced it was all a Jewish conspiracy.” The suspect has a part-time job at world-famous toy store Hamleys in London’s Regent Street. He prays at the Masjid-e-Umer mosque opposite his home, along with several others of those arrested.
The Sun is also reporting that the London bombing suspect met often with MP George Galloway (who was reportedly involved financially in the Saddam's Oil-for-Palaces program):
TERROR suspect Waheed Zaman met controversial MP George Galloway many times, his sister said last night.
Safeena, 24, said of her 23-year-old brother: “He saw it as his duty to stand up for his community and that’s what led him to know George Galloway. He has a lot of respect for him and has met him many times.”
A spokesman for MP Galloway . . . said: “Waheed Zaman is not a name that George is familiar with. He is not known to him on a personal level.”
[There is no suggestion Galloway is an associate of Zaman.]
Kopel on NRA News, discussing the British airline terror plot:
Airs at the top of the hour, at 9 p.m. Eastern, 6 p.m Pacific. Available on Sirius Satellite channel 144, and on the Internet. The show remains on the web for listening for the 24 hours after broadcast.
Gov't May Prosecute Recipients of Leaked Information:
The federal government may prosecute private citizens who illegally receive and retransmit classified information, held federal district court Judge T.S. Ellis III yesterday in United States v. Rosen. Judge Ellis denied a motion to dismiss filed by Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), who are being prosecuted under the Espionage Act for obtaining classified information and communicating it to third parties, including members of the media. According to Judge Ellis:
both common sense and the relevant precedent point persuasively to the conclusion that the government can punish those outside of the government for the unauthorized receipt and deliberate retransmission of information relating to the national defense.
Any violation of the statute must be both knowing and willful, Judge Ellis ruled, narrowing the implications of the decision.
the government must . . . prove that the person alleged to have violated these provisions knew the nature of the
information, knew that the person with whom they were communicating was not entitled to the information, and knew that such communication was illegal, but proceeded nonetheless. . . . [And] with respect only to intangible information, the government must prove that the defendant had a reason to believe that the disclosure of the information could harm the United States or aid a foreign nation, which the Supreme Court has interpreted as a requirement of bad faith.
While allowing the government's prosecution to proceed, Judge Ellis made clear he was not passing on the wisdom of the government's proseuction, just its contitutionality.
The conclusion that the statute is constitutionally permissible does not reflect a judgment about whether Congress could strike a more appropriate balance between these competing interests, or whether a more carefully drawn statute could better serve both the national security and the value of public debate. . . . the time is ripe for Congress to engage in a thorough review and revision of these provisions to ensure that
they reflect both these changes, and contemporary views about the appropriate balance between our nation’s security and our citizens’ ability to engage in public debate about the United States’ conduct in the society of nations.
Steven Aftergood on the Secrecy News blog notes that Judge Ellis' decision could have distubing implications for press freedoms.
the classified 2004 report of Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba on prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison clearly fit the court's description of national defense information that is closely held by the government. Moreover, its unauthorized disclosure was likely to, and did in fact, harm the United States. And yet that disclosure also served an important national purpose in prompting a public debate over U.S. policy on prisoner detention and interrogation.
But under Judge Ellis' new interpretation, those reporters and others who communicated this information to the public could apparently be prosecuted under the Espionage Act.
Under Judge Ellis' interpretation, it also seems the federal government could prosecute reporters at the Washington Post and New York Times for their reports on secret prisons, NSA surveillance, and other classified counter-terrror activities.
Now German TV (with English subtitles) has a short report being shown on YOUTUBE that shows just the sort of evidence that Orin wanted to see (tip to Malkin and LGF). The character who has been dubbed "Green Helmet" is shown directing a scene for the benefit of cameras at Qana.
First, the body of a child is put in an ambulance. Then "Green Helmet" is shown directing the video photographer to "Keep on filming!" and insisting that "better images must be shot."
Then (after an apparent splice in the tape) the body of what may or may not be the same child is removed from the ambulance, apparently so that "better images" can "be shot" of the body. Instead of covering up the face with a blanket, the "workers" pull the blanket to just under the chin of the dead child and manipulate the angle of the child's head so that the video photographer can get the right closeup shot of the dead child's face.
If this is what it appears to be, then it is just the smoking gun that skeptics asked for. It's interesting how much can be done when the blogosphere and the MSM (even the German MSM) work together.
Now that proof has surfaced, this story of Hezbollah manipulating the bodies of dead childen to get good propaganda photos should be a big one in the MSM over the next few days--but it probably won't be. It's amazing how anti-US and anti-Israeli propaganda can be run routinely by the American media, but when shocking and truthful stories undercut that propaganda, there's really no story worth covering.
UPDATE: Zombietime has a fairly thorough account of the various sorts of allegations being made against Reuters:
It's important to understand that there is not just a single fraudulent Reuters photograph, nor even only one kind of fraudulent photograph. There are in fact dozens of photographs whose authenticity has been questioned, and they fall into four distinct categories.
The four types of photographic fraud perpetrated by Reuters photographers and editors are:
1. Digitally manipulating images after the photographs have been taken.
2. Photographing scenes staged by Hezbollah and presenting the images as if they were of authentic spontaneous news events.
3. Photographers themselves staging scenes or moving objects, and presenting photos of the set-ups as if they were naturally occurring.
4. Giving false or misleading captions to otherwise real photos that were taken at a different time or place.
2D UPDATE: AP has identified "Green Helmet" as Salam Daher, the head of civil defense for the Tyre region of Lebanon. More commentary here.
3D UPDATE: Solomania details how Daher was the source for the inflated casualty claims coming out of Qana. EU Referendum is attacking the factual claims in AP's story.
Here's a new Oklahoma statute, 21 Okla. Stats. sec. 839.1A:
Any person, firm, or corporation that uses for the purpose of advertising for the sale of any goods, wares, or merchandise, or for the solicitation of patronage by any business enterprise, the name, portrait, or picture of any service member of the United States Armed Forces, without having obtained, prior or subsequent to such use, the consent of the person, or, if the person is deceased, without the consent of the surviving spouse, personal representatives, or that of a majority of the adult heirs of the deceased, is guilty of a misdemeanor. This section applies to the name, portrait, or picture of both active duty members as well as former members of the Armed Forces of the United States. Every person convicted of a violation of this section shall be punished by a fine of not to exceed One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00), or by imprisonment in the county jail for not to exceed one (1) year, or by both said fine and imprisonment.
Consider three possible applications of the statute: (1) Advertising of nonspeech products that isn't misleading -- i.e., doesn't suggest an endorsement that isn't there -- for instance if someone sells "Jarhead Beer" with a picture of some generally unknown marine on the label.
(2) Advertising of books, movies, or newspapers, e.g., an unauthorized biography of Colin Powell that has his name and likeness on the cover.
(3) T-shirts, bumper stickers, pins, prints, and the like that contain a servicemember's name or likeness (either an anonymous servicemember's or a more famous one's, such as Powell's or McCain's), and that are used to advertise themselves (for instance, when the T-shirt is hanging in a store window or sitting on the shelf).
And in considering them, ask two questions:
(A) Could a general right of publicity law, which purports to impose civil liability on the use of people's names and likenesses for commercial purposes, be constitutionally applied in these cases? Many states do indeed have right of publicity laws that differ from the Oklahama statute chiefly in that (i) they impose civil liability, not criminal, and (ii) they don't limit themselves to soldiers.
(B) Even if such a general law would be constitutional, would this narrower law still be impermissible, either because its narrowness makes it impermissibly underinclusive under the relevant standard of scrutiny (Central Hudson scrutiny for commercial advertising or strict scrutiny for otherwise fully protected speech), or because of R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul?
The terror plot foiled in the U.K. is the big news of the day. Closer to home, there are reports that two Michigan men were arrested in southeast on Ohio on charges they engaged in money laundering to support terrorist activities.
Deputies stopped the two on a traffic violation Tuesday and found the flight documents along with $11,000 cash and 12 phones in their car, Sheriff Larry Mincks said.
It wasn't clear what significance the airline information might have. Assistant County Prosecutor Susan Vessels declined to comment on whether the manifests were for upcoming flights or those that already had flown. She also would not give the origin or destination of the flight or flights. . . .
[The two men, Osama Sabhi] Abulhassan and [Ali] Houssaiky admitted buying about 600 phones in recent months at stores in southeast Ohio, said sheriff's Maj. John Winstanley. They sold the phones to someone in Dearborn, Winstanley said.
Vessels declined to say how the phones, cash or flight information involved terrorism.
Twenty-year old's Ali Howssaiky and Osama Abulhassan are facing charges of money laundering to aid terrorism. This comes after a traffic stop Tuesday led police to thousands of dollars in cash, several disposable cell phones and instructions of how to obtain private flight information. Police also found a list of flight passengers in the car.
"It also had information about airport checkpoints, and what would be accomplished there, so this is a little bit unusual," Washington County Sheriff Larry Mincks says.
Sheriff Mincks also says the disposable cell phones are especially important, because it appears their final destination was supposed to be overseas.
"They are digital and can be used to detonate car bombs," he says.
This story links the suspects to Hezbollah, while another account says the two are college students and claim they were on a business trip.
On my usual route home from work, I pass a Cingular billboard on I-271 south (just before exit 23) proclaiming Cingular has the "fewest dropped calls" of any cell carrier in the nation. This claim might or might not be true. Either way, I find the billboard's placement quite amusing, as Cingular's cell coverage is spotty on that stretch of 271, and my phone drops calls there all of the time. I would have thought Cingular would be more careful not to advertise where its ad claims would be so inconsistent with consumer experience.
The Associated Press reports that the Washington State Commission on Judicial Conduct admonished Pierce County Superior Court Judge Beverly Grant for ordering those present in her courtroom to cheer "Go Seahawks" in anticipation of the Seattle Seahawks appearance in the Super Bowl. The action apparently offended a crime victim's relative who was in court.
Grant, who was appointed to the bench in 2003, apologized the following Monday. She eventually filed the formal conduct complaint against herself.
"Although my intentions were to defuse the courtroom situation, I realize now the inappropriateness of my opening comments," Grant told the commission.
The Foiled Plots:
Like a lot of people, I've been spending a lot of time this morning trying to piece together what we know about the foiled plots to hijack and blow up planes bound for the U.S. from the UK. This report seems to be the most detailed so far:
More than 20 suspected terrorists were arrested in England by early Thursday morning, in an operation that involved British intelligence, Scotland Yard and assistance by a number of other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including those in Pakistan.
ABC News has learned that two "significant arrests" in Pakistan in recent days may have significantly accelerated the pace of the investigation.
Many of the alleged terror plotters appeared to be of Pakistani descent. It appears that they were probably "homegrown" terrorists with strong links to al Qaeda and Pakistani operatives. This new generation of terrorists have figured significantly in plots in the U.S., London and Canada in recent months.
In this case, the plotters apparently intended to assemble small but powerful bombs in flight and use them to take down flights from England to the United States. * * *
According to a Department of Homeland Security briefing to the aviation sector, the terrorists appear to have planned to use multiple persons aboard each flight to assemble peroxide-based liquid or gel high explosives. The bomb-making materials could easily be concealed in small containers -- water bottles, tooth paste tubes, juice boxes and any of the other numerous person items passengers traditionally take into the passenger compartment of commercial flights.
At least nine transcontinental flights from American, United and Continental airlines were targeted in the plot. ABC News has learned that terrorists planned to attack the planes three at a time, waiting an hour between each attack.
According to federal authorities, two or three bombers would each carry a separate portion of the bomb onto the plane to avoid detection. Once onboard the bomb would be assembled and then detonated by using heat or friction.
British authorities had been tracking some of the suspects for several weeks but stepped in to round up the plotters when they began to book flight reservations.
It's always hard to know what to make of stories of foiled plots, but this one sure sounds like a biggie. It sounds like the group was being tracked for a while, too, and (I would assume) pretty comprehensively; if investigators knew that the plotters "began to book flight reservations," and had a sense of the particular flights at risk, it seems safe to assume that at least a portion of the overall group was identified and UK investigators were tapping their phone/Internet connections. But of course it's hard to tell from the outside, especially just from early reports like this, and it's unclear when (if ever) we'll know the real details.
Having suffered grievous losses in recent battles, IDF soldiers wonder why they are being sacrificed in ground combat, when bombings could have cleared the villages of Party of God hideouts, which also happen to be civilian homes: "What really bothered us is that in all of the villages we passed through the houses are standing and are untouched. The IDF's morality during war is exacting a very high price. We can flatten the territory, without ground forces, but from the air."
Thinking about my prior post on this issue, and again putting practical, as opposed to purely moral, concerns aside, it strikes me that military commanders should think of themselves as agents for their soldiers. Instead of looking at things from a collectivist perspective (how many soldiers should be sacrificed for how many civilians?),the question, perhaps, is, "what risk of losing your own life would an average soldier take in return for what reduced risk of killing civilians." The answer would depend, in part, on how complicit the civilian population is aiding and supporting the government--perhaps a different answer in occupied Belgium than in Dusseldorf in WWII. No easy answers, but I think at minimum it's safe to say that most soldiers in a civilized country would be willing to take something more than a non-zero risk to avoid a very high chance killing purely innocent civilians, but would not be willing to take a very high risk (or perhaps any risk at all) to avoid a small chance of avoiding harm to those who, e.g., purposely serve as human shields.
Again, this question is arising specifically in the context of the Lebanon situation, but it has implications for any modern war for any civilized nation, so please avoid using your comments to vent on other issues concerning Israel/Party of God/Lebanon.
Mike Wallace Buddies Up to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:
Wallace has interviewed Ahmadinejad for Sixty Minutes. According to the Hollywood Reporter, "The 88-year-old Wallace, who has interviewed almost every notable person in his nearly 40 years on '60 Minutes,' said Wednesday that he wasn't going to let a little matter such as retirement stop him from doing a story about one of the biggest gets these days."
So what does he think of the man whose agents are killing scores of Americans in Iraq, not to mention thousands of Iraqis, and who also is the world's leading Holocaust denier and most dangerous anti-Semite [relevant aside: Wallace is Jewish], currently engaged in a devastating proxy war with Israel and threatening to wipe out the country entirely? "He's actually, in a strange way, he's a rather attractive man, very smart, savvy, self-assured, good looking in a strange way.... He couldn't have been more accomodating. He had a good time doing the interview." These comments are not balanced out by any negative impressions from Wallace, except to note that his interview subject is "very, very short" but, he added immediately, "he's comfortable in his own skin." If Wallace doesn't feel revulsion at meeting the likes of Ahmadinejad, it really makes me wonder. [This can be dangerous stuff. I was going to post something along the lines that I'm sure Stalin was quite charming, too, but then I remembered that Stalin actually charmed the pants [actually the Poland] right off of FDR.]
UPDATE: I guess I shouldn't have wondered. Wallace apparently has no moral sense beyond a belief that he should "get the story." Outside the Beltway recounts this hypothetical posed to Wallace:
With Jennings in their midst, the northern soldiers set up a perfect ambush, which will let them gun down the Americans and Southerners, every one. What does Jennings do? Ogletree asks. Would he tell his cameramen to "Roll tape!" as the North Kosanese opened fire? What would go through his mind as he watched the North Kosanese prepare to ambush the Americans? Jennings sat silent for about fifteen seconds after Ogletree asked this question. "Well, I guess I wouldn’t," he finally said. "I am going to tell you now what I am feeling, rather than the hypothesis I drew for myself. If I were with a North Kosanese unit that came upon Americans, I think that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans." Even if it means losing the story? Ogletree asked.
Even though it would almost certainly mean losing my life, Jennings replied. "But I do not think that I could bring myself to participate in that act. That’s purely personal, and other reporters might have a different reaction." Immediately Mike Wallace spoke up. "I think some other reporters would have a different reaction," he said, obviously referring to himself. "They would regard it simply as a story they were there to cover." "I am astonished, really," at Jennings’s answer, Wallace said a moment later. He turned toward Jennings and began to lecture him: "You’re a reporter. Granted you’re an American"-at least for purposes of the fictional example; Jennings has actually retained Canadian citizenship. "I’m a little bit at a loss to understand why, because you’re an American, you would not have covered that story." Ogletree pushed Wallace. Didn’t Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot? "No," Wallace said flatly and immediately. "You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!" Jennings backtracked fast. Wallace was right, he said. "I chickened out." Jennings said that he had gotten so wrapped up in the hypothetical questions that he had lost sight of his journalistic duty to remain detached.
UPDATE: A commenter notes that Chris Wallace says his dad has "lost it." In December, Wallace said that if he had the chance to interview President Bush, he'd ask: "What in the world prepared you to be the commander in chief of the largest superpower in the world? In your background, Mr. President, you apparently were incurious. You didn't want to travel. You knew very little about the military. . . . The governor of Texas doesn't have the kind of power that some governors have. . . . Why do you think they nominated you? . . . Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that the country is so [expletive] up?" Somehow, I doubt Wallace will be as hostile to the President of Iran!
Kathleen Carroll, senior Vice President of AP: "I also know from 30 years of experience in this business that you can't get competitive journalists [note that she doesn't limit herself to AP photographers] to participate in the kind of (staging) experience that is being described."
While on the Hezbollah side, it's really interesting — I was in Beirut, and they took me on this sort of guided tour of the Hezbollah- controlled territories in southern Lebanon that were heavily bombed. They are much cruder, obviously. They don't have the experience in this kind of thing. But they clearly want the story of civilian casualties out. That is their — what they're heavily pushing, to the point where on this tour I was on, they were just making stuff up. They had six ambulances lined up in a row and said, OK, you know, they brought reporters there, they said you can talk to the ambulance drives. And then one by one, they told the ambulances to turn on their sirens and to zoom off, and people taking that picture would be reporting, I guess, the idea that these ambulances were zooming off to treat civilian casualties, when in fact, these ambulances were literally going back and forth down the street just for people to take pictures of them.
Looks to me like "competitive journalists" were participating in staging. [UPDATE: And if you look around the blogosphere, many bloggers are examining varioius Lebanon photos that show signs of staging.] I wonder if any news outlet actually ran these shots?
Now that the fraudulent photos at Reuters have been exposed, I hope Carroll and others take their heads of the sand, and not just regarding the Lebanon situation. From what I've read, a major problem seems to be reliance on local stringers who may sympathize with one side of a conflict, and who may face personal or familial consequences if they report something the local authorities don't like. Local stringers also seem to have little supervision, while at the same time needing to get good "shots" and stories if they want to get paid, which creates incentives for cheating.
UPDATE: Strong evidence that "Green Helmet" staged photos for the media at Qana here. Via EU Referendum, Stern magazine credulously indentifies "Green Helmet" as an innocent rescue worker name Salam Daher. But he called himself "Abdel Qader" on Arabic t.v., and the footage linked above hardly suggests a typical rescue worker. The mystery deepens.
From Yates v. City of New York, 2006 WL 2239430 (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 4):
The word chutzpah, despite not debuting in a reported judicial opinion until 1972, [citing Kozinski & Volokh] is now vastly overused in the legal literature. Yet in a case such as this -- in which an individual, after being mauled by the 450-pound Siberian tiger he had been raising inside his fifth-floor apartment along with an alligator, sues the city and the police who entered the apartment in an effort to rescue the animals for doing so without a search warrant -- it is a most appropriate term to use....
In the early afternoon of October 1, 2003, Antoine Yates was mauled by his pet 10-foot-long, 450-pound adult male Siberian tiger named Ming that Yates had been raising inside his fifth floor Harlem apartment.... An anonymous caller twice dialed 911 and said that a man had been "bitten by dog" at Yates's address .... Police officers responded to the apartment building, which was owned and operated by the New York City Housing Authority, and found Yates "lying face-up on the floor" near the fifth story elevators "screaming and crying in pain." His wounds included a gash below his right knee that exposed the bone and a half-inch cut to his right forearm. Yates told the officers he had been bitten by "a large brown and white pit bull." EMS personnel arrived on the scene and took Yates to Harlem Hospital; all the while, Yates continued to insist that a "pit bull" or "dog" had bitten him.
Two days later, on October 3, the New York City Police Department ... received an anonymous tip that a tiger was living inside 2430 Seventh Avenue, Apartment 5E, and that the tiger had mauled a man who was recuperating at Harlem Hospital. Officers responded to the location but did not enter the apartment because no one answered the door. Later that evening, the police returned to the building and interviewed one of Yates's neighbors, who said that there was "a large wild animal," apparently a "full-grown tiger," living in Yates's apartment. The neighbor said that Yates had shown the animal to her daughter and that "large amounts of urine" sometimes cascaded from Yates's window down into the window of her apartment. The police also went to Harlem Hospital to speak with Yates, who insisted that he had been bitten by a pit bull in the stairwell of his residence and that he did not own a tiger.
At midnight, NYPD Captain Michael Polito interviewed Yates's brother Aaron, who said that Yates had both a fully-grown tiger and a large alligator living inside his apartment. Aaron also said that on the night before, he had opened the door to his brother's apartment, thrown in several pieces of raw chicken and watched as the tiger came toward the food....
Oddly enough, despite Yates' chutzpah, the court acknowledges that the legal question -- whether the warrantless search was justified by the "exigent circumstances" exception to the warrant requirement -- is quite difficult, though it ultimately concludes that the police officers are shielded by qualified ammunity
"because it was objectively reasonable for them to believe they were complying with the law." (I myself am puzzled why they didn't get a warrant, given that they ultimately didn't enter the apartment until more than twelve hours after they were pretty sure that there was a tiger inside.) But that is a story for another day.
I was wondering just how Lieberman can run as an Independent and win, rather than throwing the election to the Republican. In 2000, he did 64% of the vote, so he might expect that if the Republicans can't beat the 35% figure in 2000, he could win 40-24 over Lamont. But Connecticut is far from a 65% Democratic state — the Republican governor seems likely to be reelected — and my guess was that the Republicans would be energized by the chance of winning over the divided Democrats-plus-Independents.
Yet a bit of digging suggests that the Republican candidate seems very weak. Rasmussen Reports says:
[Republican candidate] Alan Schlesinger, viewed favorably by only 31%, loses badly no matter how the election is sliced. In yet another curve ball thrown into the race, Schlesinger has even been pressured by some to drop out because of questions about his past as a gambler. Conceivably, the GOP could then hand the nomination to Lieberman, and a rumor has been circulating to that effect. Let's just say this is one race that won't be over 'til it's over.
Doesn't say much about the Connecticut Republican party, sorry to say.
Marshall University has ... removed racial restrictions from an orientation course for first-year students. Last year’s listing for University Studies 101 (UNI 101) stated that certain sections were limited to “African American Students Only.” Thanks to FIRE’s intervention, several sections of UNI 101 this coming fall will focus on “African American Student Issues,” but will not exclude any student based upon race or ancestry....
Last October, FIRE won a similar victory at Arizona State University (ASU), where a professor had limited his English class to “Native Americans only.” ...
with attached data. Cool to look through, though I surely can't vouch for either the concept or the execution. It does seem odd to say "UK [at 41st] doing better than most of our similar neighbours and competitors (France 62nd, Italy 50th, Spain 46th, Japan 90th, Chine 82nd, India 125th)," though "other counties did do better (Germany 35th, USA 23rd, Ireland 11th)," when (1) the raw scores for the UK, Spain, and Germany were 236.67, 233.33, and 240, and (2) the underlying phenomenon is so subjective and hard to measure that it's hard to imagine a 2% variation being remotely significant.
While strolling through Smolensk Square, en route to the Arbat (for an indication of the importance of the Arbat, see here, here, here, here, etc., if you know Russian, as well as (on a different note) here), I ran across a book vendor with the following book: Harry Proglotter and the Magic Shawarmatrix. The blurb goes like this (my loose translation on the fly):
Woe, as it happens, crept up unnoticed. Harry Proglotter, a student in the magic school Hobotast, carelessly ate a Magic Shawarma, which contains the roots and offshoots of Universal Evil. And this Evil is growing inside the young wizard, threatening universal catastrophe. Harry must set out on a risky, distant expedition for the healing antidote. He is helped by his friends James Barahlow and Molly Kozazel, and also by master Yoda, who in those days wasn't yet a Jedi teacher.
If you like this, check out the official site of Tanya Grotter.
UPDATE: A commenter asks about Tanya Grotter in English -- the official site is in Russian only, but here's an English description of the character. Another commenter says the book wasn't published in the Netherlands but was available in Belgium -- maybe the commenter is talking about Harry Proglotter, but the Wikipedia site I link to in the previous sentence says that this was true of Tanya Grotter.
However, the "magic shawarma" plot (Perhaps we can have sequels with an enchanted falafel or a cursed baba ghanoush? But there's something cool about a "shawarmatrix" that couldn't be reproduced with other Middle Eastern foodstuffs.) reminds of W.S. Gilbert's infamous magic lozenge plot.
for the Father and the Son (I'll leave the Holy Ghost aside) -- I hadn't heard of it until Todd linked to it, but I've just read it and loved it. Much worth a read.
