Touchdown on Titan: Bravo Cassini-Huygens!
Congratulations to the European Space Agency and its collaborators on the successful landing of the Huygens probe on the surface of Titan! From an ESA press release:

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperation between NASA, the European Space Agency and ASI, the Italian space agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, is managing the mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter.

“The teamwork in Europe and the USA, between scientists, industry and agencies has been extraordinary and has set the foundation for today’s enormous success,” concludes [ESA director general] Jean-Jacques Dordain.

Nice to know that can still happen.

In addition to those pictures of the shoreline and landing site, one of the nice bits of web candy so far from the mission is a reconstruction of sounds during the descent: the rushing sound of atmosphere is unmistakable and electrifying. (There's also an odd industrial-sounding drumbeat; some machinery, I suppose, or maybe some effect of vibrating parachute cords transmitted to the Huygens microphones.) posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:31:00 PM -- |  

 
Various and sundry

• The single serious item in this post comes via the New York Times: "Congress passed legislation [on January 6th] to allow taxpayers additional time to make cash donations to relief organizations addressing the disaster in Southeast Asia and claim a tax deduction for 2004." Given that the donations were going to be tax-deductible anyway a year from now... whatever. Do what you think is right, especially if you haven't already. I'm not sure whether this means you can only deduct January 2005 tsunami donations from the 2004 return...
  
  And with that...
  
• Via Boing-Boing.net: United States Geological Survey Digital Data Series DDS-21 public domain photos made available online by good cyber-samaritan Alan P. Storm. This one shows one effect of the 1906 earthquake at Stanford University.
  
• Via Radosh.net*: make your own annoying magnetic ribbon!
  
• Via Interfaith Nunnery: competing magnetic counter-ribbon maker!
  
• Via my significant other: Shakespearean insult generator! (Hmm. Yet I would say anon: methinks her the fairest maid'n e'er.)
  
• Paperwight proposes the Bush Campaignistration Crisis Drinking Game:
  "Liberals on campus should organize Crisis Drinking Game evenings, with recorded speeches by Bush and his surrogates. Every time someone on screen says the word "crisis", everyone drinks. It sounds funny, but I am deadly serious. I can't think of a better way to ensure that college students notice and remember the propaganda technique, rather than absorbing the message."
  Don't mourn - self-anesthetize! (UPDATE: if things are going too slowly, Paperwight has Yet Another Bush Campaignistration Drinking Game)
  
• The Poor Man develops the Punditry Bought Pool:
  "Bets placed that a given media figure will have been found to have been the illegal recipient of taxpayer-funded bribes... The bribe must be for the expressed purpose of pimping an Administration policy, cheering Administration officials, or attacking Administration critics."
  Current shortest odds: Sean Hannity, Robert Novak (3-2). Current cheapest over-under: Glenn Reynolds ($50,000) ...other than Ben Shapiro (XBox). Meanwhile, congratulations to the Editors and Editoresses on their engagement!
  

=====
* WARNING: the Radosh.net link is not indisputably work- or family-safe. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:39:00 PM -- |  

 
Wal-Mart fights guppies
MSNBC relays an AP report that Wal-Mart is mounting a campaign to answer its critics:

[CEO Lee] Scott said he wants Wal-Mart to overcome its reputation as a company that does not pay well and has minimal full-time workers.

"We want to get those myths off the table, set the record straight," Scott said in a phone interview from New York City where he was making a round of media interviews Thursday. [...]

Scott said no one source of criticism prompted the new offensive. "I liken it to being nibbled to death by guppies," Scott said.

I can see why Scott is shelling out for 100 full page ads in major newspapers and a slick new web site, www.walmartfacts.com: it's cheaper than actually paying well and not engaging in illegal anti-union activity. And it doesn't look like the company plans to end those activities any time soon, p.r. campaign or not. Wal-Mart's company statement on unions:

At Wal-Mart, we respect the individual rights of our associates and encourage them to express their ideas, comments and concerns. Because we believe in maintaining an environment of open communications, we do not believe there is a need for third-party representation.

Wal-Mart doesn't just believe that, they break labor laws and regulations to keep it that way. After all: why not? It's not like anybody's going to stop them. As Simon Head wrote for the New York Review of Books:

Since 1995 the US government has issued sixty complaints against Wal-Mart at the National Labor Relations Board, citing the illegal firing of pro-union employees, as well as the unlawful surveillance and intimidation of employees. But under the present law persistent violators of government rules such as Wal-Mart are responsible only for restoring the lost pay of fired workers —in most cases, not more than a few thousand dollars—and these penalties do not increase with successive violations. So long as US law makes it possible for Wal-Mart to crush efforts to organize unions it will continue to treat its more than a million workers shabbily, while the company no doubt continues to be celebrated in the business press as a a model of efficient modern management.
(emphases added)

The "Wal-Mart Facts" web site FAQ statement about unions explains that at Wal-Mart is fighting for its "culture":

Many of our customers and associates' family members are union members. However, we simply do not believe that unionization is right for Wal-Mart. We do not believe that third party representation would improve our relationship with our associates or add anything to our culture. We believe our associates and customers benefit when our associates can deal directly with management through our Open Door Policy, which is widely publicized and used. Our associates have consistently recognized this and have rejected union representation time and time again, choosing not to have a union step into the middle of our partnership.

Because of our size, we often are the target of special interest groups with their own special agendas. We take all criticism seriously, and when it is valid, we use it as an opportunity to improve. However, there are numerous groups who do not want us to succeed for their own reasons, such as labor unions and other special interest groups. We keep their comments and actions in perspective and instead focus on doing the right things for our associates and our customers.

Right: labor unions want their workplaces to fail, that's their whole deal. This sniffy kind of "Church Lady" stuff may work for Lee Scott and the board of directors, but it's remarkably smug, ineffective public relations. No sale! But lots of good material.


=====
UPDATE, 1/15: The Progress Report devotes much of its January 14 posting to rebutting Wal-Mart's PR campaign; have a look. One item that caught my eye:"In Georgia, a new AFL-CIO study found 10,000 children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in Georgia's public health insurance program. As comparison, the next highest employer was Publix, with 734 children enrolled." The October, 2003 study can be downloaded here; the AFl-CIO estimates the coverage for those children cost Georgia and U.S. taxpayers about $6.6 million in 2002.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:30:00 PM -- |  

 
New OLC torture memo leaves loophole for CIA abroad
Marty Lederman, guest blogging at Balkinization, wrote an excellent series of posts* last week analyzing what's new and what's not about the recent Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memorandum** revisiting the Executive Branch understanding of the legal definition of torture. As is no doubt obvious to even casual readers, I'm no legal expert, so I appreciate a clear, readable discussion of important legal documents like this one all the more.

Lederman's main point is that the memorandum -- while superior to the previous OLC memorandum on the subject in its legal reasoning -- is nonetheless still carefully crafted to keep a major option open for the Bush administration:

In this Administration’s view, when the CIA is engaged in interrogating suspected Al Qaeda operatives outside U.S. jurisdiction, the agency is not bound by any standard of "humane treatment," and may lawfully engage in cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, as long as the Agency’s conduct does not technically constitute "torture." If I am right about this, then the function of the OLC Opinions has been to identify the legal limits, if any, that apply to interrogation techniques used by the CIA on suspected Al Qaeda operatives at locations outside U.S. jurisdiction—a context in which the Administration apparently has concluded that the CIA is bound only by the quite narrow proscription of the torture statute.
(emphases in original)

Lederman points out that the February 7, 2002 presidential "humane treatment" memorandum, for example, was not only reversible upon "military necessity," but only applied to military personnel in the first place: "As a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva" (emphasis added).

So CIA personnel weren't affected by that memorandum. Nor, Lederman points out, are they bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In fact, in part III of his analysis, Lederman considers provisions of the U.S. Constitution, statutes, and treaty obligations one by one, each of which might seem to make torture and abuse by the United States government illegal, and demonstrates why every one of them except for 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A -- the "federal torture statute" -- arguably don't apply to CIA personnel, and/or may not apply to U.S. personnel outside the United States (since international treaties and conventions may only apply to domestic torture and abuse).

Writing again this evening, Lederman notes that this analysis is supported by a new New York Times article. From "White House Fought New Curbs on Interrogations, Officials Say," by Douglas Jehl and David Johnston:

At the urging of the White House, Congressional leaders scrapped a legislative measure last month that would have imposed new restrictions on the use of extreme interrogation measures by American intelligence officers, Congressional officials say. [...]

In a letter to members of Congress, sent in October and made available by the White House on Wednesday in response to inquiries, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, expressed opposition to the measure on the grounds that it "provides legal protections to foreign prisoners to which they are not now entitled under applicable law and policy."

Lederman points out in his series that much of the abuse reported over the past year remains illegal, as it was conducted by armed forces personnel, and that the Defense Department has an "unorthodox" view of what is not cruel, inhuman or degrading." But the loophole exists as well. In his "coda" post about the OLC memorandum, Lederman writes,

We are yet to have an informed public debate about what forms of conduct OLC has sanctioned as lawful, about what forms of interrogation and coercion this nation does permit, and about what is, in fact, being done in our name. [...]

If we begin such a debate, here's one modest question to consider: Would it be too much to ask that Congress approve—and the President sign—a statute that would unambiguously prohibit all U.S. personnel, everywhere in the world, from engaging in cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment—including, at a minimum, conduct that would shock the conscience, and thus violate the Due Process Clause, if it occurred within the U.S.?

Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) tried to introduce just such language to recent defense and intelligence bills, only to see it removed in House/Senate conference negotiations. He has earned my thanks for the attempt, and he should be encouraged by all of us to try again. Our government should not be given the power to engage in practices like "waterboarding" (described as akin to drowning) or threatened live burials, or the power to engage in degrading treatment that "shocks the conscience." Such power corrupts our values while undermining our actions, will likely be wielded against more and more people, and will thus eventually deprive more and more of us of our own liberties.


=====
* Understanding the OLC Torture Memos: I, II, III, coda. Italicized text in the original is rendered as underlined text here.
** MEMORANDUM FOR JAMES B. COMEY DEPUTY ATTORNEY GENERAL Re: Legal Standards Applicable Under 18 U.S.C. §§ 2340-2340A (2004/12/30). posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:20:00 AM -- |  

 
Look what I found under a rock
In a post on his "Vox Popoli" blog frankly titled The merits of anti-semitism, one Vox Day ("the WorldNetDaily and Universal Press Syndicate commentator") gets upset about German Jews taking issue with a cardinal's recent comparison of the Holocaust to abortion. He concludes:

"I'd never understood how the medieval kings found it so easy to get the common people to hate the Jews in their midst. But if those medieval Jewish leaders were anything like the idiots running the ADL, the ACLU and the Council of Jews, one can see where the idea of persecuting them would have held some appeal."
(Via Laura Rozen)

Vox doesn't give himself enough credit: I think he understands perfectly well how those medieval kings operated. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:50:00 PM -- |  

 
Followups department
Stories touching on various posts on this blog, including...

Time shaving: a shameful pattern of corporate theft

Wal-Mart lawsuit certified in Cambridge, MA (2005/01/08): "The lawsuit alleges that Wal-Mart managers deleted hours from workers' payroll records, and did not provide meal and rest breaks. The suit is among a flurry of legal complaints brought against Wal-Mart in recent years."

German prosecutors seek greater U.S. cooperation in Motassadeq 9/11 case

9/11 Cases Proving Difficult in Germany (2004/12/13): "Prosecutors and the five-judge panel overseeing the trial said they still hope U.S. officials will provide fresh evidence or allow Mohammad and Binalshibh to be questioned directly. The German federal prosecutor, Kay Nehm, said Tuesday at a news conference in the city of Karlsruhe that U.S. officials had agreed to provide more information for the Motassadeq trial that he hoped would pave the way for a conviction.

Nehm did not give details about the information being sought. Spokesmen for the U.S. Justice and State departments did not respond to requests for comment.

The court has also sent invitations to members of the Sept. 11 commission to testify about the report they issued last summer, which described the formation and inner workings of the Hamburg cell in detail."

Kinsley's conjecture

Prairie dogs appear to have their own language (2004/12/06): "They have different 'words' for tall human in yellow shirt, short human in green shirt, coyote, deer, red-tailed hawk and many other creatures.

They can even coin new terms for things they've never seen before, independently coming up with the same calls or words, according to Con Slobodchikoff, a Northern Arizona University biology professor and prairie dog linguist."
(via Eric Muller, who asks the really important question)

Tsunamis

How Scientists and Victims Watched Helplessly (2004/12/31), describing scientists at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, unclear on the danger at first -- and then unable to do anything about it once the danger was apparent: "Their instinct was to somehow tell more, to warn the region that it would continue, to reach people who could clear beaches. But how? Mr. Hirshorn recalled a tsunami expert he knew in Australia, called and got an answering machine. He left a message. Someone phoned the International Tsunami Information Center, asking if they knew people in the stricken region. The center simply had no contacts in this distant world."

=====
EDIT, 1/12: Cambridge, MA, not Boston posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:30:00 PM -- |  

 
Inauguration triumphalism trumps homeland security
U.S. Tells D.C. to Pay Inaugural Expenses (Spencer Hsu, Washington Post):

"D.C. officials said yesterday that the Bush administration is refusing to reimburse the District for most of the costs associated with next week's inauguration, breaking with precedent and forcing the city to divert $11.9 million from homeland security projects. [...]

The region has earmarked federal homeland security funds for such priorities as increasing hospital capacity, equipping firefighters with protective gear and building transit system command centers."

Mayor Anthony Williams estimates the city's costs will be around $17.3 million, mainly to pay police from DC and additional police from elsewhere. Representative Tom Davis (R-VA), who chairs the House committee overseeing District affairs, is outraged as well; his spokesman called the situation "an unfunded mandate of the most odious kind." A fund covering DC costs as capital has about $5.4 million left; the $11.9 million balance will come out of earmarked homeland security funds. By way of contrast:

Inauguration officials said they plan to spend $40 million on the four-day celebration.

In other news, many of the celebrants may be making their own beds (Neil Irwin, Washington Post):

Officials of the local hotel union said yesterday that they may call a strike at 14 major D.C. hotels if they do not reach accord with management on a new contract by Jan. 15.

However, it's likely to mainly be the lower sort of hoi-polloi Bush supporters who run the risk of dirtying their hands. Few of the hotels offering rooms plus perks at gilded age prices ($10,000/day at Fairmont; $75,000,, $150,000, and $200,500 packages at Sofitel, Ritz-Carlton, and Mandarin Oriental) seem to be on the Hotel Workers United strike watch -- although the Jefferson Hotel, offering a staggering $1,000,000 package,* is on the list. Maybe some of those revelers will have enough left over to spare Mayor Williams and the city a tip on their way home.


=====
* For the better sort of readers perusing this blog:

The $1 million Jefferson Hotel package, in addition to most of the Mandarin Oriental's features [private jet, whatnot -- ed.], includes his and hers gold Presidential Rolex watches with diamond dials (hers comes on a diamond bracelet) with a private fitting in the hotel's Presidential Suite. The couple will pick out their ballroom garb from Saks, and the lady gets a matching diamond necklace, earrings and bracelet set from Tiffany's.

The guests get a private tour of the exhibit "Jacqueline Kennedy: The White House Years." This entails a second jaunt by private jet, because the exhibition is in Chicago.

There the guests will spend one night in a suite at the House of Blues, eat a dinner for two inspired by JFK's inaugural dinner and splurge at a private shopping spree at Marshall Field's.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:30:00 PM -- |  

 
Gonzales v. Potato
Fafblog! weighs the evidence:

POWERS AND ABILITIES
Alberto Gonzales: Doesn't offer own legal opinions to the president, can't remember previous legal opinions for the senate, can't explain current legal opinions to anybody.
Baked potato: Doesn't offer own legal opinions to the president, can't remember previous legal opinions for the senate, can't explain current legal opinions to anybody, and is covered with hot melted butter and sour cream!
Advantage: POTATO

posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:02:00 AM -- |  

 
Drip, drip, drip
In late December, I wrote about an ACLU document release detailing horrific instances of torture and abuse described by or reported to FBI agents in Iraq, Guantanamo and elsewhere. Last week the ACLU released additional e-mail documents obtained via the same Freedom of Information Act request.

From the January 5 ACLU summary of the newly released documents:

Documents released today by the American Civil Liberties Union show that an FBI investigation into the use of "aggressive" interrogation techniques at Guantanamo was sharply scaled back, and that records related to the FBI’s investigation are still being withheld. [...]

According to subsequent e-mails noting the status of the "special inquiry," 478 responded and 26 reported observations of detainee mistreatment by personnel of other agencies. The 26 summaries were reviewed by FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni, who determined 17 to pertain to "approved DOD techniques."

For unknown reasons, Caproni declined further investigation of the abuses that she considered to follow approved DOD interrogation techniques. Instead, she focused only on those abuses that were not approved by even the DOD’s permissive rules. As a result, only nine reported incidents were tagged for follow-up investigation.. The ACLU has received no information about the follow-up investigation, and a final FBI report about the matter is apparently being withheld.
(link added)

The questions keep piling up. It would be interesting to know whether Caproni based her decisions about "approved DOD techniques" on any of the legal opinions drafted by Bybee, Yoo and/or Gonzales, and of course it would be interesting to know what became of the nine worst cases.

Meanwhile, the ACLU says many documents haven't been released yet. In addition, many of the ones that were released are so heavily redacted as to be useless. But there's new information here, and I've added these documents to a public online file I'm maintaining. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:20:00 PM -- |  

 
Bill Frist, American hero
CBS News:

Just before his helicopter lifted off, Frist and aides took snapshots of each other near a pile of tsunami debris.

'Get some devastation in the back,' Frist told a photographer.

Via Andrew Sullivan. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:24:00 PM -- |  

 
Your nation's news industry
First the scandal of the Education Department paying Armstrong Williams to shill for the No Child Left Behind Act. Then the ONDCP is caught disseminating faux-news items "reported" by Mike Morris.

And then there's the incredible story, via a very informative, richly linked post by Stygius, about two journalists at the Fox station WTVT in Florida who tried to air a TV news piece critical of commercial use of Monsanto's milk production hormone rBGH. After pressure from Monsanto, their management pressured them to distort their story; they refused, were fired, and sued. From the Tampa Bay Business Journal story:

In 1998, the two filed a civil court lawsuit seeking employee protections under the state Whistleblower Act that resulted in a $425,000 jury award to Akre.

That verdict was overturned in 2003 when an appellate court accepted Fox's defense that since it is not technically against any law, rule or regulation for a broadcaster to distort the news, the journalists were never entitled to employee protections as whistleblowers in the first place.
(emphasis added)

Wow! Did you know that? I sure didn't. Your TV news can say whatever it wants on your public airwaves.

Maybe. Here's the good part: the reporters -- Jane Akre and Steve Wilson -- are now petitioning the FCC with "the claim that the licensee is not operating in the public interest and 'lacks the good character to do so.'" (Tampa Bay Business Journal). Let's savor the dream of that victory -- or the irony of defeat. As Stygius writes, "If the FCC renews WTVT's license, it will put itself in the position of implicitly supporting the idea that the deliberate distortion and falsification of the news is in the public interest." posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:05:00 AM -- |