A different kind of security problem

While the U.S. grapples with leaks, debates over use of intelligence and whether we should be eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants, actual secrets are waltzing out into the world through a more mundane method: theft.

Afghan cleaners, garbage collectors, and other workers from the Bagram base arrive each day offering purloined goods, including knives, watches, refrigerators, packets of Viagra, and flash memory drives taken from military laptops. The drives, smaller than a pack of chewing gum, are sold as used equipment.

Aside from the obvious question -- what are packets of Viagra doing lying around a U.S. military base? -- this petty pilferage represents a surprising security hole.

A reporter recently obtained several drives at the bazaar that contained documents marked ''Secret." The contents included documents that were potentially embarrassing to Pakistan, a US ally, presentations that named suspected militants targeted for ''kill or capture," and discussions of US efforts to ''remove" or ''marginalize" Afghan government officials whom the military considered ''problem makers."

The drives also included deployment rosters and other documents that identified nearly 700 US service members and their Social Security numbers.

How is this happening? Human failings.

Workers are supposed to be frisked as they leave the base, but they have various ways of deceiving guards, such as hiding computer drives behind photo IDs that they wear in holders around their necks, shop owners said. Others said that US soldiers sell military property and help move it off the base, saying they need the money to pay bills back home.

Yeep. It may be difficult to stop petty theft, but why are computer drives containing sensitive information left lying around to be stolen? Why are they not accounted for? Whatever happened to information security?

Detailed stuff like this is what poses real, operational threats to security, by providing actionable details for enemies to unravel. It seems a bit ludicrous to complain about things like revealing the existence of a CIA prison network or NSA spying program when stuff like this is going on.

leaks, Bagram, Afghanistan, politics, midtopia

Conyers accused of ethical violations

Rep. John Conyers, D.-Mich., has been accused of improperly using his Congressional staff to babysit his children and work on political campaigns, including his wife's.

Sydney Rooks, whom Conyers hired as a legal adviser in his Detroit office, recalls the lawmaker brought his two young sons into her office several times, saying, "Rooks, they're your responsibility for right now. I'll be back later."...

(snip)

Deanna Maher, who was deputy chief of staff in Conyers' Downriver office, says her baby-sitting duties turned into a stint as a full-time nanny. "He handed me the keys to his car and his house, [said] take care of my child Carl and everything," Maher told CNN from her western Michigan home.

Maher says she moved into Conyers' Detroit home. She took care of his elder son for several weeks, she says, while the congressman was in Washington and his wife attended law classes in Oklahoma.

Maher, Rooks and two other staffers have filed complaints with the House ethics committee.

If true this is disappointing, though not in a "hang him high" sense. Misusing staffers is a petty offense compared to corruption or bribery. Having staffers do campaign work would violate campaign finance laws, but the seriousness of that would depend on the extent of the work.

Of course, the likelihood of this ever being resolved is very small, because the House ethics committee is pretty much nonfunctional.

It was also disappointing -- if predictable -- to see Democrats borrow a GOP tactic and use the "disgruntled former worker" defense:

Sam Riddle, a spokesman for Monica Conyers, said the councilwoman "denies that any of the congressman's staff helped with her campaign." Riddle called the former staff members "disgruntled employees who couldn't cut it in the work force."

At least he categorically denied the charge. But the "disgruntled" defense should be done away with. The motivation of those making charges is irrelevant; what matters is whether their charges have any merit. Claiming a critic is merely "disgruntled" is a way to imply the charges are baseless without having to directly address them. That may be smart in a legal sense, but it's the weasel way out.

ethics, Conyers, politics, midtopia

Closing the circle

In a recent post about voter ID requirements, I agreed with Katherine Kersten that a voter ID requirement was reasonable -- providing, I added, there was a fallback provision so that people without IDs could still vote, using provisional ballots, for example.

What I failed to do is explain exactly what the current voter ID bill, sponsored by Rep. Tom Emmers and supported by Kersten, says.

Here's the text of the bill.

It requires a photo ID, period. No fallback options. No ID, no vote.

That constitutes an unreasonable barrier to voting, especially given that there's no evidence that voter fraud is a widespread problem now. If someone shows up to vote, they should be allowed to vote. If they don't have ID, their vote will only count once their right to vote has been confirmed. But they should not be turned away for lack of ID.

Given that shortcoming of Emmers' bill, it should either be amended or rejected.

vote fraud, voter ID, Minnesota, Kersten, Emmers, politics, midtopia

Definitely Diverse

If you've got a spare moment, check out Diverse and Contradictory. I know the owner, and while he started out a bit slowly the site is rolling along nicely now.

His stated purpose is building a movement of individualists, which strikes me as guaranteed lifetime employment if he can ever get it to pay. But his Credo is worth reading, and he's got some interesting takes on subjects like lobbying and immigration reform and privacy.

politics, midtopia

Sen. Bachmann exposed

A couple of blogger scoops about the flagbearer for discrimination in Minnesota.

Over at Always Right, Usually Correct, a conservative calls Bachmann a "coward" for refusing to face the truth face to face.

And Great Plains View notes a letter to the Pioneer Press debunking Bachmann's claim that she consulted her family before launching her anti-gay-marriage crusade.

With Phil Krinkie challenging her for the GOP nomination in the 6th Congressional District, I have high hopes that Bachmann won't be going to Washington. Now if only she can get voted out of the state Senate, too....

Minnesota, Krinkie, Bachmann, politics, midtopia

Military recruiters chased off campus

Some people just don't get it.

Four military recruiters hastily fled a job fair Tuesday morning at UC Santa Cruz after a raucous crowd of student protesters blocked an entrance to the building where the Army and National Guard had set up information tables.

Members of Students Against War, who organized the counter-recruiting protest, loudly chanted "Don't come back. Don't come back" as the recruiters left the hilltop campus, escorted by several university police officers.

For a detailed discussion of why everyone, including antiwar activists, should want the military recruiting on campus, see here. It's in everyone's best interest.

As for this specific case, I oppose the war in Iraq. But these students have made the mistake of confusing the war with the warrior.

"We're saying it's not OK to recruit on high school campuses, it's not OK to recruit on university campuses,'' Marla Zubel, a UC Santa Cruz senior and member of Students Against War, said. "In order to stop the war, you have to make it more difficult to wage war."

Nonsense. The military is a tool. If you object to the way it is used, take it up with the tool user. Don't damage the tool so it can't be used at all. I'm sure the survivors of the Asian tsunami were glad we had a globe-spanning military, as were the survivors of Hurricane Katrina. As were the residents of Kosovo.

Moreover, the students are trampling on the First Amendment rights of the recruiters and students interested in a military career.

But at least one student, Cody James, said he was disappointed that he couldn't get in to speak with the military personnel.

"It's frustrating,'' said James, a senior majoring in politics. "I'm not a Republican. I'm not a conservative. I don't support the war. It's about finding a career."

The way to counter speech you don't like is with persuasive arguments, not by drowning it out. Don't like the war? Protest the war. But don't deny other citizens their rights, and don't turn everyone in a uniform into scapegoats.

Students Against War, protest, campus, military, recruiters, politics, midtopia

Do any generals actually support Rumsfeld?

Another recently retired general says Donald Rumsfeld has to go.

The retired commander of key forces in Iraq called yesterday for Donald H. Rumsfeld to step down, joining several other former top military commanders who have harshly criticized the secretary of defense's authoritarian style for making the military's job more difficult.

"I think we need a fresh start" at the top of the Pentagon, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the 1st Infantry Division in Iraq in 2004-05, said in an interview. "We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them. And that leadership needs to understand teamwork."

He joins retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, Army Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton and Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni all of whom have spoken out against Rumsfeld in recent weeks. You could add to that list William Odom and Wesley Clark, as well as criticisms from the likes of Gen. Charles Swannack and Col. Paul Hughes.

Plus a lot of still-active officers, apparently; Batiste said that many of his peers felt the same way.

Batiste isn't some underachiever:

He was offered a promotion to three-star rank to return to Iraq and be the No. 2 U.S. military officer there, but declined because he no longer wished to serve under Rumsfeld. Also, before going to Iraq, he worked at the highest level of the Pentagon, serving as the senior military assistant to Paul D. Wolfowitz, then the deputy secretary of defense.

Of course, Bush didn't listen to these guys when they were in the military. Why would he listen to them now?

UPDATE: Colin Powell has joined the chorus against Rumsfeld. This isn't particularly surprising -- it was well known that he didn't like Rumsfeld's approach -- but up until now he had kept relatively quiet on the subject. Does this constitute a tipping point?

UPDATE II: If you're looking for posts discussing generals that support Rumsfeld, try here and here.

Powell, Rumsfeld, Odom, Batiste, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Busy busy busy

The site's on pace for it's third consecutive 100-visitor day, thanks to links from the Daou Report, the Moderate Voice and the Reaction.. If the pace keeps up, the site will get its 2,000th visitor today.

The most popular post at the moment is ConBoy: The Ballad of Tom DeLay. Check it out if you haven't yet.

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by to check out Midtopia.

politics, midtopia

Misusing intelligence

In yet another revelation that serves to debunk administration claims that they were innocent victims of bad intelligence regarding Iraq, we now learn that they ignored inconvenient reports regarding Iraq's bioweapons capacity.

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

This wasn't a matter of the intelligence being in dispute:

The technical team was unequivocal in its conclusion that the trailers were not intended to manufacture biological weapons. ... "There was no connection to anything biological," said one expert who studied the trailers.

Yes, earlier, preliminary examinations by military intelligence did conclude that the trailers had biological applications. But those conclusions should have been trumped, or at least balanced, by this one. Instead, this report was ignored and the earlier reports played up and repeated with growing enthusiasm.

This was a postwar incident, so it doesn't speak directly about the intelligence situation during the runup to the war. But it's reasonable to conclude that postwar administration practices were similar to prewar practices -- in this case, trumpeting "evidence" that supported the administration case while ignoring evidence that contradicted it.

That may be human nature, but it's an inexcusable basis for going to war.

Bush, bioweapons, intelligence, WMD, trailers, Iraq, politics, midtopia

Competing to replace Cunningham

The special election to replace Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R.-Calif., will go to a runoff.

In the heavily Republican district, and out of a field of 18 candidates, Democrat Francine Busby took 44 percent of the vote. Her likely opponent appears to be Brian Bilbray, the GOP-endorsed candidate, who got 15 percent.

Turnout wasn't very high, and 18 candidates meant a seriously split vote. So Busby's margin doesn't say much about how the runoff will go.

But does anyone see the irony in the GOP endorsing Bilbray, a former congressman who is now a lobbyist, to replace a man who was forced to resign thanks to his too-close ties to campaign donors? Isn't Bilbray part of the problem?

I suppose electing a lobbyist could be seen as improving government efficiency by cutting out the middle man....

Bilbray, Busby, Cunningham, politics, midtopia

GOP looks to buy votes

Minnesota Republicans -- if they win the unnecessary legal dispute they created by calling the tobacco tax a fee -- want to use some of the revenue to provide a one-time payment to homeowners billed as "property-tax relief."

Great Plains View has a succinct opinion on the matter.

Me, I have a handful of thoughts:

1. A one-time payment is not "relief"; it's a bribe. Restoring cuts in state aid to cities is "relief."

2. Scheduling the payments to arrive three weeks before the general election is not coincidence. Nor should anyone be surprised that if the GOP doesn't win their unnecessary lawsuit, they can still claim that they "tried" to provide tax relief -- but those activist judges on the Supreme Court thwarted them.

3. Relief might not be necessary if the GOP-led state government hadn't decided to balance its budget by pushing costs down to counties and cities, forcing them to raise property taxes -- which, by the way, is one of the more regressive forms of taxation.

4. We've been down this road before, with Jesse Ventura. He rebated the state's rainy-day fund to taxpayers -- just before the economy turned south. When that rainy day came, we had no fund to help cushion the impact.

Prudent financial management says you put some money away in good times in order to help you get through the bad times without huge increases in taxes. Prudent financial management also says that if property taxes are a problem, you address the problem on an ongoing basis, not with a one-year stunt.

If the GOP is so concerned about my property tax bill, they can address their own starring role in its growth.

property taxes, tax relief, Minnesota, politics, midtopia

When government works

The state Senate yesterday approved a bill on identity theft. A similar bill is pending in the House.

What I like about this development is that it represents a fairly thoughtful approach amid a lot of hyperbole and noise about privacy. Given the intemperate proposals from the governor and attorney general, it would have been easy for the legislature to get stampeded into passing a bad bill. Instead, the Pawlenty/Hatch proposals appear dead.

The identity theft proposal is a particularly good one because, as the woman featured in the story says, it can be difficult, time-consuming and expensive to get false information out of your credit report, largely because the people with the power to remove it have almost no incentive for doing so quickly.

My wife and I were the victims of identity theft several years ago, and we still haven't gotten all the smirches off of our records. Trying to do so launched us on a merry-go-round of bureaucracy, with the credit bureaus saying the bank had to request that the information be removed, the bank saying it was the collection agency's responsibility, the collection agency saying they had asked the bank to remove it, the bank saying it had lost the records.... it went on and on.

Only laws with teeth can fix that problem for victims of such theft.

But general restrictions on access to government data are a different kettle of fish. For detailed discussions of why the governor's proposal is a bad one, go here and here.

identity theft, Minnesota, privacy, politics, midtopia

Democracy retreats in the Mideast

Even as women gain voting rights in Kuwait, democracy elsewhere in the Middle East appears to be backsliding.

Analysts and officials say the political rise of Islamists, the chaos in Iraq, the newfound Shiite power in Iraq with its implication for growing Iranian influence, and the sense among some rulers that they can wait out the end of the Bush administration have put the brakes on democratization.

"It feels like everything is going back to the bad old days, as if we never went through any changes at all," said Sulaiman al-Hattlan, editor in chief of Forbes Arabia and a prominent Saudi columnist and advocate. "Everyone is convinced now that there was no serious or genuine belief in change from the governments. It was just a reaction to pressure by the international media and the U.S."

Follow-through has never been this administration's strong suit, but we can't even muster rhetorical outrage when Egypt delayed municipal elections for two years after a violent attempt to keep opposition supporters from voting. Apparently our committment to democracy doesn't apply when the opposition is the Muslim Brotherhood.

Encouraging democracy in the Middle East is a generation-long project. There will be bumps in the road, but what is discouraging about these bumps is that they come not because of resistance to U.S. pressure but because of inconsistent application of that pressure. We talked the talk, but we've been reluctant to walk the walk.

Further, Bush should have realized that the long-term nature of such a policy requires bipartisan buy-in. That means working with Democrats to agree on a strategy and establish a strong and united front, so that we and the world could be reasonably sure that the pressure for reform won't end once Bush leaves power. Instead the rabid partisanship in our domestic politics have encouraged despots to simply wait for 2008.

Iraq, far from being a demonstration of our resolve and a wake-up call for the Middle East, is increasingly being seen as weak spot, with the assumption that once we withdraw we will not be eager to re-engage in the Middle East for a while. In short, the poorly reasoned and incompetently executed occupation has weakened the push for democracy, not strengthened it.

Regardless of what happens in Iraq, we need to keep up the push for democratization in the region. At a minimum it's simply the right thing to do: supporting some dictators while overthrowing others is simply untenable, both morally and politically. But unless we're willing to invade countries that we consider allies, it's also the only way to see democracy succeed on the regionwide scale necessary to tamp down the flames if Islamic extremism.

Arab, Middle East, Mideast, democracy, Bush, politics, midtopia

Kersten on voting fraud

In previous posts I have excorciated Katherine Kersten for either being wrong or intellectually lazy. So it's only fair to point out that I largely agree with her column in today's paper. It is much too easy to vote illegally in Minnesota.

Does that mean it's a huge problem here? Not necessarily. But since the problem can be addressed with reasonable precautions, we should take them.

Kersten does a good job of laying out the issue, and the solution -- some form of photo ID or provisional ballots -- seems obvious. But Kersten, perhaps because of space limitations, doesn't really get into what we should do. She mentions a bill by Rep. Tom Emmer that would require a photo ID to vote; but all she does is ask "Is Emmer's bill perfect? Maybe not." She does not get into why she thinks it might not be perfect or what she would do instead.

The key is to have some sort of safeguard against fraud without raising undue barriers to voting. The electoral system hasn't collapsed with the current lenient rules, so draconian new rules aren't called for. Some form of photo ID, with a fallback option for people without such an ID, should do the trick.

As an aside, I wasn't impressed with Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer's complaint that she had no idea what had happened to the cases she referred to county attorneys. Her main point -- that there's no system for tracking vote-fraud cases -- is well taken. But her example is weak. She has the suspects' names, and knows which county attorneys she gave them to. How hard is it to pick up the phone and ask what became of the cases? Or look them up in the court database?

Minor nit, though. Kersten found a solid issue and wrote fairly thoughtfully about it. Good for her.

Kiffmeyer, Minnesota, Emmers, voting, Kersten, politics, midtopia

Another general wants Rumsfeld gone

A retired three-star Marine general, Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, is the latest general to criticize Donald Rumsfeld and the war in Iraq after retiring.

His Time Magazine essay is here.

He calls the Iraq war "unnecessary" and writes:

Inside the military family, I made no secret of my view that the zealots' rationale for war made no sense. And I think I was outspoken enough to make those senior to me uncomfortable. But I now regret that I did not more openly challenge those who were determined to invade a country whose actions were peripheral to the real threat--al-Qaeda.

He echoes my own sentiment when he adds

The cost of flawed leadership continues to be paid in blood. The willingness of our forces to shoulder such a load should make it a sacred obligation for civilian and military leaders to get our defense policy right. They must be absolutely sure that the commitment is for a cause as honorable as the sacrifice.

Finally, both his essay and the NYT story make clear that he is not alone. From the story:

Though some active-duty officers will say in private that they disagree with Mr. Rumsfeld's handling of Iraq, none have spoken out publicly. They attribute their silence to respect for civilian control of the military, as set in the Constitution — but some also say they know it would be professional suicide to speak up.

"The officer corps is willing to sacrifice their lives for their country, but not their careers," said one combat veteran who says the Pentagon's civilian leadership made serious mistakes in Iraq, but has declined to voice his concerns for attribution.

There's a lot more at both links. The essay is a must-read as a cogent distillation of how one can be a warrior and yet oppose this war, and of how military and constitutional principles go beyond simply "obeying orders."

It's not just "left-wing radicals" who oppose the war in Iraq. The true radicals are the ones in the administration who railroaded the country into war.


Rumsfeld, Newbold, Iraq, politics, midtopia

What does "explain" mean?

Arlen Specter has called on Bush to explain his role in the leaking of information to reporters.

What a refreshing concept: when asked about something, give a direct answer.

But that's not really how the Bush administration has operated. Bill Clinton famously disputed the meaning of the word "is". But that was in court. In the world outside the courtroom, Bush has gone far beyond Clinton in refusing to answer questions, or providing carefully parsed but misleading answers, or changing the subject.

Some examples:

• Providing misleading cost estimates for the Medicare drug benefit;

• Using discredited intelligence in the run-up to Iraq;

• The campaign to paint Iraq as an urgent threat and somehow connected to 9/11;

• Saying Congress had access to the same intelligence, when in fact they didn't;

• Defending the Patriot Act extension by saying the searches all require warrants, while running a secret warrantless eavesdropping operation;

• The recent British memo showing Bush was determined to invade Iraq regardless of what inspectors found;

• Saying he would fire anyone found leaking secrets, when he knew full well who was doing the leaking because he had authorized it;

And so on.

An illustrative if otherwise unimportant example was Bush's silence, during the campaign, on his military service record.

Bush supporters argue, correctly, that Bush wasn't running on his military service and so did not need to talk about it. But given the security focus of the campaign and the questions swirling around John Kerry's service, it was reasonable for the media to ask about Bush's service so one could compare the two.

Me, I couldn't have cared less what he did while in the service. That was 30 years ago, in a different time, and he was a different person then. If he spent all of Vietnam high as a kite in an opium den, it wouldn't have mattered to me at all.

In response to questions, Bush released some of his military records. But those records raised more questions. And Bush's response to that? Silence. Complete silence.

This led to the odd spectacle of Bush supporters arguing about what the records did or didn't prove, as if they were dissecting the Kennedy assassination. Except that Bush was very much alive, and could have cleared up the controversy in minutes by simply stating what had happened back then.

But he didn't. And he got hammered for it. Which I found very interesting. It led to three possible conclusions:

1. He truly couldn't remember what he had done;
2. He remembers, and the truth would have done more political damage than stonewalling;
3. He has a reflexive "none of your business" attitude on some things.

The logical conclusion at the time was that he had something to hide. But now I wonder if it simply reflects a character flaw -- an "it's only illegal if you get caught" mindset that rejects the notion of public oversight of his activities. That would certainly explain a lot, including the irritated and occasionally whiny tone he often adopts when forced to explain himself.

So I think Specter's plea will fall on deaf ears. This administration is the most secretive in recent memory, and doesn't believe it needs to explain itself. So its supporters will continue to argue about what Bush did and didn't know, while the man himself sits silently on the sideline, refusing to speak.

Plame, leak, Specter, Bush, politics, midtopia

Army has trouble retaining officers

In another sign that the repeated tours generated by the Iraq war are taking a toll on the long-term health of the military, young Army officers are leaving at an unusually high rate.

Last year, more than a third of the West Point class of 2000 left active duty at the earliest possible moment, after completing their five-year obligation.

It was the second year in a row of worsening retention numbers, apparently marking the end of a burst of patriotic fervor during which junior officers chose continued military service at unusually high rates.

Mirroring the problem among West Pointers, graduates of reserve officer training programs at universities are also increasingly leaving the service at the end of the four-year stint in uniform that follows their commissioning.

Naturally, the Army isn't taking this lying down:

To entice more to stay, the Army is offering new incentives this year, including a promise of graduate school on Army time and at government expense to newly commissioned officers who agree to stay in uniform for three extra years. Other enticements include the choice of an Army job or a pick of a desirable location for a home post.

The incentives resulted in additional three-year commitments from about one-third of all new officers entering active duty in 2006, a number so large that it surprised even the senior officers in charge of the program.

Those are excellent incentives, ones that I wish had been around when I was a young second lieutenant, and they have succeeded to some extent: retention rates are still better than they were immediately prior to 9/11. But the loss rate is rising rapidly despite the new incentives. The incentives just get junior officers far enough along their career path to make captain. And captain is where it starts to fall apart.

But the service's difficulty in retaining current captains has generals worriedly discussing among themselves whether the Army will have the widest choice possible for its next generation of leaders.

Exactly. Vietnam wrecked the military for a decade, as Congress cut the budget and it transitioned to an all-volunteer force that had trouble attracting good candidates because Vietnam had left its image in tatters.

Iraq is different in a couple of important ways: the public is doing a much better job of distinguishing between the warrior and the war, and Congressional support for military spending remains high. But like with Vietnam, an unpopular war of open-ended duration will drive away many of the best and brightest, robbing the military of future leadership.

This is the price we pay for using our military unwisely. It is why we should only put our soldiers in harm's way for the most defensible reasons. Not only is that a moral imperative; it is a practical one, too.

Update: As a sort of counterpoint to the above, USA Today reports that the Army is having better success retaining enlisted soldiers, helping to make up for shortfalls in recruiting.

Iraq, officers, retention, Army, military, politics, midtopia

New probe arrives at Venus tomorrow

The Venus Express, a $260 million mission to find out why Venus is a broiler and earth is not, is scheduled to go into orbit early tomorrow morning. It is designed to answer some specific questions.

Chief among them is what happened to turn Venus into a child's vision of hell, with a superheated toxic soup of an atmosphere that is 90 times denser at the surface than Earth's -- about the same pressure as the ocean at a half-mile depth. ...

There is a lot to understand. Measurements taken by early probes of Venus have made scientists all but certain that the planet once had extensive oceans that heated up and finally boiled off.

Quite probably the resulting cloud of water vapor provided the initial atmospheric blanket that turned the planet into a hothouse. "But where did [the water] go?" asked University of Michigan planetary scientist Stephen Bougher. "Nobody knows."

If they can figure out what happened on Venus, it might do one of two things: rule out the same thing happening to Earth, or provide a glimpse of what our future might be like if things go bad.

Given that Venus once had oceans, it also would be interesting to design a probe to land on the surface and search for fossilized evidence of life. Assuming all the hyperactive volcanism didn't erase the evidence in the eons since the oceans disappeared.

And there are other mysteries:

Another puzzle that has mystified scientists for decades is Venus's winds, which are negligible on the surface but reach speeds of 220 mph in the upper atmosphere, much faster than the planet rotates. Venus, the slowest-spinning planet in the solar system, has a "day" that is the equivalent of about 224 Earth days.

I can't wait for the data to come back and get analyzed.

Venus Express, solar system, Venus, space, midtopia

The Ballad of Tom DeLay

So I was musing a bit about what it would be like if Ronnie Earle were to actually get a conviction or plea deal with Tom DeLay, leading to fines and a prison term for the soon-to-be ex-Congressman. And, well, it happened.

May the fates forgive me.

CONBOY
Sung to the tune of "Convoy" by C.W. McCall
"Convoy" lyrics - "Convoy" Mp3

Uh, Breaker One-Nine, this here's the Lame Duck
How'd they get a copy of that e-mail Pig-Pen? C'mon

Uh, yeah 10-4 Pig Pen, fer sure, fer sure
They say it reaches clear to Flag-Town, C'mon

Uh, yeah, that's a big 10-4 Pig-Pen,
Yeah, they definitely got the smoking gun good buddy,
Mercy sakes alive, looks like we got us a ConBoy

Was the dark of the moon, in a grifter's room
On the Hill, breaking laws,
The head Tom boy and Reefer Roy
An' a Congress full of hogs
But back at home the DA roamed,
'Bout a mile outta Sugar-Town
He said "Pig-Pen, you're plumb out of luck;
Cuz I'm about to take the Hammer down."

Cause we gotta mighty ConBoy, he can't stand the light
Yeah we gotta mighty ConBoy, ain't it an ugly sight?
Come on an' help our ConBoy, send him up the river to stay,
We're gonna run this thievin' ConBoy, out of the USA
ConBoy... ConBoy...

Uh, breaker Pig-Pen, this here's Lame Duck
Uh, you wanna back off them hogs
10-4, 'bout five months or so, 10-roger
The heat is gittin' in-tense up here

By the time the probe reached Flag-Town
He made it four charges in all
But they's a road block on the committee floor
An' them hogs was wall to wall
With denials as thick as bugs on a bumper
An' claims that it wasn't fair
They passed the buck, but they was out of luck,
The Hammer was a-outta there

Cause we gotta great big ConBoy, he can't stand the light
Yeah we gotta great big ConBoy, ain't it an ugly sight?
Come on an' help our ConBoy, send him up the river to stay,
We're gonna run this weasel ConBoy, out of the USA
ConBoy... ConBoy...

Uh, you wanna give me a 10-9 on that Pig-Pen?
Uh, negatory Pig-Pen, yer still too close
Yeah, them other hogs is startin' to get nervous
Mercy sakes, you better back off, take a break, you know?

He had rolled up way back in '94,
A Gingrich guy through and through,
But the power went right to his head,
As power so often do.
By the time '05 rolled around,
he was actin' like a king,
From K Street to the money men
And some gerrymandering
There was pork, and sleaze and bank accounts
An' frauds of every size
From bugs he switched to Democrats
as things to exterminize
Well he shot the line, an' he went for broke
With a thousand dirty tricks
A self-proclaimed devout friend of Jesus
WIth a soul like an oil slick

Hey Rovester, listen
We may need to turn that Hammer into a suicide jockey
Yeah, this stuff is dynamite
He needs all the help he can git

Well he vowed to fight but then turned to flight
He decided to resign
He could see the writing on the wall
An' it was gettin' near to trial time
"I say, Pig Pen, this here's Ronnie Earle,
An' this time you're gonna pay in full,
You'll be in Kegans State 'til you're ninety-eight
I sez, let true justice roll, 10-4

Cause we gotta little ol' ConBoy, he can't stand the light,
Yeah we gotta little ol' ConBoy, ain't it an ugly sight?
Come on an' help our ConBoy, send him up the river to stay
We're gonna roll this slimy ConBoy, out of the USA
ConBoy... ConBoy...

Uh, 10-4 Pig-Pen, what's yer 20?
Clemens?!
Well they oughta know what to do with a hog like you out there fer sure
Well mercy sakes alive good buddy
We gonna back on outta here
So keep the bugs off yer glass
An' the DAs off yer... tail
We gonna catch ya on the flip-flop
This here's the Lame Duck on the side
Wishin' you luck
Bye, Bye...

McCall, satire, Convoy, Earle, delay, Tom DeLay, politics, midtopia

Bush, leaks and history

The New York Times has a nice perspective piece on Bush's role in leaking classified information.

The important quote for me:

Scott McClellan, the president's spokesman, disputed the charge of a double standard on leaks. "There is a difference between declassifying information in the national interest and the unauthorized disclosure" of national security information, Mr. McClellan said Friday.

I agree. But the key phrases there are "national interest" and what jeopardizes national security.

The president has the power to classify or declassify anything he wants. That makes it legal, but doesn't address whether it's right. If the president improperly classifies illegal information, then the proper thing for someone to do is illegally leak that information. That, in my opinion, is what happened in the cases of the secret CIA prisons and the NSA surveillance. No operational details were released in either instance, so it's hard to see how national security was jeopardized; the mere knowledge that these programs exist may be embarassing, but do not constitute security breaches.

But many critics refused to focus on the merits of the revelations, focusing instead on the narrow legal issue: "revealing classified information is a crime, period." They are right, but they miss the point that law and ethics don't always coincide.

The president comes across as seriously hypocritical when he condemns leaks while leaking himself, and narrowly legalistic defenses don't change that. He also comes across as a liar thanks to his public statements after the Plame affair came to light.

Finally, one can properly ask why, if Bush was willing to declassify information in the normal course of things, he didn't just declassify and release it but instead leaked it to a reporter. The answer, clearly, is that he had a political motive for releasing the information. This isn't in itself unethical; it only becomes a problem if the leak damages national security -- which it didn't -- or if one is hypocritical about such leaks -- which Bush was -- or if one lies about it -- which Bush did.

leak, Libby, Bush, politics, midtopia