Prometheus 6

Is No One Accountable?

By BOB HERBERT

The Bush administration is desperately trying to keep the full story from emerging. But there is no longer any doubt that prisoners seized by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere have been killed, tortured, sexually humiliated and otherwise grotesquely abused.

These atrocities have been carried out in an atmosphere in which administration officials have routinely behaved as though they were above the law, and thus accountable to no one. People have been rounded up, stripped, shackled, beaten, incarcerated and in some cases killed, without being offered even the semblance of due process. No charges. No lawyers. No appeals.

Quote of note:

The American Pharmacists Association recently reaffirmed its policy that pharmacists can refuse to fill prescriptions as long as they make sure customers can get their medications some other way.

Really.

...Neil T. Noesen...in 2002 refused to fill a University of Wisconsin student's birth control pill prescription at a Kmart in Menomonie, Wis., or transfer the prescription elsewhere. An administrative judge last month recommended Noesen be required to take ethics classes, alert future employers to his beliefs and pay what could be as much as $20,000 to cover the costs of the legal proceedings. The state pharmacy board will decide whether to impose that penalty next month.

"He's a devout Roman Catholic and believes participating in any action that inhibits or prohibits human life is a sin," said Aden of the Christian Legal Society. "The rights of pharmacists like him should be respected."

He has the right to deny the policy...and the pharmacy board has the right to penalize his ass for it. He's in the wrong fucking business.

This is exactly like the "crisis pregnancy center" fraud

When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Roe in January 1973, Pearson founded the Pearson Foundation and wrote a manual titled "How to Start and Operate Your Own Pro-Life Outreach Crisis Pregnancy Center." Soon, CPCs were popping up all across the country. Today, there are an estimated 3,200 CPCs nationwide.

Pearson's manual instructs CPC staff to use vague and evasive language so as not to clue women and girls in to the fact that the centers are anti-abortion. He advises centers to list themselves in the phone book "under the headings of abortion, pregnancy, birth control information, clinics, social services, welfare organizations, women's organizations and services, and health services" in order to mislead women. The manual also suggests that CPCs locate themselves in the same buildings as abortion clinics so that "the abortion chamber is paying for advertising to bring that girl to you." (JMJ Life Center, a local CPC, moved directly next door to Planned Parenthood Greater Orlando earlier this month.) Pearson's philosophy deems that CPC staffers should use whatever means necessary to prevent a woman from getting an abortion. In a 1994 speech, he declared: "Obviously, we're fighting Satan ... A killer, who in this case is the girl who wants to kill her baby, has no right to information that will help her [do that]."

Choose Life Inc.
Historically, CPCs have been funded by private donations. But in 1997, Marion County Commissioner Randy Harris formed an anti-abortion organization called Choose Life Inc., and championed a proposal that would create a state-sponsored fund-raising vehicle for CPCs: the unprecedented "Choose Life" license plate.

The first attempt to pass the "Choose Life" tag was vetoed by Gov. Lawton Chiles in 1998. But in 1999, Gov. Jeb Bush -- a staunch abortion opponent -- signed into law a bill creating the plate, making it the first of its kind in the country. (Bush is such a fan of CPCs that he donated part of his $675,000 campaign-fund surplus to them after becoming governor.)

For each $22 tag sold, $20 is returned to the county of purchase, where the board of commissioners distributes the funds to CPCs. (To date, $1.48 million has been raised in Florida from sales of more than 37,000 "Choose Life" tags; it remains one of the top-selling specialty tags.) Effectively, the "Choose Life" plate amounts to the state acting as a fund-raising agent (via tag sales) for predominantly religious, anti-abortion organizations.

Anyway...

Pharmacists' Rights at Front Of New Debate
Because of Beliefs, Some Refuse To Fill Birth Control Prescriptions

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 28, 2005; Page A01

Some pharmacists across the country are refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control and morning-after pills, saying that dispensing the medications violates their personal moral or religious beliefs.

Quote of note:

Paul L. Francis, the acquisition and sourcing management director for the accountability office, told Congress that the Army was building Future Combat Systems without the data it needed to guide it. "If everything goes as planned, the program will attain the level of knowledge in 2008 that it should have had before it started in 2003," Mr. Francis said in written testimony. "But things are not going as planned."

He warned that Future Combat Systems, in its early stages of research and development, was showing signs typical of multibillion-dollar weapons programs that cost far more than expected and deliver fewer weapons than promised. Future Combat is a network of 53 crucial technologies, he said, and 52 are unproven.

An even better quote of note:

Future Combat soldiers, weapons and robots are to be linked by a $25 billion web, Joint Tactical Radio Systems, known as JTRS (pronounced "jitters"). The network would transmit the battlefield information intended to protect soldiers. It is not included in the Future Combat budget.

If JTRS does not work, Future Combat will fail, General Cartwright said. The Army halted production on the first set of JTRS radios in January, saying they were not progressing as planned.

An Army Program to Build a High-Tech Force Hits Cost Snags
By TIM WEINER

The Army's plan to transform itself into a futuristic high-technology force has become so expensive that some of the military's strongest supporters in Congress are questioning the program's costs and complexity.

Quote of note:

Some of the anti-indecency groups see à la carte services as a way of helping consumers block out programming they consider indecent. "We are at a rare moment when there seems to be bipartisan energy on both sides of the political aisle and both sides of the ideological divide," said L. Brent Bozell, president of the Parents Television Council, a leading advocacy organization that officials say has been responsible for the vast majority of complaints against the broadcasters.

You know what? I don't much care if the choke down on sex, violence and profanity incable programming. It would seriously cut into a major source of income for major Republican donors. And it's not like people don't know where to get their sex, violence and profanity any time they want.

And I personally won't miss any of it. Last porn I bought was the issue of Playboy in which Naomi Campbell was the centerfold...and when I threw it away (after years, admittedly) none of the pages were stuck together.

There are only two down sides to this and they are "bigger picture" issues: the Bushistas will get credit from some circles, and the last time Congress forced a decoupling of cable services all the vendors repriced the parts such that the same features cost much more when a consumer reassembled the package.

Under New Chief, F.C.C. Considers Widening Its Reach
By STEPHEN LABATON

Abiola isa libertarian and so he gets a lot of readers that wouldn't be interested in my perspective. But he's also one of like three libertarians I've seen that hasn't ever said a a stupid thing. So when his readers get upset at something he writes they should really think a bit before flipping on him.

The Distribution of Human Genetic Diversity

My statement in an earlier post that I would pick mostly Africans, if I were thinking about ensuring maximum genetic variation in a small group of settlers, has evidently gotten under the skin of no small number of ignorant racist nutjobs, several of whom have, in a wonderful display of projection, been busy flinging comments on here and elsewhere to the effect that I'm a "racist" for stating what any population geneticists will acknowledge as obvious.

For the edification of such fools (and on the highly doubtful assumption that they are even educable), I hereby present a few papers supporting just this claim:

Today when you see artists like 50 Cent, Nelly, Ludacris, and others painting lyrical pictures of Black men as thugs, drug dealers, and degrading imagery of Black women, they succeed because their 80% non-Black consumer base co-signs it. So far, Ludacris has sold 10 million albums. Fiddy s "Get Rich or Die Trying" moved 11 million. If all the Black music consumers boycotted these two artists, Luda would still have sold around 8 million while 50 s last disc would ve moved a little over 9 million, simply due to the fact that 80% of their audience is not Black.

Angela Winters at Politopics pointed out How Blackness Became  Universal, and it's a goodie. Nevermind that I've said all this stuff before.

Quote of note:

Students who believe their professor is singling them out for  public ridicule  ænbsp; for instance, when professors use the Socratic method to force students to explain their theories in class   would also be given the right to sue.

Some professors say,  Evolution is a fact. I don t want to hear about Intelligent Design (a creationist theory), and if you don t like it, there s the door,   Baxley said, citing one example when he thought a student should sue.

Capitol bill aims to control  leftist  profs
By JAMES VANLANDINGHAM
Alligator Staff Writer

TALLAHASSEE   Republicans on the House Choice and Innovation Committee voted along party lines Tuesday to pass a bill that aims to stamp out  leftist totalitarianism  by  dictator professors  in the classrooms of Florida s universities.

I haven't been that much fun here recently because I'm working some code to work with Amazon.com's affiliate program with Drupal that has me interested. And there's really some other functionality I should build for P6 in the next week or so. And I need to study up on Wordpress because I'll be helping out The American Street with a little tech support (not to mention its API looks interesting).

Still, I think I should like, write something once in a while. It just doesn't always have to be clever. I can point out obvious stuff once in a while, right? Well, it's become obvious to Republicans they have to appeal to at least some Black folks, and they're going to Black churches because that's where they expect to find the candidate Black folk.

On Meet the Press I've heard 'moral foundation" so many times from Reza Aslan, I think we need to recognize our foundation as a nation is economic, and our religious history has always been pluralistic.

I am SO happy to have this PVR.

This was a good roundtable. There was a discussion of the political fallout of the biomass circus. They pointed out it's enabled a political argument the Republicans have no respect for the rules, that when they don't like the rules, they just change them.

This is good. It's true, and it's been done visibly...people will relate to this in a way they don't to screwing with the internal procedures of the House.

I'm going to think about this for a minute. I'm currently in the process of being amazed by the Chris Matthews Show.

On This Week, Stephanopolis is playing DeLay's claim that Terri Schiavo was God's gift to Conservatives! I love it!

Later today I'm going to present DeLay's paranoid statement and transcribe Rep. Weldon's response. It was, as Rep. Franks said, a noble attempt to pull on DeLay's foot without getting dragged down his throat with it.

LATER: I changed my mind. DeLay's noise was played in a bunch of the morning talk shows so I was in no rush.

I think John Paul will be the first Pope to rule from beyond the grave.

About a week ago I saw this on a mailing list

For any of you who really gives a damn, talk with, and listen to, teenagers about what is going on in high school. Talk to teenagers about what is happening in middle school. If you really want to loose sleep, talk with kids in elementary school.

Things are off the chain and loving parents have a right to be concerned about the madness that is going on.

So-called "homophobia" doesn't have jack s*** to do with it.

"Divide and conquer" doesn't have a thing to do with it.

Your kid thinking he/she is gay because they feel close to a friend, and being blasted with the overt sexual imagery going on, has a lot to do with it.

Yes, sir, I am quoting you from Afroam. But you won't mind because I bring corroboration of sorts. I'm sure parents around the country are terrified.

U.S. Is Set to Sell Jets to Pakistan; India Is Critical

By THOM SHANKER and JOEL BRINKLEY

WASHINGTON, March 25 - The United States will sell F-16 jet fighters to Pakistan in a deal that State Department officials said Friday would improve regional security. But the decision was immediately denounced by India as adding a fresh element of instability to relations between the nuclear neighbors.

The size of the arms sale has not been decided, State Department officials said, although Pakistan previously said it was seeking about two dozen of the planes, which can be used in ground or air attack roles and have a maximum range of more than 2,000 miles.

Illegal Nuclear Deals Alleged
Investigators say Pakistan has secretly bought high-tech components for its weapons program from U.S. companies.
By Josh Meyer
Times Staff Writer
March 26, 2005

WASHINGTON —  A federal criminal investigation has uncovered evidence that the government of Pakistan made clandestine purchases of U.S. high-technology components for use in its nuclear weapons program in defiance of American law.

Federal authorities also say the highly specialized equipment at one point passed through the hands of Humayun Khan, an Islamabad businessman who they say has ties to Islamic militants.

Even though President Bush has been pushing for an international crackdown on such trafficking, efforts by two U.S. agencies to send investigators to Pakistan to gather more evidence have hit a bottleneck in Washington, said officials knowledgeable about the case.

The impasse is part of a larger tug-of-war between federal agencies that enforce U.S. nonproliferation laws and policymakers who consider Pakistan too important to embarrass. The transactions under review began in early 2003, well after President Pervez Musharraf threw his support to the Bush administration's war on terrorism and the invasion of neighboring Afghanistan to oust Pakistan's former Taliban allies.

I have to admit they handled the Schiavo attack well.

Good Judgment
Saturday, March 26, 2005; Page A14

NEITHER CONGRESS nor President Bush acquitted themselves well last weekend in enacting a law to intervene in the case of Terri Schiavo. But in the days that have followed, one institution of American government has distinguished itself in its handling of the matter: the federal courts.

As you see, a judiciary that does its job is a strong bulkward against extremists. It's the reason the judiciary has been under attack for so long.

Conservatives tell court domestic partner rights are illegal
- By JIM WASSERMAN, Associated Press Writer
Friday, March 25, 2005
(03-25) 19:41 PST SACRAMENTO, (AP) --

Lawyers for two groups opposed to same-sex marriage told a state appeals court Friday that a domestic partners law giving gay couples nearly the same rights as married spouses is illegal and should be overturned because lawmakers undermined the will of voters.

The law, which was signed by former Gov. Gray Davis and went into effect Jan. 1, represents the nation's most sweeping recognition of domestic partner rights after Vermont's recognition of civil unions for gay couples. It grants registered couples virtually every spousal right available under state law except the ability to file joint income taxes.

McDonald's is considering outsourcing its drive-thru ordering. There's only one reason to even consider routing your order from Ronald's nose to the kitchen via India...to automate the kitchen processes as well.

That's what they're called...not jobs, kitchen processes.

Automating or outsourcing the order taking was the hard part. The food preparation is an assembly line deal anyway. And I can think of several business cases for this. Rest stops along interstate highways would provide flawless service 24/7. Operating hours can be extended at manned shops as well.

But god. Outsourcing McDonalds. That's got to be symbolic of something.

Because if he isn't lying this:

Rebel Leader Forms New Kyrgyzstan Government
By David Holley
Times Staff Writer
9:58 AM PST, March 25, 2005

BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan —  Kyrgyzstan's new authorities moved swiftly today to assert power a day after taking over the institutions of government, but local media reported a statement by ousted President Askar A. Akayev denouncing his political foes and vowing to return to this Central Asian nation.

Kurmanbek Bakiyev, appointed acting president and prime minister today by the former opposition, said that swiftly restoring order in the country was the top priority.

"We have to form a government which is going to resolve all the problems," Bakiyev told reporters. "Above all we need to preserve stability. You can see what kind of unrest started yesterday, and we cannot allow this."

Bakiyev announced appointments of Cabinet ministers later today. Roza Otunbayeva, another key former opposition leader, was named acting foreign minister. Bakiyev and Otunbayeva indicated that new presidential elections could be expected in June.

...requires a response.