Northman's Fury

This, while not surprising, is certainly noteworthy.

The Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House's policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.

The administration has proposed a regulation requiring "coordination" with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps - the military's 4,000-member uniformed legal force - can be promoted.

A Pentagon spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the reasoning behind the proposed regulations. But the requirement of coordination - which many former JAGs say would give the administration veto power over any JAG promotion or appointment - is consistent with past administration efforts to impose greater control over the military lawyers.

And it doesn’t take too much imagination to determine the reason for the administration to try and get this greater control.

The JAG rule would give new leverage over the JAGs to the Pentagon's general counsel, William "Jim" Haynes, who was appointed by President Bush. Haynes has been the Pentagon's point man in the disputes with the JAGs who disagreed with the administration's assertion that the president has the right to bypass the Geneva Conventions and other legal protections for wartime detainees.

. . .

One of Haynes' allies on the Bush administration legal team, former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, recently coauthored a law review article sharply critical of the JAGs' unwillingness to endorse the legality of the administration's treatment of wartime detainees.

Yoo, who wrote a series of controversial legal opinions about the president's power to bypass the Geneva Conventions and antitorture laws before leaving government in 2003, called for some kind of "corrective measures" that would "punish" JAGs who undermine the president's policy preferences.

. . .

The new proposal goes further than anything the administration has pushed before because it would affect all military lawyers, not just the top JAGs. Retired Rear Admiral Donald Guter, the Navy's top JAG from 2000 to 2002, said the rule would "politicize" the JAG corps all the way "down into the bowels" of its lowest ranks.

"That would be the end of the professional [JAG] corps as we know it," Guter said.

And as we all know, competent professionals have a liberal bias and must be destroyed at all costs.

Once we get rid of all those “quaint” notions regarding impartiality, oversight, adhering to signed treaties, and so forth, we can get back to basically treating any law we don’t agree with as suggestions without those damned “professionals” squawking.

Dana at the Galloping Beaver has a good post illustrating how our "Environment" Minister acted like a good little minion of the Bush White House to obstruct as much progress as possible at Bali, and CathiefromCanada sums up his "leadership" after the reluctant acceptance of the deal. I just thought it would be nice to add this little snippet of just how crappy our environmental record and policies really are. We're getting our ass kicked by Mexico, not to mention just about everyone else.

Europe is known as a champion of combating climate change. But a developing country famous for its capital's polluted air is also a surprising front-runner: Mexico.

Mexico ranked fourth on the Climate-Change Performance Index, which scores countries on their greenhouse-gas emissions and policy. The policy group Germanwatch released the report this week during the U.N. climate-change conference in Bali. Only Sweden, Germany and Iceland outscored Mexico, with its 110 million people. The United States ranked 55th out of 56 countries, ahead only of Saudi Arabia.

Canada ranks a pitiful 53rd, with Australia filling the gap between us and the US. India and China, who the obstructionists like to claim are the bigger problems facing the world, rank 5th and 40th respectively.

Canadians should be hanging their heads in shame.

The New York Times has a good article, (well, two), about the situation in the Ogaden region in eastern Ethiopia. I suppose it does bear repeating, as I posted on the same thing 2 1/2 weeks ago when McClatchy covered the story.

Some highlights from the NYTimes story:

The Ethiopian government, one of America’s top allies in Africa, is forcing untrained civilians — including doctors, teachers, office clerks and employees of development programs financed by the World Bank and United Nations — to fight rebels in the desolate Ogaden region, according to Western officials, refugees and Ethiopian administrators who recently defected to avoid being conscripted.

Ethiopia has been struggling with the rebels for years. But with tens of thousands of its troops now enmeshed in a bloody insurgency in Somalia and many thousands more massing on the border for a possible war with Eritrea, the government seems to be relying on civilians to do more of its fighting in the Ogaden, a bone-dry chunk of territory where Ethiopian troops have been accused by human rights groups of widespread abuses.

. . .

Dr. Sadik and other refugees described the militia program as another example of the extremes to which the Ethiopian government will go to control the Ogaden region, which lies on the border of Somalia and is home to mostly ethnic Somalis, who speak a different language and have a different culture than the highland Ethiopians who rule the country.

Several United Nations officials and Western diplomats said they were discussing the militia program in private meetings, but contended they could not comment publicly for fear of provoking the ire of the Ethiopian government, resulting in a possible suspension of humanitarian efforts in the region.

. . .

But Human Rights Watch says it has documented dozens of cases of severe abuse by Ethiopian troops in the Ogaden, including gang rapes, burned villages and what it calls “demonstration killings,” like hangings and beheadings, meant to terrorize the population.

“This is a mini-Darfur,” said Steve Crawshaw, the United Nations advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

. . .

Recent refugees said the military was trying to starve them out and the blockade had been like a noose on some parts of the region, cutting off food supplies.

In October, Save the Children U.K. surveyed more than 600 Ogadeni children and found that 21 percent were acutely malnourished, compared with United Nations surveys that found malnutrition rates of 19 percent in an area of Somalia and 13 percent in Darfur, Sudan. The United Nations considers 15 percent the emergency threshold.

And as for why all of this goes virtually unnoticed:

The Bush administration considers Ethiopia its No. 1 ally in combating terrorism in the Horn of Africa, and the American government provides it with roughly $500 million in annual aid. Last winter, American commanders gave Ethiopia prized intelligence to oust an Islamic movement that had controlled much of Somalia.

Nothing like ensuring that Americans will be hated in the Horn for generations.

John Cole has a nice round-up of something I noticed in late November; the Republican establishment getting all panicky at the thought of the social conservative Christians they've been pandering to for years might have found a candidate that actually believes in all the stuff they've been saying for years to get their votes. And John's finding it as amusing as I do.

I simply can not tell you how much I am enjoying this. The GOP has been pandering to these stupid bastards for years, and every time I pointed it out I was called “anti-Christian” or something or other. Those of us who saw what the party was becoming were told to shut up, that it was good politics.

Enjoy your new GOP, folks. And here is something else to think about- are the evangelicals going to support Romney or Giuliani if you do manage to trash Huckabee enough to secure the nomination for them? Will the eye for an eye crowd learn to forgive and forget? Have fun!

And I've also found my new favourite way to describe elections, courtesy of commenter Shinobi:

Does anyone else feel that this election is like being forced to chose a babysitter from a line up of convicted sex offenders?

A Russian rocket blasted off in Kazahkstan Friday morning, carrying with it a Canadian satellite built to keep a watchful eye over the Arctic.

One of those ironic moments where we have to use a Russian rocket to orbit a satellite whose purpose, in part, will be to keep an eye on the Russians.

The right-wing blogs are all a-twitter with the report of the fabulously successful recapture of Musa Qala from the Taliban. Fester at the Newshoggers has already pointed out that the mere fact that they had to launch a division sized combined arms assault to take the small city is a good indication that the Taliban is far more advanced than any insurgent force has any right to be if they were truly suffering major defeats.

But all I could think of when I saw these reports was, that would be this Musa Qala, wouldn't it?

BRITISH troops battling the Taliban are to withdraw from one of the most dangerous areas of Afghanistan after agreeing a secret deal with the local people.

Over the past two months British soldiers have come under sustained attack defending a remote mud-walled government outpost in the town of Musa Qala in southern Afghanistan. Eight have been killed there.

It has now been agreed the troops will quietly pull out of Musa Qala in return for the Taliban doing the same. The compound is one of four district government offices in the Helmand province that are being guarded by British troops.

I'm a little curious that last year's report put the population of the town the British were abandoning at 2,000 and that the population of the recaptured town is 45,000, but it's clearly the same place, and this "great victory" is only, at best, a return to where they were over a year ago. Whack-a-mole isn't an effective counterinsurgency strategy.

Add in the fact that the Taliban "fled", meaning they got away, posits a return to the sniping, mortars, roadside bombs, and other guerilla tactics that drove out the NATO forces the last time, since there is no way they can keep the whole force they used to capture the town on station without ceding other parts of Afghanistan to the insurgency.

Because it is also clear that Afghanistan remains on the back burner so far as the US is concerned.

The U.S. military's top officer acknowledged on Tuesday that for all the importance of preventing Afghanistan from again harboring al-Qaida terrorists, Washington's first priority is Iraq.

"In Afghanistan, we do what we can," said Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "In Iraq, we do what we must."

Tactical victories by conventional armies are expected in counterinsurgencies, but they rarely have any strategic impact. At the strategic level, just taking the town is irrelevant. It's winning over the population that's important. And so far, we haven't been doing a good job of that.

Gates acknowledged, during questioning by committee members, that opinion polls show resurgent support for the radical Taliban, who were overthrown in the U.S. invasion following the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Admittedly, it's gotten worse," Gates said, adding that this appeared to be due to inadequate provision of basic government services and corruption among local Afghan police. He said it does not reflect a lack of U.S. military commitment.

Maybe not a lack of commitment by the US military, but certainly a lack of resources allocated to them, and a strategy that as a result relies heavily on airstrikes and heavy artillery to keep their thinly spread forces from being overrun. That works tactically, but strategically its turning the population against us.

So I'll wait to hear about the next great "success" in conquering Musa Qala, again, in another year or two, with no acknowledgement of why we keep losing it, and why the strategic situation keeps slipping away from us.

It appears that the Bush Administrations' record in terror cases remains consistent.

One of seven men accused of conspiring to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower was acquitted Thursday, and a federal jury in Miami failed to reach a verdict on six others arrested in the alleged terror plot.

Clearly this shows the need for the system of military tribunals set up at Guantanamo Bay to be expanded to domestic terror cases so that men like these can be waterboarded into confessions and tried behind closed doors without access to the evidence against them.

I'm certain they'll be able to get some convictions then.

Police in southern India are hunting for two men who attacked a Hindu holy man, cut off his right leg and then made off with it.

The 80-year-old holy man, Yanadi Kondaiah, claimed to have healing powers in the leg.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, (no pun intended), and figure that the story of the golden egg-laying goose wasn't all that big in this part of India.

Libby at the Newshoggers sums up the latest, in what appears to be an endless series, Democratic capitulation to the White House.

But take heart! Help may be on the way to cure what I can only assume is a genetically hardwired cravenness in the Democratic leadership.

Japanese scientists say they've used genetic engineering to create mice that show no fear of felines, a development that may shed new light on mammal behavior and the nature of fear itself.

Scientists at Tokyo University say they were able to successfully switch off a mouse's instinct to cower at the smell or presence of cats - showing that fear is genetically hardwired and not learned through experience, as commonly believed.

Add this to some black market stem-cell research into spinal implantation, and the Democratic "leaders" may actually prove worthy of the title.

Nothing that those who are paying attention shouldn't already know, but Wired has a good rundown of just how big this summer's record melt truly was, and some of the implications going forward from that.

"The Arctic is often cited as the canary in the coal mine for climate warming," said Zwally, who as a teenager hauled coal. "Now as a sign of climate warming, the canary has died. It is time to start getting out of the coal mines."

. . .

What happens in the Arctic has implications for the rest of the world. Faster melting there means eventual sea level rise and more immediate changes in winter weather because of less sea ice.

In the United States, a weakened Arctic blast moving south to collide with moist air from the Gulf of Mexico can mean less rain and snow in some areas, including the drought-stricken Southeast, said Michael MacCracken, a former federal climate scientist who now heads the nonprofit Climate Institute. Some regions, like Colorado, would likely get extra rain or snow.

More than 18 scientists told the AP that they were surprised by the level of ice melt this year.

"I don't pay much attention to one year ... but this year the change is so big, particularly in the Arctic sea ice, that you've got to stop and say, 'What is going on here?' You can't look away from what's happening here," said Waleed Abdalati, NASA's chief of cyrospheric sciences. "This is going to be a watershed year."

2007 shattered records for Arctic melt in the following ways:

- 552 billion tons of ice melted this summer from the Greenland ice sheet, according to preliminary satellite data to be released by NASA Wednesday. That's 15 percent more than the annual average summer melt, beating 2005's record.

- A record amount of surface ice was lost over Greenland this year, 12 percent more than the previous worst year, 2005, according to data the University of Colorado released Monday. That's nearly quadruple the amount that melted just 15 years ago. It's an amount of water that could cover Washington, D.C., a half-mile deep, researchers calculated.

- The surface area of summer sea ice floating in the Arctic Ocean this summer was nearly 23 percent below the previous record. The dwindling sea ice already has affected wildlife, with 6,000 walruses coming ashore in northwest Alaska in October for the first time in recorded history. Another first: the Northwest Passage was open to navigation.

- Still to be released is NASA data showing the remaining Arctic sea ice to be unusually thin, another record. That makes it more likely to melt in future summers. Combining the shrinking area covered by sea ice with the new thinness of the remaining ice, scientists calculate that the overall volume of ice is half of 2004's total.

- Alaska's frozen permafrost is warming, not quite thawing yet. But temperature measurements 66 feet deep in the frozen soil rose nearly four-tenths of a degree from 2006 to 2007, according to measurements from the University of Alaska. While that may not sound like much, "it's very significant," said University of Alaska professor Vladimir Romanovsky.

- Surface temperatures in the Arctic Ocean this summer were the highest in 77 years of record-keeping, with some places 8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, according to research to be released Wednesday by University of Washington's Michael Steele.

. . .

Melting of sea ice and Greenland's ice sheets also alarms scientists because they become part of a troubling spiral.

White sea ice reflects about 80 percent of the sun's heat off Earth, NASA's Zwally said. When there is no sea ice, about 90 percent of the heat goes into the ocean which then warms everything else up. Warmer oceans then lead to more melting.

"That feedback is the key to why the models predict that the Arctic warming is going to be faster," Zwally said. "It's getting even worse than the models predicted."

2007 may indicate that we've reached the tipping point so far as Arctic ice melt is concerned, and an ice-free Arctic may happen much earlier than anyone previously thought.

Scientists in the US have presented one of the most dramatic forecasts yet for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice.

Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years.

And the real kicker is that they never even included the watershed year this year in their model,

"Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007," the researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC.

As noted later in the BBC article and touched on above, one of the reasons for the more rapid melting being forecast is that the ice is thinning more rapidly than it's shrinking, making the remaining slab more easily melted in future summers.

"The Arctic is screaming," said Mark Serreze, senior scientist at the government's snow and ice data center in Boulder, Colo.

Will anyone listen?

Some heroic young people were doing what they could to ensure that those who are trying to weaken the Christian faith by refusing to say “Merry Christmas” won’t soon forget that America is a CHRISTIAN nation.

On Friday, Four Jewish subway riders who wished other people Happy Hanukkah were pelted with anti-Semitic remarks before being beaten, New York police and prosecutors said.

The incident was being investigated as a possible hate crime.

The four were on a train in Manhattan on Friday night, during the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights, when they were approached by a group of 10 people who offered holiday greetings. The victims responded, Happy Hanukkah and were assaulted by the larger group, police said Tuesday.

Unfortunately, the non-believers have infiltrated the law enforcement community and our herioc Christmas warriors didn’t get too far.

Police caught up with the train in Brooklyn and arrested eight men and two women, aged 19 and 20. They were arraigned Saturday on charges of assault, menacing, riot, harassment and disorderly conduct, the Brooklyn district attorney's office said.

Not only were these brave Christmas warriors arrested for their defense of His glorious holiday, but they were set upon by another non-person-Christian who choose to assist these Jews in their blasphemy. And wouldn’t you know it, that person turns out to be a Muslim!

A Brooklyn man whose "Happy Hanukkah" greeting landed him in the hospital said he was saved from a gang of Jew-bashing goons aboard a packed Q train by a total stranger - a modest Muslim from Bangladesh.

Walter Adler was touched that Hassan Askari jumped to his aid while a group of thugs allegedly pummeled and taunted him and his three friends. So Adler has invited his new friend over to celebrate the Festival of Lights.

The two new pals - Adler, 23, with a broken nose and a fat lip, and Askari, 20, with two black eyes - broke bread together and laughed off the bruises the night after the fisticuffs.

"A random Muslim guy jumped in and helped a Jewish guy on Hanukkah - that's a miracle," said Adler, an honors student at Hunter College.

It’s clear that the folks like Michelle Malkin and those at littlegreenfootballs have been right all along; the Islamofascists have made common cause with the lib-lefters to destroy the Christian faith! Nothing else could explain a Muslim helping out a Jew, after all. This means the "War on Christmas" is now linked to the "War on Terror", and all patriots everywhere should consider calling Homeland Security when they find persons unwilling to speak the proper greeting.

Not to worry though, the true Christian members of Congress are doing their damnedest to ensure that our sacred holiday will not be further besmirched by those of hellbound heathen lesser other faiths.

Here’s the text of H.Res. 847, just so you know how important Christianity and Xmas are:

“Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith.

Whereas Christmas, a holiday of great significance to Americans and many other cultures and nationalities, is celebrated annually by Christians throughout the United States and the world;

Whereas there are approximately 225,000,000 Christians in the United States, making Christianity the religion of over three-fourths of the American population;

Whereas there are approximately 2,000,000,000 Christians throughout the world, making Christianity the largest religion in the world and the religion of about one-third of the world population;

Whereas Christians identify themselves as those who believe in the salvation from sin offered to them through the sacrifice of their savior, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and who, out of gratitude for the gift of salvation, commit themselves to living their lives in accordance with the teachings of the Holy Bible;

Whereas Christians and Christianity have contributed greatly to the development of western civilization; 

Whereas the United States, being founded as a constitutional republic in the traditions of western civilization, finds much in its history that points observers back to its roots in Christianity;

Whereas on December 25 of each calendar year, American Christians observe Christmas, the holiday celebrating the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ;

Whereas for Christians, Christmas is celebrated as a recognition of God's redemption, mercy, and Grace; and

Whereas many Christians and non-Christians throughout the United States and the rest of the world, celebrate Christmas as a time to serve others: Now, therefore be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives--

(1) recognizes the Christian faith as one of the great religions of the world;

(2) expresses continued support for Christians in the United States and worldwide;

(3) acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith;

(4) acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of the western civilization;

(5) rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians, both in the United States and worldwide; and

(6) expresses its deepest respect to American Christians and Christians throughout the world."

I'm sure that once Congress passes this critically important piece of legislation, they will be moved to immediately rescue the brave Christmas warriors from the forces of evil secularism.

(Posted by BJ trying to channel Jesus' General)

Bush: "I Doubt I'd Be Standing Here If I Hadn't Quit Drinking Whiskey"

Be honest. How many of you, when you first read that, thought, at least for an instant, "I should really buy that guy a drink"?

I wasn't going to write about the alleged rape of Jamie Leigh Jones because as with most criminal cases, I'm not privy to enough information to truly make an informed comment. On the other hand, I have no problem commenting on some of the reactions to the alleged rape, as some of them tend to be quite instructive.

The first is via mattbastard, who picks up this comment from Bread and Roses:

This has been an idea that has stayed in me [consistently] since hearing about this terrible act.

How many Iraqi children have been killed by the hoodlums of Blackwater, other ‘contractors’ and even some members of the regular armed forces? How many women raped, people maimed and humiliated in front of their loved ones?

Yet, when it happens to a pretty blonde white girl from Texas, with apparently connections to the Republican establishment - shit flows down from a great height, in the press, on TV and all over the internet.

The individual act is bad enough - but that it is only despicable when it happens to one of ‘us’ leaves me very uncomfortable.

[Bold in quoted version]

At least this commenter is uncomfortable at the double standard. Chris Jones at RedState doesn't show any such qualms:

I have been a strident defender of allowing contractors to be immune from prosecution in Iraq. I don't really lose any sleep over Blackwater having to shoot one or more people for whatever reason.

Immunity for "contractor on Iraqi" crime is one thing, but I never considered that immunity would extend to "contractor on contractor" crimes. Or more specifically "American on American" crimes. Shooting an Iraqi in a war zone is one thing, but American contractors gang-raping a 20-year old American woman is f*cking outrageous.

[Emp. mine]

As with so many other things, it's only important when it happens to "us". That Iraqis are being victimized, at probably far greater numbers and with more heinous crimes, simply doesn't matter. Immunity is fine and no punishment for such crimes is required. Just don't touch an American!

So says Chris Hitchens, who is terribly disappointed that the latest NIE appears to have put the brakes on his dreams for another glorious war against people he doesn't like, not to mention making his hero W look like an even greater idiot for continuing the WWIII rhetoric despite almost certainly knowing of the findings, though of course Chris gives Bush the benefit of the doubt and claims that the NIE's conclusions were sprung on Bush out of the blue.

How getting rid of the CIA would change the results of the other fifteen intelligence agencies who had input into the report, Hitchens fails to mention.

As Cernig notes, the wingnuts are loving the thrust of Hitchens latest diatribe. After all, it's much easier to start a war under false pretenses when there isn't anybody telling everybody that they are false pretenses.

But what I found truly interesting about the article, is that Hitchens is using the destruction of videotapes showing the probable torture of terror suspects by the CIA, which any good wingnut will tell you, is absolutely necessary to gain the kinds of critical intelligence required to win the "War on Terror", to claim that the intelligence the CIA obtained on Iran must be politicized, suspect, and can't be trusted. So we must rid ourselves of the CIA to win the "War on Terror", or so we can at least start bombing Iran, which is all the neocons really want, intelligence be damned.

Along with the US Federal Reserve cutting interest rates yet again, the mortgage giant Freddie Mac has announced that it now expects to lose between $10 and $12 billion in the sub-prime mess.

Last month, the firm set aside $1.2bn (£580m) to cover bad debts between July and September and reported a $2bn loss.

Freddie Mac then announced that it would sell $6bn of shares to cover more bad debt losses.

"Our fourth quarter results are not going to be effectively better than they were in the third quarter," Mr Syron told investors at a conference in New York.

Quite the sales pitch. "Listen, we're losing money and expect to lose a fair bit more, and we'd really appreciate it if you all wouldn't mind buying a bunch of our shares to cover the losses."

I'll get right on that.

Via the Beav, one of those, "You can't make this shit up moments", from the Bush White House, courtesy of White House press secretary Dana Perino

Appearing on National Public Radio's light-hearted quiz show "Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me," which aired over the weekend, Perino got into the spirit of things and told a story about herself that she had previously shared only in private: During a White House briefing, a reporter referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis -- and she didn't know what it was.

"I was panicked a bit because I really don't know about . . . the Cuban Missile Crisis," said Perino, who at 35 was born about a decade after the 1962 U.S.-Soviet nuclear showdown. "It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I'm pretty sure."

Now, I'm younger than Perino is, so I also managed to miss out on any personal memories of the crisis, but someone apparently decided that the nearest the world has ever gotten to a full-fledged nuclear war was worthy of a mention in school history classes, not to mention movies, books, and re-enactments on period-based TV series. How the hell do you miss this kind of stuff?

As Dave puts it, in the Bush White House, history is, "something that will judge George Bush sometime in the nebulous future."

Look out, future, because here we come: scientists say the speed of human evolution increased rapidly during the last 40,000 years -- and it's only going to get faster.

The findings, published today by a team of U.S. anthropologists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, overturn the theory that modern life's relative ease has slowed or even stopped human adaptation. Selective pressures are still at work; they just happen to be different than those faced by our distant ancestors.

"We're more different from people 5,000 years ago than they were from Neanderthals," said study co-author and University of Utah anthropologist Henry Harpending.

So apparently the easy life doesn't mean we're not evolving, just that we're evolving in different directions. Of course, as the article notes, evolution doesn't always mean progress, just change, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, and there's no guarantee that the changes taking place are actually good ones.

"Evolution is a double-edged sword," he said. "What evolution cares about is that I have more offspring. If you can do it by charming and manipulating, and I'm a hardworking farmer that's going to feed the kids ten years down the road, then you're going to win.

Great, so we're all likely to evolve into the Bush administration.

It seems, despite the attention this subject gets south of the border, that net neutrality gets very little attention here in Canada. That's unfortunate, because the big ISP's are continuing to chip away at it. (If you don't know what net neutrality is, read this piece by Michael Geist. Its a couple years old, but still accurate and a good summary.)

Rogers and Shaw have already admitted to "traffic shaping", or giving priority to certain kinds of traffic, mostly to make peer-to-peer file sharing more difficult. It's probably not a coincidence that these companies are targeting a sector of the internet where possible video sharing can cut into their business as cable and movie providers.

Now, it appears as though Rogers is chipping away at another piece of the neutrality of the net. It has begun to splice its own content into the websites its customers visit.

A screen shot posted to the web over the weekend seems to show that Canada's largest provider of high-speed internet access is exploring a controversial data substitution technique that lets it add its own content to the webpages customers visit.

. . .

The screen shot, forwarded from "a concerned  reader," shows a Rogers-Yahoo branded customer service message apparently on Google's home page.

. . .

"Just brought to my attention today by a concerned reader who chose Google for his example, what you're looking at is reportedly an ongoing test by Rogers in Canada, scheduled for deployment to Rogers Internet customers next quarter," Weinstein wrote in his blog.

"This is what Net Neutrality is about -- it's not just making sure that data is handled in a competitive and non-discriminatory manner, but it's also that the data that's sent is the data that you get -- that the content is unmodified, not with messages that are woven into your data stream [from third parties]" he says in an interview.

You can see the screen shot here.

While most of what I've read about net neutrality has focused on ensuring that everybody has equal access to information, this little "test" by Rogers may even be more dangerous. Adding ads and such is bad enough, but my worry is what might happen as this technology matures and the ISPs gain the power to more fully modify website content. Changing websites before your customers can access them is a powerful tool.

Expect this development to become Exhibit A in the case for net neutrality legislation.

One hopes that's the case.

Opposition Leader Stéphane Dion, who completed a three-day Arctic tour Sunday, said that stationing search-and-rescue planes in the North will help protect Canada's sovereignty in the region.

Currently, aircraft from more southerly bases such as Trenton and Winnipeg respond to search-and-rescue requests in the Arctic.

Dion, who was in Cambridge Bay on Saturday as part of his tour, said a Liberal government would locate two search-and-research planes in Iqaluit and two in Yellowknife.

. . .

He also pledged to re-establish an ambassador for the Arctic, which he says the Conservatives have shamefully cut.

I am very much in favour of the search-and-rescue idea, not least of which because I happen to have to travel across the north on a fairly frequent basis. Having such long lead times on search-and-rescue aircraft isn't really acceptable, particularly if you are expecting greater economic activity in the region.

The ambassador position is also important, especially given the importance of diplomacy in the hashing out of boundaries in the newly melting Arctic.

But a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay countered that Dion's Liberal party was in power for a decade and all but ignored the North, while pointing to several government military commitments in the region.

Of course, the Conservatives have promised to build a bunch of practically worthless patrol boats, and I haven't been terribly impressed with their other military promises, either.

Unfortunately, one of the things I have learned from living and working in the north for the better part of the last two decades, is that our politicians are long on promises and short on actions, regardless of party affiliation I like Dion's ideas, but I won't hold my breath waiting for them if he ever gets elected.

The latest National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran discontinued its nuclear weapons program four years ago has claimed one casualty: CNN has postponed speculative documentary "We Were Warned -- Iran Goes Nuclear."

The two-hour spec, which was slated for Dec. 12 under the "CNN Presents" banner, was "set partially in the future," featuring a what-if scenario as former government officials -- playing fictional cabinet members -- debate how to deal with the Iranian threat.

You almost have to feel bad for them. After all, war is such a ratings booster.

A so-so article in the New York Times today regarding how the world's major oil suppliers have been using the wealth from high oil prices to build their economies, which in turn, is driving up domestic consumption of oil and gas.

The economies of many big oil-exporting countries are growing so fast that their need for energy within their borders is crimping how much they can sell abroad, adding new strains to the global oil market.

Experts say the sharp growth, if it continues, means several of the world’s most important suppliers may need to start importing oil within a decade to power all the new cars, houses and businesses they are buying and creating with their oil wealth.

Indonesia has already made this flip. By some projections, the same thing could happen within five years to Mexico, the No. 2 source of foreign oil for the United States, and soon after that to Iran, the world’s fourth-largest exporter. In some cases, the governments of these countries subsidize gasoline heavily for their citizens, selling it for as little as 7 cents a gallon, a practice that industry experts say fosters wasteful habits.

I suppose we won't talk about how this justifes Iran's pursuit of nuclear power for civilian energy purposes, or mention the billions in tax breaks given to oil companies in Canada and the US, or the big write-off for people buying big SUV's in the States, but they are important points to keep in mind.

The article also fails to mention one other recent oil producer turned importer, China. Now one of the major drivers in world oil consumption, China was still exporting oil until 1993.

The big problem I have with the article is that there is no mention whatsoever of a possible decline in world oil production. Production declines are significant, since both Mexico's and Iran's "flip" from exporter to importer is driven as much by decreasing production of oil as increased consumption. The authors seem willing to acknowledge the oil peaks in individual countries but refuse to do the same globally. They state that Saudi Arabia will be increasing production by 40% by 2010. I would really like to know where that number comes from, because nothing I've read indicates that the Saudis have that much reserve capacity. There is mention of the Alberta tar sands, without any acknowledgement that prouction there can't be increased very quickly. While production there continues to grow, the conventional fields in Alberta, which still provide most of its oil, are starting to tap out. Canadian oil production as a whole is likely to start declining within the next decade.

The fact that more producers are becomng importers begs the question of just who it is that's going to be able to export to them.

I suppose I should give some props for the NYT for acknowledging at least part of the problem, but leaving out the global peak oil issue makes the problem seem less severe than it is, which means less urgency and efort put into alternatives, meaning a harder hit when the crunch time comes.

Firefighters helped operate on a man who was rushed to hospital after getting a metal ring stuck on the end of his penis.

. . .

Two firefighters used a mini hand grinder to cut through the ring during a 20-minute procedure.

Eeeyaah!

Not surprisingly, a lot of people are suddenly of the opinion that NIEs should be scrutinized and looked over now that one says something they don't want to hear. And it's so nice of the Washington Post and the New York Times to take a break from their liberal bias to allow these folks to explain this to the rest of us.

In the Washington Post, John "Yosemite" Bolton discovers that the politicization of intelligence is a problem now that it doesn't support his chosen policies.

But even he doesn't go so far as Valerie Lincy and Gary Milhollin at the New York Times, who've apparently decided to channel Normon Podhertz and contend that the 16 intelligence services of the United States have apparently decided to take Iran's side, and they list out a whole host of the standard and easily debunked chickenhawk talking points about Iran's nuclear program to "prove" that the intelligence community has their heads up their collective asses to even think that Iran isn't still working hard to acquire a nuclear weapon.

The real fun part is watching them all use the horribly messed up previous NIEs to contend that we should dismiss this one as politicized. (At least they've learned a little bit from N-pod's first outburst and focus on the 2002 Iraq NIE and not the 2005 Iran NIE. I mean, to use the 2005 NIE, which the 2007 NIE tells you is wrong, to claim the 2007 NIE can't be trusted and the 2005 NIE was right?)

Its really fun to watch.

Given the recent killings of two RCMP officers in the north, both of whom responded to calls alone, people were calling the back-up policy into question. There's actually no predicting what would have happened had they had back-up, but this certainly doesn't look too good.

In a June e-mail to detachment commanders in Nunavut, an e-mail that was obtained by CBC News, a senior regional officer wrote that while reviewing overtime claims he noticed some units sent two members to all calls.

"The direction that I am giving you, the detachment commander, is to ensure that you and the member(s) under your command base your response to calls on appropriate risk assessment," he wrote in the e-mail.

"Note on all OT claims how many members responded to every call. When more then [sic] one member responds to a call provide an explanation."

Again, back-up may have only given the killers an additional target, but cutting down on back-up because you don't like the amount of overtime people are charging . . .

Maybe the RCMP should spend a little less money on toys like the Taser and more on its people.

Dan Bartlett on right wing blogs:

That’s what I mean by influential. I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It’s a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is something that we’ve cultivated and have really tried to put quite a bit of focus on.

Yep.

I wonder if I will ever live to see the end of this desire to return to the Dark Ages:

The Austin-American Statesman reported last week that science curriculum director Chris Comer's ouster followed her circulation of an email announcing an upcoming speech by Barbara Forrest, co-author of Creationism's  Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design and an expert witness in Kitzmiller v. Dover. That lawsuit was brought in 2005 by Dover, Pennsylvania parents upset with a school board's decision to teach intelligent design -- the belief that some phenomena can only be explained as divinely manufactured -- as a scientific theory comparable to evolution.

. . .

Hours after Comer used her work email account to forward the Forrest announcement to friends and a few online communities, Texas Education Agency adviser Lizzette Reynolds emailed Comer's bosses and called for her dismissal. A former legislative adviser to President Bush during his Texas governorship and later a Department of Education appointee, Reynolds wrote, "This is highly inappropriate. I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities. This is something that the State Board, the Governor’s Office and members of the Legislature would be extremely upset to see because it assumes this is a subject that the agency supports.”

Education Agency officials mentioned Reynolds' e-mail in their decision to fire Comer. Informing people about Forrest's lecture, they said, "directly conflicts with her responsibilities as the Director of Science ... [And] implies endorsement of the speaker and implies that TEA endorses the speaker's position on a subject on which the agency must remain neutral."

Because of there is anything a Director of Science should be neutral on, it's on the subject of whether or not the scientific theory of evolution should be taught in science classes. And of course, the Education Agency wouldn't want to be seen as supporting such a thing. I mean, really! Science! In Science class! It boggles the mind!

And not to be outdone, Florida is fighting its own battle against those dastardly "evolution activists".

In October, Florida proposed new standards for science education, designating evolution as something every student should understand. "Evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology and is supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence. Organisms are classified based on their evolutionary history. Natural selection is the primary mechanism leading to evolutionary change," read the guidelines.

It was a big step forward: two years ago, when the Fordham Institute, an education think tank, gave Florida's science curriculum a grade of F, the standards didn't even mention evolution by name. But opposition is growing.

Just before Thanksgiving, four Polk County school board members said they don't support the new standards and think intelligent design ought to be taught as a valid alternative to evoultion. Then state Board of Education member Donna Callaway said she'd vote against the standards. Evolution "should not be taught to the exclusion of other theories of the origin of  life," she told the Florida Baptist Witness weekly newspaper, adding her hope that "there will be times of prayer throughout Christian homes and churches directed toward this issue." A few days ago, state representative Will Weatherford, a leading candidate to become Florida's House speaker in 2011, voiced opposition to evolution. "To show it from just one perspective and say this is more important or more accurate than the rest, I'm not so sure I'm in favor of that," he told the St. Petersburg Times.

It appears His Noodleness has his work cut out for him.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results, what do you call doing the same thing over and over again regardless what the result is?

Last week there were a couple of stories documenting just how far the US has fallen in terms of its respect for human rights and international law.  The first was where a Canadian judge ruled that our government should no longer require asylum seekers who transited the US to return there to seek asylum, since their record on rights violations placed such asylum seekers in jeopardy.

The second was almost confirmation of the first, where the US declared its right to kidnap anyone, anywhere, that they suspected of a crime, even for people in countries where they have extradition treaties and who are supposedly allies.

In any case, a couple more legal challenges to the Guantanamo Bay detentions reach the US Supreme Court today, and the BBC has a look at a very old precedent for such a place.

This is Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, who was one of Charles II's henchmen after the restoration of the monarchy in England in the 17th Century. Briefs for both sides in the Supreme Court hearing mention his activities.

Clarendon set up his own Guantanamo Bay, believed to have been in Jersey, in the hope that his prisoners could be kept away from the courts and in particular from the right of habeas corpus.

The rather interesting part is the Earl’s fate.

In the end, he failed and was himself impeached before fleeing abroad.

It's too bad that the Democrats are invertebrates and as a result, Bush and Cheney and the rest won't share Clarendon's fate, but I do find it noteworthy that the Bush administration is arguing for powers that the British monarchy of a century before the American Revolution considered going too far.

Shamanic at the Newshoggers has a sort of mea culpa post regarding the latest NIE assessment of Iran.

For the last four years, I accepted as common sense that the two remaining "Axis of Evil" nations were hard at work on nuclear weapons because I believed that the lesson we bestowed from our Iraq adventure is that the United States won't go to war with a nuclear power.

It reminded me that back in September, I took a look at that accepted wisdom and came to the conclusion that it didn't make rational sense for Iran to pursue nuclear weapons.

As a long-term strategic goal, there really isn’t anything wrong with this argument. It is all quite logical. Possessing a nuclear weapon would make Iran’s strategic position a lot safer for the regime. What’s missing from the analysis is the fact that Iran is a long way from possessing a nuclear weapon, with all the vulnerability that implies, so one should also consider what makes strategic sense for the Iranians to do now.

Thanks in large part to US pressure, Iran’s nuclear program is under intense scrutiny and already the US is doing everything in its power to isolate and coerce the regime through sanctions and the possible listing of the Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization. To stave this off, Iran needs as much support from the rest of the international community as it can get, particularly from Russia and China. Any sniff of a weapons program and that support will disappear and the threat of punitive US action goes up dramatically.

It therefore makes even more strategic sense, at least for now, for the Iranians to keep their noses clean on the nuclear issue. As long as they comply with the Non-Proliferation Treaty, they can continue to argue for their treaty right to civilian power generation and the nuclear fuel cycle that goes with it.

. . .

Whatever their long-term goals, the current nuclear threat from Iran is nothing I’d lose sleep over.

As it turns out, the Bush administration already knew there was no active weapons program, (and, as Iran Affairs points out, there still isn't any evidence that there ever was one), not that it stopped them making threats then, or even now that the NIE is out.

This leads me to another piece by N-Pod.

But I entertain an even darker suspicion. It is that the intelligence community, which has for some years now been leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush, is doing it again. This time the purpose is to head off the possibility that the President may order air strikes on the Iranian nuclear installations. As the intelligence community must know, if he were to do so, it would be as a last resort, only after it had become undeniable that neither negotiations nor sanctions could prevent Iran from getting the bomb, and only after being convinced that it was very close to succeeding. How better, then, to stop Bush in his tracks than by telling him and the world that such pressures have already been effective and that keeping them up could well bring about “a halt to Iran’s entire nuclear weapons program”—especially if the negotiations and sanctions were combined with a goodly dose of appeasement or, in the NIE’s own euphemistic formulation, “with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways.”

The really fun part is that he uses the total muck-ups of the 2002 Iraq NIE, and the now-contradicted findings of the 2005 Iran NIE to make his case that the intelligence community just can't be trusted. This politicization of the US intelligence services is probably one of the worst legacies the Bush administration will leave his successors.

On the surface, this doesn't look much different from the refusal of antiwar folks to accept the previous judgments. The difference is that the previous NIE's contradicted all other available data, where this one actually agrees with it. It won't stop the true believers, but its a bucket of cold water on their hopes to fire up the crisis further.

I Predict:

The biggest is the claim that Iran had a nuclear weapons program up to 2003, which is already being used as a vindication of the Iraq invasion in much the same way that Libya's "giving up" of their program has been. "See, we showed everybody we were serious about WMD's, (by invading a country that didn't have any), and now the bad guys are getting rid of theirs."

Instapundit delivers:

This story lets the Bush Administration take credit for pressuring Iran into stopping its weapons program by invading Iraq -- meaning that the invasion really did end a major WMD threat -- and also punt further serious action on the Iran issue to the next administration.

Beauty

On the whole, quite good news since it severely weakens the case for military action. Without an active nuclear weapons program, the "imminent danger" is just part of the steaming pile of BS the Bush administration is infamous for, and it should be interesting to see what this effect this report will on the administration's efforts to impose further sanctions on Iran for a program it's just admitted is purely civilian in nature.

That said, there are enough sops to the hawkish members of the administration that they'll still be spinning it to their utmost advantage. The biggest is the claim that Iran had a nuclear weapons program up to 2003, which is already being used as a vindication of the Iraq invasion in much the same way that Libya's "giving up" of their program has been. "See, we showed everybody we were serious about WMD's, (by invading a country that didn't have any), and now the bad guys are getting rid of theirs."

The reason this is problematic is because there is no more evidence of this program than the one the administration has been claiming is on the brink of developing a bomb for the last several years. By early 2004, Iran was voluntarily complying with the Additional Protocol, which allowed snap inspections and go-anywhere access to IAEA. They couldn't find any evidence of a weapons program, despite, one expects, pointers coming from the US as to where to look. So it not only ended, it vanished without a trace.

And wouldn't you know it, John Bolton has an explanation for all of that.

“The decision to weaponize and at what point is a judgment in the hands of the Iranians,” he said. He added that the finding that Iran halted a weapons program could just mean that it was better hidden now.

Yep, this hasn't ended the debate, but it has made the wingnuts job far more difficult, and for that we should be thankful.

Dave at the Galloping Beaver was kind enough to link to my post yesterday pointing out the Conservatives have decided Afghanistan isn't important enough to consider additional funding outside the regular DND budget. In the comments, PeterC said the following:

Perhaps when the military shuts down arctic operations we will ask our good friends to come help patrol the north, just like they recently asked us to help patrol Alaska with our CF-18s?

The patrols in question are the result of Vladimir Putin decided to start sending the "Bears" back out on long-range patrols along the boundaries of American and Canadian airspace. As this other post by Dave outlines, when the US had to ground its F-15's, Canada sent several CF-18's to help patrol the Alaskan coast.

As it happens, PeterC's comment reminded me of another story I had meant to post about, the fact that while our fighters were helping out with patrols of the Alaskan coastline, the aircraft that normally patrol the Canadian Arctic weren't flying, and won't be anytime soon.

The Canadian air force has cancelled its surveillance flights in the North for the next several months even though Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said protecting Canada's Arctic sovereignty is one of his government's top priorities.

More than half of Canada's fleet of Aurora aircraft, which patrol the country's two coastlines and the Arctic, is in the repair shop, undergoing long-term maintenance, the air force said.

Only six of 14 Auroras based at CFB Greenwood in Nova Scotia are able to fly, and the air force has decided it will dispatch them to areas off the East Coast and West Coast only.

A rather interesting set of priorites, when you think about it, though unfortunately not that surprising.

And also not terribly surprisingly, the funding constraints Afghanistan puts on other Defence priorities has a hand in this as well.

Dan Middlemiss, a defence expert and professor at Dalhousie University, speculated that Canada's combat mission in Afghanistan is taking huge amounts of money and squeezing missions at home.

"The reality of lack of funds for operations strikes home," he said. "We've seen this earlier this year with the navy's reduction in its planned exercises at the end of its fiscal year."

Something Dave also pointed out in the first post I linked to. Nice when everything comes full circle like that, isn't it?

I very much like this story:

Malawi hovered for years at the brink of famine. After a disastrous corn harvest in 2005, almost five million of its 13 million people needed emergency food aid.

But this year, a nation that has perennially extended a begging bowl to the world is instead feeding its hungry neighbors. It is selling more corn to the World Food Program of the United Nations than any other country in southern Africa and is exporting hundreds of thousands of tons of corn to Zimbabwe.

And how was this remarkable turn-around accomplished?

Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.

You have to hate it when the fuzzie-wuzzies figure out that the "free-market" reforms the World Bank and USAID make a condition of their aid aren't something they're actually willing to try and do themselves. The only way economies ever grow is through the help of government intervention of some sort, and the removal of it usually means someone else is growing at your expense. So the focus then goes to who the "free-market" reforms actually do help.

In the 1980s and again in the 1990s, the World Bank pushed Malawi to eliminate fertilizer subsidies entirely. Its theory both times was that Malawi’s farmers should shift to growing cash crops for export and use the foreign exchange earnings to import food, according to Jane Harrigan, an economist at the University of London.

. . .

The United States, which has shipped $147 million worth of American food to Malawi as emergency relief since 2002, but only $53 million to help Malawi grow its own food, has not provided any financial support for the subsidy program, except for helping pay for the evaluation of it. Over the years, the United States Agency for International Development has focused on promoting the role of the private sector in delivering fertilizer and seed, and saw subsidies as undermining that effort.

But Alan Eastham, the American ambassador to Malawi, said in a recent interview that the subsidy program had worked “pretty well,” though it displaced some commercial fertilizer sales.

The idea that these poor countries shouldn't grow their own food provides a market for the developed countries that do, and no subsidies also makes an attractive market for the fertilizer producers. Add to that the fact that the cash crops these countries are instructed to grow can't compete with the heavily subsidized Western crops, and you have a recipe for permanent misery and poverty, and an additional chance to subsidize Western farmers by buying up their crops for food aid.

I wonder what will happen if this Malawi thing catches on?

The latest of them is the run on Florida’s Local Government Investment Pool, which just froze withdrawals after nearly half of its holdings were pulled out by the quicker and (possibly) smarter investors.  And the problem isn’t limited to Florida, or even the US.

Now, start adding the stories about Citigroup from last month laying off thousands of employees and selling off assets in a bid to maintain some liquidity as their bad debt losses mount, and the share offering by the semi-government mortgage giant Freddie Mac for much the same reason.

Even the mighty American consumer is beginning to show signs of strain.  While sales over the Thanksgiving weekend were up, they were up only because there are more consumers.  The consumers themselves are spending less.

The US population has been running a negative savings rate for some time now.  Without credit, the whole system collapses, and the credit is drying up and becoming more expensive.

Going to be an ugly time ahead.

The War in Afghanistan is important, really important. So important that to even question it means you're supporting the Taliban. It's just not so important that the Conservatives want to dip into that big surplus to pay for it.

National Defence has been warned it will have to cover the costs of the Afghan war entirely out of its own budget next year, without any top-up from the federal Treasury Board, a political source has told The Canadian Press.

. . .

Jay Paxton, a spokesman for MacKay, said in an e-mail that the potential impact of restraining cost-overruns was "hypothetical and we won't speculate." During previous wars the federal government funded military operations separately from the Defence Department's annual budget, using special appropriations.

It was only during the 1960s and the era of peacekeeping that overseas military operations began coming directly out of the department's budget, say defence analysts.

Kenny and many military observers believe the federal government should return to the traditional wartime funding approach, especially if Canada is to remain in Afghanistan past 2009 as the Conservatives suggested in their recent throne speech.

And if the Conservatives were actually serious about fighting Afghanistan as a war, they probably would. Instead, they keep trying to fight using a peacetime force on the cheap in an attempt to score political points.

Kenny said the Conservatives have thus far failed to provide enough money to fulfill their campaign promise to expand the military and fight the war. Recently the Defence Department conceded that its plans to expand to 75,000 regular members and 35,000 reservists had to be trimmed back because there wasn't enough funding.

In addition, a wide range of military spending has come under the microscope at the political level, said Kenny.

"Offloading the costs of the war on the department will have a major impact on just about everything," he said. "These guys want it both ways.

"They want to have a reputation of being strong on national security and strong on defence. Their idea of being strong is to make PR gestures when they're spending less than (former prime minister Pierre) Trudeau did on defence in terms of (gross domestic product)."

Exactly right, and while some may lap up the PR gestures as though they actually mean something, there are apparently enough Canadians out there who actually understand how this all works who aren't being fooled.

At one recent meeting, the source said, political staff groused openly that the Conservatives "have spent $20 billion plus" on the military in new equipment and seen little political "sizzle" for the effort.

Which I guess explains this latest move. Why bother spending money on something you claim is important when you aren't getting any political "sizzle" out of it?

Some of the Republican presidential candidates have dismissed medical marijuana as unnecessary or “too dangerous.” Now they’re being offered $10,000 to come up with the scientific evidence.

The Medical Marijuana Project, a group advocating the use of medical marijuana, will be in New Hampshire on Monday with a mobile billboard offering to contribute $10,000 to the campaigns of Rudy Giuliani, John McCain or Mitt Romney if any of the candidates can substantiate their statements about medical marijuana.

A good way to show just how ridiculous some of these claims are. Of course, we're talking about a party where several candidates don't believe in evolution, so the fact that they don't have the science right is unlikely to bother many of their supporters.

The debate just keeps going, as do the stories. The first is about some claims made at a conference.

A biomedical engineer with ties to the company that makes Tasers insists that the stun-guns are safer than Tylenol.

"You have Tylenol in your home? As far as an electronic controlled device killing you, this stuff is safer than Tylenol," Dr. Mark Kroll said Thursday in Las Vegas.

I don't know if that's literally true, of course, but last I checked, the police rarely force a bottle of Tylenol down a person's throat. Of course, we wouldn't want to appear biased, either.

Kroll said even though he consults with Taser International, the maker of Tasers, and sits on the company's advisory board, he said he does not speak for the company.

Others at the sudden death conference, which ends Friday, also had ties to Taser International — three researchers in attendance are consultants with the company, while Taser paid for 10 of its employees to attend.

John Peters, who directs the U.S. Institute for the Prevention of In-Custody Deaths, said his organization is not influenced by Taser International, despite the ties.

. . .

He conceded that his conference did not include the work of researchers who raised safety questions about Tasers.

"Their studies were very small, they were isolated," he said. "I thought it wasn't a good fit."

No, I don't suppose research questioning Taser's safety would be a good fit for an organization that works to prevent In-Custody Deaths. I wonder if they were named by the same people who labeled Bush's "Clean Air Act", or "Healthy Forests Initiative".

Then we have the lovely story the RCMP just put out that Robert Dziekanski was still alive when medical personnel arrived to attend to him. The medical personnel in question, on the other hand, are quite clear that he was dead when they arrived.

RCMP Cpl. Dale Carr, of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, which is investigating the Polish immigrant's death on Oct. 14 at the Vancouver International airport, said on Friday that Dziekanski was still alive by the time medical personnel arrived.

"Based on the continuous monitoring and the assessments that the officers and the [airport] security officer were doing, it was their impression that Mr. Dziekanski had a pulse and that he was breathing up until the time that medical emergency personnel arrived."

Well, the mounties in question are hardly medical professionals, so I guess we'll just have to chalk it up to inexperience that they failed in their "continuous monitoring" to note that the man's pulse and breathing had stopped. Which I suppose explains the next bit.

Within six minutes, the Richmond Fire Department arrived on the scene.

Immediately, a crew initiated a medical assessment and asked police to remove Dziekanski's handcuffs, but the officers refused.

"Our officers assessed and felt that it was not a safe environment to have those handcuffs removed," Carr said.

But the Richmond Fire Department said that when fire crews checked his vitals, he had no pulse and was not breathing.

"Our crews, while they were doing their assessment, had asked for the handcuffs to be taken off," said Lake. "The RCMP had indicated that he had been violent before and they didn't want to take the handcuffs off and so our crews continued with their assessment.

"He definitely had no pulse and no breathing," Lake said. "Clinically yes, I guess he was dead."

So, as a result of their "continuous monitoring", the RCMP felt that the clinically dead Dziekanski was still too much of threat to remove his handcuffs. It was only after the BC Ambulance Service arrived that the mounties were apparently convinced that it was safe enough for them to take the cuffs off the dead man.

When asked by CBC News about the fire department's claim that Dziekanski was already dead when they arrived and why officers would still perceive a threat and not remove his handcuffs, a spokesperson for the RCMP said that's a question for the public inquiry.

Maybe they should have saved their story for the public inquiry as well, or at least until they come up with one not so easily debunked.

The last is a follow-up from the Taser video I linked to last month in Utah. The officials have concluded the Taser use was justified, even if the cop did everything else wrong, and John Cole has a few choice words that are all too relevant to the RCMP these days as well.

Got it? The Trooper screwed up, pushed the situation when he didn’t even need a signature, refused to make any attempts to defuse the situation, then didn’t behave correctly (turned his back on Massey), but the tasering was ok because it was a “scary situation” for the cop.

Ain’t being a cop great! You can screw up every part of your job, have your superiors admit publicly that you screwed up, and you are still justified doing whatever you want if you can claim you got ‘scared.’ It is time to take the toys away from the police and teach them how to do their jobs without the quick “fix” of the taser.