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Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Blogger Look & Feel (#2) Blogger Look & Feel (#2)

A couple of days ago, I made major changes to the look and feel of my Blogger blog. I just tweaked it a bit more today:
  • In "None" mode, I have added the time to the mode selection line. It fit, and it is nice to have there.
  • In "None" mode, I also have changed the URL link on the blog title to the blog entry itself, instead of to the external article referenced by it. This is more logical than the usual, plus otherwise you would have to open up the blog entry (using one of the other three modes) to get access to the blog item link.
Again, all was done with CSS, plus the addition of two [SPAN] HTML elements surrounding the title and URL.

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House GOP says: Put security first House GOP says: Put security first

Philadelphia Inquirer article: House GOP says: Put security first by House Majority leader John Boehner lays out the House Republican position on immigration reform. Any bill must:
  • Provide additional resources to federal and state authorities to strengthen border patrol efforts.
  • Stiffen penalties for those who break our immigration laws.
  • Enforce the laws against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.
  • Oppose efforts to reward the behavior of those who have chosen to break our laws.
  • Insist that newcomers obey the law, assimilate into American society by learning English, and embrace our common identity as Americans.
He then goes on to cricize the Reid-Kennedy Senate version, on the grounds that:
  • Local law enforcement could detain illegal immigrants only on criminal violations of immigration law, not for civil offenses. It's important to remember that up until the morning of Sept. 11, the terrorists had only committed civil violations of the immigration laws. This type of loophole for terrorists cannot be tolerated.
  • Illegal immigrants would be allowed to receive in-state tuition at a local college or university, while an American from a neighboring state would be charged out-of-state tuition.
  • Illegal immigrants would receive Social Security benefits for the time they worked in the United States illegally.
  • The United States would be forced to consult with Mexico on the construction of any border fence or barrier.
  • The expansion of "prevailing wage rights" would force small businesses to pay illegal immigrants more than American workers for the same job.

To me, the folly of the Senate Democrat bill is self-evident. Requiring Mexican agreement to put up a fence would give them a veto over our national security. The "prevailing wage" idea is just another attempt to provide more union jobs - because union wages are what the federal government invariably defines to be the prevailing wage. Typical Democratic responses to problems: multilateralism and more union jobs.

The Majority Leader does not mention some other glaring problems with the Senate bill, in that it would apparently also greatly increase the number of potential citizens based on the illegals here being able to leverage their family ties to bring in much of their, typically rather large, families, including parents, children, and even siblings.

If the Senate bill ultimately becomes law, let's hope that the House bill has been law long enough that a decent fence can have been built, before we give the Mexican government a veto over it.

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Lieberman: Democrats' Version of John McCain Lieberman: Democrats' Version of John McCain

RealClearPolitics article: Democrats' Version of John McCain suggests that Joe Lieberman is the Democrats version of John McCain - the party's maverick. His nomination is being hotly contested, yet it appears that he would easily win the general election as an independant.

But I think the difference is that while a lot of Republicans don't like or trust McCain, they don't really hate him, and would probably hold their noses and vote for him, if it came down to a choice between, say, Hillary and him. Not so apparently for a lot of Democrats. Lieberman is the scum of the earth. And his offence? Standing up for his principles and backing the war in Iraq.

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Blogging Intelligence Blogging Intelligence

RealClearPolitics article: Blogging Intelligence tells us that: "A software contractor for the CIA, Christine Axsmith, had been fired for her postings on a restricted-access blog hosted within the intelligence community's classified intranet, known as Interlink". There are a lot of worrying things discussed in the article. One that bothers me is the question of why a software contractor would have access to the type of information she disclosed in the first place. When I had a DOE security clearance as a software contractor, the agency made sure that I didn't have any access to any real data. Interestingly, they would keep all of their classified information in removable disk storage, and whenever any such was mounted, a stobe light would flash throughout the computer rooms. That seems a bit more security conscious than the CIA apparently was here.

Another worrisome aspect of the whole thing is the disclosure that the security agencies have over 1,000 blogs now, behind classified firewalls. Good at some level, for the sharing of information. But bad in situations like this, where too much information was shared.

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Dukakis: Raise Wages, Not Walls Dukakis: Raise Wages, Not Walls

Michael Dukakis and Daniel J.B. Mitchell have what they think is the optimal solution to our immigration problem, as they explain in an NYT article: Raise Wages, Not Walls. And their obvious solution? Raise the minimum wage. Yes, at first glance, it might just work - a bit. After all, raising the minimum wage reduces employment, and that might push some illegals out of work, causing them to go back home.

But that presupposes one critical fact: that the first employees forced out of work would be the illegal immigrants. And, the reality is that that is not likely. Rather, those first pushed out would be entry level workers, like teenagers. Why? Because, by and large, the illegals are better workers and more valuable to their employers. They work harder and, even factoring in the chance of an employer getting caught and fined, marginally, they are a much better investment as an employee.

With thoughts and philosophies like this, it is no wonder that Dukakis lost 49 states when he ran for president.

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Monday, July 24, 2006

Specter: Surveillance We Can Live With Specter: Surveillance We Can Live With

Arlen Specter, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and one of the fierest Republican critics of the NSA international surveilance program in the Senate, in a WaPo article: Surveillance We Can Live With defends the proposed changes to FISA. He first talks about the agreement to put the program up for review with the NSA court. But he also outlines some of the modernizations of the almost 30 year old act.
[The bill would] also modernizes FISA in important ways, giving the president added flexibility in protecting the country. The bill extends from three days to seven the time, in emergency situations, that the government can conduct surveillance without the court's permission. It permits the attorney general to delegate his authority to seek emergency warrants to subordinate officials. And it exempts from FISA's jurisdiction communications between two persons overseas that gets routed through domestic servers. The bill would also transfer the various lawsuits challenging the program to the FISC for consideration under its secure procedures.
This is preeminently reasonable. My position all along has been that the reason that the much needed program is putatively illegal under FISA is that that law is totally outmoded (as I have pointed out previously, including in a recent blog article below). And the proposed bill provides almost all of what I would like to see, modernizing the law, without gutting it.

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Falafel-Eating Surrender Monkeys Falafel-Eating Surrender Monkeys

I like this, from Milhouse at Neo Warmonger: Falafel-Eating Surrender Monkeys.

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After the Bell Curve After the Bell Curve

After the Bell Curve - New York Times takes a look at some of the more recent findings in the nurture / nature controversy about IQ inheritance. The past studies of adopted identical twins have shown that, raised separately, their IQs are invariably within a point or two. That would seem to indicate that IQ is primarily inherited.

But there is an inherant problem with those twin studies, and is that adoption tends to work up the economic scale. Richer people adopt, and poorer people are much more likely to put their kids up for adoption. And, as a result, the vast majority of the identical twins tested were raised in upper middle class (or above) environments, where they had good schooling available.

This study attempted to correct for that, looking through a lot of French adoption records for identical twins where one of them was raised by less well-to-do parents. And the findings were interesting, that IQ differences there could be as high as 20 points.

Still, the bulk of IQ is inherited. Two bright parents are likely to have bright kids. Two dull parents are most likely to have dull kids. But the (intended?) social message is that schooling and environment do matter in optimizing a kid's IQ potential.

Of course, that is not to say that throwing more money at public education is the answer to this problem. It isn't. It just means squandering more money needlessly. The public school systems across this country are, for the most part, not truly accountable for their successes in educationg kids, and more money would just perpetuate this.

I am somewhat troubled by the fact that the elites in this country get to perpetuate themselves. They are smarter, and as a result, their kids are inherantly smarter. But then, the use their money to purchase superior education for them, and this just makes it worse, as these kids will make more money than their peers, so that they can perpetuate this. This wasn't really a problem until we entered the era of an educated meritocracy, where the smarter you were, and the more educated you were, the more your potential earnings were, on average - and this is getting ever more pronounced as the assembly line jobs dry up, being replaced by the engineering slots requiring advanced degrees, and that pay a lot more too.

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Michael Goodwin: Give war a chance Michael Goodwin: Give war a chance

New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Michael Goodwin: Give war a chance: Hezbollah starts a fight, so it's
time to teach terror a lesson
article makes somewhat similar points to that last post.
"Stop the violence" is the natural human response to these grisly images. It's how most of us feel and it's how United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan reacted, saying forcefully, "hostilities must stop." ...

Yet now is not the time to stop this brutal war. Human nature notwithstanding, peace is not always the best answer. Not when wrongs have to be righted. Sometimes, deadly force is the righteous option.

Like a schoolyard bully who deserves a thorough butt-kicking, Hezbollah needs to be taught a lesson. It can either learn to live in peace, or it can die. But it cannot win by playing the terror card and it cannot be allowed to think it's going to.

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Mark Steyn: Failure to solve Palestinian question empowers Iran Mark Steyn: Failure to solve Palestinian question empowers Iran

Mark Steyn in the Sun Times article: Failure to solve Palestinian question empowers Iran makes some good observations about the current crisis is Lebanon. For example:
A few years back, when folks talked airily about "the Middle East peace process" and "a two-state solution," I used to say that the trouble was the Palestinians saw a two-state solution as an interim stage en route to a one-state solution. I underestimated Islamist depravity. As we now see in Gaza and southern Lebanon, any two-state solution would be an interim stage en route to a no-state solution.

In one of the most admirably straightforward of Islamist declarations, Hussein Massawi, the Hezbollah leader behind the slaughter of U.S. and French forces 20 years ago, put it this way: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you."

Swell. But, suppose he got his way, what then? Suppose every last Jew in Israel were dead or fled, what would rise in place of the Zionist Entity? It would be something like the Hamas-Hezbollah terror squads in Gaza and Lebanon writ large. Hamas won a landslide in the Palestinian elections, and Hezbollah similarly won formal control of key Lebanese Cabinet ministries. But they're not Mussolini: They have no interest in making the trains run on time. And to be honest, who can blame them? If you're a big-time terrorist mastermind, it's frankly a bit of a bore to find yourself Deputy Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Pensions, particularly when you're no good at it and no matter how lavishly the European Union throws money at you there never seems to be any in the kitty when it comes to making payroll. So, like a business that's over-diversified, both Hamas and Hezbollah retreated to their core activity: Jew-killing.
A bit over the top, as he details the ramifications of this, but he makes a lot of very good points.

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WaPo: In Iraq, Military Forgot Lessons of Vietnam WaPo: In Iraq, Military Forgot Lessons of Vietnam

Thomas E. Ricks in a WaPo article yesterday: "In Iraq, Military Forgot Lessons of Vietnam: Early Missteps by U.S. Left Troops Unprepared for Guerrilla Warfare" takes the U.S. military to task for how they approached Iraq. He faults them for not learning the lessons of Vietnam, and therefore using overwhelming force in the face of insurgency.

He makes some good points. The U.S. wasn't prepared to fight a gorrilla war, and we used much too much force for the first couple of years, at the expense of doing what was necessary, which was to earn the respect and loyalty of the Iraqi people.

But the reference to Vietnam gives away the writer's extreme biasees. Most notably, he forgets that the reason that Vietnam was lost was not through a native insurgency. The native Vietnamese insurgency was essentially eliminated in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. Rather, South Vietnam fell to a conventional army of tanks, artillary, and aircraft, coming down from the North. During the time between the Paris Peace Treaty and the breaking of this treaty by the North with their invasion of the South, after having been massively supplied by their patrons, the U.S.S.R. and the P.R.C. during this time, while the South had been shut off from replenishment of their armaments by a liberal U.S. Congress. While the NVA was rolling into the South, in direct violation of this treaty, President Ford went to Congress and requested the bullets and shells that the South was requesting, and we had promised them. And the Democratic Congress refused, repudicating the formal promises made to the South Vietnamese, and, thus, guaranteeing their subjugation.

Kennedy talks about fighting an insurgency with small units instead of big ones, and uses the Special Forces as an example. And in Vietnam, we used Special Forces to fight the insurgency. But they don't do well fighting large units. Kennedy forgets that the reason that we switched from that form of fighting in Vietnam was precisely because the nature of the enemy changed. The bulk of U.S. casualties in that war were the result of actions against large units. The fight in the Ia Drang Valley in 1965 that Mel Gibson protrayed in his recent movie was not against the Viet Cong, but rather, a regiment of NVA. Indeed, for good reason, this would become the primary way that we would fight on the ground for the remainder of the war. We would put out a medium sized unit as bait. And then, when the NVA would engage with a much larger unit, we would destroy it with our air force and artillery.

So, we have Kennedy second guessing 2003. Apparently, there are some of the reccently translated documents that indicate that Saddam Hussein had been considering a gurilla war in response to our pending invasion of Iraq. From this, we are supposed to believe that it was realistic to anticipate this. Of course, the last time we had engaged the Iraqis, it had been in an extremely conventional war. VII Corp swung up around the Iraqis and hit them from the side and behind. The last time we had engaged in this intensity of warfare had been Korea. Corp against Corp. Multiple divisions fighting multiple divisions.

And, somehow, Kennedy expected us to have predicted that the Iraqi army, that had required so many of our divisions last time, would collapse in so many days. But they wouldn't have in the face of a couple of Special Forces teams working with our own insurgents, like they did in Afganistan. Many of the same people who are decrying our use of too much force to fight this insurgency were bemoaning that Rumsfeld was only using half the forces this time as we used ten years earlier. But, as it worked out, they were more than sufficient for the job.

Kennedy bemoans that the military hasn't changed its approach fast enough. But fast enough would have required it to be instaneous. The military is big and cumbersome. And, yes, it takes awhile to change course. But change course here they did. And probably faster than could realistically be expected.

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Common Sense Of Missile Defense Continues To Elude Policymakers Common Sense Of Missile Defense Continues To Elude Policymakers

Brian T. Kennedy in Investor's Business Daily: Common Sense Of Missile Defense Continues To Elude Policymakers asks why we don't have a viable missle defense system in place now, and won't for the forseeable future.

My answer is similar to his, that those on the left are still pathologically wedded to their position in the Cold War, where it was assummed that a missle defense system would antagnonize the Soviet Union. But here today, it would not be aimed at either Russia or China, but rather rogue states like North Korea. Remember the screams of outrage when this President Bush finally withdrew us from the ABM treaty with the no-longer existant U.S.S.R.? This treaty had been hobbling our missle defense for decades, as it purposely degraded anti-missle accuracy. No wonder so many of those Patriot missles missed in the first Gulf War - they had been designed and built under that treaty. Yet, without the party with whom we signed the treaty still in existance, the liberals and peaceniks screamed anyway. Somehow it is immoral for Americans to protect themselves from those in the rest of the world who wish us evil, and have the wherewithall to do so.

Indeed, to some extent, we can look at Israel and see the reason that such a system is essential. Hezbollah is shooting a lot of missles they got from Syria into Israel right now. And the Syrians got them from the Iranians, who got some of their technology from the North Koreans. Luckily for the Israelis right now, the Iranian made missles are not all that accurate - yet. But there will come a day, very soon, when some of the missle guidance technology that Clinton essentially gave to the Chinese filters its way back around the world, and then, those missles will be a lot more accurate.

One thing that Kennedy didn't mention was that several of our allies are much more keen on developing viable missle defense systems. Notable here, of course, is Israel, for what are now very obvious reasons. But also keen is Japan, and to understand the reason for their interest, we don't have to look further than the recent North Korean ballestic missle tests.

I have worked with engineers from both of these countries. With the Israelis involved, we can quickly make an anti-missle defense system work. And with the Japanese, it can be made to work highly reliably for a decent price.

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New blog look and feel New blog look and feel

My blog has a new look, and, more importantly, feel to it. Why? And why blog about it?

A week or so ago, Steve Carlson responded to a blog entry of mine on my building my website by hand. He suggested ":hover" CSS pseudoclass to do some of the dynamic stuff that I was doing there via Javascript. Being a programmer at heart, my natural tendancy is use Javascript first, before I would use CSS to solve a web page problem.

But then, I noticed that I had been blogging a lot (for me) this summer, and my blog was starting to get a bit unwieldy to get around in. The problem is that I use Blogger, and it is really designed for someone who doesn't blog a lot, or, somewhat less well, someone who pumps out a lot of very short entries (see Instapundit.com). It doesn't do as well for a lot of long posts because you have to scroll down through them to find anything. Worse, I was extracting some of my political posts recently from my archives, and the situation was even worse there.

There are some "kludges" available from Blogger for turning on and off the display of blog entries. One of them allows you to hide part of your blog entries, but does so at the price of including HTML in your blog entries. The other just turnes on and off the display of entries.

Neither was very appealing to me. I tried the former, but settled on the latter for my Sony DRM blog last December.

Then, as I mulled it over, I wondered whether I could marry Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) with with Javascript to do a better job, and I think that I have.

Thye result is that I utilize four display modes for blog posts. First, there is the normal "Full" mode, where the entire blog entry is displayed. Then, there is a "Chopped" mode where only the first three inches of it are displayed. Third, is a "Footer" mode, where the title, posting, and commenting information is displayed, and, finally, a "None" mode where the only thing displayed is a single line to change modes. The initial mode for displaying a post is dependant upon the circumstances. If displayed as part of the entire active blog, entries are initially displayed in "Chopped" mode. But if you click on the comments or link via a URL to an entry, the entire entry is initially displayed. And, finally, entries are initially displayed in "None" mode when displayed as part of the archives. The result is that when scrolling down the active blog, a sample of each blog entry is displayed. The entire entry is displayed when you are looking at just it. And only the titles plus the line to switch modes are displayed in the archives.

I took the idea from the "hide/show" blogger hack that I used last December as the basis for this. I provide a set of switches at the bottom of each entry to switch modes. Initially, before I implimented the "Footer" mode, the three choices fairly well filled one line. But one of the choices as always a "NOOP" (computerese for "No Operation"). The answer was to not display the current mode as a selection possibility, but rather, to just display the other three. Thus, you know what mode you are in for a given blog entry because of what mode is not displayed on the mode selection line.

Interestingly, I was able to do this almost entirely through CSS. My Blogger template has less Javascript than is utilized by the "hide/show" Blogger "kludge" that I used last year. Rather, all the Javascript does is to set a global class for a HTML Division ("DIV") that includes all of the HTML for each entry in my Blogger template. These classes then interact with the CSS to do all of the fancy stuff. And, thanks to the tip by Steve Carlson, I ran into the CSS "chop" and "max-height" attributes that I use in "Chopped" mode when I was investigating :hover.

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Saturday, July 22, 2006

Blogger Test Blogger Test

Blogger Test
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Is the Democratic elite turning against the teachers' unions? Is the Democratic elite turning against the teachers' unions?

Mickey Kaus asks whether: Is the Democratic elite turning against the teachers' unions? He cites Democratic Governor-in-waiting Eliot Spitzer of New York has endorsed opening more independent charter schools.

To some extent, the writing is on the wall. The teachers' unions are some of the major foot soldiers for the Democratic party, but the African-Americans are one of its biggest, most solid, voting blocks, and they have the highest interest in school choice of any demographic in the country - possibly because their kids are some of the worst affected by the current situation with K-12 education today in this country. And charter schools are a much more acceptable answer to school choice for most Democrats than are vouchers. This approach by Spitzer keeps the Blacks in the fold, without alienating the teachers too much.

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Top Ten Signs There's Trouble At The New York Times Top Ten Signs There's Trouble At The New York Times

David Letterman's Top Ten Signs There's Trouble At The New York Times

10. Extensive coverage of recent fighting between the Israelis and the lesbians
9. Pages 2 through 20 are corrections of previous edition
8. Every sentence begins "So, like"
7. TV listings only for Zorro
6. Weather forecast reads "Look outside dumbass"
5. Multiple references to "President Gore"
4. Obituary includes list of people they wish were dead
3. Headlines fold over to create surprise mad magazine-type hidden message
2. Restaurant critic recently gave IHOP four stars
1. Reporting that Oprah isn't gay, but Letterman is

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'Stay the course' not working in Iraq - The Honolulu Advertiser 'Stay the course' not working in Iraq - The Honolulu Advertiser

"Hanoi" Kerry and ultra-liberal Feingold in an: 'Stay the course' not working in Iraq - The Honolulu Advertiser compliment Hawaii's two Democratic Senators for voting to cut-and-run from Iraq. After pointing out that "So far, the Iraqis have trained 265,600 security forces. The Bush administration's stated goal is 272,566 Iraqi security forces.", the two Senators appear to panick (again) because the U.S. is moving 3,000 troops from Kuwait to Iraq.

Of course, this is within a week or two of the Coallition turning over security responsibility for the first two provinces to Iraq, and a month and a half after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, former brutal leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed, and a number of his henchmen killed or captured in the ensuing terrorist cell roll-up.

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How to blog those photos How to blog those photos

I periodically find photos that I would like to include here while cruising the web. Sometimes it is easy to get the URL for a photo, but that typically requires that the photo be set up with an HTML anchor around it with the proper URL.

Instead, what I find works consistantly in Mozilla, is to select "Page Info" from the "View" menu, then select the "Media" tab. I then scroll down through the various graphics on the page until I find the photo I am looking for. Mozilla kindly displays a smaller version of the graphic for your convenience. I then copy the URL for the photo for insertion in blogger.

Finally, the blogger editor has a little picture up along with its other icons, such as bold, itallics, etc. Clicking on that gives you the option of uploading a graphic from your computer, or inserting a URL. Then, play with the settings to get the desired effect.

I should note that I do take short cuts here. For example, in the next blog entry, I duplicated the same HTML a couple of times, then replaced the URL in the "src=" field of the (IMG) Image tag and the "href=" in the (A) Anchor tag. A bit faster. Also, I sometimes strip off the silly formatting blogger uses.

Note that it is important that the Anchor (A) URL be checked, and maybe fixed, regardless. Blogger starts with the Anchor URL pointing at the photo itself. You sometimes want it to point at something more informative. For example, in the middle picture in the next blog entry, the Anchor "href=" URL points at a "photoessays" page at www.defenselink.mil that includes a caption describing the photo, while the "src=" URL in the Image element points at the picture itself.

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American military helping evacuate our citizens from Lebanon American military helping evacuate our citizens from Lebanon




I especially like this last one, with the two kids wearing the helmets.

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Why Dems strike out like the Cubs Why Dems strike out like the Cubs

Andrew Greeley opines on Why Dems strike out like the Cubs. He makes a lot of good points in the first half of the article on how the Democrats have cut themselves off from their original base, in particular the unions and Catholics. But then gets a moderate case of BDS towards the end.

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Interview with Milton Friedman Interview with Milton Friedman

A charming article by Tuntu Varadarajan in the OpinionJournal titled: The Romance of Economics:
Milton and Rose Friedman: Dinner with Keyes? Yes. War with Iraq? They disagree.
For example:
Sages, of course, have their oddities, and the interview last week--at Mr. Friedman's surprisingly petite office at the Hoover Institution, on the campus of Stanford University--got off to a surreal beginning...Why, I asked him, did he have a map of Belize on his wall? Mr. Friedman turned, looked at the object, and said: "I don't know. I really don't know." Not a good start to the interview, some might say; so I asked, by way of ice-breaker, whether he was keeping well. "Oh, yes!" was the spirited reply. "But my wife has gone through a session of shingles, and she's not quite through it." Here, he paused, and asked: "Have you had shingles yet?"

It cannot be said of too many economists that they "altered the shape of economics." Would Mr. Friedman say--modesty aside--that he was one of them? A long silence ensued--modesty, clearly, was hard to put aside--before he mumbled, as if squeezing words out of himself, "Er . . . very hard to say . . ."

Milton (suppressing a laugh): "I don't think I was ever regarded as 'evil.' " Rose (alluding to the protests that followed him everywhere, especially after he gave economic advice to the Pinochet regime): "It was very difficult to go to the colleges . . ." Milton: "I remember a fellow who came to see me from Harvard or somewhere. . . . He wanted to see 'that devil from the West'!" Rose: "Harvard probably still feels that way!"

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The Problem With Boys The Problem With Boys

The Week MagazineThe Problem With Boys? Well, the answer is the cliche: boys will be boys. The problem, as pointed out by the article, is that public schools these days are essentially run by women for girls. No wonder boys are failing out at alarming rates.

Of course, the other part of the problem is that the one group of people least likely to be considered victims in our victim society are boys and men. After all, they are the oppressors. Thanfully, this is changing, as our daughters are finding it ever harder to find appropriate mates, with their male counterparts tending to be less well educated, financially situated, etc.

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Local Politicians: Stay Out of Health Insurance Business Local Politicians: Stay Out of Health Insurance Business

RealClearPolitics - Articles - Local Politicians: Stay Out of Health Insurance Business says what I said in my earlier blog about the proposed CA universal healthcare proposal, only in a lot more detail.

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The Fallacy of Proportionality The Fallacy of Proportionality

The American Enterprise: The Fallacy of Proportionality starts with:
As Israel defends itself from terrorists intent on the country’s destruction, many foreign leaders have had the audacity to criticize Israel for using disproportionate force. The United States had to veto a United Nations draft resolution sponsored by Qatar, which, among other things, restated the proportionality test that seems to apply only to Israel.
I agree with the article 100% that this suggestion is somewhere between disingenous and silly. Hezbollah is engaged in asymetric warfare, which, by its very nature has to be countered by an asymetric response. I know that this sounds facile, but the reality is that overwhelming force is the only response to asymetric warfare in the form of terrorism that works.

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WTO to probe limits on Internet gambling WTO to probe limits on Internet gambling

According to an article in SiliconValley.com: WTO to probe limits on Internet gambling. I find this extremely humorous. Apparently, trying to prevent our citizens from frittering away their life savings through online gambling, is a free-trade violation.

I really don't have any sympathy for either side of this argument. Gamblins is, IMHO, silly. Yet, using free-trade treaties to overcome popularly enacted statutes is not any better.

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Microsoft to Open Vista to Competitors' Software Microsoft to Open Vista to Competitors' Software

WaPo article: Microsoft to Open Vista to Competitors' Software said that: "Microsoft Corp. said yesterday that it will allow competitors' software to appear more prominently than its own on the new Windows operating system, scheduled for sale next year." They apparently aren't going to default to MSN as a search enginer. Plus, I would guess this means even more 3rd party icons on the desktop that I need to remove whenever I (re)install Windows.

This is a royal pain already. I know that these 3rd parties (plus, MSFT, of course), pay good money for this, but it is a pain. I did show my offspring the other day how to remove them from both the default and common desktop folders so that they don't have to be removed from every user's desktop - you just do it once, and it is easier to do from a folder than from the desktop anyway.

Still, I remain unconvinced that Microsoft isn't the Evil Empire.

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India angers bloggers as it cuts Web access India angers bloggers as it cuts Web access

The Indian government has shut down a lot of popular blog sites, including this one, according to: India angers bloggers as it cuts Web access - Asia - Pacific - International Herald Tribune. The "Ban of blogs stirs outrage from India to Silicon Valley".

I suspect though that this isn't going to affect my traffic counts that much. If that accounts for 5% of my traffic, 95% of 0 is still zero.

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Pacifists versus Peace Pacifists versus Peace

Thomas Sowell's article: RealClearPolitics - Articles - Pacifists versus Peace takes to task the idea that pacism and peace go together. He concludes with '"Peace" movements don't bring peace but war'.

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Health insurance for all, for real Health insurance for all, for real

Susan Duerksen claims in: Health insurance for all, for real | The San Diego Union-Tribune to finally have the solution for universal health care. And what is it? Digging through her article, her answer is socialized medicine. She carefully skirts around the abject failures that country after country have faced, when implementing socialized medicine. No mention of the long waits, fleeing physicians, shoddy medicine. Just that her organization's solution will solve the funding problem. Their apparent solution: instead of the government running it, it will be a non-profit. Of course, who gets to pick who runs it? The governor? The legislature? The ballot? In short, it will be just as political, just without as much transparency, but with more room for abuse and self-dealing.

Sorry. I don't buy it. Thankfully, I don't live in California, so won't have just one more reason to flee that state, should her organization's proposal pass.

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Rice for VP Rice for VP

The rest of my dream team is Condi Rice for VP. Ann Althouse is a big Condi fan for president. While I think she would do a great job there, I think Romney is better suited, right now for it. Also, there is little indication that she is really running, and he is. But he has a couple of glaring holes in his being the absolute perfect candidate.

First, he has minimal foreign policy and national security experience. Yes, he had to deal with a lot of foreigners for the SLC Olympics, but they weren't trying to kill each other, at least not literally. Rice, on the other hand, was originally brought into the Bush (43) camp to bring the soon-to-be President up to speed on foreign policy and national security, and this ultimately migrated into the top foreign policy job in the country: Secretary of State. Also, obviously from her job as National Security Director, she is an expert on terrorism and national security.

Secondly, her devout Christianity is well accepted by those on the Religious Right. Not an evangelical herself, but her quiet devout practice is respected by them. And this is likely to quiet any qualms any of them might have about Romney's Mormonism.

Third, race and sex. Hillary is still likely to be the Democratic nominee for president. Rice is the closest the Republicans have for a woman ready for prime time. Libby Dole's time is past, and her Senate career hasn't done anything to make her look more presidential.

And, of course, Rice is Black, having experienced racism first hand, and overcoming that to reach the top of government, solely on her own merits. At the NAACP meeting this week, she was applauded. Mr. Bush was accepted - partially because she was brought along, and it is well known, esp. in that community, that she is his alter-ego, esp. when it comes to international affairs. The Republicans aren't going to win the Black vote. Not yet. But this would peel away some Black votes. But what it would do is swing some moderates in the Republican direction.

Both Bush and Romney have Harvard MBAs. Both seem to operate in government like they have them. One of the attributes of such graduates is an appreciation and a reward for merit. Bush bonded with, learned to trust implicitly, and, therefore ultimately, to significantly delegates to Dr. Rice. I suspect that, of all those running for president on either side, Romney is the one who could most likely reproduce this. Bush and Romney also seem to have a very similar formal way of working: meetings start on time, people are dressed accordingly, etc.

Finally, the two would have very nice geographic spread. Romney grew up in Michigan, son of the governor and one-time presidential candidate. He went back to his family's Utah roots to run the Olympics. And, now, he governor of Mass. Rice, on the other hand, was born in the deep south. She was aised there, amid segregation, and the entailing violence. She then moved here to Colorado for middle school, high school, and college. She spent a couple of years in the midwest for her master's degree (before returning here for her PhD). Then, off to California, where she taught, and was ultimately the youngest provost in the history of that state's most prestigious university.

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Romney for President Romney for President

My last post was in response to a Rich Lowrey post on a Gingrich presidential candidacy. And, I added that my vote is for Mitt Romney.

For me, Romney is the dream candidate. He is smart, articulate, and looks the president, more than anyone else running right now. Plus, he has a fairly nice resume. Harvard JD/MBA. Mostly self-made millionaire from VC, including helping to run Stapes. Got the SLC Olympics cleaned up and ran it well. Now, the governor of uber-liberal Mass. Implementing almost universal health care there. Most lately, he has jumped in and taken over the operation of the "Big Dig". Not only does he look like a president from central casting, but he acts like one too.

Of course, there is the skeleton in his closet: he is Mormon. But having lived in Salt Lake, and knowing a bunch of Mormons, that doesn't scare me in the least. Officially, the Roman Catholic Church doesn't consider Mormons to be Christian. But, I was in SLC last December, and was struck by the fact that Christmas music, etc., was ubiquitous. Much, much, more so than in either Denver or Phoenix.

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Rich Lowry on New Gingrich & 2008 on National Review Online Rich Lowry on New Gingrich & 2008 on National Review Online

Rich Lowry on New Gingrich & 2008 on National Review Online makes a lot of good points. I, like a lot of people, love hearing the former Speaker speak. He would liven up the debates enormously. But, I just don't see him as a viable presidential candidate, nor, for that matter, as a president. My vote is for Mitt Romney. Indeed, of all the other candidates, I suspect that he would come off the best against Gingrich. Almost as articulate, and probably as smart, but able to do it without throwing bombs.

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Bolton speaking on Hezbollah and Lebanon Bolton speaking on Hezbollah and Lebanon

Our U.N. Ambassador, John Bolton, recently spoke on the crisis in Lebanon, and showed why he is the best we have had in his position in decades. For example:
Ambassador Bolton: Well look, I think we could have a cessation of hostilities immediately if Hezbollah would stop terrorizing innocent civilians and give up the kidnapped Israeli soldiers. So that to the extent this crisis continues, the cause is Hezbollah. How you get a ceasefire between one entity, which is a government of a democratically elected state on the one hand, and another entity on the other which is a terrorist gang, no one has yet explained. The government of Israel, everybody says, has the right to exercise the right of self-defense, which even if there are criticisms of Israeli actions by some, they recognize the fundamental right to self-defense. That’s a legitimate right. Are there any activities that Hezbollah engages in, militarily that are legitimate? I don’t think so. All of it’s activities are terrorist and all of them are illegitimate, so I don’t see the balance or the parallelism between the two sides and therefore I think it’s a very fundamental question: how a terrorist group agrees to a ceasefire. You know in a democratically elected government, the theory is that the people ultimately can hold the government accountable when it does something and doesn’t live up to it. How do you hold a terrorist group accountable? Who runs the terrorist group? Who makes the commitment that a terrorist group will abide by a ceasefire? What does a terrorist group think a ceasefire is? These are - you can use the words “cessation of hostilities” or “truce” or ‘ceasefire”. Nobody has yet explained how a terrorist group and a democratic state come to a mutual ceasefire.

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Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Who Is Lying About Iraq? Who Is Lying About Iraq?

A Commentary Magazine article by Norman Podhoretz last December titled: Who Is Lying About Iraq? is a reminder about the blatent distortions by the left and the MSM on Iraq and our invasion of that country.

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CO Make my day law CO Make my day law

A Rocky Mountain News article today titled: Aurora man kills intruder is a bit misleading as to the CO "Make My Day" law, C.R.S. 18-1-704.5. It states that: It will be up to prosecutors to determine whether the shooting falls under Colorado's Make My Day law, which allows people to use deadly force to protect themselves in their homes from intruders. The problem with that statement is that the prosecutor does not make the ultimate determination. Rather, he just makes a charging decision. The ultimate decision is made by the courts. Indeed, it appears to be a two step process, with a court first determining whether the statute provides immunity from prosecution. Then, at trial, it can also be utilized as an affirmative defense.

The article also quotes a police spokesman who said: "We don't want people shooting people for stealing a TV," he said. "It's critical that they are in the home to commit a crime and you believe they intend to attack someone in the home." That too is a bit inaccurate. Obviously, stealing a TV is a crime. Plus, the standard is not that the intruder intends to attack anyone in the home, but rather, that "the occupant reasonably believes that such other person might use any physical force, no matter how slight, against any occupant".

As I mentioned above, it is interesting that the statute has been interpreted to provide both immunity and an affirmative defense. In the former, the burden of proof is on the defendant to prove it by a preponderance of the evidence, but in the later, the burden is on the prosecution, and requires a jury instruction to that effect.

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Turning on word verification Turning on word verification

Blogger is doing very well today, and I expect that it may be due to a denial of service attack, with the modus opperendi being comments. I have received maybe a hundred or so over the last day or so from "anonymous", all saying very nice things about my blog. I can't even figure out what blog entry his is using to comment upon - it isn't one in the last month. I only know that I am getting a lot of comments from him because I turned on the feature that emails them to me.

So, at least while this nonsense is going on, the only real solution that Blogger offers is word verification. I hate it, as do many, but it has its place, and I think this is it.

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FISA - problems with the law FISA - problems with the law

FISA comprises Subchapter I, Chapter 36, of Title 50 of the U.S. code - or alternatively, as 50 U.S.C. §1801 et seq. It was passed in 1978 to protect against the president using national security to surveil American citizens.

The big problem that is faced today with FISA is that the NSA is conducting communications surveillance that would ostensibly violate the Act. There are a lot of factors on how we got to this place.

Starting with the Act itself, §1801(f) defines “Electronic surveillance” to mean:
(1) the acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any wire or radio communication sent by or intended to be received by a particular, known United States person who is in the United States, if the contents are acquired by intentionally targeting that United States person, under circumstances in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a warrant would be required for law enforcement purposes;
(2) the acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any wire communication to or from a person in the United States, without the consent of any party thereto, if such acquisition occurs in the United States, but does not include the acquisition of those communications of computer trespassers that would be permissible under section 2511 (2)(i) of title 18;
(3) the intentional acquisition by an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device of the contents of any radio communication, under circumstances in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a warrant would be required for law enforcement purposes, and if both the sender and all intended recipients are located within the United States; or
(4) the installation or use of an electronic, mechanical, or other surveillance device in the United States for monitoring to acquire information, other than from a wire or radio communication, under circumstances in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy and a warrant would be required for law enforcement purposes.
Note that the NSA program would ostensibly fall under §1801(f)(2) because interception is being done in the U.S. Note also the differences between §1801(f)(1) and (f)(2). In (f)(1), in order to qualify, the surveillance must be of a targeted U.S. Person (defined as a U.S. citizen or legal alien) in the U.S. §1801(f)(2) on the other hand only requires that one of the people whose communications are being intercepted, is in the U.S. In other words, he may be an al Qaeda operative who entered this country illegally. Targeting doesn't matter. Being here legally doesn't matter. And the difference? §1801(f)(1) applies to interception wherever it occurs, whereas (f)(2) only applies to interception done w/i the United States.

Why is this relevant? Because technology has changed dramatically in the almost 30 years since FISA was passed. Back then, electronic international communications were either via underseas copper cable or by satellite. The underseas cables could be tapped offshore through induction, and communications satellites of the time were all in geosynchronous orbits - which are, by necessity, over the Equator, and, thus, not over the U.S.

Contrast this with the present situation. Most overseas communications today are via fiber optic cables under the ocean. But it is almost, if not totally, impossible to tap such other than at the switches. Why? First, fiber optics relies on the fact that the shielding reflects light. In order to tap this, it would be necessary to scrape some of this away, resulting in a significant signal loss. This is esp. critical under the ocean, with those long cable runs. Secondly, fiber optics utilizes a technique called Time Division Multiplexing (TDM). This means that thousands of calls are being time-sliced on a single strand at any one time. Worse, the call setup information (including who is calling whom) is carried "out of band", meaning that this information travels on separate channels (also time-sliced). Without the setup information, tapping calls is pointless. Worse again, the individual fibers are bundled into cables, and it is possible that the call setup information may even be traveling on another strand.

So, the logical place to tap international communications is at the switches, which, by necessity, use computers to tie the call identification information to the specific calls. This is the only place that makes sense, and the only place that is practical. The problem is that the only place in the world where we can assure ourselves of intercepting the bulk of communications is within the United States. Very roughly, around 1/4 or so of the traffic coming into this country routes through ECHELON participants (UK, Australia, and NZ). The rest would be lost if we couldn't intercept communications w/i the U.S.

So, technology has required that interception of electronic communications has had to move to w/i the U.S. The result is that it has moved from §1801(f)(1) to (f)(2), which, in turn, has resulted in the standard for something being defined as "electronic surveillance" being changed from only applying to communications when the person in the United States is legally here and is intentionally targeted, to communications with anyone in the U.S., regardless of who was targeted or whether they are here legally. In other words, if someone enters the U.S. illegally, then calls a targeted individual, such as Osama ben Laden, overseas, the conversation would fall under §1801(f)(2), and, thus, presumably require a FISA warrant. Ditto, of course, if OBL calls anyone in the U.S.

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Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America

Radley Balko at Cato has an article: Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America that points to the civil liberties problems inherant in the fact that even some of the smallest police forces today have SWAT teams, and when you have them, you need to ultimately use them.

I am a lot more bothered by this than the NSA international communications surveilance program. There, I see, at most, a minimal threat to my civil liberties. I rarely make international calls. I don't talk to terrorists. Indeed, I don't really know any. And, we are at war.

But the militarized police around the country come barging into our houses in the middle of the night, breaking down doors, threatening to shoot, and even sometimes shooting, innocents who thought they were safe in their own homes. The Cato site has a map feature that shows the different incidents involving innocents in the various locations around the country. I looked at Colorado, and it was scary.

Part of the problem is that this militarization is a good part aimed at the War on Drugs. But that War doesn't have anyone trying to kill me, unless it is the police, doing so for my own good. And, if drugs are such a problem, the solution is obvious: legalization. Far better to have them legal and regulated, than having police breaking down doors in the middle of the night on no-knock raids.

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Republicans Propose National School Voucher Program - New York Times Republicans Propose National School Voucher Program - New York Times

Talk about a wedge issue. Republicans Propose National School Voucher Program - New York Times discusses a Republican proposal for a pilot program of vouchers for low income families having kids in failing schools.

You can read that as being aimed straight at the heart of the Democratic Party, because the most obvious beneficiaries of such a program are African-Americans, some of the strongest supporters of vouchers and who are some of the most harmed by the current public school system, and the obvious groups that will be harmed by it most are the teachers' unions, which supply a large percentage of that party's foot soldiers in every election.

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Clueless in New York Clueless in New York

Joe Conason has an article in the NY Observer titled: Our Coarse President Can’t Fix Middle East that complains that our President is obviously not sophisticated enough to win the War on Terror. After all, he chews with his mouth open, and uses explitives when describing terrorist states.

Conason does understand that a lot of what is going on in the Middle East right now is a direct result of our actions in Iraq and Afganistan. But he takes away the wrong message. He doesn't comprehend that they are reacting this way precisely because they fear what we are doing there, and are fighting for their lives to survive in the face of it. The leaders in both Syria and Iran are petrified of what is happening all around them, and are doing whatever it takes to rally everyone around them.

But it isn't working. Who would have thought that the major Arab nations would be sitting on the sidelines in this crisis, and not egging everyone on to obliterate Israel? Yet, we have Saudi Arabia, Egypt, et al., urging caution and tacitly supporting Israel.

But Conason worries that we have alienated our traditional allies through this go-it-alone, cowboy foreign policy. And which allies are these? Obviously, not Great Britain, as it was to Blair that Bush used the explitive, and they are carrying their weight in Iraq. Rather, I suspect he means such stalwarts as France, long known for its strong support of our foreign policy. Oh, Wait. I forgot. France pulling out of NATO for awhile. France selling arms to Iraq throughout the arms embargo. France taking Oil for Food bribes. France telling us that they wouldn't support sanctions anymore, as we got ready to invade (but not mentioning that they had sold the rockets to Iraq that would shortly be shot at us, or that their vote was in payment for all those bribes). How about Russia? Ditto on the arms and bribes. Besides for most of my lifetime, they were our mortal enemy. Germany? Not sure whether they still have an army. Well, they have part of ours. Japan? Worried about oil supplies, but little else in the Middle East, but coming closer every day to us with North Korea and China. Besides, their Prime Minister got a recent tour of Graceland and got to wear a pair of the King's glasses. I am not sure what other allies he is talking about. Maybe the Netherlands, with their unionized military.

No, the author wants us to go back to the ineffectual Clinton foreign policy, where talking was more important than getting anything done. But he refuses to realize that that was a big part of why al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 - the Moslem world viewed us as a paper tiger. We had the power, but were too constrained by decadent western values to use it, even when attacked. He refuses to acknowledge that the only thing that they respect is power and the willingness to use it.

Conason is just one more effete, sophisticated, eastern liberal totally out of touch with the world, still dreaming that if everyone just understood everyone else, through endless rounds of talking at diplomatic dinners (where no one speaks with their mouths full and never uses crude language), then all these minor irritations in the world would just go away. Sorry. Not today in this world. And most likely, not in our lifetimes. Not the way the world really works.

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What Part of 'War' Don't We Understand? What Part of 'War' Don't We Understand?

Thoughtful article: RealClearPolitics - Articles - What Part of 'War' Don't We Understand? by Robert Tracinski about the War on Terror. I esp. liked this talking about Iran and Syria:
Consider the incentives we have created for these two regimes: the more trouble they cause for us--the less likely we are to attack them. The more they attack us, the more secure they are from our retaliation. This is the opposite of a rational strategy.

What makes this possible is the crippling effect of two fundamental errors in our thinking: myopic short-range Pragmatism and crippling altruistic self-doubt.

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Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Web site stuff Web site stuff

I have a website for my business as a patent attorney. But contrary to usual practice, I wrote it all from scratch, and have included a number of novel features in its operation. I did this mostly because I am a programmer at heart, and it was fun, though it has taken a lot of work to accomplish.

A year or so ago, I got it operational after a couple of months of hard work. Since then, I haven't worked on its functionality, but have tweaked the content a bit. But even that is dangerous, as it got me thinking about ways to improve the functionality of the site.

One thing that I ran into a month ago was a need to duplicate most of my home page for Yahoo marketing. They wouldn't accept my fairly stark home page. But the minute I duplicated my home page, I realized that the easiest way to keep my, now, three main/home pages consistant, is through the use of Javascript and CSS style sheets. But as a result I also started screwing around with their look.

The page I am using right now in blogger to draft this has some 3D effects. They have become so common that we don't think about them anymore. The primary way it is accomplished is via shadowing, and the easiest way to do that in HTML is via borders.(Blogger also uses a slightly lighter color for the top "tab").

It turns out that this sort of 3D effects can be modified on the fly through changing CSS classes for entities using Javascript to modify the entities' DOM (the data structures correspnding to the enties). I discovered this nice scripting feature last fall when working with blogger to figure out how to hide and show blog entries. That is one way it is done - one CSS class has text visible, and another doesn't, and switching them back and forth causes the text to appear and disappear.

So, I figured to do the same thing with my buttons on my web site. When you depress a button, I switch CSS classes, and then switch back. As a side note, I also switched from anchors to "onclick" on table entires in order to provide a single click response on my main web pages plus provide a bigger target to "hit" - I had done that earlier on my navigation buttons.

It took awhile to get the graphics to work right, and to move the HTML button generation to Javascript, but I got it working a week or so ago. Then, I tweaked it a bit to switch from a light blue with black lettering to a dark blue with white lettering, along with reversed shading, for depressed buttons.

This morning I managed to get the navigation buttons redone too. They were more difficult, because they reside in one frame, and are used to navigate in another. Worse, the document in the second frame may change, while they don't (I did this to speed up loading subdocuments in that other frame that share the same navigation and legal notices frames). That means that the binding between the buttons and the functions used to navigate has to be delayed until the last instance. But if you wait until then for the entire binding, it means that the Javascript code is interpreted, instead of being compiled, which slows things down a bit. Another problem that I faced with binding was that I was trying to build internal tables and generate HTML at the same time, but that the code had to ultimately access the DOM for the generated HTML entities - that didn't exist yet. A fine line, that I think I have managed to optimize.

One final problem reared its head. For each of the navigation buttons, I would first swap CSS classes for the button (so it would appear to be "down"). Then I would call the navigation routine. And then, I would swap CSS classes back, to show the button as "up" again. Which sometimes worked just fine. But sometimes, it happened so quickly, that you almost couldn't see it. So, I instituted a timed delay for the "up", giving the button enough down time that it would be noticable.

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Wilson Lawsuite (#2) Wilson Lawsuite (#2)

The following is a copy of a post I made ealier today at justoneminute as to causation in the Wilsons' case against Cheney, et al. (The complaint is here). It is partially in response to an interview of Wilson last night by Keith Olbermann (as reported by A J Strata) where Wilson apparently discounted the possibility of including Armitage and/or Novak as defendants.

Keep in mind my previous point - lack of causation. If you read the complaint, always keep your eye on the ball.

Starting in the history part of Facts, #13 tells of Novak's 7/14/03 column, where he "outs" Plame based on "leaks from the administration", that was the alleged cause of the Wilsons' claimed damages.

Then, #14-17 talks about the investigation and that criminal charges were brought against Libby (w/o of course telling us what they were).

Then, #18 purports to lay out the facts leading up to July 2003. It starts with the SOTU, but then quickly moves at (c) into a long discussion of what Libby was alleged to have done. Almost all of the remainder of #18, (d-x) was devoted to listing in gory detail everything that Libby had done, whom he had talked to, etc. Mention was made of the VP marking up the Wilson article, but not much more.

Sections #19-21 again talk about Libby's indictment. #22 discusses a Pincus article that mentions that the Administration had talked to a lot of reporters.

And then, based on that, #23 alleges a conspiracy between the defendants to discredit the Wilsons.

#24-33 concern Rove and include such tidbits as McClellan telling the press that Rove hadn't talked to the them about the Wilsons. It also includes some more Fitz stuff, including in #33 that he believed there to have been White House efforts to punish the Wilsons. And then, #34 further alleges a plot by the defendants.

But note what is missing. There is nothing tying the defendants to Novak, and it was his article that they tacitly admit in that paragraph was the proximate cause of their alleged injuries. The closest that I can see is in #13, which said:
13. On July 14, 2003, newspaper columnist Robert Novak wrote a column that was published in [list of papers] that contained the following sentence: "[Joseph] Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger" to investigate a report that Iraq was seeking nuclear materials from Niger. That publication, based on leaks from the administration, was the first time that Mrs. Wilson's previously secret and classified CIA identity became public. The disclosure destroyed her cover as a classified CIA employee.
Notice though that they never tell us who leaked to Novak, except that it was "Two senior administration officials" and that the piece was "based on leaks from the administration". We are left to assume from the rest of the pleadings that it must have been the defendants. But of course, we know better, which is why this slight of hand doesn't fly. And, of course, Wilson knows better too.

It is this slight of hand that leads me to believe that Wilson was involved in the pleadings. Right in the middle of a long string of horribles about Libby and Rove, you have this statement about how two senior administration figures leaked to Novak, and you are naturally going to assume that it was they.

But that is where my comments from last night on Wilson's interview come in. In order to tie it all together, they would have to bring in at least Novak's primary source (presumably Armitage), and maybe even Novak. But Wilson threw cold water on that idea.

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Monday, July 17, 2006

Bush tells it like it is, in an unguared moment Bush tells it like it is, in an unguared moment

Mideast crisis drives Bush to colorful language - Yahoo! News
Bush replied: "What they need to do it to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit." Shortly afterwards Blair noticed the microphone and hastily switched it off, but not before the recording had reached news media.

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Sunday, July 16, 2006

Wiretap Surrender Wiretap Surrender

WaPo article titled: Wiretap Surrender suggests that Congress is surrendering to the Administration as to the NSA international surveilance program. The paper is not happy with the "compromise" legislation, which is probably why I am.

Instead of eliminationg the NSA program, this would provide oversight. But that is precisely what it needs. The problem all along has been that FISA is much too cumbersome as to the getting of warrants. It was designed at a different time for a different technology and different enemies. It was aimed at spying by the USSR and the PRC. These were slow moving targets, and a slow, cumbersome, procedure for warrants was just fine. It just doesn't work in today's world of al Qaeda and disposable cell phones.

What the WaPo fails to understand is that the program is necessary to protect the American people against another 9/11 type attack. The people know this, and so does Congress. It is just the MSM in their terminal BDS that doesn't. Warrants don't work, so they are proposing something that would - oversight.

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A Sniper? Really? A Sniper? Really?


Dad29: A Sniper? Really? explains in the comments why this NYT picture of a "sniper" is staged.

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Wilsons' lawsuit against Cheney, et al. Wilsons' lawsuit against Cheney, et al.

I figured I had to nail down some of my comments about the Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame case against Libby, Rove, and Cheney before I lost their link at Volokh.com of the complaint. The complaint has eight causes of action, four under the 5th Amdt., one under the 1st Amdt., one under the civil rights laws, one for negligence as to same, and a conspiracy claim. They are all cleverly couched to try to keep the U.S. govt. from intervening too quickly and the defendants being able to assert immunity. But ultimately, they are unlikely to prevail, as they assert that the defendants acted out of animus towards the plaintiffs, whereas there is evidence that they acted at least to some extent, and maybe primarily, to rebut, which would bring their actions within the scope of their official duties.

But before the Wilsons get to the causes of action, they list their version of the history of the dispute. They essentially start with Joe Wilson's junket to Niger, his NYT article, and then list various instances in approx. June, 2003, when Libby talked to reporters and told them about Plame's CIA employment at the CIA and that she helped get her husband the junket. And, then Robert Novak published his article that made all this public. That however is one of the biggest problems with the complaint. All of their alleged damages result from the Novak article, and they fail to tie it to any actions of the defendants. And, we know from recent revelations by Novak that it was independent. And that is the problem - causation.

Let's use this analogy. A shoots at X a couple of times and misses. B independently shoots at the vicinity of X and hits him. So, here, X sues A for being hit by B, without showing how A caused B to hit him.

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Saturday, July 15, 2006

Has Bush or the World Changed? Has Bush or the World Changed?

Victor Davis Hanson suggests in VDH's Private Papers: Has Bush or the World Changed? that the big change is in the world. Oil prices are up, and the Islamoterrorists are killing Europeans, despite their trying to sit this war on terror out on the sidelines. They are slowly coming to the realization that it isn't the U.S. and our cowboy president the Islamoterrorists hate, but western society in general, and acting the innocent bystander only gets you targetted as being vulnerable.

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Iraq Announces 2nd Province Will Assume Control of Security Iraq Announces 2nd Province Will Assume Control of Security

Gateway Pundit: Iraq Announces 2nd Province Will Assume Control of Security

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Rove Secretly Runs The New York Times Rove Secretly Runs The New York Times

"In a stunning development that would appear to have broad implications for the independence of America's newspaper industry, New York Times Publisher, Edwin 'Pinch' Sulzberger today revealed that longtime President Bush advisor Karl Rove has been secretly running the Times' news and editorial operation for almost four years. For more on this important discovery, see:"RealClearPolitics - Articles - Rove Secretly Runs The New York Times.

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Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Russia and China Reconsidered Russia and China Reconsidered

Blankley has an article: RealClearPolitics - Articles - Russia and China Reconsidered where he questions our assumption that these two countries are our allies and whether we can depend on them for help with, for example, North Korea.

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Khalilzad on Iraq Khalilzad on Iraq

The Belmont Club has a copy of U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad's remarks at the CSIS on July 11 where he discusses the status of Iraq and its future.

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Bob Novak's role in the Plame leak probe Bob Novak's role in the Plame leak probe

Bob Novak comes clean in an article in the Chicago Sun Time titled:My role in the Plame leak probe after getting assurances from the special prosecutor that he would not be indicted. No big surprises for a lot of us. But of interest is his conclusion:
I learned Valerie Plame's name from Joe Wilson's entry in Who's Who in America.

I considered his wife's role in initiating Wilson's mission, later confirmed by the Senate Intelligence Committee, to be a previously undisclosed part of an important news story. I reported it on that basis.

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Monday, July 10, 2006

A Huge Step in Iraq A Huge Step in Iraq

An article in Real Clear Politics (RCP) titled: A Huge Step in Iraq applauds the turnover of all security in Muthanna province to the Iraqis:
Muthanna will be the first province [of 18] in Iraq to assume total control of its security forces: all mutlinational forces will withdraw from urban areas and take on a supporting role, while the local police will assume full responsibility and be under the direct control of Muthanna's governor. In addition to being another sign of slow but steady progress in Iraq, Muthanna also represents an important test case for the future transition of the rest of the country's security forces.

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Prager: How Liberals Injure Blacks Prager: How Liberals Injure Blacks

Dennis Prager in an article titled: How Liberals Injure Blacks points out that political correctness has gone to the point where whites are afraid of disagreeing with blacks, because if they do so, they fear being labeled as racists. It has gotten to the point where marketing surveys utilizing groups no longer include blacks - because when they do, everyone agrees with them. Prager goes on to opine on how this is not in their best interests.

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Day by Day on the NYT Day by Day on the NYT









Day by Day on the NYT.

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When in Doubt, Publish When in Doubt, Publish

WaPo article yesterday titled: When in Doubt, Publish by five J-school deans tries to draw the line on when papers should publish classified or sensitive information. Unfortunately for them, they give away the game by stating that one example of when a paper shouldn't publish was when Robert Novak disclosed that Valerie Plame helped get her husband, Wilson, his junket to Niger, after which he stated that Saddam Hussein had not acquired yellowcake there. Of course, that was never the issue, nor was that what he told his CIA debriefers. Instead, he told them that Saddam had talked trade with Niger, and their only relevant export was uranium. In other words, his report supported the position that Saddam was attempting to get yellowcake. Everyone knew that he had not succeeded.

Somehow though, this disclosure that Plame worked a desk at Langley impaired national security. Of course, no one has come up with a credible reason why. Nevertheless, these deans take it as proven. And never mind that the "backstory" behind Wilson's trip to Niger was significant news, in and by itself, implicating Plame and others at the CIA in an attempt to discredit the President and swing the 2004 presidential election towards his opponent.

On the other hand, apparently it was ok for the NYT, et al., to disclose highly classified, productive, NSA surveillance programs, as well as the covert assistance of allies in providing secret prisons for captures prisoners of war. Despite the obvious harm that all of these disclosures have caused to national security, apparently the public's right to know trumps the Administration's drive to protect the American people against another 9/11 type of terrorist attack.

The one thing that can be garnered from their attempt to draw the line here is that it is apparently ok to disclose highly classified or sensitive information as long as it harms the Administration, even if it impacts national security, but it isn't if it aids the Administration, even if it doesn't impact national security.

Both Cliff Kincaid in an article titled: The CIA Is Still After Bush and Christopher Hitchens in an article titled: Full Disclosure: Bring on the press revelations make the same point, only much more eloquently.

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Search of Wm. Jefferson's Congressional offices ok Search of Wm. Jefferson's Congressional offices ok

The District Court today rejected Wm. Jefferson's attacks on the search under warrant of his Congressional offices. See the decision by Chief Judge Thomas Hogan. The Speech and Debate Clause is primarily testimonial, and a search warrant is not testimonial (as opposed to a subpoena). Any attempt to introduce legislative material against him would be subject to exclusion. And the Separation of Powers argument fails, if for no other reason, because the execution of the search warrant requires the cooperation of the other two coequal branches of government.

The decision had a lot of great quotes, including:
Congressman Jefferson’s interpretation of the Speech or Debate privilege would have the effect of converting every congressional office into a taxpayer-subsidized sanctuary for crime. Such a result is not supported by the Constitution or judicial precedent and will not be adopted here. See Williamson v. United States, 28 S. Ct. at 167 (“[T]he laws of this country allow no place or employment as a sanctuary for crime.”)

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Iraq: The Next Crucial Battle of the War Iraq: The Next Crucial Battle of the War

Strategy Page is always a good source for what is really happening in Iraq. In an article titled: The Next Crucial Battle of the War, some of the complexities about the Shiite Death Squads, Sunni terrorists, and Shiite and Kurdish dominated security forces are discussed.

Briefly, what appears to be happening is that the Sunnis are blowing everyone up, the Shiite Death Squads are fairly quietly revenge killing Sunni Moslems, and the security forces have up until now sat mostly on the sidelines, not cracking down on the Shiite side of the mess. But this is apparenty changing, with the realization that the Sunni Moslems aren't going to seriously commit to the government until the Shiite Death Squads are shut down.

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Gitmo detainees appear to be using atty/client privilege to bypass security Gitmo detainees appear to be using atty/client privilege to bypass security

According to a WaPo article titled: Signs of Detainees' Planning Alleged, there appears to be a real possibility that the three recent suicides at GitMo were coordinated through abuse of the attorney/client privilege, and that this privilege may have been used by detainees there to hide information from their jailers and to pass it among them.

This is not a good thing. There have always been a small number of attorneys who have done this sort of thing in the civilian world. But there, the societal cost of this is outweighed by the good that the right to counsel provides. But here, we are talking people who are devoted to the destruction of our country, and will use anything at their disposal to accomplish that. And, because of that, the scales have to come down on the other side. This means that if what the article alleges turns out to be true, then the military at GitMo, etc., will justifiably be able to make significant intrusions into this privilege.

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Sunday, July 09, 2006

Dillon Amplitheater on July 4 Dillon Amplitheater on July 4

Dillon Amphitheater in the afternoon of the 4th of July. Earlier, it was full for a concert.
Looking SSW from amplitheater, Farmer's Corner can be seen at the end of Lake Dillon, with Breckenridge another 5 miles south of there.

Ten mile range seen looking WSW from amphitheater:

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Uh, oh Uh, oh


That is I (predicate nominative), accidently taken, upside down, while trying to figure out whether my camera was working. Apparently, it was. Those are my Maui Jim sunglasses.

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Town a trove of "Pirates" rumors Town a trove of "Pirates" rumors

DenverPost.com - Town a trove of "Pirates" rumors indicates that there are rampant rumors that Johnny Depp, the star of the just released "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest", may have moved to Evergreen (CO). We were able to see the movie the first day it was open, and so, today when I went into Bergan Park for grocery shopping, I kept my eyes open for Depp. No luck. But then, it was pointed out to me that this was precisely why he wouldn't be doing his own grocery shopping in the first place.

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Creeks rise, mountainsides fall Creeks rise, mountainsides fall

Another great Denver Post title: Creeks rise, mountainsides fall.
Same accident as before.

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DenverPost.com - Fairness for kids DenverPost.com - Fairness for kids

DenverPost.com - Fairness for kids (DPS spending needs rebalancing) utilizes some equations to definitively determine that the Denver Public Schools (DPS) needs to reallocate its money in order to be more fair to the kids in Denver. There is a saying in Computer Science for this: GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out).

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Climber finds rock where car was Climber finds rock where car was

Great Headline in today's Denver Post: Climber finds rock where car was.


This happened on U.S. 6 in Clear Creek canyon between Idaho Springs and Golden. I usually come this way, but stayed on I-70 yesterday instead, and apparently missed this.

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NYT business strategy NYT business strategy

An article in Pajamas Media titled: PThe Ever Widening Gap graphs the perforance of the NYT versus the S&P 500. It appears that the more the paper discloses classified information that harms our war on terror, etc., the worse their stock price does. The S&P 500 is up approximately 15% for the year, and the NYT, down almost 50%. This does not appear to be a winning business strategy for the NYT.

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Sunday, July 02, 2006

W(orst) W(orst)

I saw a bumper sticker the other day that had a big "W" and across the cross-arm of the W was "Worst". To, some extent, it reminded me of, for example, in a discussion at Althouse.com, being called "Brucey".

I couldn't decide if this implied wishful thinking or just a separation from reality. It is hard to imagine President Bush falling below, for example, Jimmy Carter, as a president. Carter managed to preside over stagflation, a malaise, and the Iranian embassy hostage crisis.

Rather, I suspect, when all the smoke settles, 30-50 years from now, Bush (43) will emerge as an almost near great president - maybe slightly below Reagan and Kennedy, and maybe Truman, in my lifetime, but above all the others. The economy is doing very well. There has been amazingly little corruption, and the president has been steady at the helm in this time of crisis.

If I were to pick an image to describe this president 50 years from now, I would probably pick the one where he is comforting that girl who lost a parent in the Twin Towers. My vision of Clinton is him playing that sax, with his pants possibly unzipped, while Rome burned.

And that is really what galls all those who put W(orst) stickers on their cars - Clinton, despite all his promise, IQ, etc., will, in the end, be rated significantly below Bush (43) as a president. Probably near the middle of the pack.

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The Power of Hillary The Power of Hillary

James Carville and Mark Penn make a point in the WaPo article titled: The Power of Hillary that the junior Senator from NY has a decent chance at winning the presidency if nominated. While I don't like the woman or much of what she stands for, I do agree with them 100%. One thing that she does have going for her is that she is considered strong, and that does sell in our 9/11 world.

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