They are calling it the "space Woodstock" — but unlike the legendary 1960s pop festival, only one man got high.
Clever.
I've become a regular reader of the White House press briefings. They aren't quite as much fun as they were with Ari Fleischer, they still have good tidbits almost every day. Yesterday, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales' briefing on the administration's torture policy was no exception:
JUDGE GONZALES: I'm not going to get into a discussion about the internal deliberations of the White House. I can say that during this period of time there was a great deal of debate, over a period of days, maybe a period of a couple weeks, when the presidential determination was made, all the agencies had actually weighed-in very strongly.
Q With the President, personally?
JUDGE GONZALES: I believe so. But the equities of all the agencies were presented to the President, and they were before the President as he made his decision.
Q: And who did that, you?
JUDGE GONZALES: Again, I'm not going to talk about --
Q: Well, wait, I'm not sure I understand, why is that a difficult thing to discuss?
JUDGE GONZALES: It's not a difficult thing to discuss, it's just one that I don't choose to discuss.
Q: Why?
JUDGE GONZALES: I just don't.
Q: Why wouldn't that be helpful?
JUDGE GONZALES: We normally don't talk about the internal deliberations within the White House. I don't think that's appropriate.
In addition to the landmark space flight yesterday, The Supreme Court issued its ruling in Hiibel v. Nevada. In this case, a man — Hiibel — was standing beside a truck, and was asked to identify himself by police investigating a domestic dispute. Hiibel (who appeared intoxicated) refused, and following repeated requests by the officer for his identity, was arrested for failing to identify himself.
Stevens in his dissent is right on:
Surely police questioning during a Terry stop qualifies as an interrogation, and it follows that responses to such questions are testimonial in nature...
Given a proper understanding of the category of "incriminating" communications that fall within the Fifth Amendment privilege, it is clear that the disclosure of petitioner's identity is protected. The Court reasons that we should not assume that the disclosure of petitioner's name would be used to incriminate him or that it would furnish a link in a chain of evidence needed to prosecute him. But why else would an officer ask for it? And why else would the Nevada Legislature require its disclosure only when circumstances "reasonably indicate that the person has committed, is committing or is about to commit a crime?" If the court is correct, then petitioner's refusal to cooperate did not impede the police investigation. Indeed, if we accept the predicate for the Court's holding, the statute requires nothing more than a useless invasion of privacy. I think that, on the contrary, the Nevada Legislature intended to provide its police officers with a useful law enforcement tool, and that the very existence of the statute demonstrates the value of the information it demands. [emphasis added]
Fundamentally, the right against self-incrimination should prevent the state from compelling identification. There is also an additional principle at play. The Nevada statute requires a reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in a crime. However, this judgment is left to the state, and compelling individuals to identify themselves in public clearly represents a shift in individual privacy rights. A troubling shift indeed...
First Ronald Reagan, now Ray Charles, dead at 73.
If these things come in three, who's next?
The city is going a little crazy because of the Reagan funeral. Adding to the fun, today at work, we got evacuated.
Sweet.
I missed The Venusian transit of the sun. Celestial events like this, or Halley's Comet, which comes around every 76 years, are one of the few truly global events. All over the world, in countries of differing governments, ethnicities, and worldviews, people were watching Venus meander across the sun. It's like the olympics for the sky.
Except it only happens twice every 121.5 years, the last in 1882 (or so I'm told). Fortunately, I haven't necessarily missed my only shot, and will be watching the skies in 2012 to see a black dot on the sun. Or I'll forget about it while I'm getting dressed for work.
I got to operate the gun turret on a Hummer in Baghdad today and you didn't.
Well, I got to do this on a training simulator they brought to our offices.
Participating as the gunner on this daytime cruise through the Iraqi capital (complete with virtual "terrorists" firing RPGs), I first was afflicted with a moral conflict:
Hummer
By operating the gun, I had the opportunity to actually destroy other vehicles, thereby reducing the burden on global resources being caused by the driving of the vehicle. Of course, all of this took place on a very elaborate headset and was nothing more than a glorified video game.
I wonder about the efficacy of training on these ridiculously expensive simulators. While I believe it probably helps prepare our troops to patrol otherwise alien environments, is there an desensitization that takes place when war turns into a video game? If the guy in the Hummer behind me who kept shooting everything that moved — including me — is any indication, there just might be.
chabel.net sleeps all day
