Another John Stewart comedy masterstroke.

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Optimist Prime

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Bobby Jindal's Republican Response

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Perhaps it's time, evolutionary economists argue, to focus less on finding the best way to foresee the economic future and more on explaining how the economy works. That discovery may lie in modeling the economy as a complex system based upon the three core concepts of Darwinism: variation, selection, and inheritance. "We're not saying it's identical. We're not saying the mechanisms are the same," Hodgson says. "The key issue is whether there is an ontological similarity in terms of the structure of reality that crosses the two domains, that's similar in biology and similar in the economic sphere."

Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who has represented several detainees, describes the government's position on Bagram and Guantánamo as a distinction without a difference, and worries that by maintaining Bagram as a legal black hole for detainees, the Obama administration will continue to hold terror suspects indefinitely without trial, even if Gitmo is closed. "The fact is that since this first Supreme Court ruling upholding Gitmo detainee's access to habeas corpus," Hafetz explains, "the administration stopped bringing people to Guantánamo and started bringing them to Bagram. The population skyrocketed."

The above article (written by Adam Serwer for "The American Prospect") gives the impression that Obama will review all the Bush terror/torture policies and eventually reverse the many particularly egregious ones. The article also comes to the general conclusion that this will take time. Fair enough. But the Bush policies were so ghastly, I am going to continue to follow Obama's tract fairly closely in addition to his Green agenda (see the below post on his public support of "clean coal"). I generally support Obama and agree with the overall direction he is taking the country in his albeit short tenure, but I dislike the tendency I see in some of his supporters to not think critically of his policies.

If you don't understand why these issues are imperative for the future of this country and want to know more about the Bush admin. torture history... watch these movies. I've posted about them before. They are both awesome in a horrible way... or horrible in an awesome way.. yea.. the second one.

"And Maybe Unicorns Will Save Us"

Clean coal is very much like a unicorn: it doesn't exist.

ill bassline

 Madonna - Get Into The Groove

The Last Laugh - George Parr - Subprime - subtitulos
Uploaded by erioluk

With some human rights advocates charging that Obama is risking a "Bush redux," current administration officials emphasized to the Times that the policies are still under review and that dramatic changes need to be balanced with national security interests.

"The president is very sympathetic to those who want to find out what happened," Gregory Craig, the top White House lawyer told the Times, referring to a court case the former administration buried. "But he is also mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency."

above link is to New York Times article.

Above text is from a ProPublica article.

awesome

"It felt like a fresh and funny way to blow apart the done-to-death Jane Austen genre by literally dropping this alien into the middle of a costume drama, where he stalks and slashes to horrific effect,"

ole'

I love this man...

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This week, Justice Department lawyers announced that they'd continue to assert the state secrets argument made by the Bush administration in a lawsuit alleging that five men were tortured abroad in U.S.-run prisons.

In a separate case, the Obama Justice Department has agreed with the Bush administration — at least initially — that the news media shouldn't have immediate access to court records in the ongoing Guantanamo detainee litigation.

In another example, the administration on Wednesday told the American Civil Liberties Union that it needed more time to decide whether to release undisclosed Bush Justice Department memos that justified harsh interrogation practices. A federal judge already had given government lawyers more time in the matter, which has been pending for five years.

more on that...

In a new book, 'The Gamble', to be published Tuesday, Washington Post reporter Tom Ricks confirms an earlier report that in his initial encounter with Petraeus in Baghdad last July, Obama had made no effort to hide his sharp disagreement with the general's views. Obama interrupted a lecture by Petraeus, according to Ricks, and made it clear that, as president, he would need to take a broader strategic view of the issue than that of the commander in Iraq.

Ricks, who interviewed Petraeus about the meeting, writes that Obama's remarks "likely insulted Petraeus, who justly prides himself on his ability to do just that..." That strongly implies that Petraeus expressed some irritation at Obama over the incident to Ricks.

On top of the interest of Petraeus and other senior officers in keeping U.S. troops in Iraq for as long as possible, Petraeus has personal political interests at stake in the struggle over Iraq policy. He has been widely regarded as a possible Republican Presidential candidate in 2012.

Petraeus evidently believed the White House was promoting a story that made him look like the loser at the Jan. 21 meeting. "I imagine the White House is not too happy that this information is out there," said the military source, referring to the Petraeus account he had provided to IPS.

Obama is obviously treading warily in handling Petraeus. His concern about Petraeus's political ambitions may have been a factor in the decision to bring four-star Marine Corps Gen. James Jones in as his national security adviser.

"I've been told by a couple of people that one of the reasons for Jones being chosen was to have him there as a four-star to counter Petraeus," says one Congressional source.

Another really interesting NOVA special.

This NOVA special details the failure of the NSA to communicate with the FBI and CIA pre 9/11. It also briefly probes the question of FISA/warrant-less wiretapping without editorializing too much.

Nova special on fractals

All in all, the centrists’ insistence on comforting the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted will, if reflected in the final bill, lead to substantially lower employment and substantially more suffering.

...

Such are the perils of negotiating with yourself.

recently heard on KALX...

For love of the Limb-bough

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7 reasons to panic.

Indeed, the year 2009 is shaping up as a planetary Enron.