Today's Cool News

Tom and Naomi

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080714/brave5_video

Good Work Brewster

Brewster Kahle remains one of the smartest people I've ever met. 

Now it turns out the founder of the Internet Archive is the winner in a legal challenge with the U.S Government. 

From the EFF:

The FBI has withdrawn an unconstitutional national security letter (NSL) issued to the Internet Archive after a legal challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). As the result of a settlement agreement, the FBI withdrew the NSL and agreed to the unsealing of the case, finally allowing the Archive's founder to speak out for the first time about his battle against the record demand.

"The free flow of information is at the heart of every library's work. That's why Congress passed a law limiting the FBI's power to issue NSLs to America's libraries," said Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive. "While it's never easy standing up to the government -- particularly when I was barred from discussing it with anyone -- I knew I had to challenge something that was clearly wrong. I'm grateful that I am able now to talk about what happened to me, so that other libraries can learn how they can fight back from these overreaching demands."

The NSL was served on the Archive -- a digital library recognized by the state of California -- and its attorneys in November of 2007. The letter asked for personal information about one of the Archive's users, including the individual's name, address, and any electronic communication transactional records pertaining to the user. Kahle, who is also a member of EFF's Board of Directors, decided to fight the NSL because it exceeded the FBI's limited authority to issue such demands to libraries.

Finally Barney Frank Proves Useful for Something

Now NORML is picking up on Barney Frank's appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher:

Direct Link

From the NORML Blog:

Yes indeed, for the first time in more than two decades, we will shortly have legislation in Congress that, if enacted, would end the federal prosecution of adult marijuana consumers!Based on the recommendations of the 1972 National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (also known as the Shafer Commission), this proposal would eliminate all federal penalties prohibiting the personal use and possession of up to 100 grams (3 ½ ounces) of marijuana. Under our measure, adults who consume cannabis would no longer face arrest, prison, or even the threat of a civil fine. In addition, this bill eliminates all penalties prohibiting the not-for-profit transfers of up to one ounce of pot. In short, for the first time since 1937, the possession, use, and non-profit transfer of marijuana for personal use by adults would be legal under federal law!

Sure, I can make do with less than a QP.

Advice from Uncle Binnie

Current affairs got you down?  Tired of hearing the same old tired opinions from the blowhard pundits about Obama's preacher or Geraldine Ferraro or Eliot Spitzer or any of the other names in the news these days?

Well you're in luck because soon we will be enjoying the wit and wisdom of Uncle Binnie.  Not sure if we'll be saying "Hey Man, Ayman"... but this is a message you'll want to see and not hear whateverthefuck that means.

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is expected to release a new message within the next two days, the U.S.-based terrorism monitoring service SITE Institute said on Wednesday.

The message is entitled, "The Response Will Be What You See, Not What You Hear," SITE said in a release.

It said an announcement of the pending message was posted on Wednesday, the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, by the administrator of the al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Ekhlaas Internet forum.

       

This is more exciting than getting a sneak peak at John Hagee's next rant.

Whatever happened to Ayman's offer to answer our questions?  It seems he doesn't want to be rushed.

Horton Hears a Who Cares?

The one time I met Ted Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, I asked him a rather political question about why kids who read his books when they're young end up borderline illiterate by high school.  He said to me, "You've opened up a whole can of peas there and I would rather not get into it."

That exchange makes more sense to me today in light of the quotes from Ted's widow in this piece about Anti-abortion rights wackos showing up at the premiere of Horton Hears a Who. 

From Kim Masters in Slate:

Your Hollywoodland correspondent attended the glamorous premiere of Horton Hears a Who! last Saturday and was present when protesters started yelling shortly after Horton uttered his famous motto: "A person's a person, no matter how small."

We could not understand what was being shouted and thought perhaps that Seth Rogen or one of the other many vocal talents in the film was expressing love for Dr. Seuss' elephant and his signature line. But as you may have read elsewhere, anti-abortion activists had infiltrated the theater. Afterward, they handed out fliers designed to look like tickets.

None of this sat well with Audrey Geisel, widow of Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel), who attended the screening. So did Karl ZoBell, the lawyer who represents her and who has represented the interests of Dr. Seuss for some 40 years.

(snip)

ZoBell says it would be nice if these people came up with their own material. But if they don't go too far—by copping the illustrations, for example—they can use a line like "A person's a person, no matter how small," even if it wouldn't have pleased Dr. Seuss. And it wouldn't have. The Geisels were opposed to using the Dr. Seuss books for any political agenda.

Some anti-abortion Web sites claim that Audrey is a supporter of Planned Parenthood. ZoBell says he's never discussed the issue of abortion with her and can't confirm that.

McCain and the Bored Agains

Now that John McCain officially has the time to try to put together a strategy for November, the left is all of a sudden noticing the views of mainstream fundies.  I guess Huckabee had too much "aww shucks" about him to make people take a close look at the doctrinal issues.

So Right Wing Watch puts out a piece today that includes a video about McCain declaring Rod Parsley his "Spiritual Advisor" and highlighting some of the "shocking views" of this rather run of the mill televangelist.

The thing is I don't find any of this all that shocking or surprising. Other than the God wants you to have an airplane thing, the political views he expresses seem to me pretty boilerplate stuff from a right wing televangelist. I suppose the key question is whether anyone believes McCain actually believes this stuff. I suspect not but I adopt cynical poses at times. In case you hadn't noticed.

More Proof the War in Iraq Has Nothing to Do with Corporate Profits

Have you heard about the latest part of the new Bush stimulus package?  Let's sell some weapons to the Iraqis.  That should guarantee some American jobs.. and what are the Iraqis going to say, "No, we don't want your weapons."???

From Military.com:

In a move that could be the most enduring imprint of U.S. influence in the Arab world, American military officials in Baghdad have begun a crash program to outfit the entire Iraqi army with M-16 rifles.

The initiative marks a sharp break for a culture steeped in the traditions of the Soviet-era AK-47 Kalashnikov assault rifle, a symbol of revolutionary zeal and third-world simplicity that is ubiquitous among the militaries of the Middle East.

"We in the U.S. know that the M-16 is superior to the AK ... it's more durable," said Army Col. Stephen Scott, who's in charge of helping the Iraqi army get all the equipment it needs to outfit its forces.

"The Iraqis have embraced that ... and the fact that it is U.S. manufactured and supplied. They are very big on U.S.-produced [foreign military sales] materials," he said in an interview with military bloggers this month.

So far, the U.S. military has helped the Iraqi army purchase 43,000 rifles - a mix of full-stock M-16A2s and compact M-4 carbines. Another 50,000 rifles are currently on order, and the objective is to outfit the entire Iraqi army with 165,000 American rifles in a one-for-one replacement of the AK-47.

(snip)

A system that registers each rifle with the individual who receives it using biometric data such as thumb prints and eye scans is meant to address concerns over U.S. weapons winding up in enemy hands. A July 2007 Government Accountability Office report concluded that as many as 190,000 weapons delivered to the Iraqi army were not accounted for and could've wound up in terrorist caches.

Christopher Hitchens, A British Atheist "We Can Believe In!"

As everyone (especially my hero Christopher Hitchens) knows, the first rule of good writing is to "Avoid Cliche's like the Plague."

So that's why I'm so thrilled to see Hitchens today in Slate excoriating the dull-mindedness of what gets our politicians attention these days.

It is cliché, not plagiarism, that is the problem with our stilted, room-temperature political discourse. It used to be that thinking people would say, with at least a shred of pride, that their own convictions would not shrink to fit on a label or on a bumper sticker. But now it seems that the more vapid and vacuous the logo, the more charm (or should that be "charisma"?) it exerts. Take "Yes We Can," for example. It's the sort of thing parents might chant encouragingly to a child slow on the potty-training uptake.

(snip)

Pretty soon, we should be able to get electoral politics down to a basic newspeak that contains perhaps 10 keywords: Dream, Fear, Hope, New, People, We, Change, America, Future, Together. Fishing exclusively from this tiny and stagnant pool of stock expressions, it ought to be possible to drive all thinking people away from the arena and leave matters in the gnarled but capable hands of the professional wordsmiths and manipulators. In the new jargon, certain intelligible ideas would become inexpressible. (How could one state, for example, the famous Burkean principle that many sorts of change ought to be regarded with skepticism?) In a rather poor trade-off for this veto on complexity, many views that are expressible (and "We the People Together Dream of and Hope for New Change in America" would be really quite a long sentence in the latest junk language) will, in turn, be entirely and indeed almost beautifully unintelligible.

Hear! Hear!

But Can She See the Road Through the Veil?

We're not sure if Mohammed allowed his womenfolk to ride on camels, but women these days still can't drive in Saudi Arabia.  That could soon be changing thanks to rulings from two of the kingdom's top clerics.

From Arab News:

A well-regarded Saudi religious scholar said that there is nothing in Islamic law that bans women from driving and that the fatwas issued in this regard are based on individual judgments.

“In principle women driving is permitted in Islam,” said Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Al-Obaikan, a member of the Kingdom’s Council of Senior Islamic Scholars.

(snip)

He said if certain issues are resolved, such as the problem of men’s behavior and traffic safety, then he sees no religiously motivated conflict with women driving.

Sheikh Mehsin Al-Awaji, another prominent religious scholar in the Kingdom, agreed. “No religious scholar is going to tell you differently,” he said. “But (the issue of) women driving comes as a ‘package’ and we need to fix the ‘package’ before making the decision (to allow women to drive).”

Expanding on the idea that allowing women to drive in Saudi Arabia comes with a “package” of issues, Al-Awaji said there needs to be Saudi women working as police officers, mechanics and other positions. The sheikh diminished the significance of women driving, saying that myriad social reforms have higher priority, even in the realm of empowering women or encouraging public participation in important social challenges.

To me this is at the heart of what's wrong with the cultural aspects of Islam. (We'll leave the spiritual aspects for another time.)  Women are deprived of rights not because they're doing something wrong but because it's easier to restrict women's rights than it is to train men to behave decently when they see a woman's face or a woman driver or anything else that shocks their sensibilities.

Islam seems to me to be based on the principle of men are so wild an unable to control our passions that the only two possibilities are sexual mayhem or complete enforced control of behavior.

Show Support for Long Haired Kids! Hooray for Matthew Lopez-Widish

Update 3:

I took my fight for Matthew to KRON4 television in San Francisco today:

----------------------------------------------

Update2:

I just wrote Matthew through his MySpace to congratulate him on getting to transfer.  With his permission, I'm quoting his response to me.

Thank you Brian. Even though I am attending another school that will allow me to have my hair down, or up, which ever I prefer, I will still fight against Kerens. What they are doing is wrong. There is a prison in Texas that allows prisoners to have long hair...Kerens has stricter rules then a prison. To me, that's down right wrong. Teachers and admin. are supposed to show us how to accept different people, not tell them "Your different and because of that, you won't be as successful in life." I had a teacher who I really liked, I was helping direct the play, and was the lead in it, the teacher told me if I didn't conform to what Kerens wanted, I wouldn't get any recommendations for scholarships or colleges because of all this. Nice to see how people can turn. I thank you for your support Brian, I will continue to fight for the right that us kids and adults deserve.

I have a feeling we're going to be hearing good things from Matthew in the future.  Good for him.

Brian

--------------------------------
UPDATE:  Happy Ending!!!

From the Dallas Morning News:

Matthew Lopez-Widish, one of five students suspended from Kerens High School for not cutting their hair, has transferred to another high school that will allow him to wear his hair down.

After a disciplinary hearing at the Kerens ISD campus today, Matthew will attend Trinidad School, which is in another school district and about nine miles east of his current high school in Navarro County.

"They actually said he could wear his hair down," said Linda Lopez, Matthew's mom.

Whatever punishment Kerens ISD hands down, Trinidad School will have to honor all or part of it, Mrs. Lopez said. Kerens ISD Superintendent Kevin Stanford said last week that the students could face alternative school until they cut their hair.

Another student who was suspended, Derek Divetta, said he was thinking about following Matthew to Trinidad School. He still was considering the decision with his dad Wednesday night.

"I'm going to say that there's a good chance that I will transfer," he said.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, here's a story that's really making me mad.  Have we really not accomplished anything over the last 40 years when guys are still getting suspended from school for having long hair?

We need to start a movement to show support for Matthew Lopez-Widish and his friends in Kerens, Texas... not too far from Corsicana, home of the world's largest fruitcake factory.  I ain't makin' this up.

From the Dallas Morning News

KERENS, Texas – Matthew Lopez-Widish hasn't cut his curly brown hair in four years, and he doesn't plan to despite an ultimatum from high school administrators.

Matthew Lopez-Widish was told by Kerens officials to cut his hair before returning to classes, per the policy that forbids male students from having hair that extends past the collar.

A few days before Christmas break at Kerens High School, about 15 miles east of Corsicana in a tiny town known as the birthplace of Big Tex, the straight-A student and at least four other students were called into the principal's office.

Cut your hair by the time you return to school in January or be sent to alternative school, be removed from all extracurricular activities and risk not graduating, Matthew said the principal and assistant principal told him.

Classes in the Kerens district resume today.

"I told them that I'm not going to cut my hair," said Matthew, 18, whose hair, when uncurled, reaches the middle of his back. "It may seem kind of stubborn, but to me, it's part of who I am."

Matthew says that his rights are being stripped and that he's going to take his concerns to the school board meeting Monday.

"I just want the school board to notice that just because I have long hair doesn't mean I'm going to quit learning or obstructing people from learning," Matthew said.

There's some excellent video coverage of this from KXAS

From his Myspace Page, it appears he's an AC/DC fan.

If you think this sucks as much as I do, contact the Kerens High School District. at:

Kerens Independent School District
P. O. Box 310, 200 Bobcat Lane
Kerens, TX  75144-0310
Telephone:  (903) 396-2924
Fax:  (903) 396-2334
webmaster email admin@kerens.k12.tx.us

Seriously folks, of all the challenges facing American education today, why are we even talking about long hair other than schools are still more about power play mind games with kids than about actually educating them.