Magpie

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Cat blogging.

Nope, it's not Friday. And these aren't my cats. But isn't this just the best cat piccie you've seen in ages?

Hungry kitties

Mom definitely needs to throw one of the kids out on his/her own, methinks.

Via Factum.

More: Our housemate M suggests that there might be more than meets the eye in the photo above. According to M, the big kitten might not be related to the momcat, in which case something kinky is going on. That M is so suspicious.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:53 AM | Get permalink

Friday, January 27, 2006

The US military continues to be a shining example of human rights in Iraq.

From an AP report earlier today:

The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of "leveraging" their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him "to come get his wife."

What really puts these actions into perspective is this Iraqi government response to a human rights activist's charge that women are being used as hostages by US and Iraqi forces:

Iraq's deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim Ali, dismissed such claims, saying hostage-holding was a tactic used under the ousted Saddam Hussein dictatorship, and "we are not Saddam."

It looks to this magpie like someone still thinks they're Saddam.

If you don't believe the AP report, you might want to read the US military's documents on the subject of women prisoners. The ACLU has obtained the documents via an FOIA request, and has posted them here and here.

More: Knight Ridder's Washington Bureau has a considerably more detailed version of the story.

| | Posted by Magpie at 6:19 PM | Get permalink

Thursday, January 26, 2006

All those illegal wiretaps in the US.

You know, the thousands of warrantless National Security Agency wiretaps that Dubya authorized shortly after the 9/11 attacks? The ones that are so critical to defending the US against the threat of terrorism?

I suppose that I could wonder what information could be so important that Dubya felt that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [FISA] tied his hands. I mean, the FISA court set up by this law has received thousands of requests for wiretaps in the last quarter century. And out of those thousands of request, it's said No to the feds only four times. And the damn FISA law even allows the government to wiretap for 72 hours before bothering to get clearance from the court. Under FISA, the feds practically get wiretapping on demand. And still Dubya thinks the law is too restrictive?

But I'm not going to make that argument against the prez's illegal wiretapping program. Instead, I'll let Dubya's administration hang itself — it's way more fun that way.

A July 2002 Justice Department statement to a Senate committee appears to contradict several key arguments that the Bush administration is making to defend its eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without court warrants.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law governing such operations, was working well, the department said in 2002. A "significant review" would be needed to determine whether FISA's legal requirements for obtaining warrants should be loosened because they hampered counterterrorism efforts, the department said then....

In its 2002 statement, the Justice Department said it opposed a legislative proposal to change FISA to make it easier to obtain warrants that would allow the super-secret National Security Agency to listen in on communications involving non-U.S. citizens inside the United States.

So less than a year after the 9/11 attacks — at a time when the real danger of terrorist action against the US was far greater than it is now — Dubya's administration thought that the existing laws protected the country just fine. There was no need, the feds said, for FISA to be expanded to allow a wiretapping program much like the one that Dubya had secretly and illegally authorized almost a year earlier.

I wish I could say that this level of duplicity is a surprise.

Via Knight Ridder Washington Bureau.

[And make sure to check out the original Glenn Greenwald blog post that Knight Ridder used as the basis for its story. You'll find it here.]

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:02 PM | Get permalink

Is Dubya getting too big for his britches?

Does the prez's claim that he is above the law cause you to lose sleep at night? Are you afraid that the next wiretap he orders will be on your phone?

Well, worry no more. Let those Fafblog kids put your mind at ease:

Q. Can the president eat a baby?
A. If that baby has suspected ties to al Qaeda, then it's the president's duty to eat it - for the sake of national security.
Q. The president doesn't want to eat sweet, delicious babies. He just wants to protect America from the growing threat of a rogue baby insurgency.
A. Exactly. And nobody will have more compassion for that succulent baby barbecue than him.
Q. How many non-terrorist babies would it be acceptible for the president to accidentally eat in the course of enforcing a rigorous terrorist baby-eating program?
A. First of all, the president would never ever eat a baby unless it was reasonably suspected to be affiliated with possible terroresque program activities. Second of all, do we really wanna start tyin the president's hands when he's tryin to protect everybody from jihadist babies? They could be Islamifying our country's drool supply as we speak!

Via Fafblog.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:53 PM | Get permalink

Science marches on.

Meet the Thumb Thing.

How did we ever live without it?

If your thumb is itchin' for a Thumb Thing of its own, you can buy one here. And you can find out more than you wanted to know about the Thumb Thing if you head right over here.

Via Kevin Kelly.

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:25 PM | Get permalink

The editorial 'We.'

It's history — at least in term of posts here at Magpie.

Since I works so well for everyone else, it should do just fine for a corvid, don't you think?

| | Posted by Magpie at 8:11 PM | Get permalink