Archive for October 14th, 2005


Pardon me

Bob Morris @ Oct 14th 2005 14:46 - Category: Unfiled ;

From Sue:

Everybody’s buzzing on the reason for Harriet Miers.

To me, it’s a very rational decision tree:

Does Bush need to appoint a new Supreme Court Justice?
No –> Stop. Yes –> Next question.

Does Bush need to appoint a token?
No —> Appoint a white neocon male. Yes –> Next question.

Might the token be anglo?
No –> Appoint an ethnic/non-white neocon male. Yes –> Next question.

Might Bush, Cheney, & Company: (a) be facing indictment; and,
therefore (b) be facing resignation rather than face a Senate
impeachment?
No –> Appoint a highly qualified white neocon female. Yes –> Next question.

Might a blanket pardon by Bush, prior to impeachment proceedings being
brought by the Senate, result in a legal challenge by Congress, which
would be brought to the Supreme Court?
No –> You must be kidding me. Yes –> Next question.

Where can we find a loyal white neocon female, who has never been a
judge and therefore does not have a body of rulings demonstrating her
integrity? Because we really really need a pal on the Supreme
Court.

Of course, those in the legal profession would laugh at my
reasoning. How little I know about the process of law! To
which I would reply, how little does George Bush know? I believe
he’s thinking in bowling terms: Nine justices = ten pins.
Got to worry about that “Big Five” split — he needs him a “love tap”
to pick up a “spare.”

Or maybe I’m crazy.

PS Pitt School of Law has an extensive section on Presidential pardons.

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White House stops denying Rove/Cheney involved in CIA leak

Bob Morris @ Oct 14th 2005 12:46 - Category: Unfiled ;

The
White House has shifted from categorical denials two years ago that
Rove or Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis ‘Scooter’
Libby, were involved in the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity to ‘no comment’ today.

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Where are the Democrats

Bob Morris @ Oct 14th 2005 10:36 - Category: Unfiled ;

DeLay’s been indicted, and deservedly so. Rove is testifying to the
grand jury again. Frist got subpoenaed. The Miers nomination has
created a firestorm of protest. Plamegate may well take down the Bush
Adminstration.

So where are the Democrats? Oh dear, they squeak, if we protest Miers,
then Dubya might appoint someone even worse so let’s creep back into
our little mouse holes and say nothing.

On Plamegate and the indictments engulfing Dubya, they are equally timid
and gutless. Are there any Democrats in Congress who are pointblank
attacking BushCo for their sleaze and amoral actions? Not that I know of.

Iraq. Yes little Timmy, back in the Vietnam War, there were
Democrats who gave speeches on Senate floor denouncing loudly that
illegal, insane war. Where are they now? Snoozing at their desks, or
more likely, equally supportive of that war, a war that enhances their
class interests and wallets, while shafting the rest of us.

“They’ve
got a set of Republican waiters on one side and a set of Democratic
waiters on the other side, but no matter which set of waiters brings
you the dish, the legislative grub is all prepared in the same Wall
Street kitchen.” — Huey Long

It’s time for some serious rabble-rousing populism in the country. And
it might well ignite where it did before - also in the aftermath of a killer
hurricane - in Louisiana. May it spread.

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Note to self: clean out garage

Bob Morris @ Oct 14th 2005 10:33 - Category: Unfiled ;

A
librarian at an evangelical seminary near Philadelphia has made one of
the most important musicological finds in memory — because she decided
to clean out a dirty cabinet in the building’s basement.



Heather Carbo has unearthed Beethoven’s manuscript score for a piano version of his Grosse Fuge, a work with almost mythical status
in the music world. It had been hidden away and forgotten on a bottom
shelf at the Palmer Theological Seminary, in the suburbs of the city.



“I was just in a state of shock,” Ms Carbo said.

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Pinter: Torture and misery in name of freedom

Bob Morris @ Oct 14th 2005 07:48 - Category: Unfiled ;

From The Independent, by Harold Pinter who yesterday won the Nobel Prize for Literature

The great poet
Wilfred Owen articulated the tragedy, the horror - and indeed the pity
- of war in a way no other poet has. Yet we have learnt nothing. Nearly
100 years after his death the world has become more savage, more
brutal, more pitiless.

But the “free world” we are told, as embodied in the United States and
Great Britain, is different to the rest of the world since our actions
are dictated and sanctioned by a moral authority and a moral passion
condoned by someone called God. Some people may find this difficult to
comprehend but Osama Bin Laden finds it easy.

What would Wilfred Owen make of the invasion of Iraq? A bandit act, an
act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the
concept of International Law. An arbitrary military action inspired by
a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and
therefore of the public. An act intended to consolidate American
military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a
last resort (all other justifications having failed to justify
themselves) - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force
responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands upon thousands of
innocent people.

More

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Something wormy this way comes

Bob Morris @ Oct 14th 2005 07:46 - Category: Unfiled ;

From the always excellent WindowsSecrets newsletter (free version available.)

Our team of Windows
experts predicts that a serious worm attack will blaze across the
Internet soon. This is due to a security hole that Microsoft announced
on Oct. 11.

The remedy is a patch called MS05-051. It’s one of 8 the Redmond
company released on its regular Patch Tuesday schedule. All of these
patches may be significant to you. But it’s particularly important that
Windows XP users upgrade to Service Pack 2 (if you already haven’t) and
that users of Windows 2000, XP, and other versions install MS05-051 to
protect against the oncoming malware.

This hole is so easy to exploit that those in the know are moving quickly.

Start/All Programs/Windows Update. Do it now. WindowsSecrets is not given to false announcements.

By the way, one of the best way to avoid attacks in Windows is to use
Internet Explorer as little as possible. It has security holes and it
is frequently targetted. I use Firefox and Opera instead. They are more
secure and less attacked.

Mac users: Feel free to post your usual ‘why don’t you just switch to a Mac’ thoughts!.

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Blog news

Bob Morris @ Oct 14th 2005 07:40 - Category: Unfiled ;


Google introduces a RSS reader.

It’s easy to use, powerful, with a well thought out interface. You can
import subscriptions lists via OPML too, I imported my 88 subscriptions
from Radio (the software this blog runs on) into Google in about 10
seconds..

Scoble jumps from Radio to Wordpress

Microsoft uber-blogger Robert Scoble has moved from Radio to Wordpress,
something I’m thinking of doing too. Radio has some amazing features
yet when it gets confused it really gets confused. I’ve almost lost
this blog twice because of Radio hiccups. Wordpress, from what I can
tell, has no such problems, and has a huge fast-growing user base, lots
of add-ons, and it’s open source.

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