Truth - it's right behind you! [Always get more than one pic.]

"Another Study Shows Widespread Prosecutorial Misconduct, Little Sanction | The Agitator"

Little galls me more than abuse of authority.

Another Study Shows Widespread Prosecutorial Misconduct, Little Sanction | The Agitator:

"...prosecutors are almost never sanctioned for misconduct, even egregious violations that lead to wrongful convictions."

Missed this/times are a changin' - "Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam."

BRAC is still going on, apparently.

The Associated Press: Historic Oahu military bases now a joint base:

"Two historic Oahu military bases have formally merged.

Naval Base Pearl Harbor and Hickam Air Force Base on Friday finished their consolidation to become one installation.

They're among 26 installations across the country that are combining to become 12 joint bases as the military strives to become more efficient."

"Have you seen this wizard?"

Now that's just funny.

Chris Evans, who's playing the new Captain America, is apparently just a super nice guy.

Bit of a long story, but he goes out of his way to make a little kid's day.  Just awesome. Click over to read through - CAPTAIN AMERICA: Chris "Nice Guy" Evans Takes Time out from Shooting CATFA to Answer a Fan

Text Wisdom. Bonus points for hailing from the 919 area code.

Texts From Last Night:

"(919): I'm going to write a letter. It's going to say, Dear Every Girl Ever: Take some goddam initiative and wake me up with a blowjob and I will eat out of your hand. Love, Every Guy Ever"

Of course - "New Documents Show Bush Administration Planned War in Iraq Well Before 9/11..."

New Documents Show Bush Administration Planned War in Iraq Well Before 9/11/2001 | Crooks and Liars:

"Newly declassified documents published at the National Security Archive prove beyond all reasonable doubt that the Bush administration planned to topple Saddam Hussein and invade Iraq as early as January, 2001, and were making strategic plans and resource allocations as early as November, 2001.

9/11 changed everything... some things... remarkably little, surprisingly.

Many, many links herein worth reading, some better than others, of course.  Critical thinking *ON* and sally forth - Did 9/11 Really "Change Everything"? → Washington's Blog

Take the red pill, go down the rabbit hole, etc, etc...

Framing isn't everything, but it is quite a bit.

Schneier on Security: Me on Cyberwar:

"[if we] frame this discussion as a war discussion, then what you do when there's a threat of war is you call in the military and you get military solutions. You get lockdown; you get an enemy that needs to be subdued. If you think about these threats in terms of crime, you get police solutions. And as we have this debate, not just on stage, but in the country, the way we frame it, the way we talk about it; the way the headlines read, determine what sort of solutions we want, make us feel better. And so the threat of cyberwar is being grossly exaggerated and I think it's being done for a reason."

Well played. He must be a Jesuit.

Suddenly liking Alton Brown even more.

'Cause that's just funny.  Iron Chef America GO!

Food Star Alton Brown Talks Sustainability - ecorazzi.com :: the latest in green gossip: "The fun-loving host is worried that food shows popularity have contributed to the obesity problem in America and explains, ”I’ve struggled with weight all my life, and probably always will. But I was on my most recent book tour I was shocked by the number of overweight families,” he says. “People would come up to me and say, ‘Oh, we love the Food Network.’ Well, no (expletive); did you eat the TV? There’s only four of you and you can’t ride in an elevator together. I’ll probably make fat people angry, but we need, as a culture, to be ashamed. It’s not “… healthy.”"

Obama as bad as worse than Bush on civil liberties, state secrets, executive power.

You know, most are up in arms over economic issues, but I have to say it's the civil liberties, torture, assassination, executive power & state secrets issues that have most profoundly disappointed me. Shame on me for buying some of the rhetoric on hope/change/ending the wars/closing Gitmo/etc.

Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:

"At this point, I didn't believe it was possible, but the Obama administration has just reached an all-new low in its abysmal civil liberties record. In response to the lawsuit filed by Anwar Awlaki's father asking a court to enjoin the President from assassinating his son, a U.S. citizen, without any due process, the administration late last night,according to The Washington Post, filed a brief asking the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the claims. That's not surprising: both the Bush and Obama administrations have repeatedly insisted that their secret conduct is legal but nonetheless urge courts not to even rule on its legality. But what's most notable here is that one of the arguments the Obama DOJ raises to demand dismissal of this lawsuit is "state secrets": in other words, not only does the President have the right to sentence Americans to death with no due process or charges of any kind, but his decisions as to who will be killed and why he wants them dead are "state secrets," and thus no court may adjudicate their legality."

Tyranny | The Agitator:

"There are no mitigating factors, here. Obama is arguing the executive has the power to execute American citizens without a trial, without even so much as an airing of the charges against them, and that it can do so in complete secrecy, with no oversight from any court, and that the families of the executed have no legal recourse."

Sullivan's defense of presidential assassinations - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:

"During the Bush-era torture debates, I was never able to get past my initial incredulity that we were even having a 'debate' over whether the President has the authority to torture people. Andrew Sullivan has responded to some of the questions I posed about his defense of Obama's assassination program, and I realize now that throughout this whole assassination debate, specific legal and factual issues aside, my overarching reaction is quite similar: I actually can't believe that there is even a 'debate' over whether an American President -- without a shred of due process or oversight -- has the power to compile hit lists of American citizens whom he orders the CIA to kill far away from any battlefield. The notion that the President has such an unconstrained, unchecked power is such a blatant distortion of everything our political system is supposed to be -- such a pure embodiment of the very definition of tyrannical power -- that, no matter how many times I see it, it's still hard for me to believe there are people willing to expressly defend it."

Assassinations Done Wrong - Reason Magazine:

"At the risk of sounding melodramatic, I just wonder: If a president—any president—has the authority to order the assassination of a U.S. citizen without oversight, what exactly can't a president do?

Now, as a matter of foreign policy, I am quite comfortable when Islamic extremists, militants, and terrorists meet their atomized ends through the work of unmanned flying contraptions operated remotely by the U.S. government.

Then again, I can also unequivocally state that the thought of an American citizen's being placed on one of these terrorist hit lists without due process of law or any oversight is one that I find disconcerting.

My unease over the case of Anwar Awlaki—an American citizen penciled in for targeted assassination by the Obama administration—isn't based on any conspiratorial daydreams about Barack Obama's wanting to randomly knock off citizens. There is no doubt, in fact, that Awlaki is a despicable character, a member of radical Islamic networks, dangerous, and deserving of a gruesome fate.

In other words, the administration has a straightforward case to make. Yet when Awlaki's father asked a court to enjoin the president from killing his despicable son, the administration asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit without hearing the merits of the case by invoking "state secrets."

With that, the Obama administration argued that the president should be empowered to order the execution of a U.S. citizen—outside a war zone and without exhibiting an imminent threat to other citizens—without any oversight from the judicial or legislative branch of government. And by using the protection-of-state-secrets argument, the administration is also asserting that the public has no right to know why."

Happiness is a cleared inbox. [OCD is a disease, people.]

Made of Awesome - "Cee Lo Green - FUCK YOU (Official Video)."

Understanding Yahweh.

Understanding that "...one set of footprints" poster.

Overheard in Liberia - "There were rumors that the Mandigos were attacking..."

You know, growing up a young man in NC, not a phrase I'd have expected to ever hear in conversation.  Just goes to show ya.

And, you know, that's Mandingo in the sense of the ethnic group in West Africa [also, Mandinka] NOT the eponymous blaxploitation film of the 1970s starring Ken Norton.

Hat tip, of course, to the ubiquitous "Overheard in..." blogs and Anonymous Country's Overheard in Monrovia series.

"Sometimes the watermark is the most important part of the picture."

I win - "Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion, survey says."

Self evident and obvious. If, you know, paying attention.

Atheists, agnostics most knowledgeable about religion, survey says - latimes.com:

"If you want to know about God, you might want to talk to an atheist.

Heresy? Perhaps. But a survey that measured Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists and agnostics knew more, on average, than followers of most major faiths. In fact, the gaps in knowledge among some of the faithful may give new meaning to the term "blind faith."

A majority of Protestants, for instance, couldn't identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation, according to the survey, released Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Four in 10 Catholics misunderstood the meaning of their church's central ritual, incorrectly saying that the bread and wine used in Holy Communion are intended to merely symbolize the body and blood of Christ, not actually become them.

Atheists and agnostics -- those who believe there is no God or who aren't sure -- were more likely to answer the survey's questions correctly. Jews and Mormons ranked just below them in the survey's measurement of religious knowledge -- so close as to be statistically tied.

So why would an atheist know more about religion than a Christian?

[This, all day. - Rob] - American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

"These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education.

The groups at the top of the U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey were followed, in order, by white evangelical Protestants, white Catholics, white mainline Protestants, people who were unaffiliated with any faith (but not atheist or agnostic), black Protestants and Latino Catholics..."

"I'd love to understand chaos, but the world is full of hidden variables."