"Ours is a government of laws, not of men."

A Small Editorial About Recent Events:

"The President claims he has the prerogative to order such surveillance. The law unambiguously disagrees with him.

There are minor exceptions in the law, but they clearly do not apply in this case. They cover only the 15 days after a declaration of war by congress, a period of 72 hours prior to seeking court authorization (which was never sought), and similar exceptions that clearly are not germane.

There is no room for doubt or question about whether the President has the prerogative to order surveillance without asking the FISC -- even if the FISC is a toothless organization that never turns down requests, it is a federal crime, punishable by up to five years imprisonment, to conduct electronic surveillance against US citizens without court authorization.

The FISC may be worthless at defending civil liberties, but in its arrogant disregard for even the fig leaf of the FISC, the administration has actually crossed the line into a crystal clear felony. The government could have legally conducted such wiretaps at any time, but the President chose not to do it legally.

Ours is a government of laws, not of men. That means if the President disagrees with a law or feels that it is insufficient, he still must obey it. Ignoring the law is illegal, even for the President. The President may ask Congress to change the law, but meanwhile he must follow it.

Our President has chosen to declare himself above the law, a dangerous precedent that could do great harm to our country. However, without substantial effort on the part of you, and I mean you, every person reading this, nothing much is going to happen. The rule of law will continue to decay in our country. Future Presidents will claim even greater extralegal authority, and our nation will fall into despotism. I mean that sincerely. "

"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!"

No.

Shit.

College students not alone in dangerous drinking - Yahoo! News:

"Though getting drunk is often seen as a traditional college pastime, other young adults, particularly men, have similarly high rates of potentially hazardous drinking, new research shows."

And let's not forget about the Druids and the evergreens... Yeah, that's right. I want a war on Christmas.

History Channel - Christmas:

"In Rome, where winters were not as harsh as those in the far north, Saturnalia—a holiday in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture—was celebrated. Beginning in the week leading up to the winter solstice and continuing for a full month, Saturnalia was a hedonistic time, when food and drink were plentiful and the normal Roman social order was turned upside down.

...Also around the time of the winter solstice, Romans observed Juvenalia, a feast honoring the children of Rome. In addition, members of the upper classes often celebrated the birthday of Mithra, the god of the unconquerable sun, on December 25. It was believed that Mithra, an infant god, was born of a rock. For some Romans, Mithra's birthday was the most sacred day of the year.

...the Bible does not mention date for his birth (a fact Puritans later pointed out in order to deny the legitimacy of the celebration). Although some evidence suggests that his birth may have occurred in the spring (why would shepherds be herding in the middle of winter?), Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date in an effort to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival. "

Reality is Open Source. Seriously.

PopImage:

"Freedom is possible. Absolutely. If you exist on the landscape of command and control, then it's not possible. But if you exist in service to life then nothing can touch you. Exodus is about just such a liberation from mental slavery. It's economic, cultural, and spiritual. The key is to smash the idols - desecrate them - in order to respect life and one another instead of death.

I've corresponded with a lot of people in jail who are more free than some of the millionaires I've met.

...I suppose the dirty little secret - or happy little secret - is that all my writing really has the same intention: to help people see that our reality is an open source proposition, and up for modification."

"The people who seem to have a monopoly on the Bible right now are basically insane."

PopImage:

"The people who seem to have a monopoly on the Bible right now are basically insane. Truly. They're nuts, and believe really outrageous things about creation and judgment. Even our President believes this really bizarre stuff - on the order of Santa Claus myths, but dark and damning.

The problem is when we surrender the most potent mythology developed this side of the Euphrates to those folks. Sure, we still have our Star Wars and Matrix, but the Bible was written over many centuries, and holds open the door to a myriad of valuable mysteries.

I just hated the idea that the tools in there would be lost to our generation and generations to follow. So many big answers have been worked out, it's be foolish to have to start over. And if kids are willing to read Crowley and Blavatsky and the Upanishads, they really should have access to these stories, as well.

..."Do you feel it more pressing to explain this to those who dismiss it outright or those who praise it yet miss the point completely?

Those who praise it yet miss the point are a lot harder to reach. They're looking for the Bible to serve as an idol - and it turns out it's been written well enough to answer this need, too. It's really working on two levels at once - as any great writer attempts to. One is for the people who need to have their beliefs confirmed, and the other is for the people who are willing to have them smashed wide open.

The best writing - and I think Bible was once capable of doing this - speaks to that first group in such a way as to slowly bring them to their senses. It strokes with one hand while taking away false beliefs with the other. The problem is that the Bible was written so long ago that people no longer recognize what's allegory and what's history. The first hearers of Torah got the jokes, and saw the symbolism. People today would need to learn a whole lot of history to distinguish all the references. They may as well be reading Finnegan's Wake.

...Let me put it this way: there's something that needs to be done to the Bible in order for it to live and function today the way it needs to. In order for its power to be accessible to those who actually need it.

The wrong crowd has gotten hold of these stories, and is using them for the reverse purpose of what they were intended. And the more they do it, the less those of us ready and willing to hack reality understand that the instruction manual is available.

So to break it all open again, I need to engage people with the myth - get everyone inside - and then rip it apart.

It has to be exploded."

Rushkoff on Testament - Comics get Biblical

PopImage:

"I started with Abraham for two reasons. First, he's really the beginning of the story as far as the Hebrews are concerned. He's the guy who makes the deal with the new God. The tradition starts out as a negotiation. That's really the basis of Judaism: this guy negotiates with a new and powerful God, they make a contract - the covenant - and the rest is the playing out of that deal.

He's also really different from how people know him. His story - and those of the people around him - are some of the weirdest in the Bible. Weird sex magick, fighting giants, offering daughters to angry neighbours.

The Akedah is a particularly great place to start because it sets up the Bible's biggest theme: people who sacrifice their children are fucked up. It's time to quit with the sacrifice of the first son and get on with civilization. (Of course, this whole dynamic gets reversed in the New Testament, with God sacrificing *his* first son to *us.*

...Where we get all the weirdness, really, is in how the story is used over the next centuries. I've already gotten shit for talking about this, but the customary interpretation of this story about the sacrifice of Isaac being a demonstration of Abraham's love of God really didn't come into common acceptance until the Crusades. Many Jews felt it was better to kill their children than have them fall into the hands of the Crusaders, who might rape, torture, or simply abduct them.

But to the first hearers, the meaning of the story would have been very clear: stop burning your children to the god Moloch. There has been a change in management, and you are no longer required to do this.

I mean, look at Abraham. In the original Torah text, he only needs to be asked once to kill Isaac. But he needs to be told *twice* to put down the damn knife! "

Perspective

Jay Pinkerton.com:

"The first time I saw a Baby GAP in a mall, I remember thinking it ridiculous that there were actually parents concerned that the ten-pound skinpile cream-shitting itself in their cradle wasn't wearing trendy enough pants.

Years later, of course, I can spot the Achilles' Heel of my criticism, which is that The GAP is in any way trendy. What I probably should have realized at the time was that the Baby GAP didn't signify a sharper focus on the part of our nation's parents as to how cutting edge their baby's fashions were, but rather the final transitional phase of The GAP from upper-end clothing store to cheap, mass-produced crap warehouse."

FOX Loves The Klan | MetaFilter

Things I don't miss about the south, part 756.

FOX Loves The Klan | MetaFilter:

"Fox Affiliate Airs Ode to White Supremacist Site

A South Carolina Fox Affiliate aired a fluff piece praising white supremacist website Stormfront.org. The reporter who filed the story is apparently a member of the hatesite and filed the pro-Stormfront story in accordance with orders from her superiors."

Ho Ho Ho

Via Warren Ellis' Bad Signal mailing list:

"Apparently it is Wrong, when finding carol singers at your door, to yell 'Hail Satan! See you in Disneyland!' and slam it on them. But I don't want to be Right."

Boing Boing: German dude gets Sober.Y worm "FBI spam", turns self in

In the battle of evil things - spam v child porn - spam kicks a little ass.

Boing Boing: German dude gets Sober.Y worm "FBI spam", turns self in:

"German dude gets Sober.Y worm 'FBI spam', turns self in
If your computer's connected to the internet, odds are you've received countless virii-burdened emails that read, 'Dear Sir/Madam, we have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites. Important: Please answer our questions! The list of questions are attached.'

One very smart fellow in Germany received the German version of that Sober.Y spam, then, presuming it was real -- turned himself in to authorities. The polizei examined his hard drive and discovered an abundance of child porn."

You know what? Stop lying to your kids and it's not a problem. Yes, "Bah-Humbug". Bite me.

Chris Rock's Show Says Santa Doesn't Exist - Yahoo! News:

"Parents with young children who happened to watch 'Everybody Hates Chris' in the past week had some explaining to do when the character of Rock's brother suddenly told his younger sister that Santa doesn't exist.

...On the show, young Tonya becomes a lot more cynical. Her mother explains that Santa Claus is a symbol and asks: "So you do understand?"

"Yeah," the girl replies. "It's OK to lie.""

It just writes itself sometimes.

3 Stabbed at Notorious B.I.G. Record Party - Yahoo! News:

"NEW YORK - Three people were stabbed early Wednesday at a Manhattan club that was hosting a record-release party for a new collection of duets featuring slain rapper Notorious B.I.G."

You know, only if Canada wasn't so damn cold...

Canadian courts have okayed group sex.

Kung Fu Monkey: I Wouldn't Know Who to Apologize to First ...:

"The beer's twice as strong, national healthcare, legalized marijuana, gay marriage, now group sex. Send in your applications people, because I have a feeling the slots in my American refugee compound are going to start filling up a little faster."

"This idea that we are living in a unique time that calls for special measures is what they always say."

Hullabaloo:

"...for 40 years --- and certainly for the last 25 since Reagan became president --- we have had to listen to endless blathering about how the Republicans want to 'get the government out of your lives.' 'If someone says 'we're the government and we're here to help you' you should run.' Rugged individualist Republicans, taking care of their own, not looking to the state to solve their problems like the betwetting girly men and manly girls on the left.

During the 90's the atmosphere was redolent with militia fevered, anti-government rhetoric that echoed throughout the right wing message infrastructure.

...They won elections in the west and the south by swaggering around extolling the blessed Bill Of Rights and the need to keep the federal government at arms length because Real Men and Women don't need no Democrat sissy nanny state and her Big Brother taking away their rights.

9/11 changed everything. Suddenly the he-men of WalMart and the NRA leaped into Big Brother's arms and shrieked "save me, save me! Do what ever you have to do, they're trying to kill us all!" They now look to Daddy Government not to discipline the children, but to check under the bed for them every night, reassure them that the boogeyman won't hurt them and then read them a nice bedtime story about spreading freedom and democracy. It turns out that underneath all this swaggering bravado, the Republicans aren't the Daddy party --- they're the baby party.

...Of course, the right has traded on fear for so long that we can hardly remember a time when they didn't. If it isn't the commies, it's the hippies or the ATF or the terrorists. And as Kevin points out they make these ridiculous decisions over and over again because they are essentially afraid of their own shadows...

...This idea that we are living in a unique time that calls for special measures is what they always say. (And this current fantasy about the unique threat that proved our oceans couldn't protect us is particularly rich considering they fearmongered a communist threat of total annihilation for decades.) Often cooler heads are able to quell the worst excesses (like the fervent belief that we needed to launch a tactical nuclear war against the commies) and satisfy the right wing's other ongoing paranoid fantasy --- the left as a fifth column --- with silly, wasteful surveillance of animal rights groups or Quakers or former Beatles (along with pernicious surveillance of their partisan opponents.)

They are rhinestone cowboys who are scared to death and don't know how to contain their fear. So they lash out at their domestic political enemies, who they can bluster about and pretend to be tough, while hiding behind the military uniforms of their Big Brother and Preznit Daddy (which is a real stretch when it comes to Junior.)

The fact that they continue to win elections as being the tough guys perhaps says more about our puerile culture than anything else. They lash out like frightened children and too many people see that as courage or resolve."

The short version.

Eschaton:

"Shorter version:

Clinton said there's no law covering this so we can do this. Congress passes law covering such circumstances. Clinton administration (presumably) follows law and never claims they have the right to not follow the law.

Bush administration situation covered by existing law. Decide they don't want to follow it. Realize Congress won't change law to make them happy. Decide they have Divine Right to explicitly break law. Gives speech saying how proud he was to have broken law.

There is a civil liberties issue, and we can have that debate too, but this is about President Bush willfully and intentionally committing multiple felonies."

Suburban Guerrilla » Slouching Toward Kristallnacht

Suburban Guerrilla » Slouching Toward Kristallnacht:

"“You see,” my colleague went on, “one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for the one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even to talk, alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not? – Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

“Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, everyone is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there will be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”

“And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have."

Suburban Guerrilla » Tonight, Tonight

Suburban Guerrilla » Tonight, Tonight:

"The planned itinerary for the evening includes group reading of “Poems of Devotion to George W. Bush,” a discussion on the topic of Why They Just Know What’s Best, and a viewing of the documentary film “The Conspiracy to Destroy Our Deeply-Rooted-in-Roman-and-Pagan-Harvest-and-Solstice-Festivals Celebration of the Birth of Our Lord That We Won’t Explicitly Blame on Jews But Hey, Draw Whatever Conclusions You’d Like…”"

Oh that crazy internet! It's so wacky!

Suburban Guerrilla » And Look, It’s Even Worse Than We Said:

"...there’s always this tone that implies we’re out there in the far fringe of reality, so blinded by Bush hatred that we can’t even see straight.

Let’s see. What were we saying about BushCo that was so very radicial?

They lied to get us into a war. They stole the election – twice. They’re filling important government positions with incompetent hacks.

They’re destroying the economy. They have elevated corporate concerns and steadily decreased any form of worker protection. They tried to gut Social Security.

They’re the most unethical and criminal administration we’ve seen in decades. They ignore civil liberties. Other than that, I’m sure they’re very nice people – to their dogs, at least.

So seriously: Where were we wrong?"

"...the President keeps saying it. That, sadly, doesn't automatically make it true."

Kung Fu Monkey: Oversight:

"I'm not sure what it says about me when I realize how much credit I'd give the President if he said: 'Yes, I broke the law. I take full responsibility and have been working to fix the situation' as opposed to 'I didn't break no laws! My lawyers say that the Constitution says I didn't! Nu-uh!'

Several of our conservative friends are under the misapprehension that there was indeed Congressional oversight over the project. This is understandable, as the President keeps saying it. That, sadly, doesn't automatically make it true. I know there's a certain percentage of people who sleep better believing the President has magic powers, among them the ability to shift reality through sheer force of his will, but, um, no.

And yes, I know that many times only a select few members of the Intelligence Committee are briefed on certain issues. But in this case, as this letter from Senator Rockefeller indicates, the Senators were told what was going on, told there was no way they could approve or disapprove, and then sworn to secrecy.

That's not oversight. Oversight means 'watchful supervision'. It means some level of control. Please pardon the crude metaphor: but if telling someone you're about to do something but they have no ability to moderate it or stop it gives them oversight, then a rape victim has 'oversight' on her rapist. I call bullshit.

Oh, and for the inevitable 'When will you people realize we're in a war' post: Yes, I realize that. But a war to preserve ... what? The Founding Fathers had Britain breathing down their neck. They didn't blink. I recently saw a Congressman on TV say 'If Washington DC goes up in nuclear fire, the Constitution burns with it.' If you want to reduce our freedoms to historical scraps of paper, that makes sense, I guess.

This isn't a war -- there's no 'winning' until you eliminate every dissatisfied wingnut with a cellphone and C4 on the planet, and that ain't gonna happen in the next two hundred year"

"When will it end? Maybe never."

Eschaton:

"Look. We have a President here who is making a claim of unlimited power, for the duration of a war that may never end. Oh, he says it’s limited by the country’s laws, but they’ve got a crack legal team that reliably interprets the laws to say that the President gets to do whatever he wants. It amounts to the same thing.

I am not exaggerating. I am really and truly not.

September 11 started the war. When will it end? Maybe never. Where is the battlefield? The entire world, including the United States. Who is an enemy combatant? Anyone the President says is an enemy combatant, including a U.S. citizen–no need for a charge, no need for a trial, no need for access to a lawyer. What if they’re found not to be an enemy combatant? We can keep them in prison anyway, and we don’t have to tell their families they’re alive or their lawyers that they were cleared. What can you do to an enemy combatant? Anything you want. Detain him forever, for the rest of his life, because this is a war like any other and we have always been able to detain POWs for the duration of the war. But you don’t need to follow the Geneva Conventions, because this is a war like no other in our history. And oh yes–if the President decides that we need to torture a prisoner for the war effort, it’s unconstitutional for Congress to stop him. They took that position in an official memo, and they have not backed down from it. They have said it was “unnecessary” but they have never backed down from it."