WhoWillBeatBush.com

From Mitch Ratcliffe:

Seth Godin has launched WhoWillBeatBush.com, a way of wagering on the election that lets the person who correctly picks the winning Democratic candidate and the margin of victory (presumably in popular votes -- do they mean electoral votes, which have counted more in previous Bush elections?) Each entrant earns one cent toward a pot that will be awarded to the charity of the winner's choice. I like this idea, because it gives you just one more reason to go and vote -- sometimes just being able to hope you'll win the opportunity to give a large amount of money to a charity is enough for the liberal voter to get off his or her rump and go to the poll.

Governor Groper?

Katha Pollit in The Nation offers this salient point about revelations concerning Arnold Schwarzenegger's past:

Now just imagine for a moment that a Democratic politician had told a soft-core men's magazine in 1977 about gangbanging a "black girl"--and when asked about it in 2003 said he didn't remember a thing about the interview or the incident itself, but also said he made the whole thing up to get attention. Would that story have been relegated to the bin of youthful escapades by Fox, CNN, the New York Post, Peggy Noonan, Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and the rest? Or would we be hearing a lot about "character" and the "I was lying" defense? ...

Absolutely. The point is not that Arnold's indiscretions should disqualify him -- they shouldn't -- but that there's a terrible double standard at work in the land.

Dirty secrets

Mother Jones: Dirty Secrets. No president has gone after the nation's environmental laws with the same fury as George W. Bush -- and none has been so adept at staying under the radar.

Cronkite likens Ashcroft to Torquemada

Walter Cronkite op-ed piece: U.S. battles terror with a touch of the Spanish Inquisition.

In his 2 1/2 years in office, Attorney General John Ashcroft has earned himself a remarkable distinction as the Torquemada of American law.

Tomas de Torquemada, you might recall, was the 15th-century Dominican friar who became the grand inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. He was largely responsible for its methods, including torture and the burning of heretics -- Muslims in particular.

Gitlin's advice to David Brooks

Todd Gitlin in the American Prospect has some questions for David Brooks, the newest addition to the NY Times' op-ed pages. And some observations.

Government lies and self-hypnosis do not seem to interest Brooks when done by Republican chiefs. In fact, to date, he has shown himself to be substantially innocent of the ways of American power. At his best, he is a close student of something he often confuses with power: prestige. The foundation executive, professor, journalist, banker, broker and CEO are, to him, brothers and sisters under the skin. Together they rule, and deserve to rule, for they do a good job for the yokels. "Unlike Washington activists or academic polemicists, most Americans live in the world of corporate America."

Thanks to Sheila for the pointer.

Cost of the war in real time

Costofwar.com is giving a real-time tally of the cost of the war in Iraq, and compares it to the difference we could have made by spending it on public education and kids' health.

Perverting the war on terror

Looks like William Saletan, Slate's chief political correspondent, had the same reaction I did to President Bush's speech Sunday night:

For more than a year, President Bush has framed Iraq as part of the "war on terror." And for more than a year, he has produced no evidence for that claim. No evidence of a link between Iraq and 9/11. No evidence of an affinity between Saddam Hussein's secular tyranny and the fundamentalists of al-Qaida. No evidence of a terrorist presence in Iraq greater than in other Arab or Muslim countries. No evidence that Iraq offered weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

In his address to the nation Sunday night, Bush offered two new arguments for declaring Iraq "the central front" in the war on terror. If you buy those arguments, he's right. But before you buy them, stop and think about how far afield they would take us from the war we embarked on two years ago. ...

And this from a supporter of the Iraq war.

Petition to stop the FCC

Those concerned by a few big companies controlling citizens' access to news, information and entertainment joined in opposition to the FCC rule change earlier this summer that paved the way for greater media consolidation.

More than 2 million Americans wrote the FCC to oppose the change, but the FCC pushed through the rule change anyway, in a 3-2 party line vote. In July, the House struck down one part of the rule change by a 400-21 vote.

In August, media companies launched a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign, using distorted polls and misleading advertising to twist the arms of members of the Senate. Now, in the next week, the final vote on rolling back the FCC rule change will come to the Senate floor.

The vote will be close. On Wednesday, MoveOn.org will be holding a crucial press conference with Senator Dorgan (D-ND) and Senator Snowe (R-ME) and groups across the political spectrum to highlight the broad opposition to the FCC rule change. MoveOn is hoping to present a petition with the names of 100,000 people who have voiced their demand that the Senate vote to roll back the rule change.

You can sign the petition here.

The AP, meantime, carries a story about the FCC controversy and quotes Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America thusly: "We hope to put the final nail in the coffin of these ill-considered rules. The FCC can't be trusted to promote diversity."

Patriotism, Bush's Big Lie, and Nixonism revisited

Supporters of President Bush may want to move on to the next item. For those who remain, I need to vent a little ...

Americans with long memories will recall previous examples of national leaders using the Big Lie. In this country, Vietnam was sold as a Big Lie from the early '60s to mid-'70s. (Remember the domino theory? peace with honor?)

Last night President George W. Bush stepped up the effort to rewrite history by portraying the war in Iraq as a fight against terrorism. What we have here is nothing short of Nixonism revisited. Perhaps the most outrageous statement in his speech was its central assertion: that Iraq is "now the central front" in a global war against terrorism.

Bush, naturally, made virtually no mention of Iraq's inconveniently missing weapons of mass destruction. But he is inviting a huge division in this country by his mendacity and dissembling over an issue of monumental significance to our nation. (Here's the full text of Bush's Big Lie speech. Here's video of the speech.)

His minions of apologists will buy into the new party line, of course, instead of acknowledging the truth: that fighting the real war on terrorism is an effort that will require not armies sweeping over desert landscapes but changes in our domestic policies (why is there no money to screen luggage on airliners, Mr. President? why is no money being allocated to fund security efforts at seaports? why are there budget cuts at the Centers for Disease Control when bioterrorism remains a threat?) and especially our unilateralist, go-it-alone cowboy foreign policy of swagger, deception and lack of substance.

Thankfully, some people, like Howard Dean, are challenging the president's Big Lie. Dean told CBS: "The president is now leaving the impression in his speeches, without directly saying so, that, in fact, Saddam Hussein was partly responsible for 9/11, that he was in league with al-Qaeda.

"Those things are not true. They have not been documented. And we're losing eight to 10 soldiers every week, with more wounded.

"We're now about to go over the half-trillion-dollar mark in the deficit because the president insists on his reckless economic policies at home, as well as his reckless adventures abroad. I think it's a mistake."

Like Dean, I believe the American people are willing to bear our fair share of the burden of rebuilding Iraq, and that we need to remain in Iraq while internationalizing the relief effort. For the record, here are the latest costs associated with the Iraq misadventure:

• War-related funds requested from Congress (2002-2003): $75 billion

• Additional funds requested to date for 2003-2004: $87 billion

• 'Stabilization phase' for Iraq: $12 billion

• Current cost of post-war occupation: $3.9 billion/month

• Budget allocated in March for 'reconstruction phase': $7.2 billion

• Rebuilding cost (McKinsey estimate, July): up to $90 billion

• Iraq's estimated pre-war oil revenues: $15-25 billion/year

• Iraq's estimated debt: $60 - 130 billion

• US budget deficit for 2003-2004: $567 billion and rising.

Longtime NY Times corrspondent David E. Sanger reports today:

[Bush] fully merged the challenge of the occupation of Iraq with the terrorism of Al Qaeda, even though his own intelligence agencies found no link between Mr. Hussein and the conspirators of Sept. 11. Now, in a post-Iraq world, Mr. Bush is saying that link makes no difference ó the arrival of terrorists blowing up Americans in Baghdad and Tikrit in the postwar period have turned this into a single war. ...

To his critics ó including most of the Democratic presidential aspirants, who believe that Mr. Bush's initial go-it-alone instincts have become his biggest political vulnerability ó the president is wrongly blending the war against terrorism with the effort to build a stable Iraq.

"I think it bears little to no resemblance to the war on terrorism," said James Steinberg, who served as President Clinton's deputy national security adviser and is now a scholar at the Brookings Institution. "There was a theory in this White House that if you were just tough, and knocked Saddam and those like him off, people would not mess with you anymore," he said tonight. "They would no longer regard you as weak.

"Now there is a risk that our muscularity, if not used in a smart way, could make us more vulnerable, not less."

As blogger Josh Marshall rightly notes:

The president has turned 9/11 into a sort of foreign policy perpetual motion machine in which the problems ginned up by policy failures become the rationale for intensifying those policies. The consequences of screw-ups become examples of the power of 'the terrorists'.

We're not on the offensive. We're on the defensive. A bunch of mumbo-jumbo and flim-flam doesn't change that. ...

The chaos in Iraq has opened the place up to serious infiltration by all manner of bad-actors from around the region -- a development which is not a justification for administration policy, but an example of its failure.

BBC News world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds also has a good read: Bush seeks his Kennedy moment.

Stepping back to take a wider view of Bush's policies, Jonathan Alter offers his take in Newsweek: Time for a New Patriotism? True loyalty to country is about more than saluting. Excerpt:

DISSENT IN THE DEEP FREEZE

For a time, the president struck just the right tone in his speeches and launched just the right policy in Afghanistan, where he promised that ìthe Evil OneîóOsama bin Ladenówould be brought to justice, though the public patiently understood this might take a few weeks or months. Because the United States was blameless on 9/11óand certainly did not ìhave it coming,î as a few ignorant left-wingers claimedódissent went into the deep freeze, subordinated to a need to pull together and take comfort in the greatness of America.

But soon patriotism moved from a comfort to a cudgel. An impulse that had briefly united now often divided, as it did in the past. At the turn of the last century, Samuel Clemens (better known as Mark Twain), who was deemed a traitor for opposing U.S. policy in the Philippines, derided what he called ìmonarchical patriotism.î The old royal idea that ìthe king can do no wrong,î Clemens reported with disgust, had been changed to ìour country, right or wrong.î ...

Somewhere, Dick Nixon and Spiro Agnew are smiling down on George W. Bush.

Bush and the environment: The Rollback Machine

Grist magazine: The Rollback Machine. Keeping tabs on the Bush administration's environmental record.

Thanks to Susan M. for the pointer.

Ted Koppel on the dangers of the Patriot Act

Ted Koppel on the dangers of the Patriot Act and the Victory Act. Yes, you missed Nightline the other night, but you can still catch Koppel's closing statement on Lisa Rein's Radar.

EPIC releases Privacy and Human Rights Report

The Electronic Privacy Information Center today announced the release of its 2003 Privacy and Human Rights Report. This extensive survey examines the state of civil liberties and privacy rights around the world. Key topics include new technologies of surveillance, such as Total Information Awareness in the U.S., the use of biometric identification, and the public response to government's increasing usurpation of individual privacy.

Here's a press release detailing the report's findings. And here's an audio summary of the report.

Thanks to Gary Price for the pointer.

The real master of denial and deception

Robert Scheer (whom I've known for 25 years) in the LA Times:

Oops. There are no weapons of mass destruction after all. That's the emerging consensus of the second team of weapons sleuths commanded by the U.S. in Iraq, as reported last week in the Los Angeles Times. The 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group found what the first wave of U.S. military experts and the United Nations inspectors before them discovered ó nada.

Nothing, not a vial of the 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin or the 25,000 liters of anthrax or an ounce of the materials for the 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent claimed by George W. Bush in his State of the Union speech as justification for war. Nor any sign of the advanced nuclear weapons program, a claim based on a now-admitted forgery. Nor has anyone produced any evidence of ties between the deposed Hussein regime and the Al Qaeda terrorists responsible for 9/11.

The entire adventure was an immense fraud.

"We were prisoners of our own beliefs," a senior U.S. weapons expert who worked with the Iraq Survey Group told The Times. "We said Saddam Hussein was a master of denial and deception. Then when we couldn't find anything, we said that proved it, instead of questioning our own assumptions." ...

Barbra goes coastal

Sunday's SF Chronicle carried the latest on Barbra Streisand's outrageous effort to thwart the inspired California Coastal Records Project, documenting the state of the California coastline. What elitist arrogance.

Pombo won't support inquiry on missing weapons in Iraq

In response to a recent letter I sent to my alleged congressional "representative," Richard Pombo, asking for an independent inquiry into the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Pombo takes the sleight-of-hand position that just because we haven't found them doesn't mean they weren't there. Here's his full email response:

Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns regarding the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq. I appreciate hearing from you and having the benefit of your views.

As you may be aware, the House Intelligence Committee is investigating the quality of intelligence that was received prior to the war in Iraq. Congress is exercising its oversight authority and has set in place procedures to review comprehensively, and on a bipartisan basis, the intelligence surrounding Iraq prior to the outbreak of war. This will take account of any dissident views on the Iraqi threat within the intelligence community.

The U.S. armed forces are still trying to pacify sectors of Iraq and to deal with daily attacks on U.S. soldiers west and north of Baghdad. People who have lived in a police state with no freedom of speech are unlikely to volunteer information until stability and security are achieved in Iraq.

All the evidence suggests that Saddam Hussein was indeed developing WMD. Those who believe Iraq did not possess WMD should ask themselves some important questions about Iraq's action leading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

If Hussein did not have a WMD program, why did he kick out U.N. weapons inspectors when they requested access to the presidential palaces and other suspect sites in Iraq in 1998 - in direct violation of the cease-fire conditions Iraq had accepted under United Nations Security Council Resolution 687 of 1991?

If Hussein did not have a WMD program, why didn't he comply with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 to allow U.N. weapons inspectors to have unfettered access to all sites in Iraq, thus providing him the opportunity to show the world he did not possess WMD? Instead of cooperating, Saddam Hussein continued to hide information from the inspectors and refused to allow Iraqi scientists to be interviewed.

If Hussein did not have WMD, why did U.S. troops find large amounts of biological and chemical protective gear and antidotes (such as atropine syringes) in Iraqi army bunkers?

Progress is already being made in the search for weapons of mass destruction. On May 9, 2003, Coalition forces found an Iraqi mobile biological weapons production facility. While no traces of biological weapons have been found in the trailer, it is precisely the kind of mobile lab that Secretary of State Colin Powell described in his speech to the United Nations earlier this year. U.S. and U.K. experts concluded the facility does not appear to have any function "beyond production of biological weapons."

Saddam Hussein admitted to possessing WMD in the past but never accounted for what happened to them and refused to provide any evidence of their destruction. Many critics of the Bush administration had endless patience for UN inspectors trying to find WMD facilities in a country the size of California. We should now be patient as coalition forces continue to search for these weapons.

Please know I will share your concerns with my colleagues and will remember your thoughts on this issue should it come before me in the Congress. Again, thank you for contacting me. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome.

The surveillance camera watch

Carnegie Mellon's Data Privacy Lab has launched SOS Camera Watch. Snippets of video surveillance are listed in New York, Washington and Pittsburgh. One participants writes on the Interesting People list:

The Camera Watch project is part of our new Surveillance of Surveillances ( SOS) effort. We are constructing a repository of links to publicly available on-line webcams, where the webcams of interest are those that observe the public in public spaces. At present, we estimate there are about 10,000 such cameras displaying public places in the United States. Our goals are to assess the number and nature of such cameras, explore potential uses, and analyze and propose related policies and best practices.blockquote>

Posted 06:04 PM | Permalink | Conversation (0) | TrackBack (0)

A price too high

Bob Herbert in today's NY Times:

How long is it going to take for us to recognize that the war we so foolishly started in Iraq is a fiasco ó tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable? How much time and how much money and how many wasted lives is it going to take?

At the United Nations yesterday, grieving diplomats spoke bitterly, but not for attribution, about the U.S.-led invasion and occupation. They said it has not only resulted in the violent deaths of close and highly respected colleagues, but has also galvanized the most radical elements of Islam.

"This is a dream for the jihad," said one high-ranking U.N. official. "The resistance will only grow. The American occupation is now the focal point, drawing people from all over Islam into an eye-to-eye confrontation with the hated Americans.

"It is very propitious for the terrorists," he said. "The U.S. is now on the soil of an Arab country, a Muslim country, where the terrorists have all the advantages. They are fighting in a terrain which they know and the U.S. does not know, with cultural images the U.S. does not understand, and with a language the American soldiers do not speak. The troops can't even read the street signs." ...

I don't agree with everything Herbert writes, but I agree with his bottom line: That this war has galvanized Islamic extremists against us and will ultimately prove counterproductive. In the war against terrorism, President Bush and the neocons in charge of our foreign policy have misled us with a magic-show act of deception and distraction.

Given that we're in Iraq for the foreseeable future, perhaps Herbert and others might begin discussion of an exit strategy, beginning with greater international involvement.

Life in Iraq slowly inches forward

Fascinating reading these days at Where Is Raed? Salam Pax writes today:

After the last article I wrote in the Guardian I was wondering whether I should stop whining. the problem is that people want to read that things are getting better and we are happy, but things are getting better in such a slow pace that it is almost imperceptible, and with the one step we move forward on one front we move back 3 steps on other fronts. People need to know that their kids and loved ones are here for a good reason and this is what they want to hear. Otherwise they send me emails saying that I am being part of the problem. They send me emails telling me that I should help the Americans capture the terrorists and Baathists, as if they walk around in the streets wearing signs. Maybe we Iraqis did expect too much from the American invasion, we did hope there is going to be an easy way. Get rid of Saddam and have the Americans help us rebuild. I don't think like that anymore. I am starting to believe that the chaos we will go thru the next 5 or 10 years is part of the price we will *have* to pay to have our freedom. This Beirut-ification is the way to learn how we should live as a free country and respect each other; it is just too painful to admit. It is too painful to have to admit that the [burn it down to build it up] process is what we will have to go thru. ...

Alabama justices defy their chief

There is intelligent life in Alabama, after all: Alabama Justices Order Ten Commandments Monument Removed.

But I have a hunch Chief Justice Roy Moore will go far in Alabama politics.

Stop the 'Victory Act'

The news media have reported that John Ashcroft will take to the hustings beginning this week -- especially the hustings in the toss-up states -- to barnstorm for the sequel to the Patriot Act.

Howard Dean's people have put together a Stop Ashcroft petition to stop passage of the Victory Act. Sign it here.

The Big Lie Machine

This week Salon is excerpting five parts from columnist Joe Conason's new book Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth.

In the intro, Conason tells how "the right-wing propaganda machine demonizes liberals and distorts the common-sense politics of America."

In today's part 2, "Limousine liberals and corporate-jet conservatives," Conason describes how George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter bash elitist lefties, but their faux populism masks a slavish devotion to the interests and indulgences of the wealthy.

In the middle of the blackout

Chris Cloud, who runs the travel blog Cloud Travel (and who is a friend of Ernie the Attorney), has an interesting first-person account of the blackout.

... When the natural condition of things goes awry in any significant way, New Yorkers get real friendly and jaunty. The bars and restaurants are filling up and people are drinking on the streets. There are a lot of smiles and the tone of the radio is reassuring. A lot of the cross town streets are closed but there's 9/11-style evacuation traffic coming up the avenues. All the busses crawl painfully by, packed full while and people huddle at bus stops and stare longingly at transportation they cannot access. ...

And here's an account from James Lilek:

The Fox news guy was outside Penn Station, where thousands of people were - brace yourself - patiently waiting for electricity to return. He seemed a little annoyed that there wasnít a brawl or a riot. Iím sure no one was happy to be standing there in the dead black dark, but what could you do? Stick someone up, take his credit cards and fashion them into a small portable fan? Stab someone in the foot, and hop he hops around and creates a small breeze? Set yourself on fire to take your mind off the hunger? He corralled a couple of New Yorkers off the sidewalk, wisely ignoring the three shiny-faced moth-balls behind him who were drawn to the camera light. Two women, one of a certain age, the other in her thirties. The first woman was a leathery old bird with a big smile and a shade of lipstick no oneís seen since Gimbels had a close-out in the late 40s. She took it all in stride. ìItís an adventure,î she smiled, shrugging. And then she added: ìAnd who needs it.î ...

Salam Pax: The temperature is rising

Salam Pax in the Guardian UK: The temperature is rising in Baghdad, Basra and Nasiriyah. Excerpt:

I went to a press conference where our new one-month-president [the coalition provisional authority has a rotating chairman] was telling us about what they were up to. The press guy, at the request of the conference, was telling journalists that the instantaneous translation thingy has two channels; channel one for Arabic, channel two for English. I would like to add another channel: channel three for the truth. It keeps repeating one phrase: "We have no power, we have to get it approved by the Americans, we are puppets and the strings are too tight." I feel sorry for the guys on the council, some of them are actually very good and honest people and they have been put in a very difficult situation.

As usual, getting into these press bashes is an event in itself. You have to be there an hour early, you get searched a thousand times and, of course, as an Iraqi I get treated like shit. I have no idea why the American soldiers at the entrance to the convention centre [where the CPA press operation is] are so offensive towards Iraqis while they can be so nice to anyone with a foreign passport. I have to be the Zen master when the soldier at the gate gets condescending. The reporters of Iraq Today were not allowed to get to the press conference and they went ballistic. "This is my friggin' government, what do you mean I can't get in?" My sentiments exactly. Keep this image in your head: an American officer stopping you, an Iraqi, from attending the press conference your government is holding. ...

Blackouts, dim bulbs and deregulation

Greg Palast, an award-winning journalist and author, has this: POWER OUTAGE TRACED TO DIM BULB IN WHITE HOUSE -- The Tale of The Brits Who Swiped 800 Jobs From New York, Carted Off $90 Million, Then Tonight, Turned Off Our Lights.

Thanks to Oliver Willis for the pointer.

Passage seen for privacy bill

Here's an apparent rare victory for grassroots democracy: The SF Chronicle reports today that "Banks and insurance companies have decided to drop their long-standing opposition to a bill to restrict the exchange of consumers' financial information rather than take their chances trying to defeat a more restrictive ballot initiative next year."

20 Worst Figures in American History

So here are the 20 Most Infamous Figures in American History from bloggers on the left and the right (c'mon, guys, use a little imagination -- Bill and Hillary Clinton taking two spots in the top 10?). Thanks to Doc for the pointer.

California in crisis

From the August 2003 issue of California Journal comes a special project that explores five major causes behind the political, financial and leadership crisis dominating Sacramento this year.

Blogger Susan Kitchens, who tripped across the package -- which explores the budget-making process, term-limits, reapportionment, and the recall -- says by email: "I feel far more informed about the state after reading it. Perhaps other Californians might also? I think it deserves more exposure." I agree. Thanks, Susan. (Also check out the beautiful photos that Susan posted yesterday.)

Government by deception

Molly Ivins on government by deception, the Bush birth tax, and more.

FBI nabs suspected bookworm

Sacramento News & Review: Imagine a country where reading in public can get you in trouble. Now guess what? Youíre living in it.

Everything is political

Paul Krugman in today's NY Times:

The agency's analysts find that they are no longer helping to formulate policy; instead, their job is to rationalize decisions that have already been made. And more and more, they find that they are expected to play up evidence, however weak, that seems to support the administration's case, while suppressing evidence that doesn't.

Am I describing the C.I.A.? The E.P.A.? The National Institutes of Health? Actually, I'm talking about the Treasury Department, but the ambiguity is no coincidence. Across the board, the Bush administration has politicized policy analysis. Whether the subject is stem cells or global warming, budget deficits or weapons of mass destruction, government agencies are under intense pressure to say what the White House wants to hear. And the long-term consequences are likely to be dire. ...

Do we still care about liberty?

This outrageous government activity deserves wider circulation -- and scrutiny. Salon reports that peace activists with no criminal record are being targeted for special surveillance on airlines.

Ever since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, reports have circulated that the U.S. airline security apparatus is targeting political activists for strict scrutiny and special searches, sometimes forcing them to miss flights. Despite the accounts of peace activists, civil liberties lawyers and left-wing journalists, federal agencies wouldn't confirm the policy and airline officials wouldn't discuss it, and so the stories had the feel of urban legend.

But in documents released this week in a federal court case in San Francisco, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) confirmed for the first time that it keeps not just a list of potential terrorists barred from the air, but also a list of "selectees" who are subject to strict security checks before they're allowed to board commercial aircraft. The agency has revealed almost nothing else about the selectee list, and is fighting in court to keep secret the names of people who are on it and the standards for putting them there.

It appears, however, that the list may contain thousands of names. Officials at the ACLU of Northern California, which is pressing the Freedom of Information Act case filed by two leftist newspaper editors, says it learned from authorities at Oakland Airport that there is an 88-page typed list of names. Between Sept. 11, 2001, and April 8, 2003, the ACLU says, more than 363 passengers were stopped at San Francisco and Oakland airports, either because their names appeared on that list or because their names were similar to names on a separate "no-fly" list made up of criminals and people with suspected terrorist ties.

Evidence compiled in a series of interviews suggests that activists on the left and right have been affected, as have many Arab Americans. That has civil liberties experts warning that the airport security checks have a chilling effect on routine political activity that is unprecedented in recent times.

"All the secrecy surrounding these lists, and the very fact that the TSA refuses to say how it compiles them, is outrageous," says Barbara Olshansky, an attorney with the left-leaning Center for Constitutional Rights. "It shows that this administration has no respect at all for the Bill of Rights, which guarantees the right of free speech and association and the right to travel freely. They're not balancing security and freedom. They don't care about freedom and civil liberties at all."

Olshansky has firsthand knowledge of the government policy: She says that she's been subjected to strip- and full-body searches every time she's flown since 9/11, even though she has no criminal record. Last November, she told Salon that she had been strip-searched on four flights she'd made on business; this week, she reported that she was specially targeted again for a search in February while trying to board a plane with her husband for a vacation trip to Puerto Rico.

"We had chosen Puerto Rico in part because my husband was afraid of what they'd do to me if we tried to return from a foreign trip," she says. Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, is a domestic flight that doesn't require going through immigration or customs.

We had chosen Puerto Rico in part because my husband was afraid of what they'd do to me if we tried to return from a foreign trip," she says. Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, is a domestic flight that doesn't require going through immigration or customs.

Salon first reported last November that the Transportation Security Administration keeps a list of about 1,000 people who are deemed "threats to aviation" -- many with links to terrorism -- and who are barred from flying under any circumstance. But that didn't seem to explain the unusual security standards applied to political activists and others with no visible link to terrorism or criminal activity. They were generally allowed to board planes after being searched.

A 71-year-old Milwaukee nun and peace activist was stopped from boarding a flight to Washington, where she and a group of students planned to lobby the Wisconsin congressional delegation against U.S. military aid to Colombia. An art dealer who'd been a high-ranking staffer in Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential campaign had been barred from a flight to Germany after telling other passengers in the check-in line that President George W. Bush "is dumb as a rock." And two journalists, Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams of the antiwar magazine War Times, were told by an airline clerk that the were on "the FBI no-fly list." Even executives at the Eagle Forum, Phyllis Schlafly's old-school conservative group, expressed concern that several of their members had missed flights because they were delayed and questioned at airport security checkpoints.

At the time, a spokesman for the TSA told Salon that in all likelihood, most such passengers were not on the no-fly list for terrorists and criminals. Instead, he hinted, there might be a second list, but he declined to be more specific and the agency officially denied it.

Efforts by the Wall Street Journal to solve the mystery resulted in an April 22 story concluding that most of the problems innocent fliers experienced resulted from computer systems that were "flagging numerous travelers whose names are merely similar to one of those on the [no-fly] list" for terrorists and criminals. For example, the story said, Sister Virgine Lawinger, the Milwaukee nun, had been stopped not because of her politics but because one of the students in her group had the surname of Laden -- a name the TSA flagged apparently because it is shared by a notorious Islamic terrorist.

Certainly that explains some of the stops. In one case, the Journal suggested, retired Coast Guard Cmdr. Larry Musarra has been stopped several times by Alaska Airlines check-in clerks because his name pops up on the list thanks to the M-U-S that begins his name; airline computers apparently flag that as a possible Middle Eastern name. But all too often, people being stopped have anti-establishment protest backgrounds, like Olshansky, whose name doesn't seem to resemble that of any terror suspects, and who has never been offered an explanation for the repeated security delays at check-in.

The Journal article made no reference to a second list.

Gordon and Adams, working with the ACLU, filed suit in federal court in San Francisco. The Transportation Security Administration, established in November 2001 to provide security for the nation's transportation system, acknowledged for the first time earlier this week, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the ACLU on Gordon's and Adams' behalf, that it has developed and maintains two lists of people that it considers risks to air travel -- the no-fly list, and a list of selectees who are subject to "special security checks" but who can be allowed to board.

On Friday, Gordon and Adams will attempt to learn more when ACLU attorney Jayashri Srikantiah is expected to ask U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer to order the TSA and the FBI to produce more detailed information about how the list is compiled and what guidelines and procedures it has in place, and what instruction it gives to airlines when it provides them with the lists for its check-in computers.

Adams, 56, recounted her airport stop in an interview this week with Salon. "We were held by the local police, who said that we weren't under arrest, but were being held until they could check to see if we were on a 'master list,'" she said. "If we were, they said that we'd have to be held until the FBI decided what to do with us. But we apparently weren't on that list, and so they finally let us fly.

"The funny thing," she added, "is that nobody bothered us on our return flight on the same airline. But much later, I had the same thing happen as I was boarding a flight in Chicago. It doesn't make you very confident about the TSA's security operation."

Srikantiah says that to date the TSA has not even confirmed whether the two plaintiffs are on either of its lists. "They have not been very forthcoming with information in response to our FOIA request," she said. But what the agency has said -- and has left unsaid -- worries her.

"We asked them whether people could be placed on the lists for constitutionally protected activities like publishing an anti-government newspaper or participating in protest activities," she said, "and they declined to respond. That is troubling because they should be saying that constitutionally protected activities will not land someone on a watch list."

Liberals aren't the only ones concerned about what the TSA is doing. "It's pretty clear that some lefties have missed their flights just because of things they've said," says Larry Pratt, executive director of the ultraconservative Gun Owners of America organization. "This kind of thing should not be happening to American citizens. I think there's something smelly about the explanations being given by the TSA."

William Olson, a constitutional lawyer in McLean, Va., who specializes in conservative issues and clients, expresses similar concern about the security lists. "Certainly the ability of an American citizen to travel freely is among the most fundamental civil liberties," Olson said. "Lists like this, where no one is accountable for who gets on it, and where there's no way to get off it once you're on, are a bad thing, and bring to mind a police state. You do get the sense these days that the rule of law is crumbling."

Last November, when Salon broke the story that the Transportation Security Administration might have two flight-security lists, a spokesman at the agency explained that it doesn't generate the names, but rather compiles the names from lists provided by other federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The spokesman said at that time that the agency itself had no guidelines for putting someone's name on the list, and no procedures for people wrongfully placed on the list to get off.

The ACLU's Srikantiah says that opens the door to abuses. "There should be uniform guidelines for a list like this, and standard procedures for the airlines to follow when someone's name appears on a list," she said. The dangers such lists pose is compounded, she adds, because they are being provided to the airlines, private companies in which employees are not trained in law enforcement.

Even after the administration acknowledged the existence of the two lists, the FBI declined to be specific about what guidelines govern who gets placed on either list. To get onto the no-fly list, said FBI spokesman Jeff Lanza, "someone would have to be linked to terrorism, based upon an FBI investigation.

"Of course, there are other agencies that might input names to that list, and I can't answer for them," Lanza added. "But nobody would be put on that list simply for engaging in constitutionally protected activity or for being arrested at a protest."

For the selectee list, Lanza said, "There are more databases they pull from. Those names wouldn't have to be approved by someone on the terrorism task force. It's slightly broader. But protest activity alone still shouldn't put you on it." At another point, however, Lanza suggested that some activities, such as "chaining yourself to a gate at a military base and blocking traffic" might be different, even if they had no connection with violent or terrorist activity.

Adams isn't so sure, and she wonders whether First Amendment activities alone could get someone blacklisted. "Rebecca and I are two middle-class white ladies," she says. "We don't have arrest records. Our only activity is War Times."

In its response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information action, the TSA declined to say that individuals would not be placed on a selectee list simply for anti-government speech or protest activity. And though the agency has conceded that many names are mistakenly on the list because of glitches in airline computer software and other reasons, it also said it doesn't track how many times air travelers have been incorrectly stopped, saying there is "no pressing need to do so."

Sometimes the stops discovered by the ACLU at Bay Area airports have been humorous, and suggest that the lists could use some refinement and updating. One flier with the unfortunate surname of Padilla was stopped at a Southwest Airlines gate. He was allowed to board after the FBI determined that the Padilla in question -- accused "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla -- was already in custody and being held as an enemy combatant in a military brig in South Carolina. A passenger with the name Hussein was stopped at a Southwest Airlines gate and barred from boarding. After the FBI was called in, he was allowed to fly on.

Efforts over this week to get a response from the Transportation Security Administration went unanswered. A receptionist at the agency advised several times that "everyone is busy."

Could a hacker steal the '04 election?

Paul Boutin in Slate asks: Could a hacker steal next year's election?

Consumer groups ready financial privacy initiative

Here's a California voter initiative done right: Backers of a financial privacy initiative say they've collected enough signatures to qualify it for the ballot. But in a surprise move, they promised to hold the signatures for three weeks to give state lawmakers a final chance to hammer out a bill instead.

Bush wants to prevent gay marriage

NY Times: President Bush said today that federal government lawyers are working on legislation that would define marriage as a union between a man and woman.

Yee-haw! We got ourselves a wedge issue!

Once again our nation owes a debt of gratitude to a president who's a uniter, not a divider.

The voting rights struggle of the digital age

My friend Kim Alexander of the California Voter Foundation has a new commentary up called The Voting Rights Struggle of Our Time. She participated in a study of electronic voting security.

The biggest problem with computerized voting systems is that they are not transparent. Some who think we don't need a paper trail tend to portray those of us who insist we do as paranoid conspiracy theorists. But any reasonable person who takes a moment to think about it quickly understands why it's not a good idea to trust 100 percent computerized, paperless voting systems run on secret software.

On a similar note, John Schwartz in the NY Times had this the other day: Computer voting is open to easy fraud, experts say.

And Don Hazen, editor of AlterNet, has this: A voting and democracy primer.

The Road to Babylon

From the August issue of Harper's magazine: The Road to Babylon: Searching for targets in Iraq, by Lewis H. Lapham.

War inspires dueling decks

This was a fun piece from yesterday's Merc on dueling playing card decks with polar political views of the war in Iraq. A Catholic school teacher in San Jose has sold 10,000 decks of her "Operation Hidden Agenda'' playing cards.

Bush by the numbers

A friend just sent this fact sheet:

$5,600,000,000,000
Budget surplus when President Bush took office
(Office of Management and Budget, 2001)

$1,900,000,000,000
Bush deficiet over the next five years
(Office of Management and Budget, 2003)

3,100,000
Jobs lost since Bush took office
(Bureau of Labor Statistics)

83,000
Monthly job loss since Bush took office
(Department of Labor)

3 out of 5
Number of unemployed Americans who live in Senate seats up in 2004
(Bureau of Labor Statistics/DSCC release)

$1,000,000,000
Weekly cost of Iraq campaign to U.S. taxpayers
(Department of Defense, 2003)

1,000,000
Number OF US Military personnel not receiving child tax relief checks
(Children's Defense Fund)

250,000
Number of children who have a parent on active duty
(Children's Defense Fund)

10
Number of nuclear devices North Korea is expected to have by year's end
(William Perry, former Secretary of Defense)

8%
Percent of non-US troops serving in Iraq
(Department of Defense, 2003)

Everything is watching you

New in Salon: We're well on our way to a world where every product has a tiny radio transmitter embedded in it. Privacy activists are not happy, but big corporations are licking their lips.

Baby Louise turns 25

Louise Joy Brown as a teen with her parents, John and Lesley Brown in Britain.

Baby Louise, the world's first test tube baby (who points out she was actually conceived in a petri dish), turns 25 today. Here's an account in the San Jose Merc about the legacy of Louise Brown, born in Oldham, England, on July 25, 1978.

As the author correctly notes in "There's a line to be drawn -- before we get to 'enhanced' people," the public is quite capable of holding a fairly sophisticated set of opinions on the subject of genetic engineering of humans. Excerpt:

We've had five years to get used to the idea of human cloning -- and a Gallup poll in May shows 90 percent opposition.

Most people have no trouble drawing firm distinctions between technologies that help families and those that work against our common humanity. Overcoming infertility is a good thing; fiddling with our genetic heritage is not. The fact that a slope may be slippery does not mean we need to go careening down it.

Absolutely dead on.

A dangerous mind

NY Times: House majority leader Tom DeLay will travel to the Middle East and take with him a message of grave doubt that the region is ready for a Palestinian state.

DeLay, a former pest exterminator from Sugar Land, Texas, is bringing his right-wing zealotry to "the world's most complex and troubled region," as the Times put it. The fact is, the Middle East has been ready for a Palestinian state for about five decades; it has just never had the full backing of a U.S. administration.

Welcome to the Big Darkness

Sheila also points us to Hunter S. Thompson, who's back with a vengeance: Welcome to the Big Darkness, the gonzo journalist's first ESPN column since June 10. In it he touches briefly on Kobe Bryant ...

You thought O.J. was bad? Wait until we get a taste of the K.B. scandal. It will be like a feeding frenzy and a long parade of cannibals.

... before moving on to other matters:

The American nation is in the worst condition I can remember in my lifetime, and our prospects for the immediate future are even worse. I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it. Our highway system is crumbling, our police are dishonest, our children are poor, our vaunted Social Security, once the envy of the world, has been looted and neglected and destroyed by the same gang of ignorant greed-crazed bastards who brought us Vietnam, Afghanistan, the disastrous Gaza Strip and ignominious defeat all over the world.

Researchers uncover 'huge flaws' in e-voting system

From the EFF:

In response to today's release of research about critical security flaws in e-voting systems, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) urged immediate passage of e-voting legislation to prevent election fraud.

Security researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University announced today that they have discovered numerous serious security flaws in what they believe is one of the leading e-voting systems in the country -- the Diebold Electron Systems' e-voting terminal.

Among the security flaws discovered were several ways in which individual voters could vote multiple times in a given election. The researchers also uncovered methods permitting voters to "trick" the e-voting machines into allowing them system administrator privileges or even terminating an election before tallying all legitimate votes. ...

Why the creative shall inherit the economy

Virginia Postrel in Wired mag: The Aesthetic Imperative. Why the creative shall inherit the economy. (By the way, that's an illustration of Virginia, not of Scott Menchin, who drew it.) Plus, views from Bruce Sterling, Rob Glaser, and J. Bradford DeLong.

The FCC's media ownership snafu

My bud Jane Black has a new piece in Business Week Online about FCC chairman Michael Powell's failture to make a case for relaxing rules on media mergers, leading to a populist revolt.

And Salon has a new article, Congress to Big Media: Not So Fast, suggesting that the growing public backlash against the FCC's media merger rules could create problems for the Bush administration.