WaPo to Froomkin: you're fired.

Damn... and damn again.

The false hope of virtual sunshine

I know we'd all love for there to be some great movement afoot in Iran. Much has been made of how the internet is going to save the Iranian reformist movement - but it is becoming all too clear that the powers that be are perfectly willing to crush the reformists in broad daylight.

Foreign journalists are being sent home or have had their movements strictly limited - the "investigation" ordered by the Supreme Leader has been exposed for the sham it always was...

Now Iran's strong man is telling people to get off the streets. It's pretty clear he means it this time.

This time next week, I would expect us to be talking about how Iran has ruthlessly crushed the reformists - and how we never should have allowed ourselves to expect anything else.

There's a great moment in the movie Goin' South (1978) where Jack Nicholson is fleeing a western posse near the Mexican border. He rides like hell and makes it in Mexico - then turns to laugh at his pursuers.

Then the posse crosses the border, grabs Nicholson, and drags him back into the US to face jail.

The lesson being: you can believe you're in the right all you want - but if your opponent is willing to do anything to win - you really can't count on that to save you.

Props to the Pharaohs

Go ahead and freak, Hadary. You earned it.

Scoreline - June 18, 2009
Egypt: 1
Homos 40'
Italy: 0


Okay, okay, having needless badmouthed the Egyptian national team - they go ahead and pull off a monster of a game. Beat Italy - that's some serious stuff there. Their goal was pure soccer - and their defense held out. They got some help from the woodwork (but who doesn't now and then?).

There's a lot of talk about how this win keeps the US "mathematically alive," but we all know that mathematically alive = dead.

Here's the group:

The remaining matches are
Brazil v. Italy
And
US v Egypt

So here's the scenario that keeps us mathematically alive:
We beat Egypt like a red headed stepchild and Brazil crushes Italy.

Our best finish leaves us with three points, which would have to beat Egypt’s three or Italy’s three. Italy’s got a differential of +1 and Egypt’s is 0.

That doesn’t sound insurmountable until you realize that our differential is -5.
Those two BS red cards start to loom kind of large now, don’t they?
The bare minimum of the required victories shifts our GD to -4, Italy’s to 0 and Egypt’s to -1.

So, sure, Brazil could beat Italy by three goals, dropping them to -2, and we could crush Egypt by three goals, boosting us to -2. This would leave us tied on points, but (assuming Italy scored no goals at all) we’d be ahead on total goals scored.

But we know that’s never gonna happen.

Italy will come out with a vengeance against Brazil – so unless Italy is red carded to death, there will be no blow out – and there’s no good odds that we’ll beat Egypt.

Sure, Egypt’s due for a fail, and the US is desperate to prove they don’t suck – but I don’t see us getting three goals past that defense.

I’ll root for the US, but if there’s a choice between Italy and Egypt – no way I’m pulling for the Azzurri.

Supremes: Requiring access to DNA evidence "Not our job"

(Via NPR)

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that people convicted of a crime do not have the right to obtain DNA testing on evidence to prove their innocence.

The 5-4 decision involved the case of William Osborne, an Alaska man convicted of assault, kidnapping and sexual assault in 1993. Although the victim identified Osborne as one of her two attackers, court documents said her identification was tentative because her eyesight was poor and the assault happened at night.

In 2001, Osborne asked the state court for access to the evidence to obtain advanced DNA testing that was not available during the time of his original trial. Ultimately, he filed suit in federal court, saying the state of Alaska had no provision for post-conviction DNA testing.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his majority opinion that Osborne should have exhausted his avenues for appeal in the Alaska courts. In addition, he said defendants have no freestanding right to DNA testing under the Constitution's Due Process Clause.

In other words, there may be a requirement that you have access to DNA evidence after your conviction, but it won't be coming from us.

Here's a fun game: Without reading the opinion - guess which justices signed on with Chief Justice Roberts?

Dear FIFA

 

I'm a little turncoat, short and stout....

 

---

Hi, it's me - the US Men's National Team.

I was reflecting on our most recent match against Italy and I had a question.

Before I get to that, let me just say - we're honored to be in the FIFA Confederations Cup. We realize we're in a tough group - facing the likes of Brazil and Italy. No sleight against Egypt, but well - they suck.

Top two will make it out and - let's be fair - odds are it won't be us. Brazil and Italy will mop the floor with Egypt and it's not like we're a massive obstacle.

We get that. But in soccer, as in all sports, there's always that chance where the odds come up wrong. That an underdog will send the favorite team home. That possibility is deeply engrained in the psyche of every American.

The Miracle on Ice, Belo Horizonte - we live for that kind of sh!t. Fact is, in sports like soccer, we've had to. We're never the overdog. And we're not griping about that. These things take time.

So, to my question. I'm looking at the scoreline for US v Italy and I have to say it doesn't surprise me all that much.

Scoreline - June 15, 2009
USA: 1
Donovan 41' pen
Italy: 3
Rossi 58', 90'; de Rossi 72'

Italy's a dominant team. I'm happy for the Rossi kid. I'd point out he came from Jersey, but you know that already. Team like Italy is going to beat us almost every time. That's almost, not every. Great passing, control and a shameless amount of pure talent.

Watching a guy like Pirlo play, you forget who you're cheering for and just marvel.

But here's my question:

Does the US have to play every goddamn match against quality opposition down a man because of a total bullshit red card?

I'm just asking because the Clark ejection was total crap. Yellow, no contest. Any ref with eyes would call it that way. The eager PK to Donovan was so obviously a make up call. Yes, it was a penalty - but if we were level on men - does anyone really believe the ref would have called that in our favor?

So the no hope team has to go against Italy down a man - for an hour? Why not eject two? - I mean hell, it's not like it would lower our odds any...

If you're going to invite us, is it too much to ask that you don't cripple us before sending us into the teeth of the best teams in the world?

It's just a question.

Cripes.

Tee shirt for the NSA

Risen and Lichtblau lay another dose of wiretapping news on us.

[Congressional] inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.

Great.

Here's the money quote:

“For the Hill, the issue is a sense of scale, about how much domestic e-mail collection is acceptable,” a former intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because N.S.A. operations are classified. “It’s a question of how many mistakes they can allow.”

Yes, how much poison is too much? Way to frame the issue, there.

I get that email is a hard technology to put geographic restrictions on, but give me a freaking break.

(H/t emptywheel)

By way of Chittum

Just read three good grabs by CJR's Ryan Chittum:

1) A review of Fool's Gold by Gillian Tett - about J.P. Morgan's creation of credit derivatives and the ensuing chaos.

The final third of the book alone is worth the price of admission, if only as a crib sheet for the events of the last two years. Tett does the best job I’ve seen of reconstructing the drama of the meltdown. Reading through it is a useful reminder of how close we came to an utter cataclysm. After the Bush administration disastrously let Lehman Brothers fail, it had the sense to prop up AIG and get into the bailout business, however clumsily. Tett quotes one senior banker in London, speaking before it was clear what steps the administration would take: “If this continues, the next logical step is that the cash eventually stops coming out of the ATM machines—if that happens, God help us all.”

2) David Leonhardt's rejoinder to the knee-jerk health care soundbite of "rationing"

In truth, rationing is an inescapable part of economic life. It is the process of allocating scarce resources. Even in the United States, the richest society in human history, we are constantly rationing. We ration spots in good public high schools. We ration lakefront homes. We ration the best cuts of steak and wild-caught salmon.

[snip]

The choice isn’t between rationing and not rationing. It’s between rationing well and rationing badly.

and

3) The Economist, for reminding us that when we review the recent history of the financial crisis, we would do well to jealously guard the historical record (and refer to it often). The banks would rather you believe they never needed government help, and that is-

...[w]rong, because in the depths of the crisis the share prices and borrowing costs of all banks indicated an almost complete collapse in confidence. Some firms did perform better than others, but only relatively so. All the banks benefited from an implicit state guarantee. Even those lenders who never got capital would probably not have survived without government rescues of weaker firms to which they had counterparty exposures.

John Dugan, comptroller of the currency and...asshat

You might not think much about the comptroller of the currency, John Dugan - but Barry Ritholtz and Chris Whalen think even less of him.

Here's Barry:

I don’t usually insert myself into personal disputes amongst regulators, but when one of them [John Dugan] appears to be a bit of an asshat, I feel compelled to comment.

Here's Chris:

[John] Dugan is a complete tool of the large zombie banks, IMHO, a career “public servant” who is entirely captive of the industry he pretends to regulate.

Ok, feeling very small now

No thanks to this video.

Essentially another exercise in "this is how small you are" beginning with the moon.

Well done.



(H/t to Bad Astronomy)

American Socialism, illustrated

Love this:

 

 Fear our socialist nightmare

(H/t The Daily Dish)

Okay... start with a dog

(Via cool blog)

Only because it's Friday, and I'm such a dog person.

Read this post

Maddow's Whitehouse interview

Sen. Whitehouse is acting like the SSCI has the goods on the torture debate.

Good stuff all round.

(H/t to emptywheel, natch)

Arbitration's worst case scenario

I remember hearing about the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, the Halliburton employee who was savagely brutalized by a group of her company's firefighters.

One of those stories you can't quite believe when you hear it.

This woman was in Iraq for less than a week before being drugged, gang-raped, and assaulted to the point of disfigurment - by men who worked for her employer.

Not only were these men not prosecuted, they weren't even fired. As contractors abroad, they did not fall under US or Iraqi law.

Incredibly, the terms of Ms. Jones employment prevent her from pursuing a civil suit against her employer - she must use binding arbitration.

Yeah, as in: Sorry about what happened, but we feel you should address your alleged grievance through our private court system. We'll pick the arbitrator. It's totally fair. Trust us.

Here's a great stat from the one state that mandates disclosure of arbitration proceedings (emphasis mine):

...California, changed its law to require that arbitration results be publicly recorded. Public Citizen staff reviewed 34,000 California cases, and [Public Citizen's David] Arkush says the results speak volumes.

"Overall, consumers lost 94 percent of the time," he says.

Here's hoping Ms. Jones buries these bastards, then takes a hammer and tongs to this notion that secret arbitration can be just.

Earth to Terry: you suck at this

Terry McAuliffe loses the Virgina gubanatorial primary.

By twenty points (and counting).

If the gods are kind, Terry will have a political awakening and switch parties. Maybe then his disasterous instincts can balance out the damage he did to progressives.

God, but that man was a fool.

Steven Colbert goes high and tight

No lie.

A pre-buzz Colbert

...and his barber was none other than Gen. Odierno.

Say what you want - the man knows how to play a crowd.

DOJ's Comey: Truth to Power

Wow. If you're tracking the torture debate - you can do worse than read the recently released emails from then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey.

Glennzilla takes the emails, the slanted NTY story based on them and basically beats them senseless.

Good times.

There are some real money quotes in Comey's emails:

Regarding the current crop of decision makers at DOJ:

Everyone seemed to be thinking as if they still worked at the White House and not the United States Department of Justice

or (regarding then-AG Alberto Gonazlez):

People may think it strange to hear me say I miss John Ashcroft, but as intimidated as he could be by the WH, when it came to crunch time, he stood up, even from an intensive care hospital bed. That backbone is gone.

Bill Killed [Self]

Apparently.

Late edit:  Or perhaps not, although the counter theory doesn't really save Mr. Carradine's honor.

The most popular business story on today's NYT

...has clearly been selected for how infuriating it is.

She had seen the advertisements for the new government program offering relief. She had heard President Obama promise that help was on the way for homeowners like her, people who had lost jobs and could no longer make their mortgage payments.

But when Eileen Ulery called her mortgage company — Countrywide, now part of Bank of America — the bank did not offer to alter her mortgage. Rather, the bank tried to sell her a new loan with a slightly lower monthly payment while asking her to pay $13,000 toward the principal and a fresh $5,000 in fees.

Her problem was that she did not yet present a big enough problem to merit aid.

[snip]

A Treasury spokeswoman, Jenni Engebretsen, confirmed that homeowners like Ms. Ulery — current on their mortgages yet grappling with a hardship like unemployment — were eligible for loan modifications under the program. She said mortgage servicers had offered to modify more than 100,000 loans since the department announced the program.

[snip]

A spokesman for Bank of America Home Loans, Rick Simon, confirmed that the bank offered Ms. Ulery refinancing and not loan modification. The bank is now focusing on modifications only for those borrowers “who are already in severe threat of foreclosure,” he said.

[snip]

“I don’t think the government gets it,” [Ulery] said. “These are the same people you couldn’t trust before.”

 (H/t to CJR)

Ex Post Facto

Okay, I'm a bit behind on things, but Lindsey Graham and Joe Liebermann are complete tools.

They seem to have fallen in with the "If we did it, we needed to at the time and besides it's in the past" crowd.

They're pushing the Orwellian named Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009.

And by protecting, they mean that we are being protected from knowing what was done.
Which is a very wordy way of saying cover up.

I get that there are people out there who think that these pictures will cause problems for us. I get that. But that's like the criminal saying we shouldn't look into his car because he might go to jail for what's in his trunk.

Obama's all for it, apparently.Perhaps he's glad someone else is stepping forward so he doesn't have to.

These pictures have been ordered released by the courts, now the rules will be amended to undo that ruling. Retroactively.

Here's the language of the act:

(b) Definitions- In this section:

(1)COVERED RECORD- The term ‘covered record’ means any record--

(A) that is a photograph that was taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States; and

(B) for which a certification by the Secretary of Defense under subsection (c) is in effect.

(2) PHOTOGRAPH- The term ‘photograph’ encompasses all photographic images, whether originals or copies, including still photographs, negatives, digital images, films, video tapes, and motion pictures.

(c) Certification-

(1) IN GENERAL- For any photograph described under subsection (b)(1)(A), the Secretary of Defense shall certify, if the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, determines that the disclosure of that photograph would endanger--

(A) citizens of the United States; or

(B) members of the Armed Forces or employees of the United States Government deployed outside the United States.

(2) CERTIFICATION EXPIRATION- A certification submitted under paragraph (1) and a renewal of a certification submitted under paragraph (3) shall expire 3 years after the date on which the certification or renewal, as the case may be, is submitted to the President.

(3) CERTIFICATION RENEWAL- The Secretary of Defense may submit to the President--

(A) a renewal of a certification in accordance with paragraph (1) at any time; and

(B) more than 1 renewal of a certification.

(4) CERTIFICATION RENEWAL- A timely notice of the Secretary’s certification shall be provided to Congress.

(d) Nondisclosure of Detainee Records- A covered record shall not be subject to--

(1) disclosure undersection 552 of title 5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the Freedom of Information Act); or

(2) disclosure under any proceeding under that section.

(e) Nothing in this section shall be construed to preclude the voluntary disclosure of a covered record.

(f) Effective Date- This section shall take effect on the date of enactment of this Act and apply to any photograph created before, on, or after that date that is a covered record.

There are smarter people than me spelling out what's wrong with this law, but here's my bullet list:

1) It retroactively undoes the rulings of the federal courts (nothing new here, but when there is the likelihood of wrongdoing, it smells pretty bad.)
2) There's no oversight. The SecDef gets to designate any photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 as off limits to the public. They have to say that it will endanger the troops, but there is no independent arbitrator of their assessment. They say so, it's secret for three years.
3) It can be renewed indefinitely. This makes the records secret until somebody forgets to keep them secret.

I'm just flat out disgusted with the new administration for not publically opposing this piece of legislative dung.

Mark to Mark Snark

CJR's Ryan Chittum heaps praise on the WSJ for covering the aggressive lobbying underway by the [State-sponsored] financial sector.

Mark to Mark accounting went away because the banks don't like it anymore. The insanity of the situation is nicely summed up in this exchange:

Last year, [SEC's chief accountant] Mr. Hewitt recalls, he challenged [American Bankers Association] lobbyist Donna Fisher and a Wells Fargo executive on their valuation complaints. “If you say you’re required to value the securities at 50 cents,” he recalls asking, “and you believe that the securities are really worth 80 or 90 cents, do you have a lot of buyers because of this unusually low valuation?”

The two responded that there were no buyers, according to Mr. Hewitt.

“Then maybe the securities should be valued at less than 50 cents,” Mr. Hewitt says he responded.

 Chittum's retort is perfect:

But what’s logic when you’ve got cash?