…explained in 30 seconds by Russ Feingold: I lived in France for just under two years. During that time the current version of FISA (which was just extended by voice vote for another 15 days to allow for more time to negotiate the next version) was in effect, and any of my phone calls home could have been monitored without judicial oversight, despite the fact I am an American citizen for whom no probable cause exists for any type of search. “Trust us” wasn’t good enough...

…and post the following: The people I am most afraid of are those who are the most afraid.    -Robert Frost

Cross-posted to Random Fate. — Let us take at face value the nominal, stated reasons as why various office-holders claim they have for taking their various actions. So, President George W. Bush vetoes the recent renewal/expansion of the S-CHIP bill because he is concerned that it is “creeping socialism” that would ultimately result in publicly funded healthcare, which goes against the libertarian philosophy of self-sufficiency and avoiding governmental interference. Yet, he promises...

…of course, the Republicans would NEVER do such a thing, so that makes it OK to attack the child when the Democrats do it. Oh, wait a minute…

At the weblog City of Brass, Aziz Poonawalla is posting his morning thoughts during Ramadan. I expect the meditations will provide very nutritious food for thought, as evidenced by the concluding lines from the first post: In fact, for the next two years, 9-11 will fall within Ramadan again. It is important for muslims to move beyond 9-11 as a context in which we defend our faith and simply embrace our faith on our own terms. The time for attempting to assuage other Americans’ fears about...

Cross-posted to Random Fate. — Upon becoming a stepdad, I’ve been introduced into the wonderful world of middle-school homework. One of the prevalent tasks (appearing in more than one class in more than one grade) is a “current event” summary. The student is to find a news article related to the class (this year we have two, one for Social Studies and one for Science) from a reliable source, primarily a newspaper or one of the major media websites, read the article, and...

Dr. Steven Taylor at Poliblog has a commentary on the comic book logic being used by some who believe the students at Virginia Tech didn’t act enough like “men”.

Cross-posted to Random Fate. — I’ve always been a big advocate of efficiency in resource use and minimal generation of pollution because it’s not simply poor form to crap in your own bed, in the long term it is deadly, regardless of what those who would like to think otherwise say. On the face of it, increased use of ethanol seems very promising in reducing at least some of the petroleum usage of the United States along with improving some aspects of the pollution generated by cars....

Ordinarily, I would have posted this to my personal weblog, Random Fate, but it is currently down because of some issues related to WordPress and how it needs to be properly configured to not overwhelm system resources with the host computer. Unfortunately, I’m not enough of a guru to tell my hosting service how to fix the issue. For almost two decades, I’ve been searching for the perfect computer. I use both Macintosh and PC programs, and I multitask like mad, frequently overwhelming...

Obviously crime pays, or there’d be no crime.    -G. Gordon Liddy

He’s a total radical, probably the most radical president we’ve ever had in terms of his definition of the power of the presidency. There’s nothing more dangerous than a radical who doesn’t have information, doesn’t learn from information and doesn’t learn from the past.    -Seymour Hersh, in a symposium at Tufts University This statement brings a question to my mind: Is it possible to remain a radical (of whatever stripe) if one does learn from...

Cross-posted to Random Fate. — Here is the result of almost six years of fear-mongering: “It had a very sinister appearance,” Coakley told reporters. “It had a battery behind it, and wires.” We’re now panicked by Lite-Brites that have “batteries and wires” behind them. This is what we’ve come to. It’s not Iraq that we have to worry about when it comes to the “terrorists winning”; it’s right here at home when we allow fear...

Cross-posted to Random Fate. —- A few weeks ago I tried to write a movie review of <em>Casino Royale</em>, the new James Bond movie. (In case you’re interested, I enjoyed the movie a lot, especially considering I went into it expecting to not like it.. I’ll finish the full review if anyone cares to read it at this late date after the release of the movie). This past weekend I went to see the movie <em>Babel</em>, and this movie prompted thoughts that went...

A “tag cloud” has been generated for the recent State of the Union Address by President George W. Bush. Tag clouds were originally created to indicate which tags used to label/categorize blog posts were used the most; it lists the words (or tags) used in different sizes, with the larger sizes for the most used tags. In this case, the larger words are the ones used more often in the speech. I am always interested in new and creative ways of displaying complex information, and tag clouds...

Cross-posted to Random Fate. — God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties...

I listened to President George W. Bush today (Wednesday) as he discussed the “new” strategy for Iraq. After digesting what I heard (with no notes on the visible body language, which I have heard was rather obvious to any normal observer), the fundamental question that I see is this: How is the proposed strategy any different than the past “surges” run with the mantra “as the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down.”? I cannot see any substantive changes. Can you? ...

A reminder to those who use RSS feed reading software that the URL for The Moderate Voice feed is now: http://themoderatevoice.com/feed/ Please also note that the site is still undergoing changes associated with the content management software, so do not be alarmed if comments you add to posts do not immediately appear.

Reports indicate that President George W. Bush will issue his “The Decider” statement that the correct strategy in Iraq is for a so-called “surge” of troops to retake control of the situation in that troubled land. The new, Democratic leadership in Congress have sent a letter to the President indicating that they will not support any troop increases in Iraq. Some commentators, while admitting their intitial analysis indicates the “surge” is unwise, also claim...

Cross-posted to Random Fate under the category “Recommended Reading“. — There are some posts that show why sorting through all the dross in the vast majority of weblogs is worth the time:    Velociworld – Requiem for the Senator Although knowing the context underlying the tale told helps, it is not necessary. The fact that “the Senator” is the author’s father becomes apparent when reading, and the full, rich texture of the relationship that...

Before going further, recall that “moderate” does not equal “centrist” nor “balanced” but instead an attitude that acknowledges the possibility that maybe, possibly, one just might be wrong. Cross-posted to Random Fate. — President Gerald Ford gave David Hume Kennerley access to the White House to take unstaged photographs of the President at work. From the MSNBC Photoblog, here is a candid shot of Ford talking with his Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller. By...

As part of the transition of The Moderate Voice to new content management software, the URL for the RSS feed has changed. It is now: http://themoderatevoice.com/feed/ Please update your feedreader software accordingly.

…here is how Santa Claus does his thing every Christmas Eve:    Science of Santa Claus: Jolly Old Elf Really Can Deliver Presents in One Night, Says NC State Engineer

…holds lessons that we need to learn, although we refuse to even see the warning.    The legacy of Chernobyl — Cross-posted to Random Fate.

For reasons both personal and related to exhaustion with the idiocies I see in blogworld, my postings both here at The Moderate Voice along with my own personal weblog Random Fate have been few and far between. Instead of a political diatribe, I offer photo I took Monday night in San Francisco on a businesss trip when out with an old friend I worked with in France. Click on the thumbnail to go to a page with a bigger version, and click on the photo on that page to get an even larger version.

My voting experience today was not one to encourage confidence that our system of voting has even rudimentary safeguards against unintentional error, much less deliberate fraud. It just goes to show that the latest technology isn’t the solution to every problem.