When science isn't

So here's another case where a wrongful conviction was at least partly based on "wrongful science" -- a presumption of forensic certainty which wasn't actually accurate at all.
We watch CSI and its clones every week, but I must say I'm gettimg more and more impatient with the plots -- maybe its the CSI effect in reverse.
I think the writers have run out of ideas for these shows.
Every week now, some science geek runs all over the city breaking into houses and slamming witnesses into the wall -- apparently, there are virtually no actual police officers in Las Vegas or New York or Miami who investigate crimes anymore. Then the Science Geek decides, on the basis of virtually no evidence at all, that the wife or the husband or the long-lost uncle or the stranger across the street is guilty of the crime and then, after an incredible chain of coincidence and luck, that very same Geek finds a fingerprint at the bottom of a well or a hair lying on an otherwise-pristine carpet or a scrap of fabric at the top of a tree which proves it. The accused, who never hires a lawyer, immediately breaks down and confesses all. Case solved.
Cue the three-minute song so they don't need any actual dialogue for the final "end of the shift/going home/life in the big city" scenes and they can expand it or cut it depending on how many commercials have been sold.
Hmmm, I guess I'm getting just a little jaded these days...

Ingrates!

In this USA Today story Bush says the children of Iraq will be grateful:

. . . Bush also was asked how he thinks Iraqi children will view the United States in 15 to 20 years.
"If we can help this government be able to create the conditions so that a mother can grow up — raise their child in peace, I think people will look back and say they'd be thankful of America," Bush said. "If America leaves, however, before the job is done, I think there will be great resentment toward America."

Really?

Shorter

Shorter Iraq War neocon analysis, from the new Vanity Fair article about the coming war with Iran:

Iraq isn't a failure. It's merely a success which hasn't occurred yet.

TOLD ya this was the greatest talking point ever.

Great line of the day

From the German version of the Financial Times, as translated by Maccabee, in his Kos diary The Coming Fall Of The Right Wing.:

Ronald Reagan is dead, Margaret Thatcher is senile and the ideological world that they created is now dying with them. From 1979 to 2004, the political Right won the Western world's battle of ideas. Conservatives triumphed because they were correct about the two biggest issues of that era: They were for free markets and against communism. But now confusion on the Right prevails, because today it is they who are on the wrong side of the West's two greatest political issues: climate change and the Iraq War.

UPDATE: Dana linked to the original English for this article, here, on Jan. 25 -- sorry, Dana, I hadn't seen this post earlier.

The domino theory

Simple questions

Glenn Greenwald reads the New York Times' latest fear-mongering article about Iran so you don't have to. And he gives us another chance to play Simple Answers to Simple Questions:

What is the point of this sort of article? Why would the New York Times just offer itself up again as a mindless vessel for what are clearly war-seeking accusations by the administration? Have they learned nothing?

What is the point? To give Republicans something to talk about on the Sunday talk shows.
Why would they do it? See next question.
Have they learned nothing? No. No, they haven't.
UPDATE Sunday: Juan Cole points out the dumbest aspect of the NYT story -- the Iranians have been supporting the Iraq SHIITES, while the Americans are being killed by the Shiite enemies, the SUNNIS:

Some large proportion of US troops being killed in Iraq are being killed with bullets and weapons supplied by Washington to the Iraqi army, which are then sold by desperate or greedy Iraqi soldiers on the black market. This problem of US/Iraqi government arms getting into the hands of the Sunni Arab guerrillas is far more significant and pressing than whatever arms smugglers bring in from Iran . . .
If 25 percent of US troops are being killed and wounded by explosively formed projectiles, then someone should look into who is giving those EFPs to Sunni Arab guerrillas. It isn't Iran.
Finally, it is obvious that if Iran did not exist, US troops would still be being blown up in large numbers. Sunni guerrillas in al-Anbar and West Baghdad are responsible for most of the deaths. The Bush administration's talent for blaming everyone but itself for its own screw-ups is on clear display here.

War by PowerPoint?

Via Raw Story and Laura Rosen we find this recent National Journal article on the politics of Iran intelligence:

Amid the continued political fallout over the faulty intelligence case for going to war in Iraq, the Bush administration is newly cautious about the specific intelligence it plans to present to the public to back up its claims that Iran is fighting a kind of proxy war with the United States in Iraq.
At least twice in the past month, the White House has delayed a PowerPoint presentation initially prepared by the military to detail evidence of suspected Iranian materiel and financial support for militants in Iraq. The presentation was to have been made at a press conference in Baghdad in the first week of February. Officials have set no new date, but they say it could be any day.
Even as U.S. officials in Baghdad were ready to make the case, administration principals in Washington who were charged with vetting the PowerPoint dossier bowed to pressure from the intelligence community and ordered that it be scrubbed again . . . the presentation was sent "back into the interagency process" . . .

I know this is a apparently-trivial side issue, but . . . PowerPoint?
They're promoting a war with PowerPoint? Haven't they ever heard of this?
Yes, its funny, but there is a more serious discussion about the problem of technical presentations on PowerPoint here.
Edward Tufte writes about the Columbia disaster and the findings of the investigation board that faulted NASA's reliance on PowerPoint presentations rather than technical reports as a primary cause of its inability to properly assess the risks of damage to the Columbia space shuttle mission:

In the reports, every single text-slide uses bullet-outlines with 4 to 6 levels of hierarchy . . . the rigid slide-by-slide hierarchies, indifferent to content, slice and dice the evidence into arbitrary compartments, producing an anti-narrative with choppy continuity . . .

As information gets passed up an organization hierarchy, from people who do analysis to mid-level managers to high-level leadership, key explanations and supporting information are filtered out. In this context, it is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation. At many points during its investigation, the Board was surprised to receive similar presentation slides from NASA officials in place of technical reports. The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA.

So I wonder if the reporters who are going to have to analyze the Pentagon's PowerPoint slides to evaluate Iranian activity in Iraq have ever read the Columbia report?
But maybe it doesn't really matter, anyway. Returning to the National Journal article, it makes the point that the war is on regardless of any actual intelligence or evidence:

"Even if this PowerPoint presentation eventually gets made public ... what does this show us as to where Iran is really coming from?" [former National Intelligence Council Middle East analyst Paul] Pillar asked. "What is the larger significance? Even if Iranian assistance to an Iraqi group is proven to everyone's satisfaction, the [administration's] policy never rested on that. The policy [is being driven by a] much larger sense of Iran as the prime bete noire in the region, and that is why the administration is trying to put together these coalitions with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Sunni states, that we've been reading about. None of this hinges [on the Iran dossier]. We are not going to call this off if we can't prove that Iran is furnishing munitions to Iraqi groups. ..."

Oh, well, that's alright then...

Show us the money

Hmmm -- CP reports Canadians blast Ottawa over treatment of Saskatchewan. Well, I should hope so:

Of the 108 submissions [to a Finance Department survey last summer] 50 criticized the Conservative government for failing to live up to promises to exclude resource revenues, just as Atlantic Canada's offshore energy wealth has effectively been excluded for Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador under special deals with those provinces.
None of the other 60 issues raised came even close to that level of consensus, an internal accounting of the responses shows. . . .
The Finance Department's official report on the web-based consultations does not reflect the overwhelmingly pro-Saskatchewan nature of the web contributions.
"There were wide views on the treatment of natural resources," says the final report, posted on the Internet last month.
"Some suggested that all non-renewable resource revenues should be excluded from the equalization formula, a view shared by the substantial number of submissions from Saskatchewan.
"There were also submissions that supported the full inclusion of resource revenues in the equalization formula."
The Finance Department warned last summer when it announced the consultation that it was not intended to be a poll, though the internal documents indicate bureaucrats conducted a careful accounting of which issues received the most comment.
The department initially refused to release the documents under the Access to Information Act, saying all results would eventually be published. But officials relented last week after the office of the Information Commissioner of Canada launched an investigation.

Well, I'm almost certain I know where 12 of the submissions must have come from -- our very own Conservative MPs!
I'm sure of it, because they were so very vocal on this issue BEFORE they were elected to government. Of course they would have taken the opportunity offered by the Finance Department to remind Harper about his promises! [/snark]
And here is what they said -- Giant Political Mouse gathered these comments from 2004 and 2005:

“The matter of equalization has to do with Saskatchewan's natural resources which by right of the Constitution we should have complete access to, we should have total and complete benefit of. It is a right which is being taken away from us through the equalization process…. We want nothing more than the basic principles of fairness applied.”- Mr. Bradley Trost (Saskatoon—Humboldt, CPC) Hansard
“Saskatchewan has been ripped off by the federal government when it comes to equalization …Because of equalization, revenues from the very resources that are keeping the province afloat are being handed to the federal government which in turn distributes the money among the have not provinces”- Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, CPC) Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on the equalization question…. We can find inequities that exist between provinces particularly as they relate to Saskatchewan. In that regard, there have been many studies commissioned showing that Saskatchewan has had the bad end of the deal on this one… All Saskatchewan wants is to be treated fairly and equitably… It is our position that non-renewable resources such as oil and gas should not be in the formula. The Minister of Finance, a native of Saskatchewan, has an obligation to the citizens of Saskatchewan and those in particular in Souris—Moose Mountain to ensure that the past injustices done to Saskatchewan are not repeated again.- Mr. Ed Komarnicki (Souris—Moose Mountain, CPC) Hansard
Saskatchewan is simply not getting its fair share out of equalization…. Just last week the Prime Minister visited Saskatoon, but refused to substantially negotiate or discuss the equalization matter with our premier…. Saskatchewan faces challenges. Its population has increased 14% since the Great Depression, while other provincial populations have flourished. With major industries in crisis, a static population and mounting fiscal pressures, we cannot afford to wait forever for this federal government to attend to this problem…. We need our NDP government in Saskatchewan to be supportive of our efforts to get a better deal for Saskatchewan. We need a provincial government that wants our province to prosper on the backs of its own industries. At the very least we need a provincial government that will hold the federal government to its constitutional obligations…. I plead with the government and the minister across the way to negotiate a fair deal with the province of Saskatchewan and to do it without delay.- Mrs. Carol Skelton (Saskatoon—Rosetown—Biggar, CPC) Hansard
“The equalization formula that we have has totally shafted the province of Saskatchewan from every standpoint…. A good deal of the problem I have identified is the gross unfairness in the equalization formula. I want to point out a couple of those discrepancies. I also want to point out that the Conservative Party has clearcut policies on this matter as opposed to the government across the way…. I want to make it clear that this formula is grossly unfair to a province that has non-renewable natural resources…. This is bad policy. It is terrible policy…. This formula is unfair. It is shocking. I do not know what terminology I could use to describe the matter….. As a resident of Saskatchewan, I am looking at a formula that does not serve our province very well at all. As I stated at the onset, in many respects it shafts the people of Saskatchewan to the umpteenth degree. What is the government's response to this very serious problem? The finance minister says that it is too complicated to discuss.- Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick (Prince Albert, CPC) Hansard
"The truth of the matter is that in Saskatchewan the only elected official who is not demanding the same deal as was afforded Premiers Hamm and Williams is the Minister of Finance. That is shameful. Will the minister or his designate stand in the House today and do what is right, do what is fair, and simply commit to the elimination of the clawback provisions and give Saskatchewan people the same deal as afforded to Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia?"Mr. Tom Lukiwski (Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, CPC) Hansard
"Representatives of the people of Saskatchewan are obliged to speak out against an equalization system that penalizes our province with an over-emphasis on non-renewable resources and a complete failure to accurately measure fiscal capacity. The detrimental effects of the present equalization formula should not be under-estimated. It has and continues to have a real effect on the prosperity of the residents of Saskatchewan, robbing them of economic benefits resulting from energy revenues…. The concept of equalization is to assist have not provinces. However, under this formula, we could conceivably cement the economic stagnation of some provinces, such as my own, for decades to come. The treatment of Saskatchewan's non-renewable resources under the equalization formula is, to quote Courchene, “not only inequitable, it is fiscally and economically immiserating”`. We cannot allow this situation to persist."- Mrs. Lynne Yelich (Blackstrap, CPC) Hansard
“A tremendous number of our graduates and our kids are working in Alberta in that oil patch that Alberta started before this equalization formula became a hindrance. I take exception to that…. The whole equalization process, and the fundamental word in there is equal, has become a political process, not a practical process. One can argue that formula is as flawed as the equalization one and I would agree. It needs to be changed…"- Mr. Gerry Ritz (Battlefords—Lloydminster, CPC) Hansard
"I have a lot of people in my riding who would like to know why, when those parties were making this deal, there was not a single penny for agriculture and not a single penny for a fair deal for Saskatchewan in terms of equalization, an agenda that this party has been driving for months as the only ally of the Saskatchewan people in moving this issue forward."- Mr. Andrew Scheer (Regina Qu’appelle, CPC) Hansard
There is no equalization deal for Saskatchewan, which is what the Conservative Party has been consistently demanding from the government. To put it into perspective, a new equalization deal would have meant an additional $750 million for Saskatchewan, my province, this year alone.- Mr. Dave Batters (Palliser, CPC) Hansard
It was interesting to hear him say that equalization is not really about equality. It seems to me that it is…. We know that the current equalization formula is flawed…. We agree that Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia deserve to keep their offshore gas and oil revenues. However, we think that what is fair for those provinces is also fair for Saskatchewan…. . This change should be a slam dunk.- Mr. David Anderson (Cypress Hills—Grasslands, CPC) Hansard
"This is not something just unique to the Conservative Party, but we believe there is a tremendous flaw in the current equalization formula… It is estimated that Saskatchewan, had it received that same deal a decade ago, would have received an additional $8 billion for the province from non-renewable resource revenues…. In regard to equalization, Saskatchewan is being treated very unfairly…. By not providing a fair deal for Saskatchewan, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance have turned their backs on our province"Mr. Maurice Vellacott (Saskatoon—Wanuskewin, CPC) Hansard

The Mouse has been giving yeoman coverage to this issue -- here's another recent post of his, a very useful roundup of Saskatchewan blog comments about the equalization issue.

They were expendable*

People who work for the Bush administration are soon going to realise that, when the Bushies need to save themselves, they'll throw you under the bus without a second thought.
Jack Abramoff? Nope, doesn't ring a bell. Scooter Libby? Didn't he used to work here? Doug Feith? Can't quite remember what he did around here.
*

What's that sound?

Oh, yeah -- Hell just froze over.
Cold enough for ya?

Speaking of my last post...

Don't give me that old time religion

When I read that rather bizarre Hugh Hewitt/Terry McAuliffe interview last week, one of things I started to think about was whether maybe, finally, our society is beginning to shake itself loose from a lock-step, all-or-nothing approach to religion.
Maybe we've realized where that can lead -- to Guyana and to Manhattan.
One advance would be if people did not think that the only way to be religious is to slavishly revere every single thing their religious leader has decreed to be an article of faith. Terry McAuliffe (who is former chair of the Democratic National Committee) demonstrates this when he refuses Hugh Hewitt's You're-Not-A-Real-Catholic frame just because he is pro-choice:

TM: Hugh, I don’t cite Catholic doctrine all through the book. I say I’d gone to Catholic schools, Hughie, through the book, and I am pro-choice, no question about it. But I don’t pretend to be a priest . . .
HH: No, but I mean, the whole abortion controversy, that’s just…you compartmentalize that and put that aside?
TM: I can, as can many Catholics.
. . .
TM: And as you know, the Holy Father himself, John Paul II, blessed my wife’s engagement ring when I wound up being at a private Mass for us in his private chapel.
HH: Nice picture. I know. Did he know about your supporting late term abortions?
TM: Sure, he knew he was.
HH: Is that teaching optional, Terry McAuliffe?
TM: Is what teaching optional?
HH: The Church’s teaching on the sanctity of life?
TM: Hey, listen, I have my views on my religious beliefs, Hugh, you’ve got yours.
HH: But I’m asking, do you think it’s…
TM: And you know, if you want to do a show on religious teaching, that’s fine. I’m talking about my book.
. . . HH: No, but it’s in the book all the time about how Catholic you are.
TM: It’s not how Catholic I am. I’m an Irish Catholic kid from Syracuse. It’s probably mentioned five times, Hugh, so please don’t incorrectly characterize my book to your listeners.
HH: Well, it’s in here a lot…
TM: If you want to talk about the book, talk about the facts as they exist. I know you’re a right wing whacko, but don’t make things up.

Another advance would be if religion itself could change its own hurtful, narrow, mean-spirited doctrines and find a shining, kind, expansive, inclusive, and, dare I say, a more "Christian" God for its adherents to worship. Here is Lance Mannion's rant about what is wrong with the Catholic Church:

. . . I can't imagine a wedding outside a church.
I can't imagine Christmas without snow, either.
I can't imagine the World Series without the Yankees, cars without gas tanks, books without covers, Greenland without glaciers, living happily in Dallas, shopping at a mall, keeping ferrets as pets, any social situation in which Joe Lieberman is taken seriously, anybody but Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes, and a world in which I've been dead and forgotten so long that I might as well never have existed.
There's tradition, and there's what you're used to.
There's what is, and there's what you wish there was.
There's the world as it ought to be and there's the world as people have made it.
There's convention, there's culture, there's ritual, there's a right way and a wrong way, and then there are things people do because that's what people have always done and they're too stupid to imagine doing them any other way, even if an obviously better way has come along.
There's marriage, and then there's the desperately clung to notion of marriage of an unimaginative, ranting, and frustrated old man who sees the institution he has devoted his life to and in which he has now risen to the position of supposed ultimate authority disintegrating into irrelevance. Pope Benedict is seeing the end of the world as he knows it in Italy's taking steps to legally recognize the unions of unmarried couples. (Pssst, homosexuals are among us!)
. . .
Maybe if the Church hadn't spent centuries imposing and enforcing an idea of marriage that was horrifically unfair to half the people getting married and a trap and a curse to many among the other half. Maybe if it hadn't spent the last fifty years teaching that children are the result of Divine whimsicality and mood . . . Maybe if it hadn't spent the last forty years teaching that the simple application of science and common sense that would allow women to decide how many children they would have, allow some to even have them, is a sin . . . [then] people would think the Church had something useful and helpful to say about marriage . . .
And maybe if they hadn't spent all that time defending celibacy as an ideal at the expense of all others to the point that it made itself hospitable to no one but the closeted, the hypocritical, and the perverse, especially the perverse, so that it became a criminal organization of pederasts and their enablers. And maybe if when the scandal was revealed church leaders had responded with courage and honesty and admitted its guilt and taken the one, easy, intelligent step to ending the problem---allowing priests to get married, making the rectories homes for real adults and their families instead of hideouts for creeps and villains---instead of reacting with a hypocritical and self-defeating purge of homosexuals. Maybe if the Church acted as if it cared about its own survival, then people might think it had something to say about anything.

Callous hunour

Do you know conservatives have no sense of humour?
Just hum a few bars and see if they recognize it.
There's a bit of a funny discussion going on in the left blogosphere now about why conservatives aren't funny, inspired by a Townhall article which said it was all the fault of those mean, sneering librulls because conservatives are just too nice.
I'm not making this up.
I guess Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter would be just as funny as Steven Colbert and Jon Stewart if only they could become more callous.
Skippy adds his two cents here in his post titled two conservatives walk into a bar. they buy it, then raise the prices, then complain about welfare cheats wanting free peanuts. He quotes a Huffington Post comment that sums it up:

. . . conservatives are unfunny because a) they take themselves so damned seriously, and b) they don't know it. The left, though it also takes itself too seriously, has at least the virtue of knowing it. Our best comics realize this and make it work for them. They poke fun at the right, while not letting us forget our own foolishness and that of our "liberal" leaders . . . When conservatives like Limbaugh and Hannity try to do humor, it's not that they are being too nice to liberals that makes them unfunny. It's that they are being too nice to themselves. It's called self-righteousness.

Canadian Press, what a scoop!

What a journalistic coup for Canadian Press, a real scoop!
Unnamed and unidentified "sources" have just leaked some really, really major news about Harper.
He's going to give a speech on Tuesday.
To the Canadian Club.
And its not just any old speech.
Nope, its going to be a "mini-throne speech" with the "broad strokes" of "major public policy" which will "highlight accomplishments".
And its even going to "include key messages" on "Harper's goals for the environment" -- which is breathlessly revealed to be "the burning issue on both Parliament Hill and in public opinion polls - sources say".
Oh, and this speech will "form the backbone" of an election platform. These "broad policy outlines" and the March budget "will be a one-two punch of Conservative ideas" and "a challenge to the opposition parties to come to the table with their own nascent platforms" -- because, after all, those other parties haven't really been announcing much of anything, I guess, while they have been waiting for Our Leader to challenge them.
Oh, and here's some more breaking news -- "several members of Harper's cabinet" are even expected to attend the speech. If they aren't too busy demonstrating leadership and resolve and truth and steadfastness and family values, I guess.
Unmentioned is that somebody in the Conservative communications office now owes Canadian Press big-time for reporting this press release just as if it were actually a news story.

Five hours

Wow, that didn't take long.
Americablog's first post on the Snickers homophobic ad campaign. launched at the Superbowl, was timed at just after noon, at 12:37 pm to be exact.

The ad in question showed a mechanic eating a Snickers bar. Hi co-mechanic is so desirous of the Snickers that he starts eating it from the other end of the same bar that's already in the other guy's mouth. The two butch guys eat their way down the bar, like the dogs eating the same string of pasta in the Disney movie - until they're accidentally kissing. The guys, naturally, recoil in disgust - then, oddly, start ripping out their chest hair with their hands . . . Snickers has set up a Web site where ... you can watch recorded-live-on-video reactions of real Bears and Colts players watching and reacting to the ad, and you can even watch the ad with 3 additional endings not shown on TV. You then vote on the three endings and the most popular one will air during the Daytona 500 . . . the reactions of the Bears and Colts players to two guys kissing is outright disgust . . . [one of the additional endings] After the guys kiss, they say "I think we just accidentally kissed - quick, do something manly," and proceed to drink motor oil and I think anti-freeze - they guzzle it down, screaming at the top of their lungs, making them sick to their stomachs. The ad is vaguely violent - better to die than be gay.. . . [another ending]The two guys accidentally kiss, they say to each other again "quick, do something manly," and one guy proceeds to pick up a huge oversized wrench and violently attack the other guy, while the second takes the first and throws him under the hood of the car, slamming it down on his head. Yes, the appropriate reaction to a guy kissing you is to beat the crap out of the guy who kissed you. Maybe Snickers should rename this ad "Matthew Shepard." . . . The entire thing is absolutely sickening. And while I can appreciate that Snickers didn't overtly think that promoting violence against gays and lesbians is "funny," they knew what they were doing. They were gay-bashing for fun. And they didn't just cross the line - they left the line in the dust. . . . I've called the head of corporate public relations for Mars and am waiting to hear back. I've also talked with the lead press guy for the Human Rights Campaign, the largest gay civil rights group in the country, and they're not very happy, to put it lightly.
As the guy who launched the first-ever successful boycott of a TV show (StopDrLaura.com), I'm going to suggest to Mars that they had better nip this in the bud quickly, or they're not going to know what hit them.

Five hours and 200,000 visitors later, at 5:47 pm, John posted another message that the offending, offensive website was gone.

Masterfoods, Mars and Snickers parent company (or something), called to let me know that while humor is highly subjective, and their target market for the ads did give them positive feedback (that would be the neanderthal gay-bashing fans of Snickers?), they did not intend to offend anyone and will not be airing any of the four ads ever again, nor will they be airing the commentary from the NFL players responding to the ads. This includes not airing the ads during the Daytona 500

Problem solved. Thanks, John.