I’m not a lawyer or a legal scholar or anything, but I must say that I’m kind of stunned by yesterday’s evisceration of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court. Not that they did it – that was to be expected by these five right wing zealots – but the way the ruling was justified.

“Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.”
[…]
Chief Justice Roberts wrote that Congress remained free to try to impose federal oversight on states where voting rights were at risk, but must do so based on contemporary data.
[…]
Congress renewed the act in 2006 after holding extensive hearings on the persistence of racial discrimination at the polls, again extending the preclearance requirement for 25 years. But it relied on data from the 1975 reauthorization to decide which states and localities were covered.

The current coverage system, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, is “based on 40-year-old facts having no logical relationship to the present day.”

Setting aside whether or not you agree that there’s a need for certain states to be kept on a short leash when it comes to fucking with people’s right to vote, isn’t it up to Congress to decide what data to rely on when passing legislation (or whether the “facts” they use in writing a law does or does not bear a “logical relationship to the present day”?

I mean, the Court can now just say, “you blew it when you wrote that law, so we’re tossing it out”? Not because it violates the Constitution, but because we don’t think you were properly informed when you wrote (and overwhelmingly passed) the law? One branch of government now has the power to overrule the other two branches just because – in the opinion of as few as 5 partisan hacks – they don’t think our legislators were properly informed on the issues?

Not that I’m a big fan of Congress and not that I think a bunch of (mostly) old white men who aren’t certain what the difference between a fax and a e-mail are especially qualified to write the laws that govern modern society, but that’s the system we have, and I don’t think a handful of (mostly) old white men on the Supreme Court are any better.

Judicial activism? Hell, this is judicial legislation.

On the bright side, it was nice to see “we the people” rise up and take on the Texas Senate last night (not that I stayed up to watch it). They apparently attempted to fix the results to make it look like the vote was completed before midnight, but got called out on their bullshit (Republicans just don’t seem to understand how things like time stamps work).

My prediction is that they’ll call another special session and they’ll make sure none of those damn obstructionist citizens are there to stand in the way after they find a way to quash the next filibusterer (hey, whattya know? Filibusterer is apparently a real word).

So today we’re expected to see rulings from SCOTUS on gay marriage. I can only imagine what twisted reasoning they’ll use to decide this one.

So the big question is: where is Edward Snowden? My personal hope is that he pops up suddenly in Iceland or Ecuador, having escaped the US and media manhunts. As long as he doesn’t wind up “renditioned” or disappeared by the CIA and/or NSA (I think they’d prefer a show trial, though I guess if they just made him go away they could drag out all sorts of false information on him). What saddens me is the reaction to him by many so-called progressives. You know damn well that if this was Preznit Bush, they’d be calling for his impeachment, but as it is they’re turning their bile and vitriol on Snowden. Is it just a matter of “when my team does it, it’s OK?” I don’t get it, personally. While I’m not surprised by all of this (and all that we have yet to head about), I still find it appalling. I mean, there’s hypocrisy on the other side too – the rightwing nut jobs have suddenly discovered their affinity to the right to privacy – but I expect it from them.

I also expect the not-liberal media to suck, and I’m sure everybody has heard Gilligan Gregory ask Glen Greenwald why Greenwald shouldn’t be charged with a crime (and now Andrew Ross Sorkin is out there saying he’d “almost arrest” Greenwald). I guess if Gregory was an actual journalist less concerned with getting a good table at the White House Correspondents Dinner, he might not have needed to ask. A legitimate question might have been “that fucking idiot Congresscritter Peter King says you ‘must be prosecuted.’ How to you respond to that?”

Speaking of idiot Congresscritters, a Republican (or course) State Representative from Texas (of course) said there needn’t be any exemption for rape to a proposed restrictive abortion bill, because “in the emergency room they have what’s called rape kits, where a woman can get cleaned out.” Apparently Rep Jodie Laubenberg (who I would like to point out is a female – apparently being clueless about women’s issues isn’t just for male Republicans) thinks a rape kit includes a power washer and a scrub brush).

Have these people never seen Law and Order?

Remember that big IRS scandal where the IRS was targeting those poor teabagger political groups for being, well, for being political? Turns out “that besides “tea party,” lists used by screeners to pick groups for close examination also included the terms “Israel,” ”Progressive” and “Occupy.”” So it sounds like the teabaggers aren’t quite as special as they thought they were, and the IRS was looking at groups from both sides (or at least from both sides where they were stupid enough to put their political affiliations in their names).

I still say, if their purpose is political, then they shouldn’t be tax exempt. But then, nobody’s asking me.

There are some of us out there who aren’t crazy about the NSA snooping on our every movement, and we’ve taken steps to give ourselves at least a little bit of online privacy by encrypting our e-mails or using anonymizers like Tor. Turns out, the NSA’s got you covered there, too.

Bad news for fans of anonymizing Tor networks, PGP and other encryption services: If you’re attempting to avoid the National Security Agency’s digital dragnet, you may be making yourself a target, as well as legally allowing the agency to retain your communications indefinitely — and even use them to test the latest code-breaking tools.

Those revelations come via leaked documents that detail the operating guidelines for secret NSA surveillance programs authorized by Congress in 2008. Those documents include a one-page memorandum from a U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) judge, saying that the guidelines don’t violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.

Mayors want control of pot.

Hundreds of mayors from around the nation voted Monday to urge the federal government to give states leeway in establishing marijuana policies.
[…]
“Voters in states and cities that wish to break the stranglehold of organized crime over the distribution and sale of marijuana in their communities by legalizing, regulating and taxing marijuana should have the option of doing so,” Mayor Stephen Cassidy of San Leandro, Calif., said in a statement after the passage of the resolution.

Of course, the best part of that AP story is the mention they give the failed attempt to broaden background checks for purchasing guns.

“The Democrat-controlled Senate voted against legislation in April that would have expanded background checks for firearm purchases to gun shows and online sales.”

Perhaps my memory is faulty, but I seem to recall that the Senate voted in favor of expanded background checks (54-46 with Harry Reid voting against as a procedural move in order to have the ability to bring the measure up for a vote later). It’s just that the Senate is not controlled by Democrats, because it takes 60 votes to control the Senate (if Democrats are in the majority, anyway).

Can you believe hockey over already? I mean, it isn’t even July yet!

It may not be July, but it’s been hot around here lately. Not Arizona or Texas or Oklahoma hot, of course, but up in the 90 degree range, and very humid. Nice for swimming, but not for much of anything else. I think I’m going to try and find a floating desk for the days I work from home.

It’s amazing how shocked and saddened you can be when somebody you don’t actually know and have never met dies. I was really bummed when Jerry Garcia died back in 1995 (a lot of that was probably due to the fact that he died shortly before the first anniversary of my dad’s death). And the news yesterday bummed me out quite a bit, too. No, not Slim Whitman (no offense to Slim but he was 90 and I was more surprised to hear that he was still alive than to hear that he’d died), of course, but James Gandolfini (by far the best thing to ever come out of Rutgers).

A lot of that is due to the face that he’s about my age (about 10 months younger, in fact), and I don’t like to hear about people my age dropping dead of a heart attack (especially since I am currently in pretty crappy shape, and a guy I work with who’s five years younger than I am just had a heart attack – though fortunately not a fatal one – a week or so ago).

Of course, it’s also because I felt like I knew Tony Soprano. I mean, Tony was my age, listened to the same music I listen to, and, other than being a homicidal sociopath, seemed like a guy you wouldn’t mind hanging out at Satriale’s (or the VIP room at Bada Bing) with (assuming you didn’t owe him any money or have anything that he wanted).

Tony was, in some respects, your typical beleaguered husband, father, brother, and son (oh, that mother of his – talk about a sociopath), trying to deal with a snotty kid and a demanding wife (though not demanding enough to keep him from having a goomar or two). He was kind of the Dagwood of “waste management.” Right up until he brutally beat somebody to death.

I think that’s what made the character so powerful. He was a guy you couldn’t help but like and even root for – and then out of nowhere this monster would be unleashed. That’s what made it so shocking.

So, anyhow, RIP James Gandolfini. I hope you’re feeding the ducks up in heaven.

When it wasn’t raining yesterday, my allergies were driving me nuts (OK, nuts-er), so I spent most of the day inside reading, and then watching some British TV on Netflix. On show I was watching is called “Waking the Dead,” which is kind of a cold case, forensics sort of show. One person was lamenting the amount of crap she was having to go through and analyze, including hundreds of smoked cigarettes, or, as she put it, “a bag full of stinky fag butts.” :rofl2: OK, I know that’s kind of a childish thing to laugh at, but I can’t help it; I thought it was pretty funny. I’m tempted to incorporate it into an e-mail signature, but people might take it the wrong way.

I know I’m old and out of the loop as far as what the kids are up to these days, but eyeball licking? Seriously, that’s a thing?

Eyeball licking, a teen fad that started in Japan, can cause blindness, “pink eye” and other health problems, health experts are warning.
[…]
Japanese blog Naver Matome interviewed one concerned teacher who said that he ran into two sixth grade students licking each others’ eyeballs in an equipment room. After he confronted them, they admitted it was popular in their class. His independent survey of students confirmed his fears: One-third of the children admitted to eyeball licking.

When I first saw the headline, I wondered how the hell you could lick your eyeball. But then I realized they were talking about licking each other’s eyeballs.

I hate to be judgmental (and I’ll admit to having licked a thing or two in my day), but eyeballs? That seems kinda gross to me. I wouldn’t want to be on either end of that transaction.

I traded with somebody this week, so today is my long day and I’m stuck here until five o’clock. Kinda sucks, but it’s nice to get it over right at the start of the week. Plus I had a hard time getting my ass out of bed this morning (not that I was asleep, mind you), so it was nice to be able to just hang out in bed for a while. We had some thunderstorms roll in as about 2 AM this morning, and poor Fritzi was not too happy about it. His response is to climb up in bed with me and pant desperately (dripping hot dog spit on me). I need to get him to a doggie psychologist or get him some good drug or something.

Better yet, get me some good drugs.

Oh well, under a half hour to go. Time to start packing up my toys and get ready to go.

It’s a big day here at work, as we are implementing a hardware and software upgrade. It’s fairly involved, so I got here before 6:30 (I actually started working on it before 4:00), and, as today is my late day, I won’t be out of here until five o’clock. If I’m lucky, it’ll be a long, boring, day. If not, it’s going to be a nightmare of a day filled with nothing but problems. Either way, it’s gonna be a long day. Even worse, this is the day of the week where we’re supposed to get sunshine and no rain. Very unusual lately (Sunday was nice – other than that, it’s been chilly and rainy pretty much every day. I better remember to lower the pool water when I get home.

I’m kind of disgusted with the overall apathy to the fact that we now know the government has direct access to our e-mail, Internet history, credit card purchases, phone records – basically everything we do and everywhere we are on and off line. I know we all suspected this was the case, but I’m pretty disappointed by the lack of outrage on the part of most people (and the media, who get their panties in a bunch when they’re the ones targeted, but don’t seem to care all that much that the rest of us are having our fourth amendment rights violated). You’ve heard stories of how hard it can be to straighten out an error on your credit report – imagine how hard it’ll be to refute an erroneous claim in your NSA file when you’ll never be allowed to see the file in the first place. Your first inkling that something is amiss will come when you’re suddenly on the no-fly list, or maybe when they’re hauling you off to Guantanamo (oh, that’s right, I forgot, Obama’s gonna close that, so maybe it’ll be when you’re renditioned to Yemen or maybe just wake up dead some day). But, hey, maybe I just worry too much.

Like most people, I get a lot of bogus calls on my cellphone, and I’m getting kind of tired by the them. There’s no way to black a number on my iPhone, as far as I can tell, so I figured I’d do the next best thing and add these pesky callers to an “ignore” contact and then set the vibrate to “none” and add a silent ringtone. Much to my dismay, adding a ringtone to a frickin’ iPhone seems to require having iTunes installed on your computer. If you download a utility called iTools, you don’t actually have to do a sync, but you still need iTunes. Since I hate iTunes and have no use for it, I found this to be rather annoying. Yet another reason I wish I could have gotten a ‘droid phone from work. But beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.

If only I could just remember to whatever Apple and the NSA tell me to do without questioning it, I’d be much better off.

Kind of a cool, damp, foggy, and rather dismal start to the weekend here today. I’m hoping things will brighten up a bit so I can get some things done. Or maybe I’ll just sit inside and read, instead.

It comes as no surprise, I guess – just confirmation. More news about warrantless spying on us, as The Guardian now leaks what appears to be a training PowerPoint slideshow for an NSA program called “PRISM”. PRISM apparently gives the NSA direct access to the servers of Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, PalTalk (whatever the hell that is), YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple. And the program is ever expanding.

The program facilitates extensive, in-depth surveillance on live communications and stored information. The law allows for the targeting of any customers of participating firms who live outside the US, or those Americans whose communications include people outside the US.

It also opens the possibility of communications made entirely within the US being collected without warrants.

So I guess if you’ve ever gotten some spam or phishing e-mail from Nigeria, you’ve communicated with people outside the US. My favorite “slide” is this one:

Email, photos, video, chat – you name it, they have access to it. Not to mention the ominous, “special requests”.

Also not surprising, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that access to phone and Internet records by the NSA isn’t limited to Verizon.

…people familiar with the NSA’s operations said the initiative also encompasses phone-call data from AT&T Inc.and Sprint Nextel Corp., records from Internet-service providers and purchase information from credit-card providers.

Not worry, though, according to our intrepid freedom-loving Senators.

“Everyone should just calm down and understand this isn’t anything that is brand new,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid….

Senate Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) said the program is lawful and that it must be renewed by Congress every three months. She said the revelation about Verizon, reported by the London-based newspaper the Guardian, seemed to coincide with its latest renewal.

So, yeah, don’t worry, this has been going on for years, and it wasn’t some one-off thing related to any specific intelligence or perceived threat. Fuck the Constitution, this is just how we roll these days, so, as Lawton Smalls would say, “deal with it!”

As you have no doubt heard already, Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian UK has gotten hold of a FISA court order at the request of the FBI that requires Verizon to turn over transactional information on ALL the phone calls within its systems to the NSA.

The numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls.
[…]
The court order appears to explain the numerous cryptic public warnings by two US senators, Ron Wyden and Mark Udall, about the scope of the Obama administration’s surveillance activities.

For roughly two years, the two Democrats have been stridently advising the public that the US government is relying on “secret legal interpretations” to claim surveillance powers so broad that the American public would be “stunned” to learn of the kind of domestic spying being conducted.

Because those activities are classified, the senators, both members of the Senate intelligence committee, have been prevented from specifying which domestic surveillance programs they find so alarming. But the information they have been able to disclose in their public warnings perfectly tracks both the specific law cited by the April 25 court order as well as the vast scope of record-gathering it authorized.

For everybody. And if you think it’s only Verizon customers and not everybody else, you’re fooling yourself because this is just the only order that the Guardian got hold of. For those of you who have forgotten the PATRIOT Act, these FISA court orders only require nominal judicial oversight (a single judge rubber stamps them), and are so secret that the person or company being ordered to turn over the information isn’t allowed to tell anyone (certainly not the folks being spied upon) that they’ve been served and have complied with the order.

This particular order runs for three months from April 25 through July. The media (who seem way less outraged about this than they are about the big AP reporters phone record kerfuffle) seems to be speculating that this is somehow related to the Boston Bombers (who were dead or captured a week before this order took effect). Bullshit. I have no doubt this is a standard three-month renewal, and that Obama’s NSA has been doing this all along.

And these orders aren’t limited to phone records – or even telecom companies. I’m sure they’re collecting Internet records, Google searches, library records – probably everything purchased online or even offline with a credit card.

In the good old Dubya days, they at least needed to specify a target of their investigations, but apparently the Obama gang has it’s own “secret interpretation” of its powers under this act.

I don’t know the extent to which the NSA can process such huge volumes of data, but they have a virtually unlimited budget, all the best toys, and there are constant advancements to processing power and data mining capabilities. Whatever they can’t do today, you can be damn sure they’ll be able to do down the road.

My guess is they’re aiming to know what your position is on the planet at all times, who you’re talking to, what you’re doing on the Internet, what your buying, reading…thinking.

I find this shit to be very scary, a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, and probably unstoppable (unless you plan on going off the grid).

Imagine what they could do if we didn’t have such a “good” President.

In other news, my union resoundingly ratified our new contract (77% in favor), which is retroactive to 2011. It features such goodies as three years of retroactive pay freezes, 2 furlough days that we aren’t getting paid for but at least get to take the days off, 7 additional furlough days that we can’t take off, but which we will get back – slowly – beginning in 2016, and a 6% increase in health insurance co-pays. On the bright side, we’re getting a $500 raise this year, and 2% raises in 2014 and 2015 (which means by 2016, I’ll still be behind where I was before they jacked up the payroll tax rates again).

At least I have the comfort of knowing that my government is watching out for me.

Sounds like there’s big trouble a-brewing for Major League Baseball (according to ESPN, anyway, which isn’t always the most reliable source). Supposedly, they’re getting ready to suspend some 20 players foe using banned, performance-enhancing substances. I find it difficult to care, personally, and I figure if people want to shoot up with whatever, well, what do I care? Oh, but what about the children, right? And I guess if it’s against the rules, then it’s against the rules (the rules being those things that you’re allowed to ignore as long as you don’t get caught). But mostly I don’t care.

Sad to hear that Deacon Jones passed away. Most people probably remember him from his guest appearances on shows like The Brady Bunch, The Odd Couple, and Bewitched, but he apparently played a little football, too. Plus he sacked the QB without doing some ridiculous dance.

So apparently, when it comes to being heckled, Michelle Obama don’t take no shit.

Michelle Obama had a rare face-off with a heckler at a Democratic fund-raiser on Tuesday evening before the protesting woman, shouting for gay rights, was escorted out by party supporters.
[…]
But where Mr. Obama, more accustomed to such interruptions, typically waits in place for the protester to stop and perhaps acknowledges the complaint, his wife chose direct confrontation.

She left the lectern and moved toward the heckler. “One of the things I don’t do well is this,” she said, to loud applause. She said the protester could “listen to me, or you can take the mike, but I’m leaving. You all decide. You have one choice.”

Apparently the heckler – Ellen Sturtz – was rather surprised to get up close and personal with FLOTUS.

Sturtz was stunned by her close encounter with Obama, she later told The Washington Post.
“She came right down in my face,” the heckler said. “I was taken aback.”

Taken aback? She was probably lucky to not have been taken to the Emergency Room.

Have you seen the latest advertising-related controversy? Apparently Swiffer® is in hot water (so to speak) for an ad featuring a woman wearing a do-rag and holding a Swiffer® SteamBoost mop. This is somehow both sexist and seen as crapping on the legacy of Rosie the Riveter.

We have one of those, I think (it something that plugs in to charge, anyway). And I’ve actually used it (mostly I use the Swiffer® wet mop, because it’s easier to figure out. I will admit that my wife uses it more often than I do, though. I’m not sure this is sexist on my part, any more that it’s sexist on my wife’s part to not get on the tractor to cut the grass or used the compressor to put air in her tires. Just kind of a division of labor combined with that thing where whoever has the lowest tolerance for dirt tends to be the one who cleans first.

I think I’m more likely to do the dishes, though (especially since I use far fewer dishes). But that’s only because I like to be able to use the sink (we really need to get a dishwasher – it’s one of the few things I miss from the old house; actually, I miss all the appliances that were basically new when we moved). Oh well.

Oh well, time to get back to work, I guess.

It’s a big weekend here in my little town, with the 2013 Olde Home Days ushering in the official start to summer, which has been going on annually since, well, since they spelled old with an “e” I guess. Yesterday was the parade and fireworks, and today of course is the big duck race (for five bucks you get a yellow plastic ducky to toss into Nine Mile Creek – which is actually about 25 miles long – and if your duck comes in first, you win). For me, this means I try not to go near the village until all this is over – too much traffic and too many tourists milling about the streets, getting in the way.

We don’t have a very long swimming season in these parts – roughly Memorial Day to Labor Day, if you’re lucky, and a lot of those days aren’t really conducive to getting in the water. Mostly, it isn’t really worth the expense and the hassle of having a pool, and if the house hadn’t come with one, I certainly wouldn’t have gone out of the way to put one in. There are a few days during the year when it’s a really, really nice thing to have, though, and Friday and Saturday were definitely two of those – hot and muggy with temperatures in the low 90s (not hot by many of your standards, I know, but pretty hot for here). It looks like we’ve got one more warmish day to go, and things will cool back off again.

I hope these tornadoes leave Oklahoma alone for a while. Maybe somebody should explain to Mother Nature that James Inhofe thinks Climate Change is a hoax (his Jesus told him so) so that she’ll go pester Ohio or something for a while.

Stay safe, everybody.