Sunday afternoon rock

Florida again poised to play kingmaker

The AP seems to think so:

Unlike the traditional early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, Florida will test the candidates' ability to compete in a large and ethnically diverse state.

Nearly 20 percent of its 17.7 million residents are Hispanic, and more than 15 percent are black. The state has several large cities as well as vast agricultural areas, while the condo communities that dot the coastline are brimming with newly arrived retirees.

Politically, the state remains nearly as divided as it was during the contested 2000 election, when Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore by just 537 votes. Registered Democrats slightly outnumber registered Republicans, and the ranks of independents are growing.

Republicans have scored big in Florida in recent years, thanks to a muscular political operation developed by the president's brother, former Gov. Jeb Bush. But Democrats picked up two House seats in 2006 and gained ground in the state Legislature.

More here.

Flashback

Let's forget wardrobe malfunctions and a too-strenuous obsession with her sexuality (she wasn't erotic so much as a purveyor of eroticism, like a newstand clerk who'll sell a teen Penthouse while smiling and winking) – Janet Jackson once recorded solid long statements. For too long I slighted Rhythm Nation 1814 in favor of its apolitical predecessor, but snagging a used copy a few days ago reminded me of what a staggering achievement it remains. As far as Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis' beats, only The Bomb Squad was purveying anything harder into Billboard's Top Ten album chart. Sure, the album showed that, for all their sonic mastery, Jam/Lewis weren't as resourceful as is commonly assumed ("Come Back To Me" is Alexander O'Neal's "Sunshine" is Human League's "Human," and don't pay close attention to how those synth stabs on "The Knowledge" remind you of "Nasty"); and Jackson often sounds like she just happened to be sitting in front of a microphone and decided to sing. Still, while a more powerful singer would have turned platitudes like the ones embedded in "Rhythm Nation" into statements, h/she might also have detracted from the beats. Note the percussion breakdown in the middle of the title track, the Herb Alpert trumpet mournfully blowing over "Someday is Tonight"'s rapt conclusion – a breeze through an abandoned Rustbelt factory – and that sampled Rob Base turntable screech effect underpinning "Alright." Only the hamfisted hair metal of "Black Cat" fails to impress: co-producer/guitarist Jellybean Johnson rocked to better effect on Alexander O'Neal's "Innocent."

In a sense, Rhythm Nation 1814 is the best industrial record ever made. Embracing the genre's facile alienation, finding ecstasy in shrill, deafening noise, Rhythm Nation scared Janet enough to find solace in the boudoir.

Rocketboom on iPhone fever

Out of order

The blogosphere has been buzzing after the slew of extremist decrees handed down by the Supreme Court these last few days, which really started with Gonzalez v. Carhart, putting a constitutional seal of approval on the idiocy of the Partial-Birth Abortion Act back in April. Today's theme is a little bit of I-told-you-so Monday morning quarterbacking. Or as TalkLeft refers to E.J. Dionne's column today, "closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out."

Dionne's aspirational column calls on the Democratic refuse to hold hearings on every judicial nominee they weren't consulted on.

Just say no.

The Senate's Democratic majority -- joined by all Republicans who purport to be moderate -- must tell President Bush that this will be their answer to any controversial nominee to the Supreme Court or the appellate courts.

The Senate should refuse even to hold hearings on Bush's next Supreme Court choice, should a vacancy occur, unless the president reaches agreement with the Senate majority on a mutually acceptable list of nominees.

Which is great, but it wouldn't have worked out when Alito was nominated and the Senate was split down the middle at 49-49. Democrats could have filibustered however, and they probably should have.

Slate has a similar, if more obnoxious, article by Emily Bazelon, pointing the finger at every liberal who defended the Roberts nomination.

And yet some liberal and moderate lawyers and academics didn't predict this at all. These members of the legal literati urged Roberts' nomination, promising that he would be a model of restraint and principle and modesty. Why did they think that then? And how do their arguments on his behalf look now?

Dionne and Bazelon, and the hullabaloo on the blogosphere about the decisions bring up a larger issue. Our judicial confirmation process, even on a procedural level, begs to be politicized. I'm talking specifically about requiring only a simple majority to confirm a nominee.

A simple majority means that the party in the White House, if they don't have a majority in the Senate, bully a couple of weak members from the opposite party and get whatever kooky judicial nominee they want confirmed. This is the Alito scenario.

European countries with constitutional courts have solved this problem by requiring that most judges be elected by a super majority. By requiring a larger majority of votes, the Europeans have ensured that minority parties have a greater say in the makeup of their constitutional courts, and have kept controversial or extremist judges off it. It appears to work. Admittedly, they have implemented other policies that help depoliticize the courts as well, like reducing the amount of dissents or keeping them anonymous, and having the judges serve limited terms.

There's nothing keeping the Senate from adopting this system. Even if the opposition party was in the minority, they should filibuster every single nominee the administration refuses to seek consensus on. That would force a party that doesn't have a 60-vote majority in the Senate to work with the minority party.

That still doesn't address the problem of Roberts. And maybe this vindicates Emily Bazelon, but there might not be a quick fix for Roberts, at least not procedurally. Maybe Bazelon's shame system's all we got.

Whoa

British police defuse bomb in London.

C'mon

I'm not exactly immune to Apple's charms--I swear by my iPod and MacBook Pro--and I think the iPhone, though not perfect, is freaking awesome. But these nerds need to stop camping outside the Apple stores and get a job. Especially, this guy:

"This phone is going to blow everything out of the water," Tony Cecchini, 40, a San Antonio, Texas, air conditioner salesman said while braving a downpour to wait outside an AT&T store Thursday morning.

For the love of God, man, you're 40 years old. You can't wait a couple of days to buy a damn phone?

Late night

Why are we not surprised?

Afternoon

White House, Cheney's office, subpoenaed

From AP:

WASHINGTON - The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's office Wednesday for documents relating to President Bush's warrant-free eavesdropping program.

Also named in subpoenas signed by committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., were the Justice Department and the National Security Council.

The committee wants documents that might shed light on internal squabbles within the administration over the legality of the program, said a congressional official speaking on condition of anonymity because the subpoenas had not been made public.

Wait, it gets better.

On an unrelated note: remember that stupid clip I refuse to post of Anne Coulter wishing John Edwards would die in a terrorist attack, or some nonsense like that? Well, it turns out the Edwards' camp is using the clip to raise money from donors.

The campaign has sent two e-mails to supporters this week, asking them to send donations to defy her attacks and help Edwards meet his goal of raising $9 million in the second quarter ending Saturday. The first e-mail from campaign adviser Joe Trippi showed a clip of Coulter on ABC's "Good Morning America," where she said Monday that she wished Edwards would be killed by terrorists.

When Coulter appeared Tuesday on MSNBC's "Hardball," Elizabeth Edwards called in to ask Coulter to stop making personal attacks on her husband. The exchanged deteriorated, with Coulter shouting over Mrs. Edwards and demanding that the campaign stop using her name to raise money if they want her to stop personal attacks.

Mrs. Edwards followed up with an e-mail to supporters Wednesday morning that included a clip of their exchange and a donation request. The campaign said they raised more money this week than from any previous e-mail campaign, but declined to give a total.

"I think when they engage in these attacks and use the language of hate, it's very important to stand up," Edwards said. "What happens if you are silent when this kind of hateful language is used — not just by her, but by anyone — hate gets a foothold."

Edwards pointed out that Coulter's attacks haven't been limited to him, but also included his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination. Coulter has made fun of Hillary Rodham Clinton's legs and compared Barack Obama to terrorists because his middle name is Hussein.

"What she said about Senator Clinton and Senator Obama is outrageous," Edwards said. "And somebody has to stand up when she makes these kind of attacks."

It wouldn't be the first time Coulter's crazy ramblings help Edwards. After she called him a "faggot" in March, Edwards used the video to help raise $300,000. Keep the attacks coming, Annie C.

New poll

There's a new NYT/CBS/MTV poll showing that young Americans, between the ages of 17 and 29, are a good deal more liberal than older people. The overall conclusion is kind of obvious but the individual results are enlightening stuff.

Fifty-four percent of respondents in the group say they would vote for a Democrat in the 2008 presidential election. They generally have a negative a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with the group; after the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush's approval rating among young people was at 80 percent.

At a time when Democrats have made gains after years in which Republicans have dominated Washington, young Americans appear to lean slightly more to the left than the general population: 28 percent described themselves as liberal, compared with 20 percent of the nation at large. And 27 percent called themselves conservative, compared with 32 percent of the general public.

The same goes for social issues.

Forty-four percent said they believed that same-sex couples should be permitted to get married, compared with 28 percent of the public at large. They are more likely than their elders to support the legalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana.

* * *

In the current poll, 62 percent said they would support a universal, government-sponsored national health care insurance program; 47 percent of the general public holds that view. And 30 percent said that “Americans should always welcome new immigrants,” while 24 percent of the general public holds that view.

On abortion, 38 percent said it should be legal but with greater restrictions, 37 percent said it should be available on demand, and 24 percent oppose it altogether. These numbers are not very different from the general public's take on adoption.

But the real interesting stuff is their views on politics.

In one potential sign of shifting attitudes, respondents, by overwhelming margins, said they believed that the nation was prepared to elect as president a woman, a black person or someone who admitted to having used marijuana. But they said that they did not believe Americans would elect someone who had used cocaine or someone who was a Mormon.

Mr. Obama has suggested that he used cocaine as a young man. Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and a candidate for the Republican nomination, is a Mormon.

By a 52 to 36 majority, young Americans say that Democrats, rather than Republicans, come closer to sharing their moral values, while 58 percent said they had a favorable view of the Democratic Party, and 38 percent said they had a favorable view of Republicans.

Asked if they were enthusiastic about any of the candidates running for president, 18 percent named Mr. Obama, of Illinois, and 17 percent named Mrs. Clinton, of New York. Those two were followed by Rudolph W. Giuliani, a Republican, who was named by just 4 percent of the respondents.

That doesn't bode well for the Republicans, and you can expect to see the Democrats getting together a huge get-out-the-vote movement among young people in 2008. The question is, what will the Republicans do to keep the demographic from voting?

Early lunch break

All the news that's fit to print

Weirdly, for someone who worked as a copy editor, I get a strange pleasure when newspapers run mistakes. Even though that obnoxious motto from the New York Times--a paper I love--gives me enough reason, it really has to do with the medium becoming horribly outdated. Just think about it, the concept of having to wait a whole day to correct an error in itself, when you can do it in seconds on TV or online, is practically otherworldly. Adding insult to injury, newsrooms have slashed the number of copy editors, far more than in other departments, in order to cut costs, and with the advent of TV and the internet, they have had to increased the amount of content they have to produce. And so, mistakes like this happen. From today's San Francisco Chronicle:

In a story Friday about political fallout from Supervisor Chris Daly's public suggestion that Mayor Gavin Newsom used cocaine, a quotation from Daly -- "My numbers are already low. Now they'll hit rock bottom" -- was presented out of context, suggesting the supervisor thought the episode would damage his standing with voters. Daly made the comment after stating that he has never tried an illicit substance and intended it as a joke that having not used illicit substances might actually make him less popular in San Francisco.

Now, I'm not deriving any pleasure from a fellow copy editor's pain, especially since this sounds like a reporter's mistake. I know what copy editors have to go through, and I couldn't be paid enough to do it again. Plus, God knows this blog needs a copy editor--or an exorcist.

Plus, this is the kind of mistake that originates in the ingenious corporate strategy of making newspapers perform at 20 percent profit by continuing to cut costs and allowing quality to drop, milking the last few dollars off the industry, before it disappears from the face of the earth.

Jagged little pill

This is not going to be a surprise to, you know, anyone, but in the '60s the CIA and an ex-FBI agent who worked for Howard Hughes recruited mobsters to try to assassinate Fidel Castro.

The documents show that in August 1960, the CIA recruited ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu, then a top aide to Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, to approach mobster Johnny Roselli and pass himself off as the representative of international corporations that wanted Castro killed because of their lost gambling operations.

At the time, the bearded rebels had just outlawed gambling and destroyed the world-famous casinos American mobsters had operated in Havana.

Roselli introduced Maheu to "Sam Gold" and "Joe." Both were mobsters on the U.S. government's 10-most wanted list: Momo Giancana, Al Capone's successor in Chicago; and Santos Trafficante, one of the most powerful mobsters in Batista's Cuba. The agency gave the reputed mobsters six poison pills, and they tried unsuccessfully for several months to have several people put them in Castro's food.

This particular assassination attempt was dropped after the failed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961. The CIA was able to retrieve all the poison pills, records show.

I love the detail about getting the pills back. How do you do that? Do you just ask? "Hey there, mobster dude, those poisoned pills are American government property and we want them back."

Rock

Robert Forster and Grant McLennan recorded many great songs during the wilderness years between the Go-Betweens' first dissolution in 1988 and their reunion twelve years later. Beautifully packaged and erratically sequenced, Intermission collects that fruit.

Democratic bling

Last year Democrats raised about $120 million less than Republicans--$512M to $392M--and we had a decisive win at the polls. The Republicans, with truckloads of cash to throw around, could only buy the Tennessee Senate race.

Things are a little different this year. Democrats are either raising more or as much money as Republicans. Here are the numbers per committee.

DSCC & DCCC: $48.6M
NRSC & NRCC: $36M

The best part about those figures is that even though the Republicans are over $12M behind, they have already outspent the Democrats $31.3M to $23.7M. Who knows? Maybe they have a secret plan for getting cash out of their asses.

Things even out a little bit when you look at the RNC numbers, which has historically raised tons of money. They've raised $39.8M and the DNC has raised about $24.6M. However, that leaves both parties on roughly equal footing money-wise.

And for a party which kicked serious ass last year with a $120M handicap equal footing is a hell of a place to be.

Read some more here and here.

Blair's new job

Looks like Tony Blair is going to take the special envoy to the Middle East job.

JERUSALEM - Outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be named on Wednesday as special envoy for the international diplomatic Quartet on the Middle East with a portfolio focused on Palestinian economic and political reform, a senior U.S. official said.

Members of the quartet, the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia, will give their public blessing and announce that Blair has agreed to take the job in simultaneous statements from their capitals and New York, the official told The Associated Press.

The official, who insisted on anonymity because the statements are still being drafted, spoke after being briefed on a meeting of quartet representatives held earlier Tuesday in Jerusalem.

Blair could be the best chance the Palestinian have had to get a fair deal since Bill Clinton's overtures in the '90s, maybe even before. Blair has a very high profile and it's doubtful that he would take the job unless he was promised a great deal of independence from all the parties involved. And he's not American, so he might not be um... swayed by all-powerful lobbying groups in the U.S.

But, who can really know, he has been too easily swayed in the past.

I'm going to have to see some ID

This handy little tool comes via Stuck on the Palmetto.

The ratings board thought three instances of "bomb," two of the word "gay," and one of the word "gun" were just too much for the PG-13 crowd. I wonder if they took into account that "gay" and "bomb" were used together--as in "gay bomb."

UPDATED TO ADD: Hey! I used "shit" in my previous post. What the fuck?

Time to call that younger sibling to brag

This article has been circulating the web for the last couple of days, but I just heard about it today. There's new, solid evidence out there that older siblings have an average of 3 IQ points higher than the next sibling in age, with the eldest having the highest IQ and the youngest... well, you get the point.

(Take a look at the Brady Bunch staircase for a second; now think about poor, young Cindy Brady's IQ.)

The new findings, from a landmark study published Friday, showed that eldest children had a slight but significant edge in I.Q. — an average of three points over the closest sibling. And it found that the difference was not because of biological factors but the psychological interplay of parents and children.

Psychologists say that the specific reason for the highest is that older siblings usually take a roll of teacher, which forces them, even if subconsciously, to know the material well, but also learn it on their own.

Something else is at work, Dr. Zajonc said, and he has found evidence that tutoring — a natural role for older siblings — benefits the teacher more than it does the student. “Explaining something to a younger sibling solidifies your knowledge and allows you to grow more extensively,” he said. “The younger one is asking questions, and challenging meanings and explanations, and that will contribute to the intellectual maturity of the older one.” (Only children receive the benefit of more parental attention but miss the opportunity to tutor a younger brother or sister.)

The theory also explains why younger siblings are more adept at taking risks based on information acquired not from personal experiences.

Younger siblings often have something more to pass on than the tricks of their favorite hobby, or the philosophy behind their social charm. Evidence suggests that younger siblings are more likely than older ones to take risks based on their knowledge and instincts.

I find this part especially fascinating because I've always envied the fact that my brother did not have to endure embarrassing first-born rites of passage, like thinking Metallica and Dave Matthews Band were bands worth a shit, but turns out I got some benefit out of it, too. Honestly, I'll trade my three measly extra IQ points if I could expunge buying those CDs from my memory. Ugh.

And now for something completely different...

I wonder what Monty Python has to say about today's llama theme.

Smart llama

Rudy's stick-to-it-iveness

Looks like Giuliani's sticking with the cokehead's dad:

The 80-year-old father of indicted South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel will remain as Rudy Giuliani's regional chairman in the early voting state despite his son's legal difficulties.

The younger Ravenel, 44, was indicted last week on a federal cocaine charge and accused of buying less than 500 grams of the drug to share with other people, prosecutors said. Ravenel had been state chairman for Giuliani's South Carolina campaign. The day the indictment was made public, the campaign said he had left but did not release any details.

Ravenel's father, Arthur, told The Associated Press in an interview that his son has a drug problem.

"He's in pretty bad shape, you know," Arthur Ravenel said Monday. "We suspected it."

If only Rudy was that loyal to his wifes.

Lost in translation

Barton Kellman and Jo Becker's long account of Dick Cheney's not-so-quiet accumulation of power since January 2001 in today's Washington Post is the best piece of journalism I've read this year, not least for the surprises that should by now surprise no one (yet still do): how then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez is a spineless hatchet man besides being a smiling non-entity; how staff members like David Addington and John Yoo rewrote the rules of wartime to create, essentially, an ad-hoc extra-Constitutional Committee of Public Safety with unlimited powers and no Congressional supervision; the utter ruthlessness with which the Vice-President eliminated rivals like Colin Powell and then Attorney General John Ashcroft; and, finally, the detachment of the President of the United States, who, according to this article, seems to have agreed to an expansion of the power of the Office of the Vice President without so much as reading the fine print (the alternative is too sinister to reckon). The first two paragraphs set the tone:

Just past the Oval Office, in the private dining room overlooking the South Lawn, Vice President Cheney joined President Bush at a round parquet table they shared once a week. Cheney brought a four-page text, written in strict secrecy by his lawyer. He carried it back out with him after lunch.

In less than an hour, the document traversed a West Wing circuit that gave its words the power of command. It changed hands four times, according to witnesses, with emphatic instructions to bypass staff review. When it returned to the Oval Office, in a blue portfolio embossed with the presidential seal, Bush pulled a felt-tip pen from his pocket and signed without sitting down. Almost no one else had seen the text.

General: Iraqi forces don't have enough ammo

Sometimes, you have to stop and ponder whether the Pentagon actually wants an Iraqi military capable securing its own country. And, a lot of times, the answer seems to be "no."

BAQOUBA, Iraq - The U.S. commander of a new offensive north of Baghdad, reclaiming insurgent territory day by day, said Sunday his Iraqi partners may be too weak to hold onto the gains. The Iraqi military does not even have enough ammunition, said Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarek: "They're not quite up to the job yet."

You would think that if it's in our best interests--and it is--to slowly pull out of Iraq and be progressively relieved by an effective Iraqi military, that we would go out of our way to fund and arm that military the best we could. Apparently not. Of course, maybe Gen. Bednarek was trying to make a point and his subtle hyperbole went right over my head, but I don't think so.

I think he means exactly that--the Iraqi military doesn't enough ammunition to fight the insurgency.

Yes, that's exactly what he means.

Across Diyala province, where Baqouba is the capital, Iraqi troops are short on uniforms, weapons, ammunition, trucks and radios, he said.

Sad. But true.

Perfect closure

A reminder that Orson Welles began his awesome career as a shaker of worlds and ended it as a devourer of worlds.

Sunday

And if the video doesn't satisfy you--fat chance!--here's a mediocre editorial to complement it.

Saturday night