Another socialist blog

The Children’s Internet Protection Act has finally been ruled unconstitutional, exactly as predicted by those of us who opposed it. The law required anti-porn filtering software on library computers as a condition of federal funding. It was a wrongheaded and repressive attempt to make the Internet suitable for children, by throwing out everything suitable for adults. Just what the doctor ordered for politicians pandering to the right-wing vote. Expect an appeal by John Ashcroft.

It’s worth noting that one reason the law failed is that the mandatory filtering software is notoriously error-prone, as Peacefire has pointed out, hilariously, over and over.

The FBI’s Carnivore system has disrupted an anti-terror investigation, according to this press release from the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Seems the system, designed for email surveillance, has a tendency to capture the email of people other than the court-authorized target of the surveillance. (This is precisely what the FBI has assured us would not happen with Carnivore). According to FBI records, the “FBI technical person was apparently so upset that he destroyed all the E-Mail take, including the take on [the authorized target].” In other words, the evidence was accidentally destroyed.

George Bush spoke today at the American cemetary in Normandy, site of 9,387 graves of Americans killed in the D-Day invasion. He drew a connection between his so-called War on Terrorism and the sacrifice of those who fought in WWII, proving once again that there is no flag in which Dubya will not wrap himself.

This seems as good a time as any to remind the gentle reader that George W. Bush evaded service in Vietnam by joining the Texas Air National Guard, and then didn’t show up for duty for a year.

The latest arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia is a very sweet deal for those in the U.S. who oppose any reduction in nuclear arms. Sure, the document calls for big reductions in nuclear warheads, from about 6,000 to between 2,200 and 1,700. But there’s no requirement for either side to make actual reductions until 2012, and either side can legally withdraw from the treaty on three months’ notice.

A lot of men probably wish their marriage contracts read like this.

Update on the charges against Cuba: former President Jimmy Carter, hardly a bomb-throwing radical, has publicly said that Bush Administration officials admitted to him that they have no evidence to support the State Department’s charge that Cuba is building biochemical weapons. The Bush Administration is still trying to brazen it out.

In another case of the pot calling the kettle black, the U.S. accuses Cuba of building biological weapons. There is no hint in the news of the history of United States bio-chemical war, against Cuba, which included supplying swine flu virus to anti-Castro terrorists in 1971. Apparently the campaign to start a war with Iraq is not going well.

The U.S. has officially discontinued any pretense of interest in an international treaty to create the first permanent tribunal for war crimes. The United States signed the International Criminal Court treaty during the Clinton Administration but never ratified it. The Bush Administration claims, as did Clinton, that the Court would be a violation of U.S. sovereignty: by which they mean, of course, that Americans might find themselves in the dock.

The United States has long viewed international tribunals as, at best, imperfect tools of U.S. imperial policy. When the United States was found by the International Court of Justice to be engaging in war crimes against Nicaragua, President Bush (the elder) simply ignored the Court. American leaders cheer, however, when the same court goes after Slobodan Milosevic. Our interest in international courts depends entirely on whose ox is being gored.

This should shock me, but doesn’t: ABC News reports that a new book by James Bamford describes Operation Northwoods, a covert plan by the U.S. military to engage in terrorism against U.S. citizens and blame it on Cuba, for the purpose of provoking a war with Cuba. All the Joint Chiefs gave written approval of the plan and presented it to Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense in 1962.

One reason not to be shocked is the memory of Oliver North, whose plans to impose martial law, suspend the Constitution, and put opponents of Reagan Administration policy in concentration camps.

The military is supposed to serve the civilian government, but military culture is antithetical to civic culture. They can’t be trusted not to subvert the Constitution they are sworn to protect.