And yes, the underlying article is old (from 2001). But it's Friday and I thought a nice change-up from the political stuff might be welcomed for some late afternoon discussion.

So I present to you, Space.com's Top 10 Space Science Photos.

This is one on the list: it's a photo of Earth as seen from your window. OK..that's a cheap Sully joke. It's actually a photo of Earth (taken by Voyager 1) as seen from Uranus, and I wanted to head off the Sully jokes at the pass. I bet I failed.

Kind of interesting. Earth appears as a pixel. I wonder if the Plutonians debate whether we should be a planet?

Anyway, there's much more space photo goodness at the link so check it out.

Or not. It's up to you really.

But it would be like you to ignore my links. Bastards.

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (16)
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Thank God we have Canada to help keep us from being entirely uncivilized.

16 minutes ago

OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada will formally protest to the United States over the case of a Canadian man deported to Syria by U.S. agents, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told President Bush on Friday.

Software engineer Maher Arar was arrested in New York in September 2002 and was sent to Syria, where he says he was repeatedly tortured. He was released a year later.

Sometimes I feel ashamed to be an American. That poor helpless man was tortured because of us.

I keep wondering, did the Syrians torture him because he was a suspected terrorist, or because he was a software engineer?

What's that you say?

An official inquiry into the affair put much of the blame on Canadian police, who wrongly told U.S. border agents that Arar was an Islamic extremist. But inquiry head Dennis O'Connor also urged Ottawa to formally protest to both Syria and the United States over the way they had treated Arar.

Wait a frickin' minute. Canada is protesting because they screwed up and . . . and . . . and . . .

What? We weren't nice enough to the guy they said was an extremist? We committed the unspeakable act of sending him home after Canada dumped him onto our lap?

Why isn't Canada apologizing to us? Huh? Why aren't they sending us a check for the airfare we wasted on that guy?

Hey Canada --- KISS MY ASS!

*Michael does deep breathing exercises*

Oh well. At least give them credit for acting on their noble humanitarian impulses. Canadians are principled, after all. They are not like Americans, who always have some crass political motive.

Say what?

Harper's right-wing Conservatives, who won the January 23 election, campaigned on a promise to repair relations with the United States. Relations had become strained under the previous Liberal government.

Bush is unpopular with many Canadians and the protest may help deflect opposition complaints that Harper is too close to the U.S. president.

Canadians to Protest Deportation

P.S. Ace has emailed to advise of last-minute (again) travel plans. He anticipates posting irregularly throughout the weekend, or until "the coast is clear."

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 AM | Comments (21)
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Funny because it's true.

Thanks to Slublog.

Posted by: Ace at 10:49 AM | Comments (7)
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And by noting it's being sent to Republican family-values type groups, he's looking for plausible deniabillity for his buddies on the left when the list makes it to the media.

Posted by: Ace at 10:31 AM | Comments (146)
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I wanted to post some happier news today. After all, I'm the guy who posted the "don't go wobbly" entry a couple of days ago, so it's my nature. And, normally, watching the Straight Talk Express derail would make me happy indeed.

Sadly, this story was the best I could do this morning. It ain't much, but at least it's a break from Foleyrama. Until Ace sobers up and starts posting again, anyway.

Plus, I know some inside scoop about this particular topic that you morons might think is interesting, or that you can use to impress those people who pretend to be your friends.

It appears Senator McCain went campaigning in Alabama, and was not so terribly well received.

U.S. Sen. John McCain was in Dothan Thursday to campaign for local Republican candidates, but he spent much of the time talking about national policy issues.

The senator spoke to about 70 supporters who each contributed $100 to the Alabama Republican Party Victory 2006 Fund.

He endorsed the local candidates and stressed the importance of maintaining Republican control of the House and Senate in November's elections.

Now for the heady, in depth analysis after the jump:

more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:07 AM | Comments (134)
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For those of you who haven't followed the links before, you may wonder how StopSexPredators fits into all of this. A good review, from a liberal, is here; he too comes to the conclusion the blog is "fake" and basically deceptive.

Pretending to be a general site about child sex predators, this site, which no one -- no one -- ever heard of apparently, somehow, got discovered by a congressional page with access to the dirty emails and IP's, who then sent them on to SSP, giving SSP a "scoop."

As the liberal site cited above describes, it's a pretty transparent hoax. The site didn't post much, what little it did post was "uninteresting" and cribbed from Wikipedia entries, and didn't even provably exist for many days before it broke the Mark Foley story.

Furthermore, someone calling himself "WHIntern" on the Daily Kos wrote a single diary entry, spreading the word of what he had found on this site about Mark Foley. "WHIntern" claims that he discovered StopSexPredators by Googling. One problem-- this liberal blogger finds that Google hadn't even discovered SSP at this point.

So that's not true.

Further, when Google's millions of web-crawling bots can't find you, that means you don't, for any practical purposes, exist on the Internet.

So how did this Tipster all loaded up with these incriminating IM's "find" SSP?

Well, he didn't. More than likely, he writes SSP himself.

The liberal blogger shares the conclusion that this is a fake blog, created deceptively to suggest a "web presence" which would provide cover to the story about a "page discovering the site and sending in the emails and IM's." He disagrees with the "wingers'" theory, though, that this is a put-up job by the left.

He suggests instead -- not implausibly -- that this could just be a page who wanted vengeance against Foley, for, maybe, either hitting on him or on his friends. He doesn't suggest why all the deception was needed, but obvious answers occur to one (the page didn't want to be known as a tattletale, and harm his possible future career, or be the subject of a media frenzy, etc.)

Possible. I can't say that's unreasonable.

However, we do know, per Dick Morris, "a prominent member" of the Democratic leadership has known about these emails for months. We also know the person in question used the Daily Kos to get the word out. And, of course, one of the biggest pushers of the story is CREW, headed, coincedentally, by a former Conyers staffer, and SSP originates, also coincidentally, in or on the border of Conyers' district.

And-- isn't this a little sophisticated for a teenager with a grudge? Hardly dispositive, but the whole deal suggests to me someone pretty blog-savvy about how to push a story into the media without any fingerprints on it.

"A teenager with a grudge" could have gone straight to ABCNews, after all. They would have withheld his identity. (Well, they would have tried -- as we know, ABCNews was sloppy about hiding the identity of the 18-year-old "prankster.")

Or: Why not just go the more direct route of publishing these emails and IM's on the Daily Kos itself?

Why this level of subterfuge?

To me this suggests that the person behind SSP wanted to push other people's stories into the media, without their approval, and wanted to do without being called on "outing" teenaged victims of Foley. And to me, that suggests the Democratic Party, or lefty bloggers, who really want this story out there, but don't want it linked to them.

Still, the simpler explanation -- that this site was just created by, say, a former page (and a Democrat) who heard about Foley, got hold of the emails, and sought to out him without outing himself is not implausible.

Someone here knew about Foley's behavior with the pages, actually had possession of emails and IM's, and then later outed them. Somewhere at the beginning of this, I think, is a fellow page, one who served with one or more of the pages harrassed by Foley. He then took the emails and IM's to a Democratic operative or liberal blogger, and that latter person created the StopSexualPredators site.

For the ten thousandth time, of course, this doesn't mitigate what Foley did, or make him anything but a dirty old chickenhawk perv who trolls for cybersex with boys/young men, but it does suggest that, for all their posturting, prominent Democrats knew about this long before prominent Republicans did, and chose to do nothing--

-- until, of course, it was useful to do so politically. Mark Foley would be free to prey on young men for a year or more, perhaps, so long as it contributed to the greater moral good of a Democratic congressional victory.

Thanks for the tip to the Alabama Liberation Front.

Update: People with the same names as John Conyer's Detroit office staffers just happen to have addresses in neighboring upscale suburb Royal Oak, Michigan.

May mean something. May mean nothing.

I'd post the list, but I don't know, seems sort of an invasion of privacy given this is all just a hunch of a fishing expedition at this point.

Posted by: Ace at 05:09 PM | Comments (179)
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An anonymizer? Perhaps. But Tommy just paid to get the full SiteMeter service, and now has the full IP of the StopSexualPredators blogger.

I won't reveal the IP (that would, I guess, be outing) but it does route to Royal Oak, Michigan.

See below post to read how Tommy/MikeZ trapped the SSP admin with a couple of dummy blogs.

What does this mean? Not sure. Trouble is, I'm guessing just about everyone who is anybody at C.R.E.W. lives in DC, not Michigan.

If anyone can figure out a way to carry the ball further, let me know.

It could be someone connected with a congressional Democratic staff, or it could be a former page who lives in Michigan, or a lot of different possibilities. Not really sure how anyone can pin it down.

One can find that this or that person lives in Royal Oak, but how do you prove that's not just a coincidence?

Riehl World Says Royal Oak Is Part of John Conyers' District... Not that I think it really matters -- we're talking a mile or two from one district to the other -- but I guess we have to get this pinned down. He says he has the maps up, but they're not on his site yet.

Meanwhile... I'm reliably tipped that former Playboy Playmate of the Year Carmella DeCasesar lives in Royal Oak, Michigan. Or did, before moving to LA or wherever.

This bears further (content warning) investigation. As they say on CSI, we need to eliminate her as a suspect before moving on to someone far less hot.

Does she make me horny?

A little... LOL.

The Map: Dan has it here, though I can't tell if Royal Oak is in Conyers' district or just across the border. Hardly matters, though. We're talking a half mile, at most, outside his district. Obviously, it could easily be someone connected with him either way. Or not connected with him.

Searching... Searching... Searching... On the theory that many people start a blog, and then abandon it, at some point, I've been searching for blogs identifying the writer from Royal Oak, Michigan, hopefully with some political connection. As of yet-- no good leads. Still, it may be a useful way to go.

If the SSP guy started a blog with his own name or background at one point, such a blog, even if abandoned two years ago, could help ID him.

Other possibilities are facebook/friendster searches for Royal Oak residents, specifically with an interest in liberal politics, a possible job in DC, and possibly gay (given the Mike Rogers connection).

Also, anyone know where a list of Conyers' staff can be found?

Posted by: Ace at 02:46 PM | Comments (128)
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Still perhaps too much to hope for, but what if the Miracle Solution is real?

1) Bloggers have identified the fake blog that started publicizing this, StopSexualPredators, as being posted from a Royal Oak, MI, address.

2) Royal Oak, MI, neighbors John Conyers' district. Correction: I wrote it was "part of" John Conyers' district. It's not. It's nearby, but it's Sander Levin's (D) district.

3) CREW picked up the story and ran with it.

4) Melanie Sloan, the head of CREW, worked for John Conyers on the Judiciary Committee.

A "dirty trick" hardly mitigates the disgracefulness of Foley's conduct, or absolves the GOP House leadership from its passivity on the issue.

However, if high-ranking Democrats knew more about this than Republicans did, as is beginning to look like the case, how can they claim that Republicans failed to act on information only they had?

Could get very interesting.

Bonus: Just on the Gibson show-- an email says that Nancy Pelosi is insisting that Republicans testify about what they knew, and when, under oath, but she herself refuses to testify under oath abut what she knew, and when.

Why?

I think the question strongly suggests its answer.

Bonus Fact: Bruce Campbell lives there. How he figures into this, I cannot say.

How Tommy/MikeZ Got A Royal Oak IP Address: In his own words--

What I did was set up two new blogs and a new email address. I attached site meters to each of the blogs to record incoming IPs. I then sent an email containing links to both blogs to SSP along with a claim to SSP that other sites were making outrageous claims about SSP. Neither blog contained anything but nonsense. Of course, the blogs are so obscure that it is likely that any IP that hit both blogs (without any sort of a referrer between the two, of course) would be the IP of the SSP admin.

The IP in question was the second visit on one blog and the fourth visit on the other blog. Both came in with a minute or so of each other. There was no referrer between the two blogs which means it is likely they just opened up links in their email.

Unfortunately, I only found out later that site meter apparently only records the range, not the exact IP (it doesn't pick up my exact IP when I visit the site).

Clever. Sitemeter in its free form blocks out the last two digits of an IP address, but if you pay the $6.95 or so for the cheapest paid version, you get the whole deal.

Maybe try it?

It may be that if Tommy pays for the thing now, the full IP's will be immediately revealed.

I'll shoot ya the seven bucks myself if you want.

Posted by: Ace at 01:57 PM | Comments (151)
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Nice.

Jews-- is there anything they can't do?

Posted by: Ace at 01:36 PM | Comments (28)
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I keep getting criticized for being gloomy, and posting bad news.

I thought I'd respond to that. Not angrily or anything; no Glenn Greenwald freak-out here. Just thinking about it out loud, on line. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:59 PM | Comments (73)
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