They're kicking off a nationwide program to alert major Universities about espionage on campus.

BOSTON (AP) -- The head of the FBI's Boston office is warning the region's top universities to be on the lookout for foreign spies or potential terrorists who might be trying to steal unclassified, yet sensitive, research.

FBI agents met recently with officials at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Massachusetts and other schools to train professors, students and security staff on how to recognize anyone who might be trying to exploit research, Special Agent in Charge Warren Bamford said.

And, as expected:

John Reinstein, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, expressed reservations about the program, warning that there could be a chilling effect on students or researchers.

"Are you going to ask all the questions you want to ask if someone is out there taking notes and reporting to the FBI that you asked the question which they perceived as suspicious?" Reinstein said.

You know what else is chilling? Being in charge of a sensitive research project and accidentally allowing somebody to abscond with important data because you weren't paying attention.

All the FBI is doing is telling them to be aware this is going on, and to safeguard their stuff.
Ooooh, it's just like the gulag.
Dork: more...

Posted by: LauraW. at 06:31 AM | Comments (50)
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The curious claim? The very fact that this particular terrorist posed entirely as a civilian -- even while preparing to wage covert war on the US -- somehow takes him out of the category of "combatant" and puts him in the more favorable category of "civilian." In other words, if you're an unlawful combatant but comport yourself with some of the rules of warfare, you can be permanently detained as an enemy combatant captured on the battlefield; but if you're an unlawful combatant who observes none of the rules of warfare, you get a get-out-of-detainment-free card courtesy of the US Constitution.

It's oft-stated that the Constitution "is not a suicide pact." Au contraire says the Fourth Circuit.

I'm getting awfully sick of these assholes:

[A]bsent suspension of the writ of habeas corpus or declaration of martial law, the Constitution simply does not provide the President the power to exercise military authority over civilians within the United States. The President cannot eliminate constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention. Put simply, the Constitution does not allow the President to order the military to seize civilians residing within the United States and detain them indefinitely without criminal process, and this is so even if he calls them “enemy combatants.”

To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the President calls them “enemy combatants,” would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country. For a court to uphold a claim to such extraordinary power would do more than render lifeless the Suspension Clause, the Due Process Clause, and the rights to criminal process in the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments; it would effectively undermine all of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. It is that power — were a court to recognize it — that could lead all our laws “to go unexecuted, and the government itself to go to pieces.” We refuse to recognize a claim to power that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our Republic.

There's some reason for optimism; Orin Kerr at Volokh predicts the Supreme Court will reverse, if the Fourth Circuit doesn't reverse itself in an en banc reconsideration.

Posted by: Ace at 05:08 PM | Comments (202)
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Kaus addresses the amnesty crowd's talking points. Two of the most important rebuttals:

1. If all these enforcement measures are so wonderful, why not enact just them and drop the questionable legalization part? Bush is holding the parts of the bill everyone says they want hostage to the parts he wants.

2. If we tried the enforcement parts first, then we wouldn't have to trust the federal government. We could make sure the measures work before we go ahead with legalization (and attract a new wave of legalization-seeking illegals).

Indeed. It does not exactly inspire belief in a new, tougher attitude on the part of government to enforce immigration laws that the people claiming they're all about enforcement will only make the weakest, most transparently-false gestures towards enforcement if they get their precious amnesty along with it.

Kaus notes a key new talking point is "We get it; we understand your concerns; now we're really going to govern/legislate according to public wishes." Such as John McCain, here, "getting it:"

Trouble is, while McCain really says he "gets it" about the two miles of the promised 850 miles of fence being built, he's made his real feelings clear earlier, stating "I think the fence is least effective [element of border security]. But I’ll build the goddamned fence if they want it.”

Yet even that grudging I'll-build-it-if-you-make-me-build-it concession was made in January. It is now mid-June. So if McCain previously stated he would bend to public will on this issue, and yet did not. Why the hell would we believe him now when he makes basically the same statement? Sure, I'll build it, if you're that angry about it. We already were angry about this before, and McCain knew it. And yet no action.

But McCain -- and Bush, and Ted "This [1986 amnesty] is the last amnesty of this kind ever" Kennedy -- really want us to believe that now they're all on board with this "goddamned" fence. Right.

They want us to trust them. How about they trust us? If these jagoffs actually do pass enforcement-first reforms and begin enforcing the laws already on the books, we the voters promise that we will take a fresh look at the amnesty issue -- with a new openness towards it -- once we have a modicum of assurance that the borders will in fact be much more secure and that a fresh amensty won't be "needed" in ten years.

Funny, but they don't seem to trust us to change our minds on this issue. They seem to believe we'll never change our ways and thus giving in to us will result in only us getting our way while never permitting them to get their side of the bargain.

I guess I know how they feel. That's my concern about them, as it turns out.

So, they "get it." And yet, as they push for this a second (okay, third) time, they will of course offer only the most cosmetic changes and will of course not begin demonstrating their supposed new commitment to enforcement prior to pushing amnesty without security on us again.

"Give us what we want first and trust us we'll later carry forward on what you want."

Why do they keep offering the same deal to us they steadfastly refuse to accept from us? If it's such a great deal -- fine, guys, you accept it.

Trust us, guys. We don't like it, but we'll give you your goddamned amnesty if you want it.

After we get ours first, of course.

Posted by: Ace at 04:41 PM | Comments (77)
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Kinda cute if you don't mind some light blasphemy. Mortal Kombat style fighting featuring Biblical characters.

Right now Matthew Sheffield (who sent the tip) and I are discussing why they made Jesus so weak and didn't give him the power to resurrect with half hit points after a nominal defeat. And why Satan is so strong.

Noah seems the second most powerful, for some reason.

The other games are good too. Five Minutes To Kill Yourself seems fun (but is in fact so frustrating you really want to kill yourself), and the Nine Billion Miles From Earth Game is pretty cute too.

Posted by: Ace at 02:52 PM | Comments (21)
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I was holding off on responding to this piece linked by Allah until I could rouse myself to contradict the idiocies contained therein.

Captain Ed has already done it by now.

I'm not sure how Will can claim a Watergate prosecutor, a crusading anti-corruption DA who brought down the Tennessee governor, and an eight-year Senator is just an "actor" who brings nothing to the table but a sonorous, reassuring voice.

Maybe Will should stick to writing long boring books about his childish fixation on baseball.

Posted by: Ace at 02:35 PM | Comments (51)
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They've apparently accepted that military action may be necessary, and will support Bush should he choose this route have no option remaining except the military one.

I don't like the idea that we'd just be hitting the nuke sites. If you're going to take a shot at the Shah, hit to kill. If we're striking their nuke sites, we ought to also be hitting their mullahs, Ahamadinejad, and all the key genrals and Revolutionary Guard commanders that keep this psychopathic regime in power.

Posted by: Ace at 02:28 PM | Comments (142)
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Big news.

I'm told the scientists involved almost dedicated their lives to perfecting the severed-foot artificial vagina. I'm glad they left the more difficult work to others and concentrated on their real strengths.

Posted by: Ace at 01:56 PM | Comments (6)
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Really, not safe for work. Maybe not safe for home, either.

A reader sent this. I'm not sure if he wants his name mentioned. Would bring up difficult questions about how he found this.

I'm linking this for the shock/humor/weirdness value. And it's educational. Tells you something about human sexual behavior. Like Margaret Mead in Samoa. It's stuff you don't want to know, but still.

Like I said, Not Safe For Work/Strong Content Warning.

A fetish I didn't even know existed -- latex models of what appear to be severed female feet with a vagina on their soles.

Yup. Foot fetish, I knew about. Plastic vagina, old hat.

Putting the two together -- we're in some weird Dave Cronenberg Videodrome/Crash area here.

Posted by: Ace at 01:40 PM | Comments (26)
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We're not serious. And this is mostly Bush's fault -- he could have stepped in and overruled this monstrous error:

The insurgents who kill our young soldiers are ruthless, but we have sometimes been cautious in our response. Take the question of targeting bomb makers: There may be an unlimited supply of explosives in Iraq, but there is not an unlimited supply of people who know how to wire the detonators. In 2004, CIA operatives in Iraq believed that they had identified the signatures of 11 bomb makers. They proposed a diabolical -- but potentially effective -- sabotage program that would have flooded Iraq with booby-trapped detonators designed to explode in the bomb makers' hands. But the CIA general counsel's office said no. The lawyers claimed that the agency lacked authority for such an operation, one source recalled.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a nuance.

Posted by: Ace at 01:18 PM | Comments (21)
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Are lesbians and men all that different? Apart from our differing appreciation of power tools and wood-lathes (men, of course, not caring so much about such macho accoutrements), we seem to have pretty similar tastes.

The article tries to make distinctions with the brutish, patriarchal, objectifying list offered by Maxim:

How is our list different from Maxim's? Eight of the top 10 women on our list aren't mentioned anywhere on the Maxim list (Angelina Jolie and Lena Headey are the exceptions), and only four of the women who made Maxim's top 10 (Jessica Alba, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel and Lindsay Lohan) appear somewhere on the AfterEllen.com list.

Clearly, what straight men and lesbians find sexy in a woman is a little bit different.

"A little bit different," yes. Men wouldn't have chosen this
particular shot of Scarlett Johanssen, for example.

"Hot" for lesbians and bisexual women comes in all ages, sizes, colors and styles, as the diversity of women on our list demonstrates — from Tina Fey (No. 7) and Helen Mirren (No. 31), to Ellen DeGeneres (No. 50), America Ferrera (No. 30) and Queen Latifah (No. 55). There's even a conservative Republican in the mix (Angie Harmon, No. 82), proving we can still find a women sexy even if we don't agree with her alternative lifestyle choice.

The list also shows that we like women who like us — slightly over half the women on the AfterEllen.com Hot 100 List have played queer characters at one time or another. Eight of the women (nine, if you count Drew Barrymore) are openly lesbian or bisexual; they're noted with an asterisk (*) next to their name.

But there is one thing all the women on the list have in common: They're more than just pretty faces. Many of these women aren't just women we like, they're women we want to be like — women we admire as well as desire.

Well, let's note the ways in which the list is exactly similar to Maxim's: Most of the women are, fairly objectively, teh hotness. I don't think Scarlett Johanson, Kate Winslet, Natalie Portman, and Jessica Alba made the list due to their "inner beauty" or gay shit of this nature.

A good number of the choices are women who aren't hot, but are either 1) lesbians themselves (Ellen DeGeneres) or 2) have portrayed lesbians. It seems that just about everyone on the cable series The L-Word is here. I submit these women are on the list just for "You Go Girl!!!11!!! TEH ROXXOR!!11!" points, or at least had their numbers, errm, helped by this. Just about every damn women who's ever played a lesbian, has been rumored to be a lesbian, or once stood in a supermarket check-out line with a lesbian is on here.

This is not beauty-based -- inner or outer -- but simple identity politics and well-wishing of those similar to oneself. It would be like me putting together a list of the top most attractive men and putting George Lucas on there six or seven times (George Lucas During The Filming of Star Wars, George Lucas During The Difficult "Willow/Howard The Duck" Period (Showing Inner Strength), etc.).

Tina Fey is on there because any group of liberals is required by secret codicil to claim she is blazingly hot.

In short, most of the picks that the lesbians are proud of -- the ones that show they're not just looking for hotness in a ranking of women by, errm, hotness --are no different than polls of women in (especially older-skewing) women's magazines perenially choosing Nancy Reagan or even Barbara Bush as among the world's most beautiful women. Let us say that while either woman may have her virtues and attractiveness, they seem to be, shall we say, wishful-thinking choices often made by elderly women.

Also, the list differs chiefly according to what sorts of media the respondents are consuming. Maxim has a lot of pin-up girls and Sports Illustrated swimsuit types. The lesbian list has a lot of... tv actresses. Lesbians, it seems, watch a hell of a lot of TV. But given they're still picking the hotties from TV (mostly; the hotties plus the women they know they're supposed to say are cute in order to not seem as superficial as men), I have little doubt that if lesbians were exposed to the same media as straight young men, and saw the hot women straight young men do, the list would be even more similar. Almost identical. Except the lesbian list would still include Ellen DeGeneres and Queen Latifah.

And, of course, Tina Fey.

All that said -- despite the heroic efforts to portray the AfterEllen list as somehow more elevated than the Maxim one -- both the AfterEllen crowd and Maxim seem to take note of 1) a gorgeous face 2) young, unweathered skin 3) a nice set of cans 4) a long set of stems and 5) a kickin' gedonkadonk. Correction: I'm informed it's "badonkadonk."

Thanks to Phinn of Agent Bedhead.

On Tina Fey: A commenter objects and says she's attractive.

Well, yes, she is attractive. My problem is the Tina Gap -- the vast chasm between what Tina Fey actually is and what she is purported to be by liberals. She was bad on Weekend Update. Mean Girls was an atrocious mish-mash of Heathers and a half-dozen better teen-comedies but was overpraised by a liberal critical clacque in her corner ("You Go Girl!"). Whatever slight charms the derivative, uninspired teen comedy may have had were ruined due to the exorbitant, nearly-unhinged claims liberal critics fell over themselves to make about the movie.

And she's a passably cute girl. But the Tina Gap becomes embarrassing as her modest beauty is continuously trumpeted as gorgeousness. It becomes embarrassing, I imagine, for her herself; she can't imagine she's super-hot. Cute yes. Super-hot? No.

It's like the way the media was always claiming that Hillary! was beautiful. Um, no, she was, I'm sorry to say, on the lower end of the attractiveness spectrum. Coyote ugly, no. But unfortunately somewhere in that sad area where "unappetizing" meets "I'll just be kind and say it just doesn't work for me." Repeatedly calling a non-beauty beautiful has the perverse effect of highlighting her fundamental plainness, making her seem less attractive than she is.

(Of course, Hillary! is actually looking better now -- not "beautiful" yet, but somewhat attractive for the first time in her life -- but due to extensive plastic surgery, which of course we're not allowed to call attention to.)

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (77)
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