Jules Crittendon with an interesting post.

How is the government finessing the issue of information elicited by coercive methods?

Well, I don't know if this is going to fly, but here it is:

FBI and military interrogators who began work with the suspects in late 2006 called themselves the “Clean Team” and set as their goal the collection of virtually the same information the CIA had obtained from five of the six through duress at secret prisons.

To ensure that the data would not be tainted by allegations of torture or illegal coercion, the FBI and military team won the suspectsÂ’ trust over the past 16 months by using time-tested rapport-building techniques, the officials said.

It's not really fruit of the poisonous tree (the doctrine that evidence gathered due to testimony gathered illegally, like a gun used in murder found because someone admitted to its location after being slapped around, is also not permitted). The law allows exceptions, like "inevitable discovery" ("We would have found it anyway") and alternate discovery ("We would have found it via this permissible route").

So there's some legal juice here. And the main point is whether or not these men originally admitted their roles under coercion or not, they're now freely admitting it without the coercion. So unless someone wants to claim that a slap in the face gets you off automatically -- and some will claim just that -- it seems the main reason for not permitting coerced testimony -- its dubious reliability -- is overcome here.

Posted by: Ace at 03:14 PM | Comments (16)
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At Westminster.

What set him apart from the pack, if you will?

Three reasons:

He was an exceptionally fine example of his breed.

He had a "spunky personality" that won judges over.

And he posses the power of telekinetic flight:

I'm sorry. Look, I know there's a lot of important news I should be linking. I'm just not up to it today.

PS: Good to see PETA maintains its even keel about animal-related issues.

I will repeat my theory that PETA people are largely asexual because they're frozen in a pre-pubescent state of development.

PPS: Well at least the animal-lovers have realistic solutions to what they perceive to be our problems.

For example, this MacArthur Genius Grant Laureate suggests that we can reduce our consumption of animal proteins, while also living healthier, simply by switching from a meat-heavy diet to a bug-heavy diet.

Is it time to start chowing down on some of those crawly critters we instinctively prefer to stomp on? The Feral Forager, a self-published 'zine excerpted in Sandor Katz's The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, rebrands pill bugs as "land shrimp"; grasshoppers are "surprisingly tasty and filling" and taste "something like popcorn"; crickets, "incredibly high in calcium and potassium." Roasted grubs make a fat-filled protein snack that, again, tastes "a lot like popcorn."

Earthworms make "a very nutritious flour," and ant eggs are edible, too; raw ant eggs reportedly taste "like couscous", but the author of the article confesses that "the only time I tried this it tasted like a hundred ants biting my tongue..."

But the Feral Foragers don't draw the line at eating insects; some of them go so far as to cross the (yellow) line in their pursuit of alternative food sources. As members of a North Carolina collective called Wildroots, they're what Katz calls "Roadkill Radicals" -- enthusiastic advocates of peeling "dishonored victims of the petroleum age" off the pavement and converting them into "food which nourishes."

As the Feral Forger notes, "picking up roadkill is a good way to get fresh, wild, totally free-range and organic meat for absolutely free." Finally, a silver lining to our car-crazed culture.

Thanks to Brian Faughnan at the Weekly Standard for that, who sent it my way because Michael Goldfarb vetoes it.

Ace of Spades HQ: Blogging the crap that respectable outfits won't.

Posted by: Ace at 02:43 PM | Comments (46)
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Woman auctions sex online, then sues internet provider to find name of winner, as she needs to know who precisely got her pregnant. I think that just made the list of constitutionally-required exceptions to any law prohibiting abortion.

If the distance between the hoo-ha and the love-nubbin is more than 2.5cm, a woman can't climax through vaginal sex. I've got my excuse now: From now on, only women with a longer V-C gap. [Alice H.]

Repellent, and not really appropriate in a lighthearted link-dump, but: woman molests seven year old and six month old because they "smelled like vanilla." She called 911 and admitted she'd "sinned" and needed to speak to a priest. [dri]

Pot may affect your brain: Obviously stoned confused guy leaves amusing email on reporter's voicemail. [genghis]

Pot may affect your brain, Part II: A religion apparently based on pot. You know he's done too much when he announces "The Complete Jewish Bible" is complete because it includes the New testament. [Sorry, I forget who sent that.]

Shock: Man nearly chokes to death while paying to be nearly choked to death in NYC fetish club. Police intend to charge the dominatrix with "aggravated customer satisfaction."

Perfect dates make for bad mates. Problem? Self-conscious people come off better in initial meetings because these "self-monitors" are good at adapting and being social chameleons who seem to say and do the right things. Trouble is, no one can sustain that. [Hot Air's headlines.

And this gets an automatic link, despite the fact I haven't played the game yet: HoboWars! [Janet.]

To wash the filth away... Dramatic Lemur.

Okay, that's not enough. How about a hedgehog? [PetiteDov.]

Cuteness overload? Indeed.

Oooh! Great Idea: Polynikes (which in Greek means "many sneakers") writes:

The Washington Post ran a contest which you had to write a two line poem
with the first line romantic and the second line as unromantic as the first
line was romantic.

example of some of the entries

I see your face when I am dreaming
Thats why I always wake up screaming

I want to feel your sweet embrace
But don't take the paper bag off of your face

I thought the commenters could do much better.

Just a thought.

polynikes

Hmmm....

Your beauty leaves me breathless, astonished, and confused;
filling me with thoughts of Kelly McGillis, nay, Jodie Foster in "The Accused."

Eh.

Posted by: Ace at 02:18 PM | Comments (206)
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Because he's not "one of them". He's a businessman.

An oilman.

And he only has a bachelor's degree.

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) - The man nominated to lead the state's flagship university is an oilman, not an academic. In a sea of Ph.Ds, he has only a bachelor's degree. But he does offer this: A reputation as a formidable fundraiser.

Bruce Benson's nomination may be bitterly dividing this 52,000- student, three-campus institution, but it is a sign that dollars, not degrees, are playing a bigger role in choosing college presidents. Though Benson would be one of only a fraction of college presidents without an advanced degree, he says he's not worried about doing the job.

Opponents seem fair minded in their opposition, including the noteworthy "Boycott Benson" site that criticizes the selection process and his background as a "conservative Republican activist".

The guy who helped raise a billion dollars for the university also happened to be the national co-chair of Mitt Romney's campaign.

But no. Fundraising is nothing. Everybody knows you can cover a $2B budget with pretty ponies and sparkly rainbows and a few advanced degrees. Hell even I know that, and I only have a bachelor's degree*.

* mail-order

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 01:09 PM | Comments (34)
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Not the full protections, at least. But there is some hope for optimism about a McCain presidency. I guess.

I asked the Senator whether he would have any reservations about the execution of the six detainees on trial at Guantanamo Bay for their role in the 9/11 attacks, whether he is comfortable with the current legal regime for trying detainees, and whether the interrogation techniques used there cast doubt on the fairness of the trials. His response:

McCain: No. I would not have concerns. I rely to a large degree on my friend Lindsey Graham, who is a JAG lawyer and who has been intimately involved in this whole process. These are not individuals who deserve the protections of the kind of judicial process that a citizen of the United States would have. We did not give those rights and privileges in the Nuremberg tribunals...these tribunals as far as I can tell...are appropriate and they are the way to address these particular cases...and there's nothing in the Geneva Conventions or any other rule of law that I've ever seen that said that the same rights and privileges apply to them as apply to American citizens.

I'm not sure that this position makes sense -- waterboarding and other forms of "torture" are absolutely prohibited by the US Constitution and the Geneva Conventions and human dignity itself, but testimony elicited by such means can be used at trial? A capital trial, no less?

Does he think these things or is it just all about his instincts and sense of moral outrage?

I could easily make an argument that the correct answer is precisely the opposite: Yes, such tactics can be used to gather information from high-value terrorists to prevent human deaths, but information elicited from such tactics cannot be used in any sort of legal proceeding. That position, at least, makes a kind of sense.

McCain's really doesn't.

I guess it is an acceptable answer. Barely.

More at Goldfarb, including Scalia's thoughts on torture and the Eighth Amendment.

Also related: McCain, the war, and the GOP. We seem to be almost a single-issue party, and maybe at this point that's what we need to be.

More: hit and run points out the following:

1) Did you see this from Geraghty?

Wisconsin Poll: Democrats No Better on Iraq Than Bush

Some eye-opening polls result from Strategic Vision in Wisconsin:

...

7. Do you believe that Democrats in Congress have a better plan to resolve the Iraq War then President Bush?

Yes 18%
No 71%
Undecided 11%

Iraq, no longer a winning issue for Congressional Democrats. In that hawkish, hard-right state of Wisconsin.

2) Brian Faughn ended his blog at WWS that you linked to:

The strength of Iraq as an issue was unforeseen just a few months ago. It's possible that an as-yet undetected bias toward supporters of the Iraq war will play a role in the general election, as well.

Others did see this coming,it should be noted.

Posted by: Ace at 12:56 PM | Comments (40)
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If that doesn't load, try Breitbart. But ya gotta see it.

That woman is not exactly hot, but.... come on. Come. On!

scott suggests that's "beefcake for the ladies." That's just not right. Some real beefcake for the ladies after the jump. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:40 PM | Comments (23)
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Well, not necessarily hotties, but women.

Kissinger turned him down.

DaveP finally accepts Christopher Hitchen's longstanding argument that Kissinger was a war criminal.

The US state department has released documents from 1973, shedding light on relations with China - and on then leader Mao Zedong's attitudes to women.

The papers include transcripts of talks between Mao and the then US National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger.

...

But during the talks, the Chinese leader made a surprising offer to send what he described as an excess of 10 million Chinese women to the US.

...

The papers show that Mao's comments about Chinese women were a recurring theme.

He lamented the dismal state of trade between the two countries but remarked that China had an excess of women.

He suggested sending tens of thousands to the US, but later in the conversation increased his offer to 10 million.

The remark provoked laughter and was clearly meant as a joke, but Mao went on to complain that Chinese women were giving birth to too many children.

If they were sent to the US he said, they would flood the country with disaster.

When discussing the possibility of a Soviet invasion of China, Mao complained that too many Chinese women didn't know how to fight.

Gay.

I don't know. Doesn't really sound like he was joking.

Posted by: Ace at 12:00 PM | Comments (50)
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Via Hot Air, which has good excerpts.

Ezra Levant's blog entry should be read in full. Here's a taste.

Today Syed Soharwardy told the Calgary Herald editorial board that he is withdrawing his human rights complaint against me that he filed two years ago when I published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed. (Seriously, if you haven't done so, you've really got to look at his hand-scrawled complaint here. I know dyslexic ten-year-olds with ADD who are more coherent.)

...

So why would Soharwardy do this -- and why now?

...

Soharwardy wants a hudna because he's losing badly. Not financially: he hasn't spent a penny to further the complaint against me -- that has been done courtesy of Ed Stelmach's government and the taxpayers of Alberta, to the tune of $500,000, I'd guess. Nor has Soharwardy had to spend hundreds of hours battling against me at the commission -- Alberta government employees do that for him. It's because over the past two years -- and the past month in particular -- Soharwardy has become known for what he is: an Islamofascist imam, who's trying to bring Saudi values to Canada. Though I'm being pummelled in a kangaroo court, he's being pummelled in the court of public opinion. He didn't expect it, and he hates it.

He hates that hundreds of bloggers ridicule him. He hates that my video clips, in which I describe his illiberal nature, have been viewed almost 500,000 times. He hates that his own enemies within his mosque have taken advantage of this media coverage to shine a light of scrutiny on the way he runs his mosque - from his financial irregularities, to his abusive treatment of women. These documents here, here, here and here, first published on my blog, have been viewed thousands of times and led to a series of newspaper items in the Calgary Herald and even the Washington Times. Soharwardy is embarrassed -- as well he should be. He is no longer polite company. Now he's known as a censor, a fascist, a sexist. He's un-Canadian. And if the complaint against me goes to a tribunal, he'll go through this again on a larger scale.

But can someone abuse a government process like he has, for two years, and then simply walk away with impunity? I've spent the better part of $100,000 defending against this thug -- but because he's losing face, he thinks he can pretend he never did what he did.

Soharwardy claims that he's seen the light and realized that he was misguided -- that he should never have tried to censor me. Really? Last month he was cheering on commission's interrogation of me; two weeks ago, he was sending me more legal threats. The only epiphany he's had was that in the circus he started, he's coming across as the clown -- an angry, anti-Semitic clown who shouts down women at his own mosque.

Read on. Levant is going to file an abuse of process lawsuit against Soharwardy, and that, unlike Sohardwardy's complaint, really is a recognized legal insult. He may also file against the "human rights" commission.

I guess he committed the third most famous error, after fighting a landwar in Asia and going up against a Sicilian when death is on the line: Taking a Jew to court.*

You'd have thought that this anti-semite would have been forewarned on that one, huh?

Levant really needs to see this through. I imagine that, behind the scenes, the "human rights" commission might just be begging Soharwardy to withdraw, because there is too much peril in convicting Levant on a thought crime -- the commission itself might be in jeopardy were they to take such a disgusting and illiberal step -- and yet they also can't afford to appear toothless.

They want to keep the threat of prosecuting for thought crimes without having to suffer the scrutiny of actually convicting in a very high-profile case, where the "perpetrator" is not some unsympathetic basement-dwelling troglodyte but someone who has much of the public, and all of the righteousness, on his side.

So it's best for the "human rights" commission and the mincing buffoon Soharwardy for this to just go away. At this point, they effectively win by simply shutting down the process, as they retain most if not all off their thought-crime patrolling "mandate."

But that's hardly the best outcome for Levant, for Steyn, for publishers and writers and anyone who cares to express a thought about politics or culture, or for Canada itself.

Have at 'em, Ezra. Make sure the Canadian authorities go on record, one way or another, as to whether freedom of speech and freedom of thought are "peculiarities of American law" or the natural rights of Canadians as well.

Even an adverse ruling serves the cause: These matters need to be clarified, and the people of Canada need to know whether or not they're living in a thought police state.

* If you're Canadian, you're not permitted to read that line. Please report to your local human rights commission re-education center for proper guidance and counseling.

Posted by: Ace at 11:20 AM | Comments (21)
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Via Eugene Volokh, it looks like the Supreme Court will be considering laws which prohibit the sale of sex-toys.

The Texas ban on dildoes -- yes, it expressly mentions "dildo" -- has just been struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The law, the court held, violates Lawrence v. Texas right of "adult consensual sexual intimacy in the home."

On this, the Fifth Circuit disagrees with the Eleventh Circuit, which upheld a similar Alabama law last year.

I love this country.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 11:08 AM | Comments (62)
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Video of the Berkeley Police, whose motto is To Protect and Serve Code Pink.

Posted by: Ace at 10:32 AM | Comments (116)
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