BIG TEACHER IS WATCHING YOU

Blake Robbins probably thought it was pretty neat when his school, Harriton High School in the wealthy Philadephia suburb of Ardmore. sent a new Macbook laptop computer home with him. His school district, one of the wealthiest in the country, had issued the laptops to its high school students.

But when Blake was called into the Vice-Principal's office and accused of '”inappropriate behavior off school grounds,” he discovered another use for the computers that neither he nor his parents knew about. According to a lawsuit filed in Federal Court, Blake was confronted with pictures of himself, allegedly taking drugs. The pictures had been taken by the built in camera on his own computer.

Now, anyone who's had any contact with the justice system here in the 21st century can probably tell you about defendants who've been undone by taking pictures of themselves brandishing weapons, ingesting drugs, or showing off ill-gotten gains, then posted them on their MySpace and Facebook pages (yes, some criminals really are that dumb).

But that wasn't what happened in Blake's case. He found, to his (and his parents') horror, that the computers contained software that allowed school administrators to turn the cameras on remotely and photograph whatever was in the room with the computer.

At first, the school admitted that it had turned on its all-seeing eyes a total of 42 times, but insisted that the system was only used to track “lost or stolen” laptops. This did not address the question of how Blake's machine, which was neither lost or stolen, had its camera activated so that school administrators could peer into his home.

Later investigations by the Philadelphia Inquirer showed that the network administrator responsible for the laptop program apparently had not gotten the memo about only using the program to search for purloined hardware. In a case of almost too-perfect irony, the administrator, Mike Perbix, had posted his own video on line touting the neat things that could be done when you turned school computers into surreptitious surveillance devices. It showed him, for example, snapping “as many as 20 photos of a teacher and some students without their knowledge while in the classroom.” Perbix apparently thought this was a keen thing to be able to do: “It's a fantastic feature," the Inquirer quotes him as chuckling. I don't know about you, but the idea of some geeky IT guy chuckling over his ability to spy on kids without permission creeps me out.

Blake's parents have now filed a class action suit against the school district. The FBI is also investigating for potential violations of Federal wiretapping laws.

For years, under the banner of “maintaining order”, the schools have demanded increased power to encroach on the privacy and free-speech rights of students. They've also moved to criminalize every behavior problem, to the point where students who commit infractions that would at one time have gotten them sent to the office end up in court, charged with crimes. And the courts, on all levels, have pretty much let them have their way, especially in the post-Columbine world, in which it sometimes seems as if every student is regarded as a criminal by default. In one case that I've written about in this column, a student was locked up when his response to the prompt “write a scary story” led to...well, a scary (and violent) story. In another, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a student could be suspended for a drug-related joke made off campus. In such an environment, why shouldn't a school feel entitled to send surveillance devices home with a student? Especially if he was caught doing drugs?

Except that those “drugs” Blake was supposedly taking turned out to be candy. Something called Ike and Mikes. I'm sure we're all glad that this brave new technology is being deployed to protect us and our children from sugary snacks.

George Orwell, in the book “1984”, wrote about a society in which everyone had a “telescreen,” a device in the wall that provided propaganda broadcasts, but which could also be used by the totalitarian government of Big Brother to keep an eye on citizens. You never knew when the screen was being monitored, so you had to live at all times as if you were being watched.

In 2010, is Big Teacher watching you?

Groucho For GOP Chairman

Wow, THAT Was Quick

Scott Brown Votes For Jobs Bill, Wingnuts Go Nuts On Twitter

How's that upcoming Republican majority workin' for ya?

H/t Balloon Juice

GOP: No Matter What Happens, America's Losing

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First off, it seems that we need to start with a correction.

Last week, we discussed the silliness, hypocrisy and downright dishonesty of the wingnut tantrums over the fact that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a.k.a. the Undiebomber, was read his Miranda rights immediately upon being taken into custody. As it turns out, he wasn't "Mirandized," as they say, for almost nine hours.

According to a timeline released by administration officials, and reported in The Washington Post, Abdulmutallab was taken into custody and then taken to a hospital for treatment of the burns he suffered in his botched attempt to detonate the explosives in his undershorts.

He was interrogated about three hours later by a specially picked pair of questioners (one a bomb specialist), with the questions -centering on immediate emergency concerns, like whether there were other bombs about to go off. During this session, the report asserts, the agents got "some useful intelligence."

Then Abdulmutallab went back into surgery. When he came out, a second FBI team questioned him again. At that point, the report says, he stopped talking, and only then was he Mirandized.

This report clearly shows that assertions by Republicans like Kit Bond, Pat Buchanan and Lindsey Graham that the Undiebomber was "read his rights within 50 minutes" were dead wrong. I await their retraction. And wait, and wait, and wait...

Of course, wingnuts being wingnuts, whatever the truth of the matter may be, they'll probably find some way to spin it as being some colossal failure by the Obama administration in the War on Terror.

Nowhere was this more clear than in a recent editorial in the journal Foreign Affairs, where former Bush speechwriter turned regular Washington Post columnist Marc Theissen complained that the Obama administration was killing too many terrorists.

"With every drone strike that vaporizes a senior al-Qaeda leader," Theissen groused after such a strike killed the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, "actionable -intelligence is vaporized along with him. Dead terrorists can't tell you their plans to strike America."

But wait. Didn't Dick Cheney just tell us that Obama wasn't treating the fight against terrorists enough like a war? And now the problem is that he's killing too many of them?

Wait, it gets better. A recent joint operation between U.S. and Pakistani forces captured the military leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. This mook was the highest-value target captured in the Afghan War since 2001. But that, according to supposed "terrorism expert" and perennial Fox News commentator Michael Scheuer, was "no big deal," because "you win wars by killing people, not capturing them."

To the casual observer, this might seem a tad confusing. Are the Republicans saying we're killing too many terrorists, or not enough? Do they contend that killing top al-Qaeda and Taliban extremists in Afghanistan is a good thing or a bad thing? What's the overriding principle here? Or is it that they have no real principles at all?

Well, there is one principle operating here, of a sort. I've noted here frequently that the Republican Party during the Bush years abandoned every principle it once claimed to stand for - fiscal responsibility, limited government, the rule of law - in favor of a single belief, that everything's permissible if you're a Republican.

And the principle here, if you can call it that, is the flip side of that: Everything a Democrat does or proposes doing is wrong. It's the same double-think/double-speak that lets the congressional Republican caucus scream about how deficits are destroying our future while voting, purely along party lines, against the same "pay as you go" rules that cut deficits in the '90s and left George W. Bush a surplus to squander.

Back during the height of the controversy over the Iraq War, one of the most infuriating slanders by the Right was that liberals "wanted us to lose." Now an increasingly hysterical right wing seems unconcerned whether we're actually winning or losing against terrorists, because they're so determined to call everything a loss.

HAW! HAW! HAW!

Babbin Jokes About IRS Plane Attack:

At the CPAC conference, Human Events editor Jed Babbin introduced Grover Norquist, the top anti-tax conservative activist in the country. During his introduction, Babbin joked about the recent airplane attack on an IRS building in Texas, which reportedly killed both the alleged perpetrator and a person who was in the building.

"And let me just say, I'm really happy to see Grover today," said Babbin. "He was getting a little testy in the past couple of weeks. And I was just really, really glad that it was not him identified as flying that airplane into the IRS building."

Those zany wingnuts! They're so crazy!

Which leads us to the question: Why are so few conservatives funny? PJ O'Rourke's the only one I can think of that actually makes me laugh. The rest of conservative "humor" just comes off as severe dickishness.

RUN, SARAH, RUN!

Palin lashes out at `Family Guy' - Yahoo! News

Sarah Palin is lashing out at the portrayal of a character with Down syndrome on the Fox animated comedy "Family Guy."

In a Facebook posting headlined "Fox Hollywood — What a Disappointment," the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and current Fox News contributor said Sunday night's episode felt like "another kick in the gut." Palin's youngest son, Trig, has Down syndrome.

Seriously. She gets this upset over a stupid joke on Family Guy? Yes, it's cruel, yes it's offensive, but its' a stupid TV show.

This sort of thing is why I really wish that Caribou Barbie makes good on her threat to run for President. She is easily the most thin-skinned politician on the national stage. She cannot lay her head down at night until she's found someone or something that she thinks is insulting to poor Trig (or Bristol, or whoever) and then try to blow it up into a national scandal. Even her resignation speech when she quit the Alaska governorship cold be shortened to "people are mean to me and my family, so I quit, Nyaah." It plays well to those whose entire political philosophy is based on resentment, but as the man once said, "politics ain't beanbag."

I guarantee that, if she does run, someone will say something to set her off. It's how presidential campaigns are. Jesus, they questioned Obama's faith, his patriotism, his very citizenship, and wingnut blogs were posting pictures of Michelle Photoshopped to look like a character from Planet of the Apes. If Palin gets a tenth of that kind of flak, she will crack like an egg. She will then have a messy and very public meltdown that will drive away everyone but the most fanatical Palindrones.

So...RUN, SARAH, RUN!

Correction

It seems that the Undiebomber was not, as the wingnuts so indignantly put it, read his Miranda rights "within 50 minutes" after being apprehended. According to this at washingtonpost.com, it was more like 9 hours:

The first questioning of the suspect, which took place more than three hours after his arrest and without him being read his Miranda rights, ended after 50 minutes when doctors said his medical condition had deteriorated, according to the chronology. When interrogation resumed, some five hours later, the Nigerian refused to answer further questions and was then read his Miranda rights.

Think Kit Bond and Mitch McConnell will correct their statements? Do you also believe in the Easter Bunny?

I Don't Know About This...

So, I hear that the Coen Brothers are remaking the John Wayne classic TRUE GRIT, with Jeff Bridges in the John Wayne role.

I've got to say, I'm a little conflicted about this. On the one hand, I think the Brothers Coen are absolute geniuses, and I think if anyone can do a good job, it's them.

On the other hand, why remake a movie that's already a classic? And do they really think The Dude can deliver one of my favorite bad-ass movie lines as well as the Duke? You know the line I mean...



"FILL YOUR HANDS, YOU SON OF A BITCH! "

Sigh. I dunno...

"Lawyering Up" Doesn't Always Mean Clamming Up

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When I heard about the attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, I immediately thought two things.

The first was, "Thank God everyone's all right." (Except, it seems for the hapless Abdulmutallab, whose attempt to set off a liquid explosive in his underwear succeeded only in causing severe burns to his intimate areas. I confess I'm a bad person, because I laughed hard.)

The second thought I had was, "Hey, what's that giant whirring sound?"

That sound was, it turns out, the Right Wing Spin Machine firing up, ready to politicize this near-tragedy for all it was worth. President Obama, it seems, had done nothing right. He had stayed on his Christmas vacation in (gasp!) Hawaii rather than go on TV immediately, pat us on the head and "reassure" us that we were safe from Scary Dark-Skinned People with bombs in their underwear.

His Justice Department had chosen to indict Abdulmutallab and prosecute him in the civilian justice system rather than send him to Gitmo and put him in front of a Super Secret Military Tribunal. My God, Pat Buchanan sputtered on the Sunday after the attempt, he hasn't even been tortured yet!

But the thing that apparently put the worst twist in the wingnuts' knickers was that Abdulmutallab was - I can hardly bear to even say it - read his Miranda rights upon his capture!

If you've watched any television cop shows in the last 40 years, you know the Miranda warning by heart: You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, etc. It's called the Miranda warning after the name of the case, Miranda vs. Arizona, which established the principle that a defendant had to be informed of these rights before being interrogated by the police.

Despite the outcry at the time (and ever since), it wasn't all that new or radical a principle: Both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the FBI's procedures required that a suspect be informed of his right to remain silent and of his right to counsel. But, as everyone knows, the FBI and the military were, then as now, well-known hotbeds of liberalism.

Now, it might seem strange that all this fuss was being made over the Undiebomber being charged in civilian court, while the same people never complained when the so-called "Shoe Bomber," Richard Reid, got the same treatment. Reid committed almost exactly the same acts during the Bush administration, and Dubbya didn't interrupt his vacation or make a statement about the attempt for six days.

The reaction from the Right? (Cue sound of crickets chirping.)

Both Republican Sen. Kit Bond and wingnut emeritus Newt Gingrich have struggled and failed in public to make some distinction, with Gingrich finally falling back on a time-honored tactic: making stuff up. Reid got the benefits of civilian law and the Undiebomber shouldn't, Gingrich said, because Reid's an American citizen. (Not true. Reid is actually British.)

But, the objection goes, if you let a suspect lawyer up, he'll clam up. You won't get any good intelligence from him! More Scary Dark-Skinned People might be coming to kill us! Aaaaaaaah!

Real life and real lawyering, however, are a good bit different from an episode of "Law & Order." The last instructions a terrorist gets from his commanders may be "resist until death," but any halfway decent lawyer, given a client like the Undiebomber who was caught in the act, is not, I guarantee you, giving that advice.

He's very likely telling his client, "Look here, Slim, your chances of walking out of here whistling are exactly zero. Maybe you need to start trying to save as much of your own behind as you can, with the only thing you've got that they want: names, places and methods."

And, it appears, that's exactly what's happening with Abdulmutallab. There've been some fits and starts; he was originally quite forthcoming with the intel, then did clam up for a while. But after his family was allowed to see him, Abdulmutallab has reportedly been "cooperating on a daily basis" and providing "actionable intelligence that could help prevent terror attempts on U.S. soil."

OK, so it's not as much fun for wingnuts as torturing him might be. But it's undoubtedly working better. And we don't have to abandon real American principles like the Rule of Law to do it.

We Suck

Posting at Murderati today about UNC's recent slump (and what writers can learn from it).

Here, Trollie Trollie Trollie....

Boy, nothing brings out the anonymous trolls like making fun of the Wasilla Hillbilly, does it?

Sorry, guys, I hate to break it to you: no matter how many starbursts you think she's winkin' your way, no matter how many times you tell yourselves you're defending the honor of your Redneck Prom Queen, she's not going to sleep with you. Especially since none of you have the balls to take responsibility for your words.

But here's a little more troll bait:



And here's a news flash, because you people are as predictable as the sunrise, and I know what cliche is struggling to get out of your heads right now: mocking someone does not mean you're "afraid of them."

It means they think you're a joke.

Sarah Palin Better Get Busy

Latest Newspaper Column

Recently, The Wall Street Journal reported that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, in a private meeting last August, referred to liberal opponents of President Obama's health-care plan as "[bad word] retarded."

Well, Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor, failed vice-presidential candidate and soon-to-be Fox News commentator, wasn't going to take that lying down, you betcha. Palin (who, you might remember, has a son with Down syndrome), quickly leapt to her recent political forum of choice, i.e., her Facebook page, to call for Emanuel's resignation immediately, if not sooner.

"I would ask the president to show decency in this process by -eliminating one member of that inner circle, Mr. Rahm Emanuel, and not allow Rahm's continued indecent tactics to cloud efforts," Palin wrote.

Emanuel apologized for his comment, but that wasn't enough for Palin, who wrote: "Just as we'd be appalled if any public figure of Rahm's stature ever used the 'N-word' or other such inappropriate language, Rahm's slur on all God's children with cognitive and developmental disabilities - and the people who love them - is unacceptable, and it's heartbreaking."

Doggone right. I'm glad to see that Gov. Palin is taking a stand against the use of the word "retarded" to describe liberals. I look forward to her demand for the immediate firing of conservative radio host Michael Savage, who is constantly referring on his show to "liberal retards."

I also look forward to her calling for the immediate banning from the airwaves of conservative pundit Ann Coulter, who once wrote of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, "Is no one going to remark on what a great country it is where a mentally retarded woman can become speaker of the House?"

Coulter is actually pretty fond of using the word; she referred to talk show host Bill Maher's audience as "MoveOn retards." And in an interview on Fox News' Sean Hannity program, she referred to former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan as "retarded." "It's not offensive, it's accurate," Coulter insisted when challenged on it by allegedly liberal co-host Alan Colmes.

Hannity, it should be noted, never said a mumblin' word. So maybe Ms. Palin should be calling for his resignation, too.

Then there's bowtied Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, who's referred to Canada as "America's retarded cousin" not once, but twice. There's also frequently utilized wingnut talking head Dick Morris, who, after he got fired from the Clinton administration for letting hookers listen in on his phone calls to the White House, became the go-to guy for anyone who wanted a sound bite bashing the Clintons, Barack Obama or any Democrat.

Morris, on Fox's "The O'Reilly Factor," criticized Obama's stimulus package by saying: "What he didn't quite explain to me - and maybe I'm a little retarded about this - is how are you going to get banks to give people car loans when the government is elbowing them aside?"

I'm sure Gov. Palin missed that slur, but now that it's been called to her attention, I'm sure she'll be calling for Dick Morris to be banned from Fox. It's going to get pretty lonely on that channel, but it's a small price to pay to defend against those who slur "God's children with cognitive and developmental disabilities."

While we're at it, I look forward to Ms. Palin expressing her outrage at every conservative blogger who's ever used the word "libtard" (a combination of the words "liberal" and "retard") to describe anyone to the left of themselves. A quick Google search of the Republican Web site "Redstate" for the word "libtard", for example, turned up five long pages of hits.

And on Facebook, where the Resigning Woman is so fond of holding court, there are groups called "Al Gore is Retarded," "Liberals are Retarded," "Hollywood Is Full of Retarded Liberals," etc. Fortunately, since there's an easy way to ask for the administrators of Facebook to remove offensive groups, she can take a stand right away. There are only about 500 Facebook groups that use the word "retarded" in their names, so it shouldn't take more than a week or so.

If she's going to go after everyone who ever referred to liberals as "retarded," Ms. Palin had better get busy. But I know she will. Because if she's only upset by the use of the word "retarded" when a Democrat uses it, her outrage might seem, shall we say, a bit selective, even a bit hypocritical. And we know she's not a hypocrite, right?

Right?

Amazon Does NOT Want to Expand The E-Book Market

Yes, it's true that Amazon allows you to publish and market your own stuff to the Kindle, and at a very attractive-seeming royalty...but that model allows you to publish ONLY to the Kindle.

You don't see Amazon "fighting" to keep prices down on .pdf or epub files, just Kindle-friendly ones.

If they do what they seem bent on doing, and drive other e-book readers, as well as paper books, off the market, then you, the reader, are only going to be able to get your reading fix on Amazon.

What's worse from my perspective: if Amazon has their way, writers are only going to be able to publish with them. And if that happens, how long you think that sweet royalty will last?

Amazon isn't trying to expand e-publishing. They're trying to contract it to one machine, the one Amazon makes.

It's a bad idea. Fight it.

Post Your Amazon Alternatives Here

SFWA removes Amazon.com links from website

Despite their acknowledgment a few days ago that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms, it appears that Amazon still hasn't restored the ability to buy titles from Macmillan or its subsidiary publishers (including mine) at its website. Whatever your feelings about who's right and who's wrong here, it's undeniable that this is hurting authors more than it's hurting either Amazon or Macmillan. So the Science Fiction Writers of America has decided that they "would prefer to send traffic to stores where the books can actually be purchased." To that end, they're taking the Amazon links from their website and substituting links to indiebound.org, Powell’s, Barnes and Noble, and Borders.

I've also posted links here to Park Road Books, Seattle Mystery Bookshop, and Murder By the Book.

Anyone else have suggestions for online bookstores? Post them here, with links. Amazon's been the big dog too long.

But John McCain Is An Honorable Man

MSNBC:

"I understand the opposition to it, and I've had these debates and discussions, but the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, senator, we ought to change the policy, then I think we ought to consider seriously changing it because those leaders in the military are the ones we give the responsibility to."-John McCain, 2006 talking about "Don't Ask Don't Tell"

"At this moment of immense hardship for our armed services, we should not be seeking to overturn the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy."- John McCain, 2010, the same day Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen came to him (and other Senators) and said "Senator, we ought to change the policy."

Wait, it gets better:

"Senator McCain has not changed his policy on Don't Ask Don't Tell" -McCain spokesperson Brooke Buchanan.

They're not even trying to pretend any more that they have any principles at all. They're lying to our faces, they know it, we know it, and they just don't care.

And, of course, the chickenshit Democrats will never pick this up and run with it, and the media will let it drop, because John McCain was a POW.

Meanwhile, the big story is that Caribou Barbie is pretending to have her knickers in a twist, because Rahm Emanuel called some leftists "fucking retarded." SIX MONTHS AGO.

Because, you know, she's always been such a friend to the Left. And she's always been right out front when conservatives refer to liberals, or the President, as "libtards." Hasn't she? No? I wonder why....

Quote of the Day

Jim Winter, at Edged in Blue

Print is not the buggy whip of the 21st century. The ebook is the paperback of the 21st century. The sooner you understand this, the sooner you will understand the future of publishing.