telescreen.org

30% of Americans think the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.

*boggle*

Can I just say that again? Thirty percent -- more than 87 million people -- think that the First Amendment goes too far.

That's not all: 42% say the “press in America has too much freedom", while 41% disagree with the statement that "newspapers should be allowed to freely criticize the U.S. military."

Heaven help us.

Freedom-loving Americans can take some small comfort in the fact that American support for our basic freedoms is back at pre-9/11 levels...two years ago, the country was split 49%-49%.

This is all from a survey by the First Amendment Center, which also has some interesting analysis and commentary on the results.

From the analysis, it's clear that Americans have some pretty self-contradictory views on the First Amendment:

In the minds of many Americans, there is a troubling disconnect between principle and practice when it comes to First Amendment rights and values.

Americans in significant numbers appear willing to regulate the speech of those they don’t like, don’t agree with or find offensive. Many would too casually breach the wall between church and state. There is, in these surveys, solid evidence of confusion about, if not outright hostility toward, core First Amendment rights and values. . .

By a large majority, Americans say parents bear the primary responsibility for protecting their children from sexual material in the entertainment media, yet they are willing to broaden government regulation in that area.

Nearly eight in 10 believe the press has a government watchdog role, but four in 10 believe the press has too much freedom.

This is scary stuff, people. When your Administration is arguing (unsuccessfully, thank goodness) for the right to indefinitely detain people without charge, on the President's say-so, without access to lawyers. When the government asserts the right to put you under surveillance based on what you read. When the government can have access -- with no judicial oversight or even the need to prove probable cause or provide evidence -- to records of your finances, your purchases, your travels (not to mention searching your home) without telling you why, and without telling you what they're searching for. Freedom is being eroded in our country, and what's scarier is that the climate in which freedom flourishes is changing. When more than eighty-seven million people think that Americans shouldn't be able to practice their religion without government interference, or speak freely, or write about whatever they want, or assemble in public, or petition their government, we seem to be in trouble as a nation.

Think about that while you're enjoying your Fourth of July.

Gotta love that "No-Spin Zone".... (Link via Wonkette.)

The new LebowskiFest NY poster is out, and it's a hoot.

(Oh, and by the way, tickets go on sale at 3pm tomorrow.)

I really want an ice cream sundae.

Especially after reading this.

Hmmm...maybe I've found what I want for my birthday today. Binney & Smith now sells Silly Putty in bulk -- 5 lb. chunks to be exact. (And unfortunately, it doesn't come in a basketball-sized plastic egg.)

But what if that isn't enough? You can buy it in 50-pound boxes, too, direct from Dow Corning, which sells it as "3179 Dilatant Compound." (It's even got its own Material Safety Data Sheet.)

So: What to do with all that putty?

Well, you could always chuck it off a building, for one...

Hey, I made the front page of BoingBoing yesterday, where I pointed out some posts at Looka regarding the recent contentious interview that Bush gave Carole Coleman of RTÉ. (Go here and here for background.) Too bad the first link is fux0red...hopefully they'll fix it.

But cool!

More creeping Lysenkoism in the Bush Administration:

The Bush administration has ordered that government scientists must be approved by a senior political appointee before they can participate in meetings convened by the World Health Organization, the leading international health and science agency.

A top official from the Health and Human Services Department in April asked the WHO to begin routing requests for participation in its meetings to the department's secretary for review, rather than directly invite individual scientists, as has long been the case.

Just unbelievable. (More in this LAT article from which the above quote was taken.)

This is, of course, in addition to the Union of Concerned Scientists' report (signed by 20 Nobel laureates, among other prominent scientists) chronicling the many times that the Administration has abused the scientific method in favor of ideology.

I'll let Bruce Sterling have the last word here, on why this is important:

Politics without objective, honest measurement of results is a deadly short circuit. It means living a life of sterile claptrap, lacquering over failure after intellectual failure with thickening layers of partisan abuse. Charlatans like Lysenko can't clarify serious, grown-up problems that they themselves don't understand.

Bush's ads: now comparing Kerry to Hitler.

Josh Marshall, on Cheney's cursing:

Consider for a moment. Who is Dick Cheney? What do we know of him? None of us like being questioned or critized. But in him the disinclination runs particularly deep. He prefers to act in secrecy and is a man to whom government transparency has all the allure that a shaft of sunlight has to a vampire. When challenged, violence seems always to be his preferred method of response, that of first resort --- often a literal sort on the world stage, but with bureaucratic (viz. Plame) and what we might call verbal violence at home. By verbal violence I mean specifically tough talk and threats meant to frighten people away from challenging him further, to knock them on their heels. Even this new case -- saying Leahy et al. had it coming -- is but another example. When that doesn't work, he gets sloppy.

Cheney et al. can see all sorts of bad business coming down the pike in the next few months -- much of it already on the public radar screen, some of it still clogged up no doubt in back channels, newsrooms and new rounds of dirty-tricksterism. It seems clearly to be getting to them.

I'm just an EMT
And everywhere I see
Peoples' bones get broken

Fallen off the boat?
I'll intubate your throat
I'll even save you if you're chokin'

Your life is full of drama?
I'll take care of the trauma
But I patch 'em up and they go on their way

When the bill comes, they see
I'm just an EMT
And their prognosis is fine
Without me

So...I ain't got nobody
Nobody
Ain't healthy
Won't some sweet patient come and require ambulatory care?
'Cause I ain't so bad...

Another good weekend (hey, how can I manage to have so many in a row? Just lucky, I guess...) On Saturday, I headed to CT, where B. picked me up. We went to a couple tag sales (they're her passion, and they're everywhere up there.) I snagged some paperbacks and some vinyl (including old Sinatra albums on Reprise, Dave Brubeck, and "Saturday Night Fiedler"), and she got some cool sweaters and other stuff. We then went to a cookout/party that one of her friends threw -- good to see her friends again, and hang out with her family. Sunday our time together before she had to go to work was all too brief, but we had a nice breakfast with her mother, sister, and niece.

I headed back to Manhattan (passing the Acela on the way), where I met up with Jonmc and Pips at Grand Central. Off we went to Coney Island, where we stopped first at the original Nathan's on Surf Boulevard for chili cheese dogs and cheese fries, after which we staggered to the gorgeous Keyspan Park, where we met up with my friend Tom and caught a Brooklyn Cyclones game.

Is there anything better than minor-league baseball with good friends on a pretty, not-too-hot, early-summer evening? I'm not sure there is. (The game wasn't bad, either.) The Cyclones, down three runs in the bottom of the ninth, rallied to make the score 6-5. The visiting team brought in a closer to pitch the final out. First ball was high and wide. Second ball was never pitched...as the Cyclone on first tried to steal second and got picked off, and the game was over. (What kind of player tries to steal a base on the last out of the game, when your team has rallied, and you're up against a fresh, alert pitcher??)

We drowned our sorrows in marshmallows on sticks, cotton candy, and funnel cakes, and strolled down the boardwalk to check out the arcade. (We declined, however, to bump our asses off.) Tom and Jon chickened out, but Pips and I rode the famous and historic Cyclone. It was awesome. I've been on some great wooden coasters, but the Cyclone was surprisingly smooth...and man oh man, was it fast, with tons of turns (apparently it switches direction 16 times during the 60 mph, 110-second ride) and surprises. Fun!

Commute NYC. I wish I were this good a photographer. (via Anil's daily links.)

(And don't forget that if the MTA gets its way, these photos would be illegal. Much like the gorgeous subway photos currently on display in the dining concourse of Grand Central, which were taken during the earlier subway photo ban which ended in 1994.) (Those photos are part of the MTA's Lightbox Project...but they haven't updated their website to include them. Interesting.)

From the May 2004 Harper's Index:

Minimum number of misleading statements on Iraq made by the Bush Administration's top officials since March 2002 : 237

Percentage of these that contradicted, made selective use of, or mischaracterized existing government intelligence : 100

Days before last year's invasion of Iraq that Osama bin Laden called Saddam Hussein a "socialist infidel" : 36

Days into the 1999 NATO bombing of Kosovo that candidate George W. Bush observed, "Victory means exit strategy" : 17

Percentage of the 958 same-sex unions granted to Vermont residents since July 2000 that have since been dissolved : 3

Percentage of U.S. heterosexual marriages that are dissolved within five years : 20

(via Looka!)

Interesting Time article on federal air marshal training.

Does Fox News rig their polls?

So why doesn't Zell Miller just bite the bullet and switch his party membership already?

(Wow...1% more evil than Jonmc's.)

I probably shouldn't go into too much detail here, but yesterday I got to meet [former President], who was making an appearance at [large news organization where I work] to promote [his vastly publicized brand-new book.] It was cool -- just a quick handshake, but he definitely has a real presence.

Yahoo's most e-mailed pictures, tracked over time. (via Anil's daily links.)

"Face the Nation", March 14, 2004
SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, you're the ... only people I've heard use the phrase "immediate threat." I didn't. [...] if you have any citations, I'd like to see 'em.
MR. FRIEDMAN: We have one here. [...] "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world and the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq."

"Capitol Report", June 17, 2004
GLORIA BORGER: Well, let's get to Mohammed Atta for a minute, because you mentioned him as well. You have said in the past that it was quote, "pretty well confirmed."

VICE-PRESIDENT CHENEY: No, I never said that.

"Meet the Press", December 8, 2001
VICE-PRESIDENT CHENEY: It's been "pretty well confirmed" that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April.

(All of the above is via Looka, which also points out that "Czechoslovakia" hasn't existed since 1992...)

Lies, lies, and more lies. They're utterly shameless.

Some thoughts on the upcoming Supreme Court decisions, from Slate's "Breakfast Table" feature, from Walter Dellinger:

"Historic" is an overused term in Supreme Court commentary. We hear it instantly applied to far more high court opinions than will ever make it into college textbooks. But this time the word seems right. The war on terror has come to the Supreme Court, and the court's rulings on how it can be conducted could go a long way toward defining our national character. Liberty and security, the authority of the president and the Congress, the role of the court itself, are all at issue in the Padilla, Hamdi, and Guantanamo cases.

and Dahlia Lithwick:

The court will now determine whether there is to be any scrutiny at all of presidential decisions, and at a time when so many of those decisions are cloaked in secrecy. Despite almost weekly reminders of the ugliness that blooms in secret, there is the possibility of the court agreeing to pull the curtain around that bed and call it a day. This terrifies me.

I have this mental image that I cannot shake: The war on terror rolls inexorably along, crushing out basic rights and freedoms as the judges puff along on the sidelines, robes flapping ineffectually, trying to stop this machine that is the Pentagon, the Bush administration, and the Justice Department. We are now poised at the exact moment when the court really could stop that machine, or slow it down, or at least peek in a window. This is breathtaking when you think about it.

The entire series of their e-mail exchanges is here, and it's worth reading.

Hey, Chico's back.

I haven't yet seen any wire stories (or other press reports, for that matter) about this yet, but it's an interesting tidbit:

Apparently today there was a class photo of the U.S. Senate at the Capitol. During the photo session, Sen. Leahy started giving Dick Cheney a hard time about Halliburton. Cheney then apparently told Leahy to "go fuck yourself."

Hopefully, there's video or audio of this moment.

(Hey, wait a sec! Wasn't the White House upset about profanity in public discourse a while back? I must have been mistaken.)

ADDENDUM: It's made the wire services, newspapers, and the networks. (Wow...so how often does Telescreen.org beat CNN? Cool!)

As reported in these pages in March, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon went to the Dirksen Senate Office Building on March 23 and proclaimed that he had rehabilitated Hitler and Stalin, and that he was the Messiah.

The story -- and this is a big one -- was broken by John Gorenfeld and went unreported by major news organizations, until yesterday, when it finally hit their radar.

The WaPo had a story yesterday and the NYT had one today.

It's about frickin' time.

(See? This is why bloggers can be useful...to hammer the story until the mainstream press pays attention. Worked for Trent Lott, worked here.)

Why Kerry should pick Edwards as his VP nominee. Good analysis from John Judis of the New Republic, guestblogging at Talking Points Memo.

ADDENDUM: A concurring opinion from Ruy Teixeira, another TPM guestblogger.