meta-roj

the 11th circuit court of appeals has issued its opinion [pdf] in the case of sherri williams v. attorney general of alabama.

the court upheld an alabama state law prohibiting the sale of sex toys in the state.

Alabama’s Anti-Obscenity Enforcement Act prohibits, among other things, the commercial distribution of “any device designed or marketed as useful
primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs for any thing of pecuniary
value.”

sorry, alabamians… you’ll have to run your sex toys across state lines until your legislature overturns the law. and that is a debate i’d love to see on c-span.

a little birdie told me that the keynote speaker at jupiter plugin thinks the cd will be around for a while. something like “it is far too early to write off the cd.”

i can’t find any good sources to link, so we’ll just have to take the birdie’s word for it for now.

normally, i’d expect to disagree with pretty much everything coming from the coo of a major label, but because i’m an honorable kinda guy, i’ll give credit where it’s due… charles goldstuck seems to be the one to come out and say it.

just in time to foster confidence in the system, cnn is reporting….

Florida officials: Some voting records wiped out [ap via cnn, july 28, 2004]

The crashes occurred in May and November of 2003, erasing information from the September 2002 gubernatorial primaries and other elections, elections officials said Tuesday.

The malfunction was made public after the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, a citizen’s group, requested all data from the 2002 gubernatorial primary between Democratic candidates Janet Reno and Bill McBride.

that’s one way to prevent unauthorized recounts

nobody that’s tried to work with a computer is surprised. on the other hand, like most technology, the electronic voting machines only lose ballots when you try to use the machines.

after 24 years of operations in afghanistan, through the russian operations, the warring warlords period, and the taliban, medecins sans frontieres has decided that afghanistan is too dangerous and they will leave.

this will presumably result in the pullout of some 80 foreign personnel and the unemployment of some 1400 local workers.

Médecins Sans Frontières to leave Afghanistan [guardian, july 28, 2004]

MSF today angrily blamed the Afghan government for failing to protect aid workers, and US forces for “co-opting” humanitarian relief programmes for its own ends. More than 30 aid workers have been killed in Afghanistan since the beginning of 2003.

“After having worked nearly without interruption alongside the most vulnerable Afghan people since 1980, it is with outrage and bitterness that we take the decision to abandon them,” Marine Buissonnière, MSF’s secretary general, said in a statement

…

The agency also claimed the US-led coalition in Afghanistan had “consistently sought to use humanitarian aid to build support for its military and political ambitions”.

It cited a leaflet distributed by US-led forces in southern Afghanistan in May that told locals they would need to give troops information about the Taliban and al-Qaida if they wanted to keep receiving humanitarian assistance.

i suppose this could be msf playing politics to drive some sort of agenda, but the organization’s integrity and reputation is fairly solid. maybe candidate bush was right when he suggested that the united states wasn’t very good at the whole nation-building thing.

i guess we’re stuck in a situation where the united states is going to have to step in and fill in the humanitarian gap, or we’re just going to ignore those people and hope nobody notices.

i woulda re-arranged the speech a bit to end on that note, tho.

Libraries ordered to destroy US pamphlets [boston globe, july 24, 2004]

The federal Government Printing Office has ordered libraries across the country to destroy five US Department of Justice pamphlets that provide how-to instructions on prosecuting asset forfeiture cases, invoking a rarely-used authority to order the removal of items the government routinely sends to hundreds of libraries

two problems with this.

1) is that the documents aren’t being destroyed because they are classified, but because “the Department of Justice has determined that these materials are for internal use only.”
2) the subject matter seems to be “asset forfeiture law,” particularly how to build an asset forfeiture case. that gives me the impression that asset forfeiture is now a hot topic in the department of justice. that’s a problem, because in our adversarial legal system, the prosecution is required to disclose its strategy and bears the burden of proof. or maybe not so much anymore.

kudos to the librarians for fighting back on this one. the secret is out. it’s too late. power to the readers.

once upon a time, there was a state in america that had trouble counting its votes. that state was florida. since then, florida has spent millions on new equpiment, public education, media and spin to convince the residents of florida that their toubles with counting votes are over.

the problem, of course, is that in the elections since then, there’s still trouble – enogh trouble that on the order of 1 in 100 votes “were not recorded.”

unfortunately, we’re going to have to deal with the word “intent” a lot to discuss this issue.

in february, the florida department of state, division of elections issued this [pdf] formal opinion in response to questions about providing a manual recount of ballots. you can spend some time reading the opinion yourself, but i’ll quote the first page for people who are in a hurry:

Because it is impossible for a voter to overvote or make stray marks on an electronic ballot, the manual recount provisions of section 102.166, Florida Statutes, do not apply and therefore, counties utilizing touchscreen voting systems are not required or authorized to print or review the electronic ballot images of undervotes occurring in a recounted race.

this opinion is redered on the basis that the idea of a recount is to see if there is “clear intent” on the part of the voter that might be unreadable by the machines. it also goes into great detail about the intent of the legislature regarding procedures and timeframes and other such election processes.

importantly, the opinion goes as far as to say that election officials “have no authority” to manually recount votes cast on touchscreen machines.

but why would i bring up an obscure document from a little office in the department of state of florida now? well, partially because i can, and blogs are timeless. there is another reason, of course, and that is that the ap ran a story today, with this statement….

Groups Challenge Florida Ban on Recounts [ap via abc news, july 27, 2004]

The Division of Elections then ruled that state law only requires a recount to determine voters’ intent, and that it is impossible to question voter intent with touchscreen ballots.

and that was a very troubling statement to me.

what’s missing, as far as i can tell, is any statement that the “intent” of an election is to count the legitimate ballots of legitimate voters accurately. in other words, i think we’re missing the big picture here.

i could be wrong, of course, elections are terribly inconvenient, inefficient and bothersome events, so there’s a lot to be said for skipping them entirely, or maybe just postponing them until they are more convenient.

cartoonist. banned.

interesting perspective on the election from the boston globe…

Rivalry between Wal-Mart, Costco also extends to national politics [boston globe, july 25, 2004]

Sixty-seven percent of Wal-Mart’s stores are in the 30 states that voted for Bush and Cheney in 2000, according to a comparison of store-location figures in the Wal-Mart 2003 annual report and election results. Costco’s stores are mostly located on either coast, with 208 [65%] of its 321 stores in the higher-wage, more union-friendly 20 states that voted for Democrat Al Gore in 2000.

so the battle is set on the ground… the fronts are healthcare:

Issaquah, Wash.-based Costco offers comprehensive health insurance to most of its 78,000 US employees, making it eligible for Kerry’s plan, said Kerry’s top domestic policy adviser, Sarah Bianchi, 31. That may cut 10 percent, or $35 million, off its annual healthcare premiums.

Wal-Mart’s health plan for its 1.3 million US workers is probably not broad enough to qualify for the savings that Kerry’s proposal would bring, since it doesn’t cover enough workers, said Jason Furman, 33, the Democrat’s chief economic policy adviser. Fewer than half of Wal-Mart’s employees are enrolled in the company health plan, according to figures supplied by the retailer.

…and wages:

Costco wouldn’t have to raise salaries with Kerry’s proposal to increase the minimum wage to $7 an hour, from $5.15 now. It already pays hot-dog vendors as much as $16 an hour, and the lowest wage it pays is $10 an hour. That’s higher than the $9.96 average wage paid at discount stores bearing the Wal-Mart name.

…and unions:

Wal-Mart has no unions; about one-sixth of Costco’s workers are represented by labor groups.

…and many more. it’s all reflected in the corporate donations and money-funnels that bear witness to the conflict. maybe we should set up the elections next to the cheese-sample-ladies.

this must be some kind of strange political strategy to ensure that real criticism is not directed at the major candidates. first cheney delivers the now-classic “fuck yourself” on the floor of the senate with no regrets.

now it’s the democrat’s turn: theresa heinz-kerry delivers a “shove it” and she has no regrets either.

honors are tarnished. i think it’s time for a duel.