LEATHER DUCKY, YR THE ONE ...

Quack quack, sluts!



And no, I’m not telling you how I found that.

Good night.

Gag rule,

This is dF

THE EARTH IS A MOTHER

As I’ve disclosed elsewhere, my original Earth Day post was going to be “Don’t Turn Your Back On Mother Earth” by Sparks. But then I saw the Lewis Black rant and forgot all about it.

So, since we’ve already established that every day is (or should be) Earth Day, and seeing as how bedsitter23  has posted the Depeche Mode cover, I thought I’d go ahead and post the original in the interest of bringing balance to The Force. And because you should all be listening to more Sparks anyway.

Watch yr ass,

This is dF

THEY CALL THEM “KILLER WHALES” FOR A REASON, YOU KNOW

And while we’re on Mother Earth, Neko Case has a nice cover of “Don’t Turn Your Back On Mother Earth” on her excellent new album Middle Cyclone –  which is fitting since the whole album has a Nature theme.

All of which is an excuse for me to post the first single from the album, "People Got A Lotta Nerve" – in which she warns that when animals in zoos turn on you, you really shouldn’t act surprised.

Nature girl,

This is dF

GREAT MOMENTS IN ABJECT HYPOCRISY

I know you’ve all been enjoying the revelations that (1) America really does torture, (2) so much so that Condi Rice personally approved it, (3) we especially do it if we need to get people to "confess" a link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and (4) the military got the idea that if the CIA can do it, why can’t they?

But while we’re sharing Great Crime Stories About The Bush Posse That Really Should Have Been Broken Five Fucking Years Ago When It Mattered, here’s one of the best anecdotes yet to emerge from the GWOT that also illustrates the fundamental problem of trading off other peoples’ civil liberties in the name of a Greater Good like fighting Teh Terrorz.

ITEM [via Threat Level]: According to Congressional Quarterly, in 2005 Attorney General Alberto ‘The Judge’ Gonzales ordered the DOJ to drop a criminal investigation of Rep. Jane Harman (D - CA) in order to guarantee her support for the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times.

It gets better.

As part of the investigation, the NSA apparently got a legal warrant to tap her phone whilst investigating members of another group, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, who were suspected of illegally trading in national defense information.

Now, Harman – who apparently only just found out that her phone was bugged during that investigation – is furious and angry that her phone was tapped and her privacy violated – even though she supported giving the NSA even more power to tap people's phones without any court oversight, and actually successfully pressured the NYT to kill the NSA wiretap story for a year, and accused them of damaging national security when they did run it.

And she’s a Democrat.

Glenn Greenwald sums up the situation perfectly:

So if I understand this correctly ... when the U.S. Government eavesdropped for years on American citizens with no warrants and in violation of the law, that was "both legal and necessary" as well as "essential to U.S. national security," and it was the "despicable" whistle-blowers (such as Thomas Tamm) who disclosed that crime and the newspapers which reported it who should have been criminally investigated, but not the lawbreaking government officials.  But when the U.S. Government legally and with warrants eavesdrops on Jane Harman, that is an outrageous invasion of privacy and a violent assault on her rights as an American citizen, and full-scale investigations must be commenced immediately to get to the bottom of this abuse of power. 

Which to me illustrates the greatest and (one would think) most blindingly obvious flaw in the logic that civil liberties have to be compromised to stop terrorism: it’s a great and convenient idea until (1) it’s yr civil liberties being violated, and (2) the opposition party inherits those powers.

Pretty obvious, really. Unless unabashed hypocrisy doesn’t bother you. Or yr a fucking idiot.

Oh. Right.

Other peoples’ privacy,

This is dF