February 2006 Archives

Ask me any question. Same rules apply as to the rest of my journal: no personal attacks, stay on topic, and so on. Of course, here, the only "topic" is that you have to ask me a question.

Washington state law says I am required, if I wish to homeschool my children, to, by the time they are eight years old:

• Fulfill one of the following:
  • Earn 45 units of college credit
  • Attend and pass a "parent qualifying course"
  • Be "supervised" by a certified teacher who meets with my child an average of an hour per week
  • Be "deemed sufficiently qualified" by the local public school superintendent
• Perform all of the following:
  • Annually register with the local public school district
  • Teach each of 11 require subjects (reading, writing, spelling, language, math, science, social studies, history, health, occupational education, and art and music appreciation), each for the amount of time required for that grade level
  • Participate in annual testing, either by a certified teacher, or through the state testing program

None of these are bad things. But that they are required certainly is bad. For example, if I had not attended college, I'd still undoubtedly be far more qualified than most college grads; why give them a free pass, but require me to do something additional?

And screw annual tests by a "certified teacher," let alone the state government. I am far more qualified to assess my children than anyone else is. This becomes, they say, part of the child's "permanent record." As if by rejecting the public school system I would want a government or government-licensed official to place something in my child's "permanent record" (whatever that is) that I cannot control?

Of course, all of this is based on the idea that the state has a right to make education compulsory in the first place.

I don't know if we will register as required. If I had not gone to college, I likely would not fulfill the required qualifications; but unfortunately, I have to follow that part of the law, because I cannot undo my college credit. But it is extremely unlikely that anyone outside of my wife and I will assess my children, annually or otherwise.

As to the curriculum: I'll make them a deal. I'll teach my children "occupational education" (whatever that is) if they start teaching their kids history. I won't hold my breath. And I certainly won't keep track of how many hours we teach any of it. Heck, I probably won't keep any records at all, about anything.

I couldn't find any specific consequences for failing to follow the law. But I'm willing to accept them, to assert my civil rights.

South Dakota is trying to ban all abortions, except those necessary to save the life of the mother.

I agree with the policy itself, but it's the wrong way to go about it. The country is not ready for it.

It's the same basic thing as what gay marriage activists did, trying to force gay marriage on the country. As a result, the cause of gay marriage was set back: we now have many more states with Constitutional amendments against gay marriage, and those won't be overturned any time soon.

If this South Dakota bill is made a law, it will be overturned by the Supreme Court (Kennedy, Souter, and Stevens voted for the decision in Casey, and Breyer and Ginsburg certainly would have). And when that happens, it will only help to solidify court-legalized abortion as a "super-duper precedent" for years to come.

Of course, the difference between what gay marriage activists did, and this, is that South Dakota is doing it properly: through legislation, not extralegal court decisions or executive acts.

But it doesn't change the fact that the law of the land right now is abortion on demand, and that this law is well-supported by the courts, and the people. And this frontal assault on the court (and, as the Supreme Court sees it, the Constitution itself) and the will of the people of the United States will fail, and will be counterproductive. I wish it were not so, but it is.

Voter Vault is the nationwide database of voters run by the Republicans. Chances are, if you vote in this country, you're in it.

Primarily what it's used for is contacting voters to remind them to vote, to invite them to come to events, and so on.

In Washington, most decisions -- including who gets on the ballots -- are determined by caucuses and conventions. So whoever will be the Republican candidate for the Senate this year will be decided at the state convention in May, and the delegates for that will be elected at the district caucuses, and the delegates for that will be elected at the precinct caucuses.

So, it's important.

I'm the chair of the 39th District Republicans of Snohomish County in Washington, and we have the precinct caucuses coming up in March. I want my PCOs (Precinct Committee Officers) to call all the voters in their precincts who have self-identified as Republicans (we don't register party affiliation in Washington) and who vote often (that's part of the public record).

Voter Vault has all that information and can print out nice PDFs with this information. But it is a total pain to produce these lists. There are some flexible options for printing complex reports, but few of them work if you are not running IE on Windows (and God help you if you want to actually change any of the information and you're not on Windows). And you can only run one report at a time, and you can't do batch reports, and I have over 20 PCOs, and if I have to select each precinct, one at a time, and manually select all the options I want each time, I'll go nuts. And if I made a mistake ...

So, perl. Duh.

It's a bit of a challenge because it's over SSL and you need to get a cookie and so on, but brian d foy did this work already to do something similar with SourceForge.net in Module::Release. It's the bulk of the code. Using LiveHTTPHeaders in Firefox helped a lot, to see exactly what headers were being passed around. There's also a lot of redirection going on: after clicking the NDA, I have to allow it to redirect me like five times just to get logged in.

Then I put together a simple data structure for the config options. Which party affiliation, phone or no phone, how often they vote, order (walking order, alphabetical), and so on.

I keep the PCOs in a Group in Mac OS X's Address Book. In the notes section for each PCO, I put the precinct number and name, so I just loop over the PCOs (with Mac::Glue, of course), grab the email address and precinct info for each PCO, then create the report, then download it. Then use Mac::Glue again to send the file to the PCO with Eudora.

So what could normally take probably close to an hour, now takes me about two minutes. W00t.

Tip of the hat to Jamie. Don't read this on a full stomach.

Hat tip to eglamkowski.

HR 4694 (yes, sponsored only by Democrats, including prominent ones like Frank and Waxman) would cap spending on political campaigns: major party candidates can spend a maximum amount of money, and no more. That in itself is not necessarily a big deal; honest people with integrity have disagreement about it.

But it also says that third-party and independent candidates can only spend a percentage of that cap, based on how much of the vote they got the previous time.

The ratio itself makes no sense on its own: the major party candidates' caps are not based on their percentage of the previous vote. But the real point is that this could not be more un-democratic. You don't give special privileges in elections to certain people or parties. You give everyone the same opportunities, so the people can have a real choice.

Anything less is simply wrong in a democracy. That applies to spending caps, as well as to debate participation.

They call the bill the "Let the People Decide Clean Campaign Act." That's the best example of Orwellian doublespeak I've seen in a long time. A better title would be "The Independent Exclusion and Incumbent Protection Act."

People keep saying the United Arab Emirates should be shunned because they recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. What most of those people don't tell you is the other two countries to do so were -- apart from Israel, and now Iraq -- our two closest partners in the region: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Anyway, I don't know of one person who really understands this UAE deal who asserts that it is endangering American security. So, *shrug.* Seems to me like there's a whole lotta pandering going on.

Voter Vault is the nationwide database of voters run by the Republicans. Chances are, if you vote in this country, you're in it.

Primarily what it's used for is contacting voters to remind them to vote, to invite them to come to events, and so on.

In Washington, most decisions -- including who gets on the ballots -- are determined by caucuses and conventions. So whoever will be the Republican candidate for the Senate this year will be decided at the state convention in May, and the delegates for that will be elected at the district caucuses, and the delegates for that will be elected at the precinct caucuses.

So, it's important.

I'm the chair of the 39th District Republicans of Snohomish County in Washington, and we have the precinct caucuses coming up in March. I want my PCOs (Precinct Committee Officers) to call all the voters in their precincts who have self-identified as Republicans (we don't register party affiliation in Washington) and who vote often (that's part of the public record).

Voter Vault has all that information and can print out nice PDFs with this information. But it is a total pain to produce these lists. There are some flexible options for printing complex reports, but few of them work if you are not running IE on Windows (and God help you if you want to actually change any of the information and you're not on Windows). And you can only run one report at a time, and you can't do batch reports, and I have over 20 PCOs, and if I have to select each precinct, one at a time, and manually select all the options I want each time, I'll go nuts. And if I made a mistake ...

So, perl. Duh.

It's a bit of a challenge because it's over SSL and you need to get a cookie and so on, but brian d foy did this work already to do something similar with SourceForge.net in Module::Release. It's the bulk of the code. Using LiveHTTPHeaders in Firefox helped a lot, to see exactly what headers were being passed around. There's also a lot of redirection going on: after clicking the NDA, I have to allow it to redirect me like five times just to get logged in.

Then I put together a simple data structure for the config options. Which party affiliation, phone or no phone, how often they vote, order (walking order, alphabetical), and so on.

I keep the PCOs in a Group in Mac OS X's Address Book. In the notes section for each PCO, I put the precinct number and name, so I just loop over the PCOs (with Mac::Glue, of course), grab the email address and precinct info for each PCO, then create the report, then download it. Then use Mac::Glue again to send the file to the PCO with Eudora.

So what could normally take probably close to an hour, now takes me about two minutes. W00t.

Here's the story: shoot your friend in the face, and thereby keep the latest Abu Ghraib pictures out of the news, and make the press look like completely out-of-touch buffoons in the process.

Who but Karl Rove could have devised such a plan?

Best quote of the last week: The press corps that noisily champions "the public's right to know" about a minor hunting accident simultaneously assures the public that they've no need to see these Danish cartoons that have caused riots, arson and death around the world.

Second best quote of the week (from the same article), in reference to NBC's David Gregory comparing the delay in Cheney notifying the press to the delay in Ted Kennedy notifying authorityies: Hmm. Let's see. On the one hand, the guy leaves the gal at the bottom of the river struggling for breath pressed up against the window in some small air pocket while he pulls himself out of the briny, staggers home, sleeps it off and saunters in to inform the cops the following day that, oh yeah, there was some broad down there. And, on the other hand, the guy calls 911, has the other fellow taken to the hospital, lets the sheriff know promptly but neglects to fax David Gregory's make-up girl!

Karl Rove, you are a genius.

Regarding a 76ers Tickets For Guns program, the Philadelphia police commissioner gave law-abiding citizens an excellent reason to remain armed:

Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson said the program wasn't only for illegal guns. He would be happy if law-abiding citizens turned in their firearms, too.

"Any gun that can kill needs to be taken off the streets," Johnson said.

A conservative libertarian friend of mine sent me a page that purports to show that Democrats are more libertartian than Republicans.

My friend is smart. He knows a lot and does his research. Usually. In this case, he did none. He did not notice, for example, that the data was compiled by a pro-Demcratic web site with the explicit goal of convincing libertarians to affiliate with the Democratic Party.

My friend noted that it was shameful that Hastert got a zero score. This should have at least raised a flag demanding further examination, since Hastert is pro-tax-cuts. In fact, Hastert did not vote on most of the bills in question (as the Speaker rarely votes), and was assumed to have voted against the scorecard if he did not vote at all.

Not that it would have mattered if Hastert did vote in favor of tax cuts, because those votes were specifically excluded from the scorecard, "because of the desire to place an emphasis on the importance of limiting the growth of government spending and ideally cutting spending as well." That's nonsense, of course: the point of having a scorecard is to incoroporate a broad range of votes, so you can get a really good idea of where they stand as a whole. If the vote in favor of tax cuts, but also in favor of government growth and against spending restraints, then you know the scorecard should reflect all that. He left off tax cut votes because it favored Republicans.

And this restraint did not apply to many other types of votes: the Iraq war alone shows up as 1/15th of the overall score, and they decided that a vote in favor of the war in any way is a vote against libertarianism. Also, a vote for any pro-life position is also against libertarianism. And a vote for protecting the borders with the armed forces is viewed as anti-libertatian. (Get that? It's against our liberty to use the military in other countries, and also to use it to protect us at home.)

And so on.

It's really a ridiculous pair of scorecards, designed to maximize the scores of Democrats, and minimize those of Republicans, in order to convince libertarians that the Democratic party is on their side.

Mad props to Jim Lehrer of the NewsHour for resisting the peer pressure to call Turin "Torino." We don't call Milan, Rome, Naples, Florence, and so on "Milano," "Roma," "Napoli," and "Firenze." In English, it's not "Torino," it's Turin.

Update: More information.

There's a new feature in Slash: promotion of journals to story. When you post your journal, you should now see a checkbox to "Submit" your journal entry as a story. If you click that, then your journal entry will end up as a submission for the editors to post, or not.

You must enable comments in order to submit your journal, and once submitted, it cannot be unsubmitted. If accepted as a story, and you set your discussion to "No Foes," the discussion will then be open to everyone. Changes you make to the journal entry will not be reflected in the story. You can delete your journal entry, but you cannot delete the discussion, which will be tied to both the journal and the story.

Don't just submit every journal you post. We'll get annoyed. Just use this for news items, or items of general Perl interest. Use your best judgment.

you know full well that the abuses [like those in Abu Ghraib] are widespread, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo, and that they result from policies and statements issued from the top

Let's see. We have no evidence that the abuses are widespread. We have no evidence that the abuses we do know about resulted from policies or statements from the top, as we have seen no policies or statements from the top that say such abuses are OK (and the only policies and statements any of us HAVE seen, in fact, are in direct opposition to such abuses).

And yet apparently I am "profoundly ignorant" for saying "no, I do not know that at all." Because I, you know, don't say I "know full well" something for which there is no evidence.

Again I say: reality-based community, my ass.

ESPN and ABC are both owned by Disney. ABC did Monday Night Football since its inception decades ago, but next year for the first time, it will be on ESPN.

NBC, owned by Universal, is getting back into the NFL business too, with Sunday Night Football, which has been on ESPN the last few years.

John Madden and partner have been the announcers for Monday Night Football these last few years, but ESPN had other plans, so Madden went to NBC to do Sunday Night Football. Al Michaels wanted to go too, but was under contract with ESPN/ABC/Disney.

So a deal was struck. In exchange for letting Michaels out of his contract to reunite with Madden, NBC gave ESPN a few golf broadcast contracts, expanded rights for highlights for the 2006 Winter Olympics (which starts tomorrow), and the rights to ... Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Oswald was Walt Disney's first cartoon character, created in 1927, for Universal. Oswald was highly successful and Disney wanted more money when his contract came up for renewal, but an agreement could not be reached, so Disney struck out on his own, but this time with a mouse character, later named Mickey.

Interestingly, if not for the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, Oswald's copyright would already have expired, and Disney would have had the rights to him anyway (or at least, the early films Walt Disney created). Of course, everyone else would have, too.

I saw this article. I posted this response, which was terribly fair and reasonable, but apparently brought up a few uncomfortable facts, specifically, that Reid has accused Republicans of doing far less than he himself has done. So someone deleted it.

"Now, looking at this article, how is Harry Reid implicated in any of these charges? He wasn't."

Right.  But who else has?  Ney.  That's it.

And yet the Democrats, most especially Reid, have been going around saying this is a pervasive Republican scandal, citing all the money given to Republicans, directly and indirectly, implying and sometimes stating that anyone who has received money from Abramoff in any way is crooked.

So the point is not that Reid did something wrong, but holding Reid to the same standard he's been holding the Republicans to.

Remember, it was his office who issued a report naming 33 Republicans Senators who took money from Abramoff, or Abramoff affiliates, most of whom got less money, and did less for the Abramoff clients, than did Reid.

Yes, he apologized for that later, but by now most of the damage is done: he and the Democrats have successfully planted in the minds of the public that this is a "Republican scandal."

If Reid had been all along calling for moderation, saying we should only go after people who actually did something wrong, instead of casting as wide a net as possible, then he might not have gotten himself caught up in it.

I ask you only one thing: whenever any Republican is tied to Abramoff with some information, ask yourself, "Now, looking at this information, how is this Republican implicated in any of these charges?"  Your answer will almost always be, "He wasn't."

Burger King has an utterly ridiculous ad campaign with the creepiest character on TV since Brian Dennehy played clown serial killer John Wayne Gacy in "To Catch a Killer." For the Super Bowl, they unveiled some elaborate song-and-dance number and put the music online. I made it sound spookier to let other people know what I hear in my head when this music is matched up with that character.

OK, I obviously didn't put much time into it. Sue me.

Oh, and I completely overhauled my music page. It is now generated CSS + JavaScript goodness, and provides a familiar interface for many people ... There's also an RSS feed that works just fine in iTunes (not in iTunes Music Store, but you can to go Subscribe to Podcast in the iTunes menu and paste in the URL).

Update: Broken link fixed.

On the one hand, the riots over the Mohammed cartoons is helping many people to wake up to the serious threat to Western culture posed by mass immigration of radical Muslims.

On the other hand, some of the backtracking this week from some of the Imams in Denmark make me think that maybe the radical Muslims are waking up too, and realizing the old rules don't apply in the West.

Ha. I wonder where Mohammed will end up next?

It was very good. I watched every replay of a "bad" call, and there was only one bad one in the bunch: the Seahawks receiver who stepped out of bounds did, in fact, barely nick the pylon with his right leg, after getting possession and stepping in bounds with his left leg. That should have been a touchdown.

The offensive pass interference was clearly correct. He changed directions, straightened out his arm on the defensive player, and gave himself some momentum while taking away same from the other player. No question, correct call.

The hold on the lineman, same thing: the defensive player got past him, and he grabbed the guy's shoulder pad from behind. Absolutely no question, correct call.

Big Ben's touchdown, I am not entirely convinced was the right intial call, but I am 75 percent sure he got it across. But everyone seems to be telling me the video was not conclusive, so how can they be mad at the initial call, if you can't even tell from the video? Judgment call, can't tell from the video, so I have no problem with it.

And how come the Seahawks fans aren't talking about the interception and two missed field goals, without which they would have won regardless of these supposed "bad" calls?

Look, I complained about the bad call against the Patriots in the divisional playoff game, where the fumble clearly went through the end zone. However, I was quick to point out that Brady through an interception to put them in that situation, and their three other turnovers are what killed them.

The best team always wins, even with bad calls, because that's part of the game too. But in this case, the calls weren't bad anyway.

I played the Steelers vs. the Seahawks tonight on the PS2. Madden 2005. Steelers won, 63-21. Bettis had 12 carries for 23 yards and all nine Steeler TDs.

Last year I picked the exact score of the Super Bowl.

Stop your genuflecting.

I had the advantage of knowing the Patriots team extremely well. This year, well, not so much. I know the Steelers pretty well, though not nearly as well as I know the Pats, and despite living in the Seattle region, I don't know the Seahawks well at all.

But there are a few things I know. I know the Steelers have a slightly better passing game. I know the Seahawks have the decided edge in running. I know I fear the Steelers defense more, but on the other hand, they tend to give up some big plays.

Big Ben is prone to some error, but on the other hand, he's only lost to three teams, and two of those he ended up coming back to beat in the playoffs, the Colts and Bengals. (He remains 0-2 against the Pats.)

In the end, I think the Seahawks won't be able to contain the many Steelers weapons. So I am picking the Steelers to win, 28 to 24.

Actual democracy is illegal in the United States at the state and federal level.

It's in the Constitution, Article IV: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government ... ."

I'm watching Colbert Report tonight, and Christine Todd Whitman is bitterly complaining about how she feels moderates are shut out of the GOP. Then Colbert talks about other moderates, like Giuliani and ... McCain.

I've talked about this before, but I want to quantify it a bit. Can someone tell me any way in which McCain is more moderate than, say, President Bush? And I don't mean moderate in tone, but in actual views.

In my scale, McCain is quite a bit more conservative than Bush, on balance. I seriously want to know if I am missing something, or if most other people are, when they think McCain is moderate. Let's come up with a list.

Many people often bring up the McCain-Feingold bill, which frankly I don't see as fitting in to the political spectrum at all. But if you do, fine, that's one. But on the other hand, McCain is far more conservative than Bush on spending, especially in regards to social programs and pork.

McCain also was a more moderate voice in regard to the war on Iraq, which puts him as more conservative than Bush (remember, the invasion was a very liberal policy).

McCain is also more conservative on interpretation of Constitutional powers, but I won't count that, because it may be the result of perspective: Bush is President after all, and perhaps as President, McCain may be similarly biased.

I've never seen a quantfiable difference between the two men on abortion, despite many right-wing claims to the contrary. Nor on taxes or gay rights.

So here's a list. Under each is a list of ways in which they are more conservative than the other. I'll update it as ideas come in.

• McCain
  • Social programs
  • Pork
  • War
  • Immigration
• Bush
  • Campaign finance
  • Embryonic stem cell research

A new British memo asserts that "Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme."

Look! Evidence Bush made up his mind early!!!

Except of ccourse, it does not say Bush said he would go to war no matter what. It says that Bush said he would not be deterred by the absence of a second resolution, or new WMD evidence.

And, of course, we already knew those things, at the time.

The Bush administration asserted many times -- from the day 1441 was passed, onward -- that they did not require a second resolution in order to act.

And the main point of 1441 was not to find actual WMD evidence, but to give Iraq a chance to cooperate -- immediately, and fully -- or not. Hussein chose not.

This is all well-known and well-documented. It was well-known at the time. It is not a new revelation.

What short memories some of these people have.

The Democrats in Washington State rejected a very important part of the Republicans' attempts at reforming Washington sex offender law: making sure that punishment cannot be essentially bypassed for rapists and molesters of children just because they are "family" to their victims.

If the criminal is "family" -- which could even include a live-in boyfriend -- they could literally receive mere months in prison, instead of the 25-year minimum for everyone else.

We're told without SSOSA (special sex offender sentencing alternative), victims might not come forward, and we will get fewer convictions. But of what worth is a conviction when the predator will be back on the street within a year anyway?

Representative Hans Dunshee complained recently that the Republicans will never be happy no matter what the Democrats do, implying that they are merely playing politics. "Whatever we do on sex offenders, the Republicans will want to do more. ... If we want to hang them, they'll want to to hang 'em and shoot 'em."

I make this pledge to Rep. Dunshee: if he and the Democrats pass hangings for sexual predators, I promise I won't say he should be doing more. And in return for that pledge, I ask that he stops pretending the Democrats are doing enough.

Shouldn't there be a list of people who have chained themselves to the front gates of the White House? And shouldn't the people on said list be automatically excluded from entrance to events such as the State of the Union?

Seems obvious to me.