Bad Deeds for 12-18-2007

Conservative Student Make Up Story About Being Attacked – A Princeton University junior who claimed to have been beaten by two men in black ski caps for his conservative views admitted on Monday that he made up the attack, according to Princeton Township police officials. Francisco Nava, 23, told police that he was attacked on Friday evening, two days after he and three other students belonging to a conservative group, the Anscombe Society, had received threatening e-mail messages, according to the university. The society opposes premarital sex and advocates for a return to more traditional morality in society. (Part of that traditional morality should be telling the truth. – JLV)

So who’s crazier: Bill O’Reilly or his viewers? – Bill O’Reilly thinks you’re crazy to make on-line credit card purchases. He said, “Ahhhh, you put your credit card online like that, you’re insane! Because every idiot in the world’s gonna get it!” However, Bill O’Reilly own website boasts a newly opened Christmas Store, which invites online credit card purchases. So does that mean that even he thinks his viewers are insane?

White House involvement in discussion to destroy CIA tapes could constitute as many as six crimes – White House involvement in the CIA’s decision to destroy videotapes documenting severe interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists could constitute as many as six crimes, according to constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley. “There are at least six identifiable crimes here, from obstruction of justice to obstruction of Congress, perjury, conspiracy, false statements, and what is often forgotten: the crime of torturing suspects,” he said.

Bush Lawyers Discussed Fate of C.I.A.Tapes – At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials. The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged. Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council, and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

Bush tribunal law allows countless ways to launder evidence – The military commission hearings held earlier this month in the case of alleged al-Qaeda associate Salim Ahmed Hamdan might have been mistaken for a typical American courtroom scene: Evidence was introduced, witnesses were cross-examined, and the accused, who for five and a half years has been detained at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was represented by a team of defense lawyers. However, the two-day hearing sessions were marked by hearsay evidence, denied witness requests and challenging time constraints. The reality of the situation is, the way it was written, there’s 162 ways to launder evidence. “For the first time in U.S. history, and under pressure from the Bush administration, in the Military Commissions Act, Congress explicitly authorized an American tribunal to permit evidence obtained through ‘cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment’ as long as it was obtained before Dec. 31, 2005,” writes Hina Shamsi, an ACLU attorney. “Even though the Military Commissions Act prohibits evidence obtained through torture, it could still come in because of this cruel treatment loophole, combined with the other provisions that permit secret evidence and evidence from second- and third-hand sources.”

Ohio, Colorado voting machines have critical security failures – Just in time for the 2008 election season, Colorado has decertified hundreds of faulty electronic voting machines for being error-prone and easily hacked. This news comes on the heels a massive study in Ohio that also found critical flaws in Buckeye State’s voting machines. Yesterday, Colorado Secretary of State Mike Coffman decertified three of the four voting equipment manufacturers allowed in the state — affecting six of Colorado’s 10 most populous counties — for their inaccuracy and for the ease with which they could be hacked. Today, he backtracked slightly, noting that some of machines could still be used in November if a software patch was installed. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner spoke to MSNBC about Ohio’s study, where teams were able to pick locks to access memory cards and use hand-held devices to plug false vote counts into machines. They also concluded that hacker could break into the machines with “a magnet and a PDA.”

FCC removes longstanding newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban – Imagine some 99% of the people passionately implore that you not let media companies get any bigger. What do you do? If you’re the FCC chairman, you ignore them.

The Press Isn’t Covering the Issues or the Candidates’ Records; We’re Making an Important Decision Based on Fluff – A study from the Project for Excellence in Journalism that indicated much of the coverage of the race is dominated by daily horse race reporting rather than about policy issues. Only one percent of the press coverage was devoted to the candidates’ candidates’ records or past public performance. In all, 63% of the campaign stories focused on political and tactical aspects of the campaign. That is nearly four times the number of stories about the personal backgrounds of the candidates (17%) or the candidates’ ideas and policy proposals (15%).

Regards,

Jim