Contradictions on Syria

Apparently we have to bomb Syria because they used chemical weapons. I believe the mindset is that under international law, two wrongs can make a right.

Plus under Republican logic, Obama both exercises dictatorial powers and he is weak because he can’t decide to take military action without following the Constitution and going before Congress.

The most absurd reaction was Donald Rumsfeld saying Obama hasn’t made the case for striking Syria. He may be right, but Rumsfeld is in no position to question Obama about taking limited action regarding real WMD after he backed a major war over non-existent WMD.

Washington Post Op-Ed Calls For Decriminalization Of Consensual Sex Between Teachers And Students

I see a lot of off the wall op-eds, typically conservatives promoting positions based upon premises which are contrary to fact, but this is one which transcends ideology. Betsy Karasik, identified as a writer and former lawyer, argues in The Washington Post that “consensual sexual activity between teachers and students should not be criminalized.”

Here is a part of the op-ed:

I’ve been a 14-year-old girl, and so have all of my female friends. When it comes to having sex on the brain, teenage boys got nothin’ on us. When I was growing up in the 1960s and ’70s, the sexual boundaries between teachers and students were much fuzzier. Throughout high school, college and law school, I knew students who had sexual relations with teachers. To the best of my knowledge, these situations were all consensual in every honest meaning of the word, even if society would like to embrace the fantasy that a high school student can’t consent to sex. Although some feelings probably got bruised, no one I knew was horribly damaged and certainly no one died.

She also asks:

If religious leaders and heads of state can’t keep their pants on, with all they have to lose, why does society expect that members of other professions can be coerced into meeting this standard?

While the system has been imperfect, religious leaders who have molested children are not being treated sympathetically under the law. We are well aware of extramarital affairs on the part of heads of state but I bet the repercussions would have been more severe if Monica Lewinsky was a 14-year-old.

I have no doubt that there are areas of the law which should be revised, but teachers having sexual relations with 14-year-old girl students is not one (especially as it is likely that the teacher realizes the age gap, even in the case of girls who could pass for 18).

Reaction, as would be expected, has been pretty negative to this op-ed. As is typical of the genre, conservative blogs have responded with a visceral response (including an erroneous claim at Newsbusters that this op-ed by someone who is not on the editorial staff somehow alters the fact that The Washington Post leans to the right). Also, as is more typical of the genre, the liberal blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money has a more thought out response to Karasik on the legal isues which is well worth reading. There is more at x0jane from a female perspective:

The fact is, a 14-year-old girl may be capable of agreeing to sex with a 49-year-old man, but she doesn’t have the emotional and mental maturity to consent.  I was 25 before I realized that every man I’d slept with as a teenager was a pedophile. It seemed to me that since I’d courted the attention, that I was fully culpable. What teenager believes she is not mentally or emotionally capable of full consent? I thought I was an adult, although when I look at the picture of myself from the time period above, I see a child.

I thought I was the exception for these men, the girl so precocious and advanced that it superseded social norms. I thought that I was “older than my chronological age.”

It never occurred to me as a young sexually active teen that the adult men I had relationships with may have been manipulating me, that they had designs and motives I couldn’t see from my limited child’s perspective.

Quote of the Day: Gender Pay Gap

“According to a new study, most men would like women to occasionally pick up the check. The study also found most women would occasionally like to be paid as much as men for doing the same job.” –Conan O’Brien

In a related item, Hanna Rosin writes at Slate that the claim that “women make 77 cents to every man’s dollar” is false, with differences in pay being far more complex than women receiving a lower rate of pay for doing the exact same work as men. She looked at factors including hours worked (with women on the average working fewer hours), different career choices, and career interruption by women.

This isn’t to say that there isn’t some degree of discrimination, but I can also see there being claims based upon comparing apples and oranges, and sometimes an exaggerated feeling of victimization.  I once had a female employee believe she was the victim of discrimination for receiving a lower bonus (which was proportional to hours worked) than a male employee who both did significant things she did not do and (the real factor determining the difference) worked more hours. The actual hourly wage for both was exactly the same.

Tech Companies Fight Back Against Excessive Government Surveillance

Since Edward Snowden leaked information on the degree to which the NSA has been conducting surveillance on Americans it has often appeared that tech companies have given the government whatever access it wants to our personal information. An opinion piece at Wired suggests that tech companies are fighting back:

Everyone assumes that technology companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google don’t care that their customers are being spied on. I don’t believe that’s true.

On the very day the media dropped detailed documents on the NSA’s X-Keyscore collection program, the Facebook engineering team published a blog post stating that all access to Facebook via apps and web browsers was now SSL encrypted. Given X-Keyscore was a program primarily designed to intercept unencrypted internet traffic, you could be forgiven for interpreting Facebook’s post as a middle finger pointed in NSA’s direction. (Sources inside Facebook say it is a coincidence, and indeed the company had been in the process of enabling this across-the-board for years. But still. The timing.)

There are new interception hurdles everywhere you look. Even plain old SSL encryption is becoming more difficult to snoop on. Previously, governments could rely on complicit or compromised certificate authorities to provide them with the means to intercept encrypted traffic. Thanks to the Iranian government’s overly enthusiastic use of this technique, Google made changes to the Chrome browser to neuter the practice. Similar updates are expected soon in Internet Explorer. There goes another interception technique for law enforcement!

And it’s only going to get worse for the poor ole G-Men. Technology companies are enabling security features that make certain types of government surveillance extremely difficult, and it’s a trend that’s set to continue. That’s why the U.S. government has long wanted laws that force tech companies to make their products wiretap friendly…

Currently, there’s no law stopping companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google from introducing such security changes or forcing them to build in backdoors. Why would Apple want its users migrating to cross-platform, anti-snooping messaging apps like Hemlis (by the founders of The Pirate Bay)? Especially when the company could push itself out of the surveillance business with its own technical tweaks before federal regulations force them to become key players in warrant execution.

In fact, advancements in the usability of cryptographic protocols have made anti-surveillance features relatively simple for technology companies to bake into their communications products. And public demand for greater security and privacy in the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations may make it virtually obligatory for them to do so before new wiretapping laws can be introduced.

It is increasingly looking like Edward Snowden’s release of information is as important in defending civil liberties (and understanding the threats) in the technological age as Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers were in spreading knowledge of how the government was lying about Viet Nam. Snowden’s actions have probably prevented the passage of new laws which would further enable organizations such as the NSA to violate our privacy rights:

Today, an attempt to introduce laws that would heavily fine software and internet companies for failing to make their products wiretap-friendly would be met by a full-scale revolt by the commentariat — and by the noisy political fringe on the left and the right.

President Obama was reportedly on the verge of backing the new wiretapping plan as recently as May this year. Only the “Snowden files” hit the press one month later, and surveillance became a hot-button issue. These laws seemingly dropped off the agenda.

For now.

Before Snowden, the proposed law would have been a mildly controversial but grudgingly accepted compliance regime for technology companies. The blowback might have been limited to a few angry Reddit threads and Anonymous denial-of-service attacks against government websites.

Now, it would become a serious political liability for the Obama administration — as well as a public relations and commercial disaster for the technology industry.

We are seeing an example of tech companies pushing back in this statement from Microsoft about a joint effort with Google to increase transparency. The Washington Post offers further background information as to why Microsoft and Google want to be able to discuss information beyond the government plans to  release annual reports on the government’s surveillance activity:

The company wants to be able to discuss just the court orders that it receives, rather than a larger bucket of reports that also includes demands made of other tech companies. Google has made a similar plea in a separate filing to the FISA court. It’s as much a public relations move as a bid for greater openness; by showing company-specific numbers, Microsoft and Google would be able to put distance between themselves and the Justice Department.

Microsoft goes one step further than Google, however. In accordance with the practices contained in its own transparency report, Microsoft said that the government should break down those numbers even more to distinguish requests for user metadata, such as IP addresses and e-mail header information, from demands for user content, which would expose personally identifiable information such as the actual text of e-mails to law enforcement.

Positive News In The Culture War on Equal Rights For Gay Couples and Marijuana Laws

There was some good news today which should upset quite a few social conservatives.

The Department of Treasury announced today that same-sex marriages will be treated as any other marriages nation-wide in response to the Supreme Court invalidating the Defense of Marriage Act:

The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) today ruled that same-sex couples, legally married in jurisdictions that recognize their marriages, will be treated as married for federal tax purposes. The ruling applies regardless of whether the couple lives in a jurisdiction that recognizes same-sex marriage or a jurisdiction that does not recognize same-sex marriage.

The Department of Health and Human Services also revised rules in response to the Supreme Court decision:

Today, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a memo clarifying that all beneficiaries in private Medicare plans have access to equal coverage when it comes to care in a nursing home where their spouse lives.  This is the first guidance issued by HHS in response to the recent Supreme Court ruling, which held section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.

“HHS is working swiftly to implement the Supreme Court’s decision and maximize federal recognition of same-sex spouses in HHS programs,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.  “Today’s announcement is the first of many steps that we will be taking over the coming months to clarify the effects of the Supreme Court’s decision and to ensure that gay and lesbian married couples are treated equally under the law.”

“Today, Medicare is ensuring that all beneficiaries will have equal access to coverage in a nursing home where their spouse lives, regardless of their sexual orientation,” said Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Marilyn Tavenner.  “Prior to this, a beneficiary in a same-sex marriage enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan did not have equal access to such coverage and, as a result, could have faced time away from his or her spouse or higher costs because of the way that marriage was defined for this purpose.”

Under current law, Medicare beneficiaries enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan are entitled to care in, among certain other skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), the SNF where their spouse resides (assuming that they have met the conditions for SNF coverage in the first place, and the SNF has agreed to the payment amounts and other terms that apply to a plan network SNF).  Seniors with Medicare Advantage previously may have faced the choice of receiving coverage in a nursing home away from their same-sex spouse, or dis-enrolling from the Medicare Advantage plan which would have meant paying more out-of-pocket for care in the same nursing home as their same-sex spouse.

Today’s guidance clarifies that this guarantee of coverage applies equally to all married couples.  The guidance specifically clarifies that this guarantee of coverage applies equally to couples who are in a legally recognized same-sex marriage, regardless of where they live.

The Department of Justice announced it will not challenge state marijuana laws legalizing marijuana:

Today, the U.S. Department of Justice announced an update to its federal marijuana enforcement policy in light of recent state ballot initiatives that legalize, under state law, the possession of small amounts of marijuana and provide for the regulation of marijuana production, processing, and sale.

In a new memorandum outlining the policy, the Department makes clear that marijuana remains an illegal drug under the Controlled Substances Act and that federal prosecutors will continue to aggressively enforce this statute. To this end, the Department identifies eight (8) enforcement areas that federal prosecutors should prioritize.  These are the same enforcement priorities that have traditionally driven the Department’s efforts in this area.

Outside of these enforcement priorities, however, the federal government has traditionally relied on state and local authorizes to address marijuana activity through enforcement of their own narcotics laws. This guidance continues that policy.

For states such as Colorado and Washington that have enacted laws to authorize the production, distribution and possession of marijuana, the Department expects these states to establish strict regulatory schemes that protect the eight federal interests identified in the Department’s guidance. These schemes must be tough in practice, not just on paper, and include strong, state-based enforcement efforts, backed by adequate funding. Based on assurances that those states will impose an appropriately strict regulatory system, the Department has informed the governors of both states that it is deferring its right to challenge their legalization laws at this time.  But if any of the stated harms do materialize—either despite a strict regulatory scheme or because of the lack of one—federal prosecutors will act aggressively to bring individual prosecutions focused on federal enforcement priorities and the Department may challenge the regulatory scheme themselves in these states.

The ruling is mixed. Tom Angell, Chairman of Marijuana Majority, sent out this response by email earlier today:

“It’s nice to hear that the Obama administration doesn’t at this point intend to file a lawsuit to overturn the will of the voters in states that have opted to modernize their marijuana policies, but it remains to be seen how individual U.S. attorneys will interpret the new guidance and whether they will continue their efforts to close down marijuana businesses that are operating in accordance with state law.

“It’s significant that U.S. attorneys will no longer be able to use the size or profitability of a legal marijuana business to determine whether or not it should be a target for prosecution, but the guidelines seem to leave some leeway for the feds to continue making it hard for state-legal marijuana providers to do business.

“The administration’s statement that it doesn’t think busting individual users should be a priority remains meaningless, as it has never been a federal focus to go after people just for using small amounts of marijuana. The real question is whether the president will call off his federal agencies that have been on the attack and finally let legal marijuana businesses operate without harassment, or if he wants the DEA and prosecutors to keep intervening as they have throughout his presidency and thus continue forcing users to buy marijuana on the illegal market where much of the profits go to violent drug cartels and gangs.

“In all, today’s announcement represents a step in a right direction and a recognition by the administration that the politics of marijuana are rapidly shifting in favor of those who support legalization. However, my optimism is tempered by the fact that despite the Justice Department’s 2009 announcement that it shouldn’t be a priority to bust medical marijuana providers operating in accordance with state law, this administration went on to close down more state-legal marijuana businesses in one term than the Bush administration did in two terms.

“Polls from Pew and Gallup show that a supermajority of Americans wants the president to follow through on his 2008 pledges to respect marijuana laws, and that’s what advocates will continue pressing him to do.”

Also today, a federal appeals Court upheld California’s ban on “conversion therapy” which attempts to turn gay individuals straight.

Quote of the Day

“A great democracy does not make it harder to vote than to buy an assault weapon.” —Bill Clinton

Health Care News: Majority Oppose Defunding, Clinton the Explainer, Battle in Michigan over Medicaid Expansion

This month’s Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows what most polls on the Affordable Care Act have shown–most people responding do not understand the law and a majority have a negative opinion. Unfortunately this poll didn’t break down support based upon specific aspects of the law. Multiple polls show a majority (often including Republicans) support the individual components of the Affordable Care Act even if they say they oppose it. Overall 37 percent have a favorable view with 42 percent having an unfavorable view. Despite this, only 36 percent of responders support the Republican strategy of defunding while 57 percent oppose, showing a much stronger regard for the rule of law than is seen by Congressional Republicans.

Bill Clinton has been recruited to help with the problem of many people not understanding Obamacare. After his excellent speech at the Democratic National Convention last summer, Obama said Clinton should be his “secretary of explaining stuff.” Clinton will be giving a speech on September 4 explaining the Affordable Care Act.

Hostility to the Affordable Care Act remains strong on most conservative sites. I’m seeing an increasing number referring to it as the Unaffordable Care Act, showing how conservatives prefer cute sounding names over reality, considering that the Affordable Care Act helps to cut health care expenses. Conservatives might argue that it doesn’t cut costs enough if not for the fact that it has been Republicans who have opposed cost-cutting measures. Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman supported the Republican position, resulting in the elimination of cost-cutting ideas such as a Public Option.

We had quite a battle over expanding Medicaid in Michigan yesterday. Governor Rick Snyder and Lt. Gov. Brian Calley supported Medicaid expansion, which was passed by the House previously. On the first ballot, one Republican opposed to passage refrained from voting, resulting in a 19-18 vote, preventing the measure from achieving twenty votes while preventing a tie which Calley might have broken. They did have a second vote later yesterday in which expanding Medicaid did pass. Michigan is likely to lose potential federal funds due to Republicans postponing passage until after the August break, probably preventing them from  providing the benefits in time to receive the federal funds.

Tea Party supporters in Michigan have already been upset that Snyder and Calley have not supported them on all measures and are running a candidate, Wes Nakagiri, against Brian Calley for the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor in 2014. Hopefully the make up of the Republican ticket will not matter with the Democratic ticket winning.

Sarah Palin Backs Shutting Down Government To Attempt To Defund Obamacare

Sarah Palin joins efforts to shut down the government in an attempt to defund Obamacare and reduce access to medical care. Sarah Palin’s support is more evidence that this is a bad idea. The Washington Post reports:

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin is set to announce Tuesday that she has signed on to the Defund Obamacare movement.

“Forced enrollment in Obama’s ‘Unaffordable Care Act’ is weeks away,” Palin says in a statement to be released by the Senate Conservatives Fund and shared early with Post Politics. “This beast must be stopped — by not funding it. Today, Todd and I joined with many of our fellow citizens to urge those in the U.S. Senate to not fund Obamacare.”

ACLU Files Suit Challenging Legality Of NSA Data Mining

The American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the legality of the NSA’s telephone data collection. A PDF of the challenge is available here. The New York Times reports:

In a detailed legal attack on the National Security Agency’s collection of Americans’ phone call data, the American Civil Liberties Union argued in court papers filed Monday that the sweeping data gathering violates the Constitution and should be halted.

The A.C.L.U. cited the writings of George Orwell and the comprehensive East German surveillance portrayed in the film “The Lives of Others” in warning of the dangers of large-scale government intrusion into private lives. The new motion, elaborating on the A.C.L.U.’s arguments against the data collection, came in a federal lawsuit challenging the N.S.A. program that the group filed in June.

Intelligence officials have emphasized that the N.S.A. database does not contain the contents of any Americans’ calls, but only the so-called metadata — the numbers called and the time and duration of each call. They say the database is searched only based on “reasonable, articulable suspicion” of terrorism and is valuable for tracking terror plots.

The Justice Department is expected to ask the judge in the case, William H. Pauley III of the Southern District of New York, to dismiss it. The department declined to comment on the A.C.L.U.’s filing.

In a declaration in support of the A.C.L.U., Edward W. Felten, a professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton, said that by gathering data on the three billion calls made each day in the United States, the N.S.A. was creating a database that could reveal some of the most intimate secrets of American citizens.

“Calling patterns can reveal when we are awake and asleep; our religion, if a person regularly makes no calls on the Sabbath or makes a large number of calls on Christmas Day; our work habits and our social aptitude; the number of friends we have, and even our civil and political affiliations,” Mr. Felten wrote.

He pointed out that calls to certain numbers — a government fraud hot line, say, or a sexual assault hot line — or a text message that automatically donates to Planned Parenthood can reveal intimate details. He also said sophisticated data analysis, using software that can instantly trace chains of social connections, can make metadata even more revealing than the calls’ contents.

The N.S.A.’s collection of call log data is approved in general terms by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But the information is collected without individualized court warrants, based in part on a Supreme Court ruling from 1979, Smith v. Maryland, that said call logs recorded in a criminal case were not subject to protection under the Fourth Amendment.

The A.C.L.U argues that the Smith ruling involves “narrow surveillance directed at a specific criminal suspect over a very limited time period.” The organization said the facts in the Smith case bore little resemblance to the mass collection of data on every call made in the country over the last seven years, which it said violated the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The lawsuit also charges that the data collection violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause by imposing “a far-reaching chill” on the A.C.L.U.’s interaction with clients and sources.

The Washington Post had this on what is revealed from telephone metadata, from a legal brief filed in support of the ACLU’s position:

Certain telephone numbers are used for a single purpose, such that any contact reveals basic and often sensitive information about the caller. Examples include support hotlines for victims of domestic violence and rape, including a specific hotline for rape victims in the armed services.

Similarly, numerous hotlines exist for people considering suicide, including specific services for first responders, veterans, and gay and lesbian teenagers. Hotlines exist for suffers of various forms of addiction, such as alcohol, drugs, and gambling.

Similarly, inspectors general at practically every federal agency—including the NSA—have hotlines through which misconduct, waste, and fraud can be reported, while numerous state tax agencies have dedicated hotlines for reporting tax fraud. Hotlines have also been established to report hate crimes, arson, illegal firearms and child abuse. In all these cases, the metadata alone conveys a great deal about the content of the call, even without any further information.

Further examples are given regarding information which can be obtained from metadata obtained in bulk, including this example: “If a government employee suddenly begins contacting phone numbers associated with a number of news organizations and then the ACLU and then, perhaps, a criminal defense lawyer, that person’s identity as a prospective whistleblower could be surmised.”

Choosing A Coffee Shop

When going out for coffee, more often than not I will get dragged into Star Bucks, but if given a choice I’ll choose a local coffee shop. Maybe I should reevaluate this after reading this blog (especially if in Boston):

 A trio of anthropologists from the University of West Virginia recently published an article based on observations at six coffee shops in and around Boston—three that are independently owned, and three Starbucks locations. Their intention was to determine how effectively Starbucks outposts are able to provide the same community-based social environment associated with traditional coffee shops (or, to pull from a different realm, a place where “everyone knows your name”).The anthropologists conducted their observations at Pavement Coffee House in Copley Square, 1369 Coffee House in Central Square, Diesel Café in Davis Square, and in three nearby Starbucks locations. They focused their observations on five categories, derived by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, that describe how urban, social spaces function: how social and welcoming a place is; the arrangement of seating; the activities taking place there (work, socialization, leisure); amenities (like wi-fi and power outlets); and the overall atmosphere, as measured by music volume, volume of chatter, wall color, lighting, and décor.

The biggest surprise was that, on the whole, Starbucks actually provided a more welcoming environment than any of the three local coffee houses. They credited the Central Square Starbucks with having the most vibrant sense of community, and observed that the baristas there knew many patrons by name and could anticipate their orders. The anthropologists also noted that the Starbucks baristas were friendlier to new customers than the bespoke hipsters behind the counter at the local places: “The Starbucks baristas would help customers by explaining the many options available and even offering suggestions. In contrast, the baristas at the independently-owned coffee houses were more aloof and would just wait or sometimes stare at a customer, offering minimal assistance.” The Starbucks friendliness advantage was further accentuated by its greater amenities. In particular, the locally owned coffee shops were more restrictive with their Internet policies, either charging for wi-fi access (Diesel Café and 1369 Coffee House) or setting a cap on daily Internet use (Pavement Coffee House)…

On the other hand, this doesn’t address a rather important issue–the taste of the coffee

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