Toe Fungi

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germs of every other…No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual war.

James Madison

humanity hanging from a cross of iron

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

Dwight D Eisenhower.

it should be the Bomb

I have much to say, but I also have much to do.  Since nobody actually reads this, I am not under considerable social pressure to put anything up.

Still, we get mail here at Work.  Enjoy.

We write to congratulate your feat in developing   the super computer, and wish o request for collaboration with your company in pursing the frontier of technology and opening the GATES. It can control all that is in HEAVEN, it could also begin the process of communicating with other planets 
We are involve in application of new technological formula in Research and  production of computer that should  not just serve as  complimentary tool but an independent entity that can initiate action, reaction e tc, the way humans could  do. Instead of controlling aero plane or Electric Train It should be the flight or Transport. Instead of controlling Nuclear Bomb, it should be the Bomb. Instead of forecasting the weather, it should create the weather e t c .it should be super, but not necessarily big. 
We have already established the path and opened the GATES in the software side. We created software's that can identify a terrorist, loan default, identify the rise and fall in stock, indentify a criminal from a list of suspects, etc.

Eat My Fuck Mitt Romney

Just in case you think that Mitt Romney is not just a dick for a bunch of cross burning motherfuckers:

“You remember during the Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter debates that Ronald Reagan came up with this great thing about the misery index, and he hung that around Jimmy Carter’s neck and that had a lot to do with Jimmy Carter losing. Well we’re going to hang the Obama misery index around his neck.”
He continued, “ The fact that you’ve got people in this country really squeezed…We’re going to hang him with that, so to speak, metaphorically, with uh, you have to be careful these days.”

uh, maybe you might if anybody in the news saw this as anything more than a 'gaff'.   So while I am here, eat my fuck Corporate News Bitches.

Rule of what? So Ordered.

Two posts in one day!  Trying to clear the docket of stuff I have to rant about...


This one revolves around  a decision yesterday by a DC Appeals Court for Yasein Khasem Mohammad Esmail, detainee, Camp Delta.   As I am not well versed in reading a typical court decision, it is not my normal reading material.  Went and looked over this one though since it was referred to in a rather unhappy post on The Guantánamo Blog.  If you have never seen it, this is a very good read.


In looking over this opinion, I am struck by how arbitrary it all seems to be.  In a country where such notions as innocent until proven guilty, chain of evidence and differentiating between hearsay and verifiable evidence it is a little shocking to read.  In reading it over I hear the courts saying something like "we really don't give a shit that we tortured you, tried you on uncorroboratable hearsay, we think that there is a strong enough chance that you could have been part of al Qadea and that lets us violate all legal precedent and tradition."


I can not make this up, from the source: 

Opinion for the Court filed PER CURIAM. Concurring opinion filed by Senior Circuit Judge SILBERMAN. 

PER CURIAM: Appellant, Yasein Khasem Mohammad Esmail, a detainee at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was captured by Northern Alliance forces in December 2001 and transferred to American custody in January of the following year. In 2004, he filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The district court denied the petition, and Esmail now appeals. Because we agree with the district court’s ultimate determination that Esmail was more likely than not “part of” al Qaeda at the time of his capture in December of 2001, we affirm.

Esmail challenges the district court’s decision on a number of grounds. In particular, he argues that the district court erred in finding that statements he made to American interrogators in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay were voluntary. He also argues that the district court erred in relying on those statements despite the government’s failure to provide sufficient evidence corroborating their content. But we have no need to consider either of those issues because the record contains sufficient facts—affected neither by the alleged coercion nor by the lack of corroboration—to support the district court’s conclusion that Esmail was “part of” al Qaeda at the time of his capture. See Bensayah v. Obama, 610 F.3d 718, 724–25 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (“[T]he [Authorization for Use of Military Force] authorizes the Executive to detain, at the least, any individual who is functionally part of al Qaeda.”); see also Barhoumi v. Obama, 609 F.3d 416, 423 (D.C. Cir. 2010) (clarifying that in habeas appeals involving Guantanamo Bay detainees we review district court fact findings for clear error, and we review the ultimate issue of whether the detainee was “part of” al Qaeda de novo).

Was more likely than not "part of" al Qadea.  Perhaps I am a bit old fashioned, but that seems a little less like a burden of proof than I would like to have applied to me.

Think about what is going on here.  What sucks even more is the opinion statement in the last two pages.  It is here in part:

My second point, not unrelated to the first, goes to the unusual incentives and disincentives that bear on judges on the D.C. Circuit courts – particularly the Court of Appeals – charged with deciding these detainee habeas cases. In the typical criminal case, a good judge will vote to overturn a conviction if the prosecutor lacked sufficient evidence, even when the judge is virtually certain that the defendant committed the crime. That can mean that a thoroughly bad person is released onto our streets, but I need not explain why our criminal justice system treats that risk as one we all believe, or should believe, is justified.

     When we are dealing with detainees, candor obliges me to admit that one can not help but be conscious of the infinitely greater downside risk to our country, and its people, of an order releasing a detainee who is likely to return to terrorism. One does not have to be a “Posnerian” – a believer that virtually all law and regulation should be judged in accordance with a cost/benefit analysis – to recognize this uncomfortable fact.

     That means that there are powerful reasons for the government to rely on our opinion in Al-Adahi v. Obama, 613 F.3d 1102 (D.C. Cir. 2010), which persuasively explains that in a habeas corpus proceeding the preponderance of evidence standard that the government assumes binds it, is unnecessary – and moreover, unrealistic. Id. at 1104-05. I doubt any of my colleagues will vote to grant a petition if he or she believes that it is somewhat likely that the petitioner is an al Qaeda adherent or an active supporter. Unless, of course, the Supreme Court were to adopt the preponderance of the evidence standard (which it is unlikely to do – taking a case might obligate it to assume direct responsibility for the consequences of Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008)). But I, like my colleagues, certainly would release a petitioner against whom the government could not muster even “some evidence.”

So the (sic) Justice Department just has to come up with some evidence to detain a person - be that hearsay, or that derived by torture - to hold someone because that person was "more likely than not part of al Qadea".  And this determination is left up to a judge based on a burden that they think it is "somewhat likely" that they are even a supporter of al Qaeda?  What the fuck?

I have another post about madness at the OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) - which you may know from it's fine tradition of telling the executive branch (often post-facto) that silly things like laws and constitutionality no longer apply to them which then just seems to magically become law.  WTF?!?!

More later.  The last sentence in the decision says it all:

So Ordered.

The widespread pattern of discrimination

So scratch another state of the list of places I will ever live.  In an act of anti science dumbfuckery, the state of Tennessee has passed a bill which encourages "science" teachers to "explore controversial topics without fear of reprisal."

The bills text says that teachers will be protected if they:

"help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught," namely, "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming, and human cloning." The bill also says that its "shall not be construed to promote any religious or non-religious doctrine." 

So remember this folks, Evidence Based Analysis is just a non-religious doctrine.

I hate this fucking place some times.

Are there no work houses?

In a effort to get those lazy driftless children off the public dole and out into productive society, free market hero Jane Cunningham sponsored a bill in the Missouri congress which proposes the following:

SB 222 – This act modifies the child labor laws. It eliminates the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed. It also repeals the requirement that a child ages fourteen or fifteen obtain a work certificate or work permit in order to be employed. Children under sixteen will also be allowed to work in any capacity in a motel, resort or hotel where sleeping accommodations are furnished. It also removes the authority of the director of the Division of Labor Standards to inspect employers who employ children and to require them to keep certain records for children they employ. It also repeals the presumption that the presence of a child in a workplace is evidence of employment.

This is not a joke.  The text of the bill has clearly been taken over since the pdf available at the above link tracks changes made in the bill text.  Don't really know what to say about this.  It took decades of determined effort to get rid of child labor in this country when business claimed that they needed child labor to be competitive. 

I have nothing to add, but to ask Jane Cunningham what it is like to live as a person without shame.