Cox Crow

Peggy Noonan is tired of the security theater at the airport.

Why do we do this when you know I am not a terrorist, and you know I know you know I am not a terrorist? Why this costly and harassing kabuki when we both know the facts, and would agree that all this harassment is the government’s way of showing “fairness,” of showing that it will equally humiliate anyone in order to show its high-mindedness and sense of justice? … All the frisking, beeping and patting down is demoralizing to our society. It breeds resentment, encourages a sense that the normal are not in control, that common sense is yesterday.

She also has a suggestion for Barack Obama.

via Arnold Kling, we learn that the State of California does not like home-schooling by parents who are not also teachers, on the assumption that certification ensures quality. Mr. Kling pulls out this quote from the article.

“Parents do not have a constitutional right to home school their children,” wrote Justice H. Walter Croskey in a Feb. 28 opinion signed by the two other members of the district court. “Parents who fail to [comply with school enrollment laws] may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program.”

I’m not sure what interest the State has in compelling schooling, but I am sure that I have an interest in not being compelled.

I read Joel Spolsky’s “Martian Headsets” post a while back, in which he discusses Microsoft’s about-face with regards to Internet Explorer 8 in terms of balancing backward-compatibility with standards compliance, as if they are necessarily incompatible. Mark Pilgrim followed up with this funny translation into colloquial English.

So I was reading Spolsky’s piece, and nodding, and sort of agreeing that his central premise was correct, and then I got to this part, the conclusion.

98% of the world will install IE8 and say, “It has bugs and I can’t see my sites.” They don’t give a flicking flick about your stupid religious enthusiasm for making web browsers which conform to some mythical, platonic “standard” that is not actually implemented anywhere. They don’t want to hear your stories about messy hacks. They want web browsers that work with actual web sites.

Damn straight we want web browsers that work with actual web sites. But I must beg to differ about 98% of the world installing Internet Exploder 8 of their own volition. If they’re not using Firefox 3.0 because their friends told them it’s the bomb, they’re still using AOL, or Internet Explorer 6 on Windows 2000, or maybe Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP — but the only reason they switched to IE7 is because it just happened, and unless IE8 offers some compelling advantage, that is the only reason they will switch to IE8.

Oh, and the reason IE8 won’t work with some websites is not standards. Opera and Firefox and Safari do just fine. It’s Microsoft. Site developers have been kowtowing to Internet Explorer’s quirks for years, and have come up with tricks to make Internet Explorer display the site the way that they want the site to be displayed. Either they fork their content so that IE gets the “good stuff,” or they’re willingly putting in more effort to please those customers who just happen to be stuck with a browser older than my kids. (And, no, I don’t mean Netscape Communicator 4.0.) The way around that impasse is to quit being Internet Explorer. Quit asking for special treatment. Quit demanding a segregated web.

We want web browsers that just work with web sites. And we want them to just work whether we’ve chosen to use Microsoft Windows Vista, Apple iPhone, Nintendo Wii, or Ubuntu Linux.

Would you like your opinion of the Fourth Estate lowered further? Thought it couldn’t get any worse? Suspect that journalists on deadline have less scruples than a Congressman on a junket? Then read Glenn Greenwald’s series on how the chattering classes have disconnected their brains from their mouths.

On the one hand, criticism of the media is a bit much like navel gazing, since one can find exceptional coverage of important matters. The Associated Press did notice that footnote, after all. But it is exceptional. The vast bulk is trivial. Where Greenwald errs is in asserting that this is exclusively a “right-wing” or Republican phenomenon. Perhaps the Democrats, as a party, are simply less competent in their manipulation, but all in power attempt to distract the People from their actions.

Bread and circuses, my friends, bread and circuses.

I’m surprised that Cato hasn’t mentioned the stink around the latest memorandum from John Yoo [part 1, part 2]. Perhaps they are as shocked, shocked!, as I am to learn that the Executive has been up to no good.

There are more memoranda, which are perhaps just as shocking, in the same vein. The Associated Press noticed one mentioned in a footnote which blithely remarked that,

Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.

Excuse me? Come again?

Domestic military operations?

“They have beaten us publicly, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and do they now throw us out secretly? No! Let them come themselves and take us out.”

At the age of 19, Murat Kurnaz vanished into America’s shadow prison system in the war on terror. He was from Germany, traveling in Pakistan, and was picked up three months after 9/11. But there seemed to be ample evidence that Kurnaz was an innocent man with no connection to terrorism. The FBI thought so, U.S. intelligence thought so, and German intelligence agreed. But once he was picked up, Kurnaz found himself in a prison system that required no evidence and answered to no one. [CBS News]

“Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncondemned?”

One Howard Kurtz appears to be employed by The Washington Post to read the web and regurgitate it with perspective. Must be nice. A while back, in evaluating whether Hillary Clinton had any hope against the swell of support behind Barack Obama, he wrote:

Here’s another example [of how Obama has not faced tough criticism from the press], from the conservative side. How many stories even took note of Obama’s vote on a Bush-backed bill to expand the government’s surveillance powers?

“As good of a campaign as Obama has run,” says Bull Dog Pundit, “you do wonder if he’s really given any thought to the fact that he actually might become the president. How else to explain his ‘No’ vote on a bill that was overwhelmingly supported 67-31.”

Perhaps he voted that way because the bill is wrong and unnecessary.

But why does Mr. Kurtz assume that Senator Obama would be pilloried for not giving the Executive everything it wants? Perhaps this vote appeals, not, as the ankle biter suggests, to “his far-left base,” but to his far-right base, and to innocent Americans world-wide.

I had nothing to do with this Discordian activity:

It might be interesting for a while to have a “jackass of the week” feature, but there are only 52 weeks in the year, and many, many more jackasses than that. But just for starters, let’s include the entire Directorate of National Intelligence: jackasses.

Perhaps I have a one-track mind recently, but on viewing this public service announcement [via Movie Marketing Madness, via Rick], I understood the tagline “We won’t interrupt your phone calls” a bit differently than perhaps was intended.

Dear Senator Clinton:

You should be ashamed.

Dear Senator Schumer:

Thank you for voting to remove the telecom immunity provision from the contemptible bill recently before the Senate.

Dear Representative Hall:

I am very concerned about the direction this country is taking under President Bush and a Congress which seems willing to abandon our essential liberties at the slightest shadow. We are not small children scared of the wind in the trees at night.

In 2006, I voted for you to replace Sue Kelly because she had abandoned us. Will you stand for the citizens of this great nation against invasive searches? Will you allow the citizens to sue if they are somehow caught in an overly aggressive dragnet?

I am not only a citizen of the United States, but also an employee of AT&T. I am ashamed of my employer. Do not let them escape justice.

I am not only a citizen of the United States, but a Republican. I am ashamed of my party. Do not let them destroy our liberties for the illusion of security.

Do not allow the Congress to grant immunity, either retroactive or otherwise, to the telecommunications firms assisting the Executive in illegal searches. Do not let the Executive search or seize our private communications without a warrant. Follow the demands not only of your heart, but of our Constitution, and do not let this wonderful country become a police state.

I trust you will do what is right.