Russ McBee

A while ago, a conversation arose on Twitter about this op-ed in today's New York Times by John Bolton and John Yoo (yes, that Bolton and that Yoo), in which two of the biggest perpetrators of the "unitary executive" mythology now advocate that the Senate should suddenly reassert its historic role as a check on the power of the president to commit the United States to international agreements.

On the subject of the two-thirds majority needed in the Senate to ratify treaties, they write, apparently with straight faces:

The framers required a supermajority to ensure that treaties would reflect a broad consensus and careful, mature decision-making.

Given the authors' histories in the Bush adventure, that statement is both hilarious in its mendacious attempt to rewrite the history of the last eight years and breathtaking in its hypocrisy. Neither the mendacity nor the hypocrisy should be the least bit surprising.

But it gets even funnier; check out this statement:

[I]nternational agreements that go beyond the rules of international trade and finance -- that involve significant national-security commitments, or that purport to delegate lawmaking and enforcement functions to international organizations, or that could fundamentally alter the American constitutional system of individual rights -- should receive the intense scrutiny of the treaty process, regardless of their policy merits.

First of all, Bolton and Yoo attempt to distinguish trade agreements like NAFTA and GATT as not really deserving the same two-thirds majority, since they only deal with trade. However, even a superficial understanding of GATT would reveal its "delegation of ... enforcement functions to international organizations" such as the WTO in trade disputes. If GATT doesn't surrender a measure of American sovereignty over its economic destiny, then I can't imagine what would; yet neither GATT nor NAFTA were subject to the wringer of treaty ratification in the Senate. Only simple majorities were needed.

More to the point, it is laughable that John Bolton, of all people, would suggest that President Obama submit graciously to the will of two thirds of the Senate in matters of national security commitments. Wake me when he recommends that President Bush submit the Iraqi Status Of Forces Agreement to the Senate for ratification as a treaty.

A while ago, I had the following conversation with a dear friend who happens to be from Kentucky:

Friend: We're going to Wild Wings to watch Kentucky's bowl game. Want to go?

Me (laughing inappropriately): No, thanks.

Friend: What's so funny?

Me: The phrase "Kentucky's bowl game" is pretty hilarious all by itself. You're not used to saying that, are you?

Friend: OK, you're not invited. And, uh, remind me again -- what time is Tennessee's bowl game?

Me: That's not funny.

Friend: Oh, yes it is.

Here's Lou Rawls singing a hip-swinging version of "Stormy Monday:"

He could turn just about any song into smooth.

A week and a half after the Kingston coal ash disaster, TVA is continuing its campaign of spin and obfuscation. Yesterday, TVA's overpaid CEO Tom Kilgore escorted Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen on a photo-op tour of the edge of the disaster site. This story in the Knoxville News Sentinel makes the following statements about the cleanup efforts:

Cleanup efforts continue around the clock, with a crew of about 75 still working to skim the tons of cenospheres - small, hollow balls used as fillers in concrete and epoxy foam - from the water.

Those cenospheres are generated as one of many waste products of coal combustion, and they are mostly chemically inert. However, coal combustion also produces high concentrations of heavy metals and other toxic substances, and those don't float; at the Kingston disaster site, those metals have spent the last week and a half leaching out of the spill and into the river. The article does mention that they've been testing the air for heavy metals, and with predictably negative results, everyone should be happy about that, I suppose.

The problem is that heavy metals wouldn't be very likely to go airborne from a static pile of ash on the ground (unless a tornado came through the area). Airborne metals aren't the real risk at Kingston, and both TVA and TDEC know this; the real risk is of metals leaching into the river from the spill. According to the article, testing of the water supply at Kingston's city intake (downstream from the disaster site) have so far proven negative, but those metals can migrate fairly slowly. This will take years to clean up, and years of testing remain in store.

At the photo-op yesterday, the governor said this:

"TVA is a federal agency," Bredesen said. "I strongly suspect that over the years there may have been exaggerated deference given to them as a federal agency. We need to take a fresh look at that. We will be looking at all aspects of that. We need to tighten those up."

That "fresh look" ought to require TVA to perform tests that are actually relevant to the problem, instead of irrelevant distractions meant to mollify the public; it should also include an admission by the state and by TVA that "clean coal" is nothing but a destructive, poisonous myth.

[UPDATE:] Meanwhile, the allegedly harmless ash is making people sick (link from Sandranista on Twitter).

For some reason which I still don't understand, I landed on Santa's good list again this year. The combination of a very generous gift of cash and a very generous gift card to Best Buy enabled me to buy myself a new toy -- I finally bought a laptop.

I've been researching them for at least a year now, but I'd just never taken the plunge. Yesterday, I sauntered into Best Buy, as I am wont to do, just browsing for bargains on the day after Christmas. I wasn't specifically looking for anything in particular, but I told the sales associate I was sort of interested in a laptop, and that I wanted a screen no larger than 13.3 inches. That limits choices significantly, and it generally means a machine that is underpowered and rather blah in its feature set.

She directed me to a laptop I'd never seen before: the HP Pavilion dv3510nr (the CNET review is here). This laptop is one of two models produced specifically for Best Buy under their "Blue Label" program, in which Best Buy conducted surveys of their customers, asking them for a wish-list of features they'd like to see in a laptop. Best Buy consolidated those lists and approached OEMs, looking for someone to build what the customers actually wanted. This HP and another laptop by Toshiba are the first models produced as Blue Label machines.

I'm thrilled with it.

Keeping in mind that the screen size is only 13.3 inches, the feature set is surprisingly rich, and the price is significantly lower than a comparable notebook PC from any other vendor. For the money and the size, the performance is outstanding.

Here's a brief rundown of the hardware:

• CPU: 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7350
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Hard drive: 320 GB SATA, 5,400 RPM
• Video: nVidia GeForce 9300M GS, with 512 MB dedicated video memory
• A double-layer DVD burner

For a laptop that small, those are impressive features. It's almost unheard-of to see a laptop in that size range with half a gigabyte of dedicated video memory. Since it comes with Windows Vista (64-bit), the dedicated video memory makes the difference between sluggish and blazing fast. This HP is not a gamer's laptop, but for a non-gamer like me, the video performance is outstanding. For watching (or creating) videos and working with graphics programs, the nVidia card's performance is top-notch. I'm also running the Aero interface in Vista, which is highly video-intensive; this laptop runs Aero just as smoothly as my desktop PC. It's a dream.

Built-in doodads and gadgets abound on this laptop. It has a fingerprint reader (which I have totally fallen in love with), three USB ports, a backlit keyboard, WiFi (802.11 a/b/g/n), Bluetooth, two external headphone jacks, a webcam, a built-in microphone, an external microphone jack, an ExpressCard/34 slot, an HDMI port, an eSATA port (which can also serve as a fourth USB port), a five-in-one card reader, a gigabit Ethernet jack, a modem (for some reason) and a super-thin LCD display that is backlit using LEDs. It also includes the smallest remote control I have ever seen (for controlling the DVD and volume features). If you don't have an ExpressCard/34 installed in its slot, the remote control is built to slide into that slot instead; that's how tiny it is.

The laptop weighs just over four pounds, and the battery life is claimed to exceed four hours.

The only complaint I have with this machine is the touchpad: it's a tad too sensitive. I'll play around with the touchpad settings in Control Panel to find the right sensitivity for me, but it ships from the factory with sensitivity set way too fine.

The fingerprint reader not only allows the user to substitute a fingerprint for a password in the Windows logon process, it also substitutes the user's fingerprint for credentials on websites that require a username and password. The convenience of that is so awesome I can't even describe it. The user only has to enter the username and password once for a given website, and the fingerprint reader's software will prompt the user for a fingerprint swipe on all subsequent visits. This is the greatest invention since the mouse.

So far, the HP Pavilion dv3510nr looks like it's going to be the ideal laptop for me: feature rich, powerful, small, truly portable, and a real bargain.

Kudos to Best Buy for getting the PC manufacturers to finally listen to the public.

For this holiday edition of Feel Good Friday, here's Marvin Gaye singing "I Want To Come Home For Christmas:"

Happy Boxing Day!

I love many aspects of Christmas, but I completely fail in selecting gifts, shopping for them, and especially wrapping them. I can never pick out the right gift, I completely despise shopping, and my gift-wrapping looks like it was done by a blind orangutan after a four-day bender.

I would gladly pay a premium for an entrepreneurial person willing to do the following for me:

1) Pick out the right gifts for everyone on my list.

2) Shop for them and buy them.

3) Wrap them.

4) Deliver them to my house.

5) Probably do all this on December 23, since I procrastinate on Christmas shopping every year.

Any takers?

(And it should be obvious that I'm writing this post as a means of procrastinating on the annual gift-wrapping disaster.)

It's bad enough that Caroline Kennedy thinks she's entitled to a Senate seat solely by virtue of her last name, and that she thinks she can land the position merely by making a phone call to the governor. But now, she's even refusing to reveal the most basic financial information about herself.

How can the governor of New York make an informed decision on Hillary Clinton's replacement if the main candidate for the job won't even reveal how her income is generated, or to whom she is financially beholden?

This is the arrogance of aristocracy; people like Caroline Kennedy (or George W. Bush, for that matter) think they are entitled to hold public office due solely to their bloodlines. That arrogance has no place in a democracy. In fact, we fought a revolution (in part) to escape that brand of tyrannical crap.

If Ms. Kennedy wants to serve as a member of the US Senate, she should run for the office when the next election cycle rolls around, and she should be prepared to reveal her financial ties at that time. But she should under no circumstances be granted the position by default, merely because of the family name to which she was coincidentally born.

The Ohio Players were one of the best funk bands of the 1970's. Here's their classic song "Fire:"

As the sun finally begins to rise and banish the darkness of the Bush years, we continue to witness an alarming chain of eleventh-hour regulations emanating from the White House. The latest of those offenses against decency was published today:

The Bush administration yesterday granted sweeping new protections to health workers who refuse to provide care that violates their personal beliefs, setting off an intense battle over opponents' plans to try to repeal the controversial measure.

[...]

The far-reaching regulation cuts off federal funding for any state or local government, hospital, health plan, clinic or other entity that does not accommodate doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other employees who refuse to participate in care they find ethically, morally or religiously objectionable.

This is not an unexpected move; Women's Health News has been blogging about this proposed rule change for months. See here and here for reaction to today's fait accompli.

Federal regulations typically take effect 30 days after they are published in the Federal Register, which means this odious assault on private medical decisions will become enforceable only a few days before Bush leaves office. Even if Congress seeks to overturn this rule by passing a bill to be signed by Barack Obama on January 20th, its existence for only a few days will cause chaos within the health care delivery system.

Ostensibly described as providing legal cover for health care workers who object to abortion, the rule in fact casts a far wider net. Health care providers are already protected by federal law from providing abortions if they personally object to the procedure, so this rule would seem superfluous on its face.

In fact, this rule goes far beyond the single issue of abortion. It is written so broadly, it would allow doctors, nurses, pharmacists, clerks, or any other worker to refuse to do their jobs when faced with any situation they find morally objectionable. A doctor could flatly refuse to prescribe birth control pills, and a pharmacy technician could refuse to fill such a prescription. An ER doctor could refuse to provide emergency contraception to a rape victim. A family practitioner could refuse to issue a referral for a tubal ligation. A nurse could refuse to administer a transfusion. A doctor could refuse care to a patient if the doctor held any moral objection to that patient's race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, sexual history, or personal habits.

Just think about how absurd this is: I am a software developer; if my employer assigned me the task of writing a program that I found objectionable (say, an application for scheduling torture at Guantanamo), should I expect to have legal protections against being fired, or should I expect to be invited to find employment elsewhere?

I guess worker protections are only valid for right-wing fundamentalists.