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Comments by YACCS

 

You ain't seen nothin' yet

Is your television set clear? Is the quality of the signal okay? Are your sitcoms funny enough, and are your made-for-TV movies based on true enough stories? Well, not to worry, because Washington is on the case! The F.C.C. is going to save America from the tragedy of low quality television! Never again will you have to worry that the plot of The District will be too formulaic, or that there might be too many commercials in NFL games.

Oh, sure, it could cost American households hundreds of dollars each. But doesn't that cost pale in comparison to the benefit of knowing that your government cares enough about you to mandate that your new television be digital, even if you're too dumb to know how much you really want it?

Digital television offers viewers a variety of options not possible under the analog system. Digital signals can carry high-definition television (HDTV) broadcasts, with vastly improved picture and sound. Several different "standard-definition" broadcasts can be carried on one digital channel.

In a test during the NCAA men's college basketball tournament last spring, CBS broadcast four games at the same time on one digital channel, allowing viewers to switch among them.

Digital broadcasts also support viewer interactivity. In one of the most frequently cited examples, viewers would be able to punch a button on their remote controls to buy products they see on TV.

Wow. Think of that. It would save dozens of Americans the effort of picking up the phone, or surfing the internet, to order products. And if we're really lucky, the F.C.C. will then be able to act to keep Americans from losing sleep over the thought of taping television shows to watch later:

The commission voted 3-0, with Commissioner Michael J. Copps concurring but not approving, to consider requiring that digital TV tuners support a copy-prevention standard backed by the entertainment industry.

Such a "broadcast flag" would be a code embedded in over-the-air digital broadcasts, containing instructions on how and where a show could be copied. Future video recorders would read these instructions and prevent users from making unauthorized copes of a program.

Electronics makers and consumer groups fear that technology would limit a consumer's ability to copy and use broadcasts as they wish. That, they say, would slow the transition to digital TV even further.

So we're going to force Americans to spend extra money for a product we don't want, in order to obtain a service we don't want, which will allow Hollywood to limit our ability to do something that we do want. Sometimes don't you just think that Timothy McVeigh was right about the U.S. government?
posted by David Nieporent at 8/09/2002 05:36:00 AM |

 

You have the right to remain silent

Many of my liberal friends still hold to the idea that George Bush (and/or John Ashcroft) is the big threat to civil liberties in the United States. Well, I'm not a blind defender of the Bush administration, but as any good libertarian can tell you, neither party has a monopoly on authoritarian tendencies. Case in point: two Clinton-appointed judges just decided that political candidates can be censored by the state. The U.S Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit just upheld, 2-1, a Vermont law that restricts spending by candidates for various state offices, with a sliding scale depending on the office in question.

So we have a court deciding that the first amendment does not protect political speech. Why? Because politicians are telling the court that they'll be corrupt if they're allowed to spend more money. This apparently is a reason to censor people, rather than, say, prosecuting everyone currently in the legislature. The Supreme Court held in its Buckley decision that contribution limits were acceptable means of limiting corruption, but that expenditure limits were not. The Second Circuit simply glosses over the distinction after noting it.

And if there's any doubt that this is totally unconstitutional, the decision's explanation of where the compelling state interest comes in includes:

1) encouraging public debates and other forms of meaningful constituent contact in place of the growing reliance on 30- second commercials and (2) increasing the ability of non-wealthy Vermonters to run for state office in Vermont.

Not only are they trying to dictate how much may be spent, but how it may be spent. The state has a compelling interest in seeing debates rather than 30-second spots? Why they don't just label this the "Make Sure Incumbents Get Re-elected By Ensuring That Challengers Can't Get Their Name Out" law, I'm not sure.

The first thought I had when I read the decision was Justice Brandeis's observation that "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well- meaning but without understanding." It turns out that I'm not original; Judge Winter, who filed a long dissent in this case, began his opinion with the same quote. The only encouraging thought I can take from this is that the dissent is so much clearer and more convincing than the cursory majority opinion, that the Second Circuit sitting en banc will be embarrassed into reversing it.
posted by David Nieporent at 8/09/2002 12:37:00 AM |

 

I'll never tell

No matter how one feels about how enemy combatants deserve to be treated -- summary execution is too good for them, as far as I'm concerned -- and no matter how one feels about what level of due process these people should receive, I would think there would be one thing that reasonable people on all sides could agree upon: we should be sure that they are enemy combatants before we do anything to them. Another point on which I would hope reasonable people could agree: the government saying "Trust us, we know what we're doing" isn't very comforting. Given the many revelations about law enforcement incompetence, not to mention outright malfeasance, there's no way they can ask us to take their word for it.

And yet, that's what happening: the Justice Department is taking the position that providing evidence to support the claim that someone is an enemy combatant is unnecessary:

"An inspection of the requested materials would all but amount to a [new] review of the military's enemy combatant determination, and thus exceed the limited standard of review governing the Executive determination at issue," the Justice Department said in a legal memo.

What does the Justice Department think is required?

A week later, Doumar asked the government to explain why it was holding Hamdi, and on July 25, prosecutors submitted a two-page declaration by Michael H. Mobbs, a Defense Department special adviser on enemy combatants.

Mobbs wrote that Hamdi traveled to Afghanistan in July or August of last year, joined a Taliban military unit, received weapons training and remained with his unit after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Prosecutors believe that Mobbs's declaration should be sufficient for Doumar's needs. "Under the fundamental separation of powers principles recognized by the 4th Circuit . . . in justifying the detention of captured enemy combatants in wartime, the military should not need to supply a court with the raw notes from interviews with a captured enemy combatant . . . or the other types of information listed in the court's order," Leonard wrote.

In short, "He's an enemy combatant because we say he is. And you should believe us because we wrote it down on a piece of paper." A little frightening, to say the least.

This is not an argument that a detained individual is entitled to a full trial to determine his status -- but independent review of the evidence would be nice. It's not as if there are such overwhelmingly large numbers of people being detained that it would overwhelm the courts to allow judicial review. We're not talking about everyone at Guantanamo, after all; just American citizens. If there's evidence to support the claims, surely a judge can be trusted to interpret it.
posted by David Nieporent at 8/07/2002 05:49:00 AM |

 

Pat Buchanan is rolling over in his grave

We're at war halfway around the world, and we're thinking of expanding that war to other countries. (And -- gasp -- Israel might benefit from that decision.) And now, the president has the authority to negotiate free trade agreements. Given the president's past pandering to protectionists, in industries like steel, lumber, and textiles, this is a welcome sign. The one good thing you could say about President Clinton was his commitment to free trade. Bush had been wobbly on the issue, as he had on so many others. Hopefully this signals a firming up of Bush's backbone, and we see some real progress.
posted by David Nieporent at 8/07/2002 05:25:00 AM |

 

"I didn't do it! Nobody saw me do it! You can't prove anything!"

Well, a sure sign that the war on terrorism is bogged down: people stop worrying about what needs to be done, and start worrying about what has already happened. It's bad news when people feel that they have the time for throwing blame around -- and the need to do so. The first step of that process: lay the groundwork for explaining why it wasn't your fault. Tell everyone how you foresaw the attacks on 9/11, and how you developed a plan that might have defeated Al Qaeda before 9/11, but how you were undermined by incompetent FBI officials, shortsighted State Department officials (okay, that part is plausible), bureaucratic infighting between the CIA and armed forces, and the awkwardness of the transition from Clinton to Bush.

I'm certainly not suggesting that something can't be learned from these circumstances. Certainly there needs to be a strong hand in charge of defense policy, to keep the various agencies from working at cross purposes. But the lesson Time wants to draw, apparently, is that people should listen to the guy who, in hindsight, turns out to have been right.
posted by David Nieporent at 8/05/2002 05:44:00 AM |