Letters to the Editor
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sysprog
Thanks for the history lesson, that was an entertaining article. While I have your attention, I never got a reply for this: "If the Department of Homeland Ssecurity is interested in dnssec, and others say there is no need for central root authority, why are they interested at all? If it solves no problem that terrorism may cause, why would they be making such overtures to gain this level of access?"
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the blog-crush
There's girl crushes and
boy crushes, puppy love and
simple adoration
But I got 'em all for this blog.
Terrific post.
Finally...the saying getting said.
Thank you.
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Yes, A Troll
LBS:
A troll? A small quibble.
Paul, I respect and admire you. Let me say that straight off, for I get a lot from your posts. (You give a lot.)
I do have a small quibble: I followed Hankrest's (I may have the name slightly off) line a bit yesterday. I actually thought his original point was a good one, if a bit trivial, and, given the fact that this column is in large part dedicated to accuracy in language, the dialog was somewhat instructive.
We've asked repeatedly for a better quality of troll, and this is what one looks like. It starts off looking like a concerned citizen.
My question: Was Hankrest the problem or was the problem our response to Hankrest?
I'll admit, his tone seemed rather hostile at first, however, he seemed to grow more circumspect later.
Yes, when challenged. Like I said, a better quality of troll. But he weasles out of answering questions that would reguire him to admit outright that what he was up to was bogus.
I have not read over the entire line, so I offer the questions as real questions, not as assumptions.
However, I think it's important that we are careful when we use the word 'troll.' This forum could lose credibility if writers did not feel free to question.
Agreed. I watched a bit before offering my first judgment. But I've seen the pattern for years before. And everything that's followed has been according to script.
My own take is that trolls are those who keep showing up to provoke and provoke, and generally succeed in doing so. That they succeed maybe something for us to consider . . .
Ounce of prevention. Pound of cure.
Did I mention I tried to cure psychopaths when I just a young un? Well, not quite. But almost...
Point being, I know well the yogic pose of bending over backwards.
Been there. Done that.
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Jim Montague (re DNSsec)
I dunno. First of all, the bureaucrats making the decisions, especially in THIS administration, probably don't understand DNSsec. (To be fair, only a very few gurus actually understand its implications . . . and maybe not even those guys either.) Maybe the bureaucrats just think it's their job to run the internet. Maybe they want to be able to disrupt the internet themselves (though I'm sure they already have contingency plans for doing that).
DNSsec itself is questionable. Some people claim it's useless. Some claim it's worse than useless. My hunch is -- mostly useless, but maybe it'll make DNS "poisoning" a little less likely, and e-commerce a little more secure.
Which is a long-winded way of saying, I dunno.
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Armagednoutahere:
JimC:
I believe with all my being that homosexuality is wrong, unnatural, immoral, and perverted. When I see homosexual people proudly displaying their “gayness” it feels painful to me. To me, it feels like a part of the America we once were, is being lost, it feels like the family values of the founders of this country are being destroyed and twisted. I feel as if my children’s purity is under attack. That by being forced to accept alternative lifestyles, I cannot teach my children what I believe to be right and wrong.
Wow. That's really repulsive - at least everything after the word "immoral" (everything before that is just plain misguided but harmless).
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The Logan Act of 1799
JimC acts like a proud homophobe and thinks freedom means
editing or deleting portions of a comment that run counter to his values. Also feels fine with arrogantly expressing Judea/Christian beliefs to justify his positions.
Most of what JimC has expressed run counter to my values but am glad Salon has not edited or deleted his comments. Go figure.
In terms of the Logan Act, might want to look at a superceding document, the Constitution and what powers it grants. For example it declares Congress is the only entity authorized to declare war but somehow by sheer ignorant audacity I am supposed to believe the Logan Act overrides this and makes Congressional involvment in foreign affairs illegal?
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On Yoga
"Did I mention I tried to cure psychopaths when I just a young un? Well, not quite. But almost...
Point being, I know well the yogic pose of bending over backwards.
Been there. Done that."
Ahh, and I'm not even young!
I've mastered the yogic posture you write of.
So, before I rush off to see my niece, I defer to your judgement. A bit of bending over backwards? No, because you meet my post with respect and humor.
Have a great night.
LBS
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sysprog on the Logan Act, A Few Reflections, and Republican Violations Tending Toward Treason
Now that we've had our edification on origins, with a tip of the old top hat to Herr sysprog, a few points can be somewhat clearly made.
First off, this came out of a very turbulent time. This era ultimately culminated in the Alien and Sedition Acts, our first close encounter with authoritarian government, and the resulting repudiation of the Federalist Party that passed said acts.
The Logan Act was very much a product of that time, and thus it is no accident that it hasn't been used since. Such laws are not necessary where good sense and custom can prevail, and besides, they are both too vague (arguably out of necessity in the original drafting, and the lack of subsequent case law to clarify) and too strict (one could, with mal intent, torpedo a quite useful effort to defuse minor tensions, that arguably wouldn't even rise to the level of cabinet-level attention, for example).
Second, we find that the issue of historical context is a messy one. The real point of the Logan Act, as it has functioned in our history, has been to create conditions that we take for granted--a relatively focused foreign policy apparatus, compared to the diffuse intrigues that characterized the European courts at the time of our nation's founding. It was, in a sense, a warning shot, and wasn't felt to be needed again.
Third, however, it should be noted that considerable meddling amount to clear violations of the Logan Act have most certainly taken place, and significantly shaped American history. I refer to the Republican presidential campaigns' intereference with (A) the Vietnam peace negotiations in 1968 and (B) the Iranian hostage negotiations in 1980. Entirely unlike the current FauxScandel, these were (a) secret actions (b) undertaken by private individuals (c) working to the detriment of America's interests and (d) to surreptiously influence the outcome of presidential elections.
Here's what Robert Parry, presenting a gloss from Seymour Hersh, has to say about the first event:
The first major recounting of Nixon's sabotage of Johnson's Paris peace talks - by offering South Vietnam's President Nguyen van Thieu a better deal from Republicans than was available from the Democrats - came 15 years after the actual events, in Seymour Hersh's 1983 political biography of Henry Kissinger, The Price of Power. According to Hersh's book, Kissinger learned of Johnson's peace plans and warned Nixon's campaign. "It is certain" Hersh wrote "that the Nixon campaign alerted by Kissinger to the impending success of [Vietnam] peace talks, was able to get a series of messages to the Thieu government making it clear that a Nixon Presidency would have different views on the peace negotiations.
Nixon's chief emissary was Anna Chennault, an anti-communist Chinese leader who was working with the Nixon campaign. Hersh quoted one former official in President Lyndon Johnson's Cabinet as stating that the U.S. intelligence "agencies had caught on that Chennault was the go-between between Nixon and his people, and President Thieu in Saigon . ... The idea was to bring things to a stop in Paris and prevent any show of progress."
In her memoirs, The Education of Anna, Chennault acknowledged that she was the courier. She quoted Nixon campaign manager John Mitchell as calling her a few days before the 1968 election and telling her: "I'm speaking on behalf of Mr. Nixon. It's very important that our Vietnamese friends understand our Republican position and I hope you have made that clear to them."
On November 2, four days before the U.S. election, Thieu withdrew from his tentative agreement to sit down with the Viet Cong at the Paris peace talks, killing Johnson's last hope for a settlement of the war. A late Humphrey surge fell short and Nixon won a narrow election victory.
In The Price of Power, Hersh quoted Chennault as saying that after the election, in 1969, Mitchell and Nixon urged her to keep quiet about her mission, which could have implicated them in an act close to treason. As the Vietnam War dragged on for another four years, tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers died, as did hundreds of thousands of Indochinese. When the allegations of the secret deal surfaced, survivors of the Nixon administration denied them, depicting Chennault as a freelance operative working on her own initiative.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Bush_Gang/First_Restoration_S&P.html
Now that's what a genuine Logan Act violation looks like--and, as Parry intimates--quite possibly an act of treason as well.
The second event was the deal between the Reagan/Bush campaign and the Iranians known as the "October Surprise," which has never been adequately investigated, but appears even more serious in its implications. Parry discusses it in the same document quoted from above. Laying out the case takes considerable time, and pieces keep being added to the puzzle. But perhaps the strongest single piece of evidence for the October Surprise being real is the fact that arms shipments to Iran--via Israel--began in 1981, before both the capturing of hostages in Lebanon, and the cut-off of funding to the Contras, the two supposed triggering events that gave rise to Iranian arms sale side of the the Iran-Contra Affair.
Fourth, with all the above in hand, it is now quite clear that tossing out Logan Act accusations against Pelosi consitutes yet another example of rightwing projection--wildly attacking an innocent liberal Democrat for the very sins that they themselves have committed.
Now, I'm not saying that most folks making the accusations are aware of these past transgressions. Indeed, they would probably strenuously argue against admitting even the possibility that either could have happened. But it is precisely this sort of willful denial among the mass base that makes such machinations so attractive to the GOP elites. This is how the rightwing movement as a whole functions to falsely blame liberals and Democrats for the very sorts of things that conservartives and Republicans actually do.