"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Marquette Dental Student Suspended Over Blog Posts

This is bullshit: Marquette Dental Student Suspended Over Blog Posts

When I was at NYU I once gave some juicy quotes to an NYT reporter who stopped me on the corner of Waverly and Green and asked about recreational use of prescription drugs by students. Earned me my one and only conversation with the Dean of our Tisch School of the Arts, who's a pretty laid back guy and was remarkably cool about it given this came at a time when the media was focusing on a student death from painkiller overdoses at Holy Cross college (I think).

Another girl who was at the more conservative Stern School of Business -- and who copped to personally popping some unprescribed ritalin to pull through finals, a common practice but nontheless a violation of the law and the student body regulations -- was expelled. They're more hard-ass over there.

Now students are being suspended over blogging, and not for talking about illegal activity, just for blowing off a little steam about class.

This is a first amendment issue. There are verifiable chilling effects which amount to prior restraint (which the supreme court has roundly rejected). We need to rigorously move to define and defend our rights to freely post content online without the threat of administrative punishment.

Paging the 21st Century's Mario Savio...

...hmmm, maybe it really will be the frustrated campus activists on the right who push this. While I've nothing but contempt for David Horowitz (who's transparently two-faced about his idea of "academic free speech"), I also have no support for a university administration which seeks to stifle provocative Republican ad campaigns. That GOP3 blog cites an example of "Adopt-a-Sniper" at Marquette. I'm immediately reminded to NYU's College Republicans and their "Think Big: Bomb Iraq" postering campaign in late 2002. While they may lack taste, wit, or real political content, this sort of speech should certainly never be impeded.

These provocations are first and foremost in invitation to debate, and must be met on moral and intellectual grounds. Getting the school to quash them justifies the fantasy of many financially well-supported budding white male conservatives that they are somehow "oppressed." The reality is that their ideas are stupid, but they'll never learn this if the authorities keep stomping on them, they'll just develop that bizarre conservatives-are-victims complex that's so rampant these days.

A 21st-Centiry definition of free speech with a robust view of the right to publish online is a possible point of consensus on the left and the right. Someone aught to really make something of that.

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Rhythm

So last night I worked until 3am. I didn't really get started until around 5 in the afternoon, so it's not like I was pulling a heroic 18-hour day. More like I overslept and had a lot of crap (bike repair, errands, etc) to deal with and so I made the executive decision to pull a swing shift.

It works for me, the late-night style. It's quiet. The only other people I have to interact with are fellow late-nite workers. I can focus more easily.

This can pretty quickly turn into a nocturnal workaholic lifestyle. Like a devoted lush might with booze -- close out a bar every night, crawl back in around 2pm -- I feel a pull to let the rhythms of labor determine my schedule. I can still do conference calls, meetings and all that jazz, because unlike an alkie I don't have a lengthy boot-up process. I can pretty much get up at any time, suck down a coffee and be lucid for at least 90 minutes before getting punchy if, say, I only got 45 minutes sleep or something.

Yet I really wonder about giving in to this lifestyle. Work is going to hit a peak this winter, which is a good time to hit a peak when you're working online and indoors; it's a shit time to leave the house, anyway. But I'm hesitant to give in. I know I have a less than completely healthy relationship with work, and I need to exercise my will here, lay down some more structure, routine.

Nothing new here, really. Focus, Koenig. Focus. That's my turn on Ali's rumble young man rumble.

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Rhythm

So last night I worked until 3am. I didn't really get started until around 5 in the afternoon, so it's not like I was pulling a heroic 18-hour day. More like I overslept and had a lot of crap (bike repair, errands, etc) to deal with and so I made the executive decision to pull a swing shift.

It works for me, the late-night style. It's quiet. The only other people I have to interact with are fellow late-nite workers. I can focus more easily.

This can pretty quickly turn into a nocturnal workaholic lifestyle. Like a devoted lush might with booze -- close out a bar every night, crawl back in around 2pm -- I feel a pull to let the rhythms of labor determine my schedule. I can still do conference calls, meetings and all that jazz, because unlike an alkie I don't have a lengthy boot-up process. I can pretty much get up at any time, suck down a coffee and be lucid for at least 90 minutes before getting punchy if, say, I only got 45 minutes sleep or something.

Yet I really wonder about giving in to this lifestyle. Work is going to hit a peak this winter, which is a good time to hit a peak when you're working online and indoors; it's a shit time to leave the house, anyway. But I'm hesitant to give in. I know I have a less than completely healthy relationship with work, and I need to exercise my will here, lay down some more structure, routine.

Nothing new here, really. Focus, Koenig. Focus. That's my turn on Ali's rumble young man rumble.

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Clear and Hold

John Robb has a good post on the inevitable failure of our clear and hold strategy in Iraq. When I mentioned in my little critique of Bush's "Strategy for Victory" that Clear and Hold weren't going to work as military strategies, this is what I was talking about.

The bottom line is that this can't really create order. A secondary downer is that the transition from US forces to Iraqi forces in the "hold" portion will likely exacerbate the violence in the short term.

In the long term, though, that's the only way. We've got to leave and we've got to leave soon. Iraq will never be remotely peaceful (or even orderly/stable) as long as US troops are stationed there.

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The Trial Of Saddam Hussein

Today's NYT:

[Mr. Muhammad] described in harrowing detail a night spent at a military police building with 350 other captives, where he saw people being tortured with burns and electric shocks. Seven of his 10 brothers disappeared or were killed after the arrests, he said. He was only 15 years old at the time, he said, but he was tortured and kept in prison for almost four years.

Mr. Hussein interrupted Mr. Muhammad's narrative at least once, saying "these are not our ethics," after Mr. Muhammad described the torture he had witnessed.

A few weeks ago:

Bush did not confirm or deny the existence of CIA secret prisons that The Washington Post disclosed last week, and would not address demands by the International Committee of the Red Cross to have access to the suspects reportedly held at them.
...
The U.S. government is aggressively taking action to protect Americans from terrorism but "we do not torture," President Bush said on Monday, responding to criticism of reported secret CIA prisons and the handling of terrorism suspects.

UPDATE: another instance via Digby: you hear a stray reference to someone being taken to Abu Ghraib and abused. Is your first assumption that this is something we did, or something done by Hussein's regime?

I'm not trying to exculpate Hussein here in any way shape or form, just noting a disturbing parallel. I hope the people in Iraq are able somehow to come to terms with what he did to their country and their families and move on.

I have the same hopes here in the US w/President Bush.

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Kos Humor/Election Fraud

A problem we have on the Left is that many of our most ardent activists have no sense of humor.

For the record, "having no sense of humor" here means trying to rationally respond to the diary with an argument about the probability that the 2004 election was rigged electronically.

It's a big debate that's gone on there (and elsewhere) for quite a while. My take is that the possiblity is quite distinct given that the systems Dibold sold the government were ludicrously insecure and downright faulty in a lot of cases. However, no hard evidence exists that anything went on that might have swung 100k votes in Ohio. While I recognize the potential for widespread fraud -- and I absolutely hate the fact that there were actual, measurable, voter supression activites that were actively witnessed -- I'm not about to accuse the Bush administration of subverting democracy in the 2004 election.

Nor am I willing to call for the heads of any members of their campaign other that Kenneth Blackwell, who served as both Ohio Secretary of State (thus overseer of all election-related activities) and Ohio Chair for Bush/Cheney'04. Last person who did that was... Katherine Harris, who more or less did steal the 2004 election by purging 30,000 elegeble voters, overwhelmingly African Americas, from the rolls. A turnout of 5% among those voters would have swung the election in favor of Al Gore. Yeah. She stole it, just like Kenneth tried to do.

But Kenneth's state wasn't within the margin of error for that sort of skullduggery. The reality is that the GOP, the "conservative movement" and the religious right put together a politlcal machine which turned out more votes than the Democrats and their coalition were able to match.

Or rather, that's what I believe. I believe it because there's nothing solid pointing to another reality, and this is the world you have to play in if you want to participate in the politlcal process. Even though there was the potential for electronic fraud, and we all know the people in charge are ethically challenged, you can't call the other party illegitimate -- essentially guilty of treason -- without some sort of hard evidence implicating specific individuals.

Otherwise there's no bottom. It's just a war of all against all. I don't believe in that kind of reality.

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Big News

Frank and Laura are ENGAGED.

We had a grand potluck over at their place last night; I had a 52-minute work-related phone call in the middle, but whatever, a good time was had by all. Apparently it was good enough for Frank to propose the next morning.

Congradulations, kids!

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9 New Messages

Confession: I don't like checking my voicemail. I find it oppressive.

This is highly unprofessional and needs to stop.

Anyway, have a good Friday. I'm goin' potlucking.

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Coulter to O'Reilly on Media Matters

Media Matters is providing pretty good daily entertainment for me lately. Perhaps its my BFA-honed sense of post modern irony, but I find this segment featuring O'Reilly and Coulter hillarious.

I've been talking with a couple comrades about how we could really start to turn the screws on these bastards, get under their skin a little. Any ideas?

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With Arms Wide Open

Amazing; via Atrios, two great links about Scott Stapp, aka the singer from Creed.

Quoth Stapp, "311, I'm ready to fight"

And also, Floridian kids pulling a booty-call prank. A desparately horny ex-faux-christian rock start prowls a Ganesvills Denny's... Too strange to be made up.

It's friday!

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