Bits & Pieces

The Boston Globe’s The Big Picture turns its attention to the earthquake in Chile with its usual stunning results. The pictures are amazing.

The New York Times has a terrific blog running with constant updates on the dire situation in Haiti. It includes great updates, like this video report from Thursday.

The Times also has some amazing before and after satellite photos clearly showing the scope of the destruction.

Update: You can now also donate to the Red Cross through iTunes.

(From the Wall Street Journal)

Text “HAITI” to 90999 on your cellphone to donate $10 to the Red Cross for its international relief efforts in Haiti.

To really understand what is going on in Haiti, right now, you have to look at this collection of photographs from The Big Picture, a terrific project from the Boston Globe. This certainly seems a bigger catastrophe than the tsunami in southeast Asia a few years ago. If you have ever experienced a major earthquake, you can understand. I have, but fortunately nothing so extreme.  (Warning: some of this is hard to view and it makes me want to cry.)

I vividly remember being sent home from school when this happened, even though I was only nine years old at the time.  It was clear the teachers were very, very upset.

This is not a joke. Actually, this looks like a hoax. See updates below.

Authorities were trying to determine Thursday how to safely bring down a 6-year-old boy who reportedly clambered into his family’s experimental balloon-powered aircraft and floated away from home, sheriff’s officials said.

The Larimer County Sheriff’s Department said the boy’s family had been building an experimental aircraft that had a large helium balloon attached to it at their home, KUSA-TV reported. The aircraft was approximately 20 feet by 5 feet and covered in tin foil, the station said.

Pictures here. And live video as it happens here.

Latest: No kid inside when balloon lands.

Very latest: The missing boy is found alive and safe at his house. Breaking at 6:30 pm, Thursday.

Update 3: Was this a scam? The kids says “We did it for the show.” More here.

Update 4: Sheriff’s Department announces it will bring criminal charges against the family based on false claims by the family. More here.

Andrew Sullivan tackles US torture head on. This is not alleged torture, nor is it “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Such torture has now been confirmed in a Federal court judgment:

We now know that torturing a human being to get proof that he deserved to be tortured was not just a theoretical fear of mine. It happened. If it happened once, it almost certainly happened more often. The temptations are just too great; and when you have clear evidence that Bush and Cheney knew some inmates to be innocent but tortured them anyway to manufacture evidence of their guilt, we know that there was nothing in the character of those two men to restrain the true nightmare scenario.

Go here and read Scott Horton’s vital account of what the case of Fouad al-Rabiah tells us about the abyss the last administration threw us into. Here is the actual judgment, which provides a meticulous and unanswerable account of the extent to which the torture power corrupted the American government in ways usually found in totalitarian regimes. Read too how the Obama administration – far from turning the page on this matter, as it openly pledged to do – is up to its neck in the same disgrace, pursuing charges against a man they also knew was plainly innocent of all charges, simply to prevent embarrassing the government.

Obama had a chance to draw a line between his administration and the last. While he deserves credit for ending the torture going forward, he has essentially embraced and defended the torture of the past. Which makes him and Eric Holder complicit in it as well. May God and history forgive them. I sure won’t.

And here is a release from the law firm that defended the victim.

Shameful.

America’s reading habits really must improve. Click the image below for the three current (as of 6 pm Wednesday evening) bestselling books on Amazon.

In the middle of last night’s speech by the President, Congressman Joe Wilson (Wingnut, South Carolina) could not restrain himself from shouting out to the President, calling him a liar. This has never happened during a Presidential address to a joint session of Congress before.

Needless to say, the President was not lying about healthcare reform not covering illegal immigrants. The current bills do not.

The New York Times has more:

His eruption — in response to Mr. Obama’s statement that Democratic health proposals would not cover illegal immigrants — stunned members of both parties in the House chamber.

Democrats said it showed lack of respect for the office of the presidency and was reminiscent of Republican disruptions at recent public forums on health care.

“It is outrageous,” said Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York, who said it reminded him of the “antics that are being used to disrupt and fog what is going on.”

After the speech, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff who sat a few rows in front of Mr. Wilson, said he immediately approached senior Republican lawmakers to encourage them to identify the heckler and urge him to issue an apology quickly.

“No president has ever been treated like that. Ever,” Mr. Emanuel said.

Update: Apparently Mr. Wilson has been driven off the interwebs.

Here is an incredible collection of photographs of Detroit, taken over the past five years by seven amazing photographers, all within the City.  They are moving, sad, beautiful and despairing. (h/t Bruce Sterling)

For more organized tours of Detroit, you might also be interested in The Fabulous Ruins of Ancient Detroit.

Microsoft is up to its monkey games again. Once more it is set to mimic Apple.  This time the Redmond copying machines are churning out copies of the Apple retail stores, in advance of Microsoft store openings later this fall. These guys are incapable of creative, independent thought.

Essentially, Microsoft is taking the best elements from the Apple Store, Sony Style and other “flagship” stores. The main focuses are going to be Windows 7, Xbox, PCTV (Windows Media Center) Surface and Windows Mobile, revolving around this concept customer they call “Emily,” who’s basically a younger version of your mom, since they make all the buying decisions.

In fact, they are likely to include a “Genius Bar” clone called, wait for it…..the Guru Bar.  Not only are they copying the stores, Microsoft is also copying the locations. That is, they are planning to open the Microsoft retails store adjacent to Apple retail stores wherever possible.  This might be huge mistake as it will make comparisons between the bustling Apple stores and empty Microsoft stores painfully obvious.

As John Dvorak notes, perhaps Microsoft would be better served if they returned their focus to producing easy-to-use, reliable software.

Everyone knew the day would come when the fortunes of Microsoft Corp. would reverse. The company might now be in actual decline.

If it’s true, it brought it on itself by ignoring its core competencies, because it exhibits signs of what can only be described as Corporate Attention Deficit Disorder — CADD.

Try to remember all the crazy directions Microsoft has gone in over the past few years. Note the dizzy remarks by Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, who recently insisted that online advertising would soon account for the majority of Microsoft’s income. This is a software company making these comments.

Disclosure: I am long in Apple.

When will the injuries caused by tasers end, and why do police officers still use them as if they cannot cause harm? Another injured person, a 14 year old girl, was tasered in the head by a cop in New Mexico, and had to undergo critical surgery as a result.

People, like this heinous individual, who torture and abuse helpless animals should be locked up for a good long time. Same applies for torture of captive humans, by the way.

Update: More coverage of his court appearance is at the New York Times.

The Obama administration’s DOJ filed a brief this week defending the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  Among other arguments made in the brief are the following:

• DOMA does not restrict any fundamental rights
• DOMA saves the federal government money (by denying same-sex benefits, etc.) and its elimination would require taxing others more
• Same-sex marriage is equivalent to incest and people marrying children
• Loving v. Virginia (which ruled bans on interracial marriages unconstitutional) has no application to DOMA

This brief does more than argue a defense of DOMA; it is an insult to all gay Americans. And it is yet another breach of Obama’s campaign promises. He has taken no action whatsoever to repeal DOMA.

When asked to explain the comparison of gay marriage to incest, a DOJ spokesman said the DOJ was merely doing what it generally does: defending existing law. However, there are many instances, involving constitutional claims, where the DOJ has joined in challenges to existing federal law.

In fact, George W. Bush (ACLU et al., v. Norman Y. Mineta – “The U.S. Department of Justice has notified Congress that it will not defend a law prohibiting the display of marijuana policy reform ads in public transit systems.”), Bill Clinton (Dickerson v. United States – “Because the Miranda decision is of constitutional dimension, Congress may not legislate a contrary rule unless this Court were to overrule Miranda…. Section 3501 cannot constitutionally authorize the admission of a statement that would be excluded under this Court’s Miranda cases.”), George HW Bush (Metro Broadcasting v. Federal Communications Commission), and Ronald Reagan (INS v./ Chadha – “Chadha then filed a petition for review of the deportation order in the Court of Appeals, and the INS joined him in arguing that § 244(c)(2) is unconstitutional.”) all joined in lawsuits opposing federal laws that they didn’t like, laws that they felt were unconstitutional. It is an outright lie to suggest that the DOJ had no choice.

One should also note that one of the three authors of the brief is a Bush holdover, a Mormon, and he received an award from Alberto Gonzalez for his work defending a ban on partial birth abortion.  As Andrew Sullivan notes:

So it becomes clearer. The harsh rhetoric, the gratuitous attacks on our relationships … they were written by someone who was given an award by Alberto Gonzales for his defense of the Partial Birth Abortion Act.

So who signed off on this brief? Who is responsible for this mess? Or are gays that low a priority for DOJ?

You can email the President to express your disappointment here.