CNN.com – Federal judge rules part of Patriot Act unconstitutional – Jan. 27, 2004 From Terry Frieden, CNN

The court said a paragraph that prohibits providing ”expert advice or assistance” to designated international terrorist organizations is a violation of the First and Fifth Amendments because it is impermissibly vague.

”It was in part a violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution which allows free association and free speech and also the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which grants due process before criminalizing someone,” said Ralph Fertig, president of the Humanitarian Law Project, the organization that brought the suit.

PCWorld.com – Online Voting Plan Draws Concern by Joris Evers, IDG News Service

SERVE [Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment] is part of the U.S. Federal Voting Assistance Program. All mail-in absentee election functions have been placed on the Internet. This enables about 6 million U.S. citizens overseas, including uniformed services members, to cast their ballots online. The FVAP falls under the U.S. Department of Defense.

“We’re very concerned that a system we feel is insecure is going to be deployed,” says Barbara Simons, a computer scientist and technology policy consultant. “SERVE is called an experiment, but it is in fact not an experiment. There are not paper ballots, there is no way to verify after the fact to see if votes were correctly received and tabulated.”

Teenage hackers, terrorists, political parties–essentially anyone with an agenda and enough technical know-how–could subvert an election if the online system is put into use, according to Simons. The Internet is not secure enough for something as serious as electing a government official, the experts agree in their statement.

“What gives me nightmares is that SERVE might go forward and appear to work correctly … then Internet voting might come widespread for the whole country, perhaps in the 2008 election, and that could be a serious threat to our democracy,” Simons says.

Regardless of the experts’ opinions, the Department of Defense is moving ahead with SERVE. The system could be used for a primary election as early as February, and will certainly be up and running for the November presidential election, says Glenn Flood, a Defense Department spokesperson.

“We’re not stopping the SERVE program,” he says. “We’re aware of the concerns and we’re calling it a minority report because it is only four out of the ten review group members who felt they had to express themselves.”

Note this is not just a plan but a real program that will be ready for November this year. This may make Florida in 2000 look straight-forward. mjh

Tapes From Vermont TV Show a Howard Dean Rarely Seen on Campaign Trail

During Mr. Clinton’s impeachment in 1998, Dr. Dean took a now-familiar jab at Washington and at Mr. Clinton’s Republican accusers, saying, ”Who would want to listen to those windbags pontificate about morality when they are so incapable of illustrating it themselves?”

Rule Change May Alter Strip-Mine Fight By JAMES DAO, NYTimes

The Bush administration is moving to revamp a rule protecting streams that Appalachian environmentalists view as their best weapon for fighting the strip-mining technique of mountaintop removal.

Over the past six years, environmental groups have used the rule, which restricts mining within 100 feet of a stream, to block or slow the issuing of state permits for mountaintop removal.

Strip mining involves dynamiting away mountaintops to expose seams of low-sulfur coal, then dumping the leftover rubble into nearby valleys and streams. Some of those valley fills, as they are known, are hundreds of feet deep and several miles long, making them among the largest man-made earthen structures in the East.

The proposed rule change by the Office of Surface Mining would make clear that filling valleys and covering streams is permitted under federal law if companies show they are minimizing mining waste and the environmental damage caused by it.

Administration officials say the proposed changes to the rule, affecting the stream buffer zone, will clarify conflicting federal regulations and thereby reduce litigation. …

The struggle over the stream buffer zone underscores how some of the most significant battles over government policy are waged on the overlooked fields of little-known laws and lesser-known regulations.

And the struggle comes as mountaintop mining has emerged as the most common form of surface mining in central Appalachia. The process produces more coal, requires fewer employees and is less costly than other forms of mining.

But opponents contend that strip mining also levels mountains, fills narrow valleys, covers streams and destroys forests. Mining companies are required to reconfigure hilltops and replant forests, but those efforts rarely approach the natural beauty of the original landscape, residents argue.

Again, Bush uses executive fiat to change things to benefit corporations at the expense of everything else. mjh

Dumping Dean by George Shadroui

Let us reflect on what actually occurred. A disappointed candidate, confronted with a large crowd of supporters, wanted to thank them and reenergize them in the face of what appeared to be a crumbling campaign and candidacy. So he tried to pump up his disappointed troops. He didn’t say anything controversial or stupid. He simply growled a little. He was laughing. They were laughing. Granted, the guy isn’t Vince Lombardi, but come on. What is the big deal?

William Bennett had it right. This was a non-event and a non-issue compared to many other things done or not done by other major candidates. Consider, for example, Wesley Clark’s refusal to distance himself from Michael Moore’s charges that President Bush was a deserter. Or John Kerry’s ties to big money, even as he tries on the populist mantle of Dean. Yet, many in the media, mostly Democrats, desperate to destroy Dean’s candidacy, used the Iowa speech as excuse to fire (metaphorically) a few more shots into his still quivering political corpse, lest it rise again.

In short, what we witnessed was the assassination not of the man, but of his viability as a presidential nominee. …

Interesting to read a conservative analysis of the reaction to Dean in Iowa. sees it as proof of a liberal (yes, liberal) media consipiracy, even with his prime example being Chris Matthews, MSNBC Hardhead, er, Hardball. mjh

NOW with Bill Moyers. Transcript. January 23, 2004 | PBS

MOYERS: So Howard Dean committed what pros say could be a terminal no-no. He got so hot under the collar in a cool medium that his campaign seemed to melt down right before our eyes.

Someone put his Monday night bombast to music and the cable channels and rightwing radio jocks are playing it over and over. Pundits and opponents hinted he came unhinged and is ”unfit for higher office.”

Even some faithful Democratic voters were shaken at the sight of a candidate sounding more like a pugilist than a President.

Horrified, the doctor’s gurus called in the cosmetic team who worked overnight on a full makeover: softer tones. More pastels. A touch more wonkery about healthcare. Dignity, Doctor, dignity on the media’s terms — even if to get it the other Dr. Dean, his wife, had to leave her examining room and patients to sit for an interview with Diane Sawyer.

The media want penitence, Doctor — penitence, served up with a dash of tact and deference — with cultural cool. I don’t know Howard Dean, have never met him. I don’t have a horse in this race. But I’ve been around long enough to know that on Monday night he did violate the 11th commandment of the medium-as-message: Thou shalt not be intemperate before a microphone. Unless, of course, you are intemperate on talk radio, or cable television, where fortune smiles on the bully and fame rewards excess.

A lot of people are gloating over Howard Dean’s foot-in-the-mouth disease. Among them, says Tina Brown in THE WASHINGTON POST, are establishment Democrats — the big-money guys — who are breathing easier now that Vermont’s Don Quixote has crashed his noble Rocinante into the windmill. With all that money raised from the internet rabble, with malcontents and idealists rallying to his side, with so much pent-up rage at a system that allows you to pick the public’s pockets as long as you do it with a smile and hurrah and good manners. Well, Howard Dean was just too unfashionably independent and unpredictable for comfort inside the Beltway.

The cameras caught him in flagrante politico, the unpardonable sin: daring to let go, losing it in the cause.

So the picture I’ll remember from the week is not of the candidate as raging bull, but this one: his subdued young followers, made suddenly aware of sudden death brought on by an overdose of spontaneity in an age where only the image counts.

mjh’s Blog: Think for Yourself

I’m so tired of the Media determining what is acceptable or not. Reporters have become critics….

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: Citizen Dean

There’s A Little Bit Of Dean in Me by Paul Vitello, Newsday.com

Dean has spoken for me. …

NOW with Bill Moyers. Transcript. January 23, 2004 | PBS

MOYERS: In his State of the Union address, President Bush gave us a preview of his re-election campaign. He got 29 standing ovations. But behind the scenes, some conservatives were grumbling about the soaring federal deficits and the President’s failure to confront them. …

MOYERS: After Barry Goldwater’s defeat in 1964 and the resignations of Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon in the 70’s, CPAC [the Conservative Political Action Conference] helped to resurrect the Republican party, with grassroots activism, determination, and Ronald Reagan.

The reward: control of the White House and Congress today.

But the conservative revolution is heading into middle age and new complexities. Traditional conservatives argue now over key questions.

For example: can Homeland Security and civil liberties coexist?

Former Republican congressman Bob Barr of Georgia is now working not just with the American Conservative Union, but also the American Civil Liberties Union.

BARR: The direction the party at the national level seems to be going in is to have more and more power to the government to find out more and more about individual law abiding citizens, less and less privacy. …

MOYERS: The big discussion at the conference this week, as it was across the Potomac River in Washington D.C., was about the growth of government spending.

Six conservative watchdog groups have joined to rebuke the administration, charging that Bush isn’t even doing as well as Bill Clinton, and isn’t close to living up to Ronald Reagan’s example. …

BARR: I do worry that at least on fiscal matters at the national level the party seems to be going in the direction of becoming a sort of Democrat-lite party in terms of federal spending. And I think that’s very dangerous for the long term strength of the Conservative movement and certainly for the Republican Party.

MOYERS: Richard Armey spent six years as the Republicans’ majority leader in the house.

ARMEY: Conservatives can get disillusioned, they can get disconcerted, and they can stay home. One hundred percent of the Democrat vote will be out for the presidential election. President Bush cannot afford to have any percentage of his vote stay home, and that’s where, if he loses the election, and I don’t think he will, it’ll be because some of his vote stays home. …

MOYERS: Joining me now to talk more about the conservative agenda is David Keene. He’s the chairman of the American Conservative Union, the largest grassroots conservative organization in the country.

MOYERS: One of your conservative colleagues, Stephen Moore of the Conservative Club for Growth, says that the Bush state of the union has become a state of dependency and a state of entitlement. And Paul Weyrich, another one of the founders with you of the Conservative Movement, says profligate spending by the Republicans in Congress is twice the rate under Bill Clinton.

KEENE: That’s not an opinion, Bill. That’s a fact.

MOYERS: That’s a fact.

KEENE: Non-defense discretionary spending under Clinton was going up at about 2 1/2 percent. And under Bush it’s been going up roughly twice that. And I think that the Republicans, unless they want to lose definition, the definition of their party and what they mean to the base out there that supports them in election after election, have to come to grips with the fact that they are letting that definition be eroded by acts that they would never contemplate were they looking at somebody else doing it. …

MOYERS: What, in essence, defines a conservative today?

KEENE: I think I’ll go back to what Mike Pence said in opening this conference this week. We talked about the conservative desire for a smaller and limited government. A government that doesn’t tax people to death, a government that doesn’t regulate them to death, a government that doesn’t spend money that doesn’t exist.

We talked about the fact that conservatives believe in a strong defense, believe in being able to defend our population and in traditional values that conservatives have historically stood for. And Mike put it very effectively. He said, “If you don’t believe in those things you can be our friend, you can be our ally. We’ll work with you. But you don’t have the right to stand up and call yourself a conservative.”

MOYERS: But, David, I have to come back to this. George W. Bush is spending non-existent money faster than anybody in modern times. He’s expanding the power of the state with not just homeland security and the war of terror abroad but with one extension of domestic agency after another. I mean, do you really consider him a core conservative?

KEENE: We consider Bush to be a conservative who’s allowed the ship to drift a little bit off-course. And we’re yelling to get it back on-course and I think we will. You know, the jury, in a sense, is out.