All I can say is I’ve added “create a fake website for use in a hostage rescue operation” to my list of life goals.

Their iReporter feature shouldn’t even exist. “Got a camera? Then send us your photos and we’ll show them to millions!” During any given news segment, the Youtube to professional cameraman ratio of video clips is somewhere around 90:1. Now they’ve reached the point where they find somebody’s Myspace page and use it to write an entire article.

Suddenly, apathy is quite appealing.

I hope I never do anything newsworthy. Just imagine the shitty article they could write about me just from using Shyzer. God help us.

[via ZeFrank]

Suddenly the thought of staying home and reading Reuters all day doesn’t sound half bad.

Of course, at first glance, one might cast Prager’s comments aside as the ramblings of some loony talk show host. Yet faster than you could call for a jihad, Prager suddenly found an ally in Congressman Virgil Goode, who penned a letter denouncing illegal immigration and stating “if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt (my) position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Quran.” Both fools men have now found even more supporters, some of which are calling for a new law requiring all officials to use the Holy Bible during their swearing in. Apparently those people hate that little annoyance known as Article VI of the Constitution.

Of course, Goode seems to ignore the fact that Ellison was born and raised in Detroit, a city that has always been right here in America, no matter how hard we wish the opposite. Yet what’s even more jarring is how so many people seem to be motivated by fear more than anything else these days.

You didn’t hear any uproar when Rep. Debbie Wasserman of Florida used a Hebrew Bible without the New Testament two years ago. Nor did anybody make a peep when a Catholic Missal was used when Lyndon B. Johnson assumed the Presidency. All was quiet when President John Quincy Adams used a legal book in honor of his background in law or when President Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover both swore upon no text at all. President Franklin Pierce went so far as to decline any sworn oath whatsoever and instead simply affirmed his oath and nobody batted an eyelash or gave it a second thought.

Yet when the nation’s first Muslim elected to Congress decides to use a Quran, the zealots on the religious right pull out the guns and start firing across the bow of USS Tolerance. In fact, seeing as how all members are sworn in earlier at a different session before pulling out the Bibles for a ceremony designed for maximum publicity, this debate is essentially moot. Yet people like Prager have for some reason adopted a stance of never letting an opportunity pass where they can remind Americans that we were attacked by Muslims on 9/11 and then scaring them into agreeing with whatever retarded goal they have.

We get it. A handful of Muslims attacked our nation over five years ago. That doesn’t mean we have to sink to their level and become just as close minded as those few individuals were. There’s a reason black people don’t hold every white person responsible for hate crimes committed by members of the KKK. It’s because they understand that just because a small group of idiots hate blacks, that doesn’t mean that all white men and women hate blacks as well! They are able to make what’s called an intelligent assumption – just because a small group of people looks or act a certain way, that does not mean the entire race or sect does so as well.

The day we let fear of the different and unknown rule our lives is the day we stop being American. In fact, we not only would sink beneath our own morals, but would sink beneath those who Prager and Goode are so deathly afraid of. Countries like Iran, who have some of the most narrow minded views on foreign policy in the world (ie, death to Israel!!) still allow Jews to serve in their government. Morris Motamed, a Jewish member, has served in the Iranian parliament for years without having to swear upon the Quran. In fact, when quized as to why this was allowed, Tehran University professor Hossein Bashiriyeh explained that “an oath taken with a holy book other than one’s own cannot be religiousl and morally ‘binding.’…in effect, it will amount to not taking an oath at all.” You know you’re in bad shape when officials in a country like Iran are making more than sense that your own.

One of the many lessons I’ve learned from studying history is that America’s strength has nothing to do with our (somewhat) Christian heritage, but in our respect for individual choice, freedom, and rule of law. People like Prager and Goode would benefit greatly from remembering that.

If you happen to live anywhere other than New York City or near any major media outlets, you might not have heard to story of Wesley Autrey. Earlier this week, a normal weekday morning in a NY subway station suddenly transformed into a scene rarely spotted outside of movies or mythical lores. Cameron Hollopeter, a student and total stranger to Autrey, began having a seizure before falling down onto the subway tracks, where a train quickly raced towards him with the full intention of occupying the same space as his flailing body. What happened next is something many say they would do, but few ever follow through with. Autrey, sizing up the situation, knew Hollopeter’s only chance at survival was to lie between the two rails, so he jumped down, pinned the young man beneath him, and comfortably lied as a NY city subway train screeched to a halt a full two inches above his head.

Autrey might not seem like your everyday hero. He certainly isn’t somebody who gives good interviews, as you can see for yourself in the David Letterman clip below, but that’s what makes his actions even better. This wasn’t a man out looking for fame and glory. He had no grand visions of accolades or rewards dancing through his mind that morning. He simply saw a man in trouble, knew he was the only person who could help, and acted.

Of course, since doing so, he’s not only been giving the highest award a citizen can earn from the city, but has received a free trip to Disney World, a $10,000 check from Donald Trump, a free lifetime subscription to Playboy (since his favorite Playboy hat was destroyed by the train), and a promise by the New York Film Academy (where Hollopeter is a student) of scholarships for his daughters when they’re older, among many other rewards. Let’s just hope he doesn’t end up like some of the other national hero sensations in recent memory.

The last thing we need to do is find yet another reason to discourage the average citizen from helping those in need.

Niyazov’s funeral, meanwhile, is scheduled for Sunday. A 10-kilometer (6-mile) corridor of mourning citizens will be created all the way from the Turkmenbashi Palace to the burial place in Niyazov’s home village of Kipchak.

If nothing else, that quote from CNN best sums up Niyazov’s reign. Rarely have you ever heard of a 6-mile corridor of mourning citizens having to be created in honor of a fallen leader.

I remember first reading about Saparmurat Niyazov a few years back. I had recently discovered the joys and wonders that are the CIA Factbook and I was spending a beautiful, gorgeous spring day deep underground, nerding it up amongst the stacks of history books and foreign language guides in the USC library. I was reading up on every country whose location on the globe I was oblivious to when I came to Turkmenistan. As I read, I came across this sentence: “[The] president [is] elected by popular vote for a five-year term; election last held 21 June 1992.”

Wait, what?

The last math class I may have taken was back in high school, but even I’m not that bad at math. At first, I just thought it was a typo, but I soon discovered it was anything but. In fact, it fit in perfectly with the other whirlwind of Crazy that Niyazov imposed on the Turkmen people.

• Slapping his face on every banknote in the country? Check.
• Erecting statues of himself and his mother that rotate to always face the sun? Check.
• Awarding himself the Hero of Turkmenistan award five times? Check.
• Banning news readers from wearing make-up since he had trouble telling male and female reporters apart? Check.
• Renaming a day of the week after himself and the month of April after his mother? Check & check.
• Outlawing gold tooth caps and gold teeth while suggesting that people instead check on bones to strengthen their teeth? A painful check.

Hell, renaming cities, airports, and schools after himself was a given. But what other dictator thinks of renaming a meteorite after themselves? Damn straight.

Niyazov might never have gotten the same press as Kim Jong-Il, Hugo Chavez, or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but he certainly was right up there with them on the Crazy Barometer. Leaders like Niyazov are a dieing breed, for better or worse. (I’m guessing better for the people they actually rule over, worse for entertainment value for people like me) I think that’s part of the fascination the Western world has with them. Gone are the days of leaders such as Stalin and Hitler ruling their countries with an iron fist while wrecking global stability at the same time. Sure, you’ll never find me arguing that this is a bad thing, but you’ll also never find me passionately debating the values and merits of the new Ukrainian parliament election results. Why? Because that’s boring as hell.

Instead, you’ll find my (happily) mourning over today’s eccentric leaders, whom are quietly, if not quickly enough, falling to free elections and democratic rule, which makes their rise, reign, and eventual fall fun as hell to watch. Well, as long as you’re safely tucked away in America or Europe. And assuming you are outside their grasp of power, I can’t stress enough how much you should follow along. When else are you going to read and learn of leaders who write the only legal textbooks used throughout a countries education system? Or of leaders who close all hospitals outside of a country’s capital on the grounds that “why should we waste good medical specialists on the villages when they should be working in the capital?”

With Niyazov’s passing, the list of such leaders shrunk by one.

Like I said, the days of world domination desires by rogue countries is over. Instead, current dictators look only to maintain control over their own country and to a lesser extent, their region; a lesson I hope most Americans learned with the Iraq War debacle. But that doesn’t mean the Crazies aren’t out there and if you take a few minutes to read up on them, I promise you’ll quickly become enamored with one, if for no other reason than to find humor in a dismal situation.

What the hell is wrong with you people? How is it that the Democratic challenger is only leading by 2,000 votes over an opponent who resigned from Congress a month ago for sending messages to underage boys about masturbation and being horny? Sometimes I don’t understand the American public.

EDIT 1: With reporting up to 75% of precincts, Foley has gone from trailing by 2,000 votes to leading by 900 votes. Way to go, Florida!

EDIT 2: So I just found out that Foley’s name simply couldn’t be taken off the ballot and that if he wins, some other guy will take his place. I still think it’s retarded to have Foley’s name on the ballot and “vote” for him, even if it’s just for his name in general. I liked this post a lot better when I thought the citizens of Florida were the morons instead of now where I now I’m the idiot.

This document I speak of contains 13,794 words and is over 20 pages long with only a few blank lines separating each new topic. Some are only short fragments that I don’t even understand anymore. Other times there are paragraphs or two where I started to write a post and then abruptly stop for one reason or another only to pick it back up at a later date. And finally, sometimes things get a little lost in the shuffle and are rendered obsolete after a few weeks due to their time sensitive nature

This is such a post, which was written sometime in early July:

Dear local and national news networks,

Stop giving us hourly updates on Barbaro. What with WWIII starting in Middle East’s Paris, Type O Dong missiles flying all over the world, and the Mariners still employing one of the worst managers in baseball, I don’t have time to listen about how doctors now feel that Barbaro’s state of mind is solid. It’s a horse. You have no idea what his state of mind is. For all you know, he could simply be sitting there thinking “Brrrrrrrrrr, I’m a horse who likes oats and apples!” It’s wonderful that somebody has the compassion and funds to pay for all these expensive medical costs to keep a horse alive, but that doesn’t mean you have to give us the horse’s condition on CNN, ESPN, and even my damn local news simply because an hour just passed and he didn’t die. So the next time I hear a story about this freaking horse, he better have either A) died B) won a race or C) found a cure to cancer.

Thank you for your time,

Goob

I’m also proud to announce the Grand Opening of the Learn To Cheat, the latest website to join the Shyzer Network. Well, I actually wrote that sentence about a week ago before I created Facebook Talk, so I guess Learn To Cheat now gets the honor of being the “website with the shortest lived latest addition to the Shyzer Network stamp.” LTC was something I threw together a while back and then never really worked on. But with the school year being young and fresh, I thought it’d be cool to get it up and running. It basically has ways to cheat in school, as well as a new segment about what NOT to do while cheating. (I hope that have that part up by this weekend). Some people have asked how I sleep at night knowing that I’m teaching kids to cheat in school and I respond that I hope teachers are reading this site as well. In fact, I tell fellow teachers about it every time I substitute and on teaching message boards. That way, it can go both ways. Sure, somebody may cheat using the knowledge I put on there, but then again, the teacher might have read the site too and can be on the lookout for methods they previously didn’t know existed.

The fun thing is that these both should hopefully be the first of a few websites launched in the near future. Add to that some of my travel plans and new life changes and this fall should certainly be an exciting time.

And while it’s sad news, I’m surprised it’s such big news.

I always thought people saw him more as a gimmick than anything else. A source of mild entertainment as they watched from the comfort of their home as he wrestled a croc or stabbed at a snake. As we saw him more on TV, we got used to seeing him around, but there really wasn’t anything beyond that. He simply was that crazy guy from Australia that we all liked listening to partially because of his cool accent and partially because he did things nobody else would do. His TV shows here in the states did moderately well in terms of ratings and his movie didn’t really set any records in terms of earnings. What I’m trying to say here is that while a celebrity, he was a D-list celebrity at best and somebody who you didn’t notice when you went a few months without seeing him on TV.

And yet I can remember when other, arguably “bigger” celebrities died recently and their deaths didn’t get near as much attention as Irwin’s has. I’m not saying it’s not sad he died, but I’m just left wondering how much of these condolences are real and how much are from the “ex-high school” crowd.

I guess I should explain the “ex-high school” crowd. One of my major pet peeves is when people display false emotion. I don’t care what emotion it is, I don’t care what the setting is, if the emotions you’re displaying aren’t real and are simply what you think they should be, then you’ve joined the crowd. In fact, there’s no group worse at this false emotion than all the people you used to go to high school with, which is where the name comes from. You know exactly who I’m talking about – say you’re in a bar and you spot somebody across the room who you went to high school with. As soon as they see you, they come running up and pretend y’all were best friends. They as how you’ve been and want to hear your whole life story just as long as you can fit it into 10 seconds. Then they cut you off, brag about their latest job or kid, and then make some over the top gesture about how you two need to get together and “catch” up sometime.

No, we don’t. We didn’t talk in high school. We don’t talk now. There’s a reason I didn’t hang out with you before and I bet it has something to do with your crappy personality that you so eloquently just put on display for everyone within earshot. Don’t patronize me with this false sense of past brotherhood, as if we were close only to have drifted apart over the years. That’s not how it was, trust me, I’m a history major. Sure, come on over and chat if you want, but don’t insult my memory or my intelligence.

Some people do this far too often in their lives and it only gets worse when they talk to you about somebody who isn’t around or who might even be dead. They conjure these memories out of thin air, lamenting over what they lost and how wonderful that person was. They pretend the person was a saint and that they could do nothing wrong and I just don’t understand how or why people do it. Speaking nothing but good and completely false things about a person after they’ve died helps not their memory or legacy, but instead tarnishes and insults it. Speak the truth, no matter how little the good was.

When I die, I want people to remember and speak of me as for who I really was; warts, faults, and everything else. Don’t make me out to be my generation’s Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr. I simply want to be remembered and credited with whatever I managed to accomplish, no matter how little or great. And I think other people deserve just the same treatment.

And thus, I hope that the “ex-high school” crowd didn’t highjack the Steve Irwin memorial today. That said, however, if all the condolences that people expressed were completely real and heartfelt, then so be it. You earned them, mate.

You can count the number of times I’ve agreed with President Bush on your right hand. In fact, my grandfather, who lost a few fingers in an old mill accident, can still count the times on his hand. And yet, for all those out there keeping count, it’s time to extend a finger. It’s no secret that President Bush’s approach to foreign policy is “kick ass and take names later.” And while that doesn’t work in most cases, it’s certainly a better approach than “kick ass against the wrong people and take names later,” which is exactly what Israel is doing. They’re causing a scene for no reason (I’m looking at the bigger picture here, not at the 2 kidnapped Israeli soldiers) and which in turn will only hurt their cause.

Lebanon is a pawn. It has been for decades now and any low-level State Department diplomat can tell you that. This is no secret. And yet the entire world seems to turn a blind eye and accept Israel turning Lebanon into a scapegoat and in exchange the world gets to sleep easier at night while Israel ignores Syria. Sure, it’s true that Hezbollah was formed and currently resides in Lebanon, but its true backing comes from Syria. Weapons, money, soldiers, you name it, Syria hooks them up with it. One could even argue the Lebanese government has little power over Hezbollah due to Hezbollah’s increasing political force, as well as their high level of local support since it was Hezbollah and not the government who was building schools, hospitals, and roads. All thanks to Syrian support and money. Although, it might be safe to bet that some of that support will erode in the near future since all those schools, hospitals, and roads are in flames now, but that’s beside the point.

The point is, as Israel bombs the hell out of Lebanon, they are only hurting themselves and the Lebanese people. Sure, they might slam a few Hezbollah buildings and headquarters, but this is just like fighting the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. You can’t eradicate them with long range missiles. Hell, we’ve been in Afghanistan for almost five years now and we still don’t have anywhere near complete control over the country.

You can’t wipe out a terror cell with bombs and missiles. You can’t even do it through unilateral occupation (hi there, Iraq!) You attack the center of the problem, Syria, and to make sure it doesn’t succumb to the same fate as Iraq, you get the rest of the world behind you and show the Syrian government that they are so outnumbered, they haven’t a chance.

If we take diplomacy off the table (which with President Bush is almost a given, at least with the old and true President Bush, the one we heard on the microphone talking to Blair), then the only way to do it is to get a global backing and wipe out the source.

And that’s what President Bush and Tony Blair suggested here. Blair takes the diplomatic route in saying that if the entire world united, they could pressure Israel to stop in a matter of minutes. And President Bush takes this conclusion a step further in the form of, if Israel truly meant to rid themselves of Hezbollah, they then use this global pressure and flip it into support for attacking the true root of the problem and hit Syria. Israel wins in destroying an enemy, Lebanon wins in no longer being bombed, and the world wins by removing one of the most dangerous nations from the oh-so-fun equation of “Oh God, Oh God, what crazy nation might kill us all?”

Israel has done a fantastic job of playing the Holier-than-thou maiden in distress role over the past 40 years, but that’s for another post. What’s clear now, though, is that A) Israel is helping nothing in the current situation and has other alternatives that if taken would produce a much better result, B) Syria is playing a wonderful game of poker, C) The rest of the world seems okay with the fact that Israel is beating Lebanon senselessly, and D) President Bush and I are in the same frame of mind.

I think I need a drink.

One day I might tell you about the time I became a Facebook God and had unlimited powers on the site, but that’s not what this post is about (Although I’m sure Fellner can tell you all about how depressed I was when I was suddenly stripped of my new found powers). No, this post is to share a little story about a group of kids one upping the local police.

Not every college is on Facebook, but all the important and big ones are. On most campuses, statistics place the Facebook saturation rate somewhere between 50-90% and recently, college officials have caught on to this. Since registration only requires a college e-mail address, they too can create accounts and make fake student pages with the real intention of spying on students. There have been a few reports of people being busted for drug and alcohol use thanks to pictures they’ve posted on their Facebook profile. A student at Fisher College in Boston was expelled last year for his online criticism of a campus security officer. Officials at the University of California Santa Barbara, said they would discipline students living on campus who posted information or photographs on their profiles that involved illegal activity like under-age drinking. At North Carolina State, RAs wrote up 15 students seen consuming alcohol in photos on Facebook. The list goes on and on.

And then there are the students at George Washington University who decided to fight back and launch a “Facebook Attack.”

It all started last year when a party was shut down by campus police. Students found it odd that the cops had known about it and then began to realize that the only place they’d heavily talked about it was on Facebook. So, a few months ago, they decided to strike back. They planned another party and talked about it only on Facebook, therefore ensuring that if the cops came this time, the students were being spied upon. They created a group, left tags on each other’s boards, and talked non-stop for weeks about how awesome their “Beer Bash” was going to be.

So imagine the look on the police officer’s faces when they burst through the doors only to find a group of kids standing around eating cake and cookies with the word “Beer” painted on them in icing. Luckily for you, though, you don’t have to imagine. Pictures of the party surfaced on the net soon after and I’ve stuck them in the newly reformatted (although not yet finished) Shyzer Gallery. Have a look here., so Google around for them. My absolute favorite is the last one, which contains the stunned look of one of the cops. I just wish I could have been there.

This whole topic raises an interesting issue, though. I used to tell Fellner I couldn’t wait until the Presidential elections of 2024 or beyond. I always thought it was interesting to imagine how sites like Myspace, Livejournal, and the such could come back and bite a politician in the ass. Bush and Kerry and Dean might be a little too old to have run a website while they were growing up, but my generation isn’t. When it comes time for my fellow peers to start running for office, people are going to dig up what they wrote in their blogs, what they posted on message boards, what they said in chat rooms. Everything, and I mean everything, put on the Internet is archived somewhere. Whether it be in Google’s cache or archive.org or a server’s backup in downtown Atlanta, chances are if you want to find an Angelfire site from 1999, you can, especially if you have the resources most powerful news agencies have. We make such a big fuss over what our politicians have maybe said in an interview or possibly said in a speech. Now think about having daily writings from an angst-ridden teenager who went on to clean up his act and run for political office. Imagine the worst thing you’ve ever typed and posted on the Internet. Now imagine seeing that run as a headline in the New York Times or USA Today. I’ve kissed any possible political career away with Shyzer, but that’s fine with me. For other people my age, they might not be ready to write off a certain career choice already and yet they might have already done so without even knowing it.

But Facebook is bringing this scenario to us in the present day, even if it’s only in a smaller scale. Reports are now surfacing that big-time companies and possible employers are getting into Facebook to check out prospective employees. Like I said, all it takes is a college e-mail and any bigwig in a Fortune 500 company surely can call up his alumni rep and get a college address to his old school. Ten minutes later, he’s pulling up Brad Johnson’s profile on Facebook and finding pictures of Johnson’s Johnson on there, right next to another one of him drunk and passed out in his dorm and reading about his “appreciation of the festive greens.” And just like that, there goes Bard’s chances of landing that internship.

On-line privacy debates are nothing new. From the recording industry suing Internet Providers for ISP records, to the Bush Administration’s attack on pornography, to employers being able to read their employees e-mails – It’s all ongoing. But the recent rash of Facebook incidents shine light on the new question involved. Where does the privacy line lie with minors and those releasing their pent up, youthful expressions and indiscretions?

Looks like we’re lumped together with the porn peddlers, the illegal downloaders, and those who are lazy on the job. Good company.

Now I just can’t wait for those 2024 Presidential Debates.

Seriously, the story is slightly stunning, slightly hilarious, and mainly downright retarded. I applaud his efforts and motivation, but damn kid, this is naivety taken to a whole new level. How can you expect to walk around Iraq without being able to speak a word of Arabic and survive? It seems like the only thing going for him was that he was rich, his dad had connections, and he looked as if he was a local. But Daddy’s friends can’t save you when you’re abducted from the street corner one evening.

But do you know the way I’m certain this kid is simply stupid and not naive? If he’d had any sense, he’d have started a blogger site and documented his journey. Imagine the publicity and traffic he could have gotten with that. Anyways, this is the last post of ’05, but expect some new stuff come tomorrow.

How does the name Joseph Ratzinger get changed into Pope Benedict XVI?! What kind of crap names does he have to chose from? Is there not any way we can get some new names added to the selection? Pope Goob VI would sound pretty cool if you ask me. Even Google is throwing me goose eggs on this subject. This is a thousand times worse than the old James to Jim switch that some people try to pull on us. IT’S NOT THE SAME NAME! That’s like me going from Ryan to Robert and then saying “eh, they start with the same letters. Close enough.”

Seriously, how do these types of questions go unasked and unanswered in the world?!

I should have taken the safe odds and placed a few bets on Ratzinger.

Seriously though, I was hoping to see a more moderately liberal Pope elected. Guess I’ll have to wait until next time. But it’s good to see a new Pope elected without much trouble. Hopefully he can be as strong a leader and moral force as Pope John Paul II was.

This story is simply heartbreaking. I’ve probably stared at the above photo for 20 minutes and tried to imagine what he must be running though his mind. One minute he’s going to buy ice cream for his little girls and the next, they’re all dead. How do you recover from that? How?

You may notice some weird stuff over on the left side of the page today/tomorrow. I’m working on finding one decent ad company as well as adding a few new subpages and a search function. All should be well by tomorrow night.

While you’re waiting for my new post, make sure you go read up on this. If I meet one more person who asks me what a “Tsunami” is or why the news keeps talking about all those “slant eyes” over there, I’m going to beat them with a blunt object for a minimum of four hours. You’ve been warned. With that said, I’ll leave you with this:

I hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into the catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world’s poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world’s richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That’s less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities.

I just wish Christopher Reeve could have lived to see the day as well…

And even though I agree with him wholeheartedly when it comes to stem cell research, I hope John Kerry doesn’t take Reeves’ death and use it as a playing chip in the days leading up to the election. Please, have some common decency and don’t make a political gain out of this…

The Chechen rebels fight the hardest of all fights – the one for freedom. There is no harder struggle then that for one’s independence. The context alone already puts you at a disadvantage since you are fighting a stronger, dominating, and possessive force. Otherwise, you’d already have your freedom. Screw a strong backbone – you’ve got to have balls of steel that would make William Wallace look like a pussy. When you say you’ll do something unless your demands are met, you must follow through with your threat. Nothing is more weakening to a cause than a hollowed threat that you’re too fearful of fulfilling.

And with that being said…..

When you turn to taking hostages, committing executions, and then pull innocent children into the mix, you’ve crossed the proverbial line. You’ve lost all credibility and forsaken your people to not only a much longer and harsher battle, but likely failure. You rile and ruffle the feathers of not only the entire nation you are fighting against, but those of the world as well. You’ve just handed the Russians a blank check and you’d damned well not act surprised when the whole weight of their military comes crashing down upon you. You think you have it bad with the few thousand Russian soldiers in your providence now? Just wait another week as President Putin responds to your craven, cowardly, despicable act.

If the terrorists who committed this act truly were Chechen rebels, then they have just set their cause for freedom back at least 20 years and sentenced thousands of their own people to death. What good they thought could have come from this, I have absolutely no idea.

And back to what I was talking about earlier with the Rainbow 6 idea. For those of you who haven’t read the book, the basic premise is that to help combat terrorists, especially those who would be considered “professionals”, the U.N. puts together a crack team comprised of the best of the best who basically train just for situations like the one in Russia. Therefore, when a situation arises in a country with a horribly trained military, like, say……oh…..Russia…..then these men are sent in to take over the military aspects of the operation. I could get a little more into the logistics of the process and how they would all be worked out, like the damage control on a country’s ego for basically saying their military sucks, but you get the overall point.

The Russian military and government has consistently botched one hostage crisis after another. Take for instance that standoff back in 2002 where rebels took over a theater. The Russian solution? Pump mysterious gas into the building three days later that not only kills all the captors, but hundreds of the hostages as well. The government didn’t help matters any by refusing to release the name of the gas, which limited doctor’s ability to treat those who lived since they had no idea what to treat them for!

I understand money is tight and their economy has never been strong since the collapse of the Union, but seriously, I find it tough to believe that this is the best they can do when it comes to special operation situations. I doubt you are in danger of being invaded anytime soon. Divert some of that basic military training money and invest a little in some spec. op. forces. Whether you want to face the grim truth or not, you are waging a Civil War and have been for over a decade now.

How many more innocent schoolchildren need to be shot in the back as they flee before you understand that?

Anyways, am I the only person who is in pure awe over this? I’ve reread the article over and over and am just amazed. This isn’t just front-page news material to me, this is run-out-in-the-streets-yelling-at-the-top-of-your-lungs-to-anybody-who-will-listen-to-you type news.

And finally, I really am worried. Worried about my future, my country’s futures, but most importantly, Shyzer’s future. You have no idea how many times in the past year I have held back from ranting about the current administration in the driver’s seat of our government. I refuse to let Shyzer slide down that slippery slope (say that 5 times fast) and become a site where all I do is bitch and moan about things. But I honestly wonder how long I’ll be able to silent myself if President Bush is reelected this November. I’ve considered opening up a Blogger.com account and just posting that type of material over there, which I might end up doing one of these days. But honestly, one site is enough for now.

Instead, I want to share with you a well-written piece from a Professor at Yale’s School of Law. It underlines one of the main problems with the Bush Administration that is hardly spoken about with much intelligence; their attempts and abilities to justify their misjudgments and downright blatant errors instead of admitting they erred and correcting the problem. In the past, when both Democrat and Republican Presidents made mistakes, they were at least alerted to the said mistakes since they had enough foresight to surround themselves with at least a few people who could sense the difference between right and wrong. Sometimes they were able to correct the mistakes and were reelected. Other times their attempts to correct the mistakes backfired and they were quickly voted out of office. Rarely did they outright say they were wrong, but there was always at least some indication through a “news leak” or some other method that they understood the problem, understood where the problem occurred, and understood that they needed to fix it.

Which is why I am worried. Instead of correcting their errors, the Bush Administration seems hell-bent on a mission and refuses to listen to any amount of reasoning. Ever since September 12th, they have used fear and terror to propagate their not-so-hidden agenda while at the same time literally lying straight to the public. They refuse to admit they have done anything wrong at all. Instead, they seem to almost find pleasure in putting on the blinders and just plowing through anybody who even remotely disagrees with them.

Which leads me to this article:

In the past few days there has been much discussion of the recently released secret Pentagon “torture memo”. The report argues that the President, under his powers as commander-in-chief, has the right to order torture of suspects regardless of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments, existing laws, and international agreements to the contrary. It also argues that people acting at the president’s request can escape prosecution for crimes on the grounds that they are only following orders.

There is a pretty serious problem with the arguments in the memo, given that the Article II, section 3 of the Constitution states that the Executive “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” That suggests that the Commander-in-Chief power described in Article II, section 2, clause 1, however, great it may be, cannot be exercised through violation of law.

In any case, I thought I’d offer some historical perspective on the controversy. To begin with, here, (reprinted from my constitutional law casebook), is Richard Nixon making arguments remarkably similar to those in the torture memo. These come from an interview with David Frost following his resignation as a result of the Watergate scandal:

Mr. David Frost: So what in a sense you’re saying is that there are certain situations . . . where the President can decide that it’s in the best interests of the nation or something, and do something illegal.
Mr. Nixon: Well, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.
Mr. Frost: By definition.
Mr. Nixon: Exactly. If the President, for example, approves something, approves an action because of national security, or, in this case, because of a threat to internal peace and order, of significant magnitude, then the President’s decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out to carry it out without violating a law. Otherwise they’re in an impossible position.

Nixon argued that the President is not above the law because the President determines what the law is, and subordinates who follow the President’s orders are thereby immunized. It follows that if the President determines that torture does not violate the law, it does not violate the law, and if he orders his subordinates to torture people, they are immunized from later prosecution.

Next, here’s Abraham Lincoln, who wrote the following in an 1863 letter to Ohio Democrats after they passed a resolution denouncing his policy of military arrests and suspension of habeas corpus:

You ask, in substance, whether I really claim that I may override all the guarantied rights of individuals, on the plea of conserving the public safety when I may choose to say the public safety requires it. This question, divested of the phraseology calculated to represent me as struggling for an arbitrary personal prerogative, is either simply a question who shall decide, or an affirmation that nobody shall decide, what the public safety does require, in cases of Rebellion or Invasion. The constitution contemplates the question as likely to occur for decision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it. By necessary implication, when Rebellion or Invasion comes, the decision is to be made, from time to time; and I think the man whom, for the time, the people have, under the constitution, made the commander-in-chief, of their Army and Navy, is the man who holds the power, and bears the responsibility of making it. If he uses the power justly, the same people will probably justify him; if he abuses it, he is in their hand, to be dealt with by all the modes they have reserved to themselves in the constitution.

Lincoln’s argument, although flawed in its interpretation of Article I, section 9, is far more subtle than Nixon’s. Lincoln does not assert that he automatically determines what the law is simply because he is President. Rather, he argues that the Constitution specifically contemplates that the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of emergency, but does not specify who must make that decision (he is wrong about that– my view is that under Article I, section 9, Congress must authorize the President; the President cannot do it alone). Someone has to make a decision in times of emergency about suspension of the writ, Lincoln argues, and therefore President is permitted to make a gamble: If he exercises his powers justly, he will be exonerated. If he abuses his powers, then he is subject to sanction, including not only being thrown out of office in a subsequent election, but also impeachment, and subsequently, indictment, and criminal prosecution.

Note that Lincoln is not saying, unlike Nixon, that the Commander-in-Chief power allows him to do anything, and that all of his actions are necessarily legal. Rather Lincoln is saying that Article I, section 9 gives him the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus and detain people indefinitely if he deems necessary, and that his decision will be subject to political oversight later on. In this passage, Lincoln does not say that he can overturn any existing laws (in another famous statement, he suggests he should be able to disregard a single law to preserve all the others). He does not say that he can violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments, laws specifically prohibiting torture, or the country’s treaty obligations, or commit what would otherwise be war crimes. He merely says that a particular clause of the Constitution allows detention of people in times of emergency, that in the absence of a clear statement as to who makes this decision, he has the right to make it, and that he will be held to account if he abuses his power. How much more so should he be held to account if he violates the Constitution or the law.

Moreover, Lincoln’s argument requires a certain degree of political transparency. It requires that the people be able to know whether the President has made a difficult decision in order to preserve the country. The problem with the present torture scandals is that, as far as we know, the Bush Administration never wished its policies regarding torture, or its actual practices of prisoner abuse, to see the light of day. Rather, it was merely luck that photographs of what went on at Abu Ghraib were released to the media, which then set the stage for further revelations. And unlike Lincoln, the Bush Administration does not believe that it can be held accountable for its actions if abuse is proved. Indeed, it continues to insist that it should be allowed to do what it wants, however it wants, without interference from Congress or anyone else.

The Bush Administration has been pursuing a logic very much like Nixon’s. The President, because he is Commander-in-Chief, does not violate the law if he thinks a particular action is necessary. Rather, he determines what the law is. This way of thinking twists the Rule of Law beyond recognition. It is a chilling reminder of what people seduced by power and convinced of their utter rectitude will do to justify their actions.

Just what I need. My phone reception and service already suck. Now I have to start worrying about some 15-year-old kid up in the German Alps growing bored and writting a little virus to show off his virus skills in front of all his little friends.

All I know is that I’ll still refuse to drop $80 on a Norton Anti-Virus product when I can just get it for free from Kazaa. It still amazes me how much money people spend on their computer when one decent porn video can get it all for free.

At least it’s a start.

Today Pat Tillman was killed in action while serving in Afghanistan. For those of you who know little or nothing about Tillman, he was an NFL star for the Arizona Cardinals for 4 years until 9-11. He then went and married his longtime girlfriend, enjoyed his honeymoon, and joined the Army Rangers. He walked away from the fame and fortune of a multi-million dollar contract to serve his country. His brother, who was a pitching prospect for the Cleveland Indians, also joined him and after months of training, they both became Army Rangers. Both refused to give ANY interviews or comments to the media since they felt what they were doing was no different then the other men and women who gave up their normal lives to join the military.

I first heard of his story last summer when the two won the ESPN Arthur Ashe award. They played a 10 minute clip or so on him and it was so moving, I stayed up until 3 in the morning just to watch it again, even though I had to be at work at 5 AM. Nothing I say right now can give justice to how I feel about Tillman…he inspired me to change my life, to do a few things I never would have done before, and to realize that you can go through life doing things your own way. Reading some of the stories and comments that people sent in only shows that I wasn’t the only person Tillman touched. There is a tribute to him on ESPN Classic tonight at 9:00. If you can’t watch it, I’d suggest you set your VCR to record it like I have. You won’t be dissapointed in the least.

I’ve never once cheered for ASU or the Arizona Cardinals. I’d never heard the name Pat Tillman until a year ago and I’ve only read about him from what I’ve been able to find on the Internet.

And yet today I feel as though I’ve lost a mentor and friend.

We need more Pat Tillmans in the world today. He is the true epitome of everything I try to be.