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"Your Liberty is Our Interest"
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Jefferson Review |
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"Your Liberty is Our Interest" |
February 16, 2004 | |
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Reason's Weekly Dispatch February 10, 2004
1. Sunday Funnies 1. Sunday Funnies The Bush White House must have believed that Tim Russert would go easy on the wartime commander-in-chief. Trouble was, George Bush went on Meet the Press more as a political candidate than as chief executive. Plus, the Bush appearance was clearly intended to rebut claims being made by CIA director George Tenet concerning the agency's warnings about WMD imminence. Thus, Bush was emerging in campaign-salesman mode, red meat to any interviewer. The result was not pretty for Bush. He failed to shed any light on why America had to invade Iraq, aside from Bush's personal conviction that Saddam Hussein had been a threat. Bush also failed to parry Russert's thrust regarding his own military-service history. The White House seems genuinely surprised that at a time when National Guardsmen in the Mid-Atlantic and Pacific Northwest are mustering for unprecedented combat duty the president's own National Guard experience might interest to the public. Clearly, the intention was for Republican operatives to frame the issue as "beyond-the-pale," a matter that John Kerry won't dare raise, while at the same time claiming that all questions about Bush's service have been answered. That won't work quite yet. In foreign policy Bush's shaky performance also may have sent a very mixed signal to North Korea. Bush essentially told Russert that North Korea must be even more "transparent" than was Saddam with regard to its own WMD programs. The North Koreans may wonder how exactly they can do more than give UN inspectors run of their country to chase down every CIA-fingered hiding place in search of supposed WMD evidence. Does it mean that regime change is already rolling down the tracks? In short, the more Bush said, the less the world understood. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4179618/ 2. Tales of Cannibals Meanwhile, a previous U.S. attempt at nation building enters new crisis. Some of the same elements who brought President Aristide to power in Haiti now want him gone. They claim that like every other Haitian government before it, Aristide's has rewarded corrupt cronies and has grown brutal and repressive. Although facts are hard to come by, there are reports that an anti-Aristide group calling itself the Cannibal Army is in control of Gonaives, Haiti's fourth-largest city. Meanwhile, the Cannibal Army -- and just about all other opposition groups -- have been labeled remnants of the old right-wing death squads that kept the country in fear before Aristide assumed office. Conditions seem ripe for continued violence. Aristide is vowing to stay in office until his term ends in 2006, but that democratic detail is unacceptable to an opposition that wants him gone right away. The Bush administration would, of course, prefer for the whole thing to go away. But if the conflict jumps to Haitian immigrants in the vital swing-state of Florida, then ignoring Haiti might become very difficult. http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20040208T020000-0500_55466_OBS_THE_CANNIBAL_ARMY.asp 3. More Breast Fallout The most lasting result of the Janet Jackson boob-tubing might be public willies over devices that monitor their viewing habits. TiVo users received a rude shock when the firm was able to call up user-data screams to reveal the bodice-ripping stunt as the most watched moment in the digital video recorder's history. Good old analog, stand-alone VCRs never told anyone about such lecherous moments. There has already been some consumer movement away from TiVo's proprietary, subscription-based service (which requires a telephone line hook-up to retrieve programming data and send viewer preferences back upstream) toward DVRs that function more like old VCRs did. Pioneer offers both TiVo and non-TiVo DVRs, while the falling prices for recordable DVDs offer consumers another freestanding digital replacement for their analog VCRs. TiVo has never hidden the fact that it strips out "generic" viewer info as part of periodic random samplings of viewer habits. Such data mining is of great interest to both programmers and broadcasters, and TiVo is beginning to cash in on that interest. TiVo viewers can opt out of such surveys, but for a service that sells itself on plug-and-play-and-forget simplicity, it's doubtful that many users know much about doing that. http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-5154219.html 4. Quick Hits Quote of the Week "Principle is principle. When someone does something bad, it's bad.'' - - Theodore 'Lolo' Beaubrun Jr., the lead singer of Boukman Eksperyans, Haiti's Grammy-nominated roots music, group, on his opposition to the Aristide government. http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/7901737.htm
Baker's Secret The price of bread is allowed to increase in Israel after the Industry and Trade Ministry agrees that price controls on bread actually cost bakers money. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/391998.html Ritter Repeat Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter resurfaces to hurl a big I-told-you-so at David Kay and the Bush administration over WMDs. http://www.iht.com/articles/128261.html When Girls Are Outlawed, Only Criminals Will Have Girls A couple in Australian skirts the local law by traveling to Sydney to have in vitro fertilization treatments. The goal? Having a girl to go with their four boys. The couple's home state permits sex-selecting IVF treatments only if a gender-specific disease is in the mix. http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,8548985%255E24331,00.html Top of the Poppies Russia's defense minister claims that Afghan opium production is now nine times what it was under the Taliban. NATO and Great Britain are called on to do something about it. http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,1284,1143881,00.html 5. New at Reason Online Saddam's Last Secret 6. The Print Edition Get your personal copy of the latest issue of Reason's print edition each month -- before it hits the newsstands and before it's posted on the Web! Subscribe Today! 7. News and Events Buy Reason T-shirts and coffee mugs! Click here for the latest on media appearances by Reason writers. Want even more Reason? Sign up for Reason Alert to get regular news from Reason Magazine and Reason Public Policy Instiute, as well as advance notice about media appearances and events. We encourage you to forward Reason Express. If you received this issue from a forward, please subscribe. It's Free! ---
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