The Poster Police: a 19-year-old student activist is questioned by police and Secret Service for a poster in her home critical of Dubya’s Texas capital punishment record. Yes, rudely critical:

Brown got it at an “anti-inauguration” protest in Washington, D.C. Distributed to hundreds of activists, it depicts George W. Bush holding a length of rope against a backdrop of lynching victims, and reads: “We hang on your every word. George Bush: Wanted, 152 Dead”–a reference to the number of people executed by the state of Texas while Bush was governor.

It occurred to me to say that this story makes me want to go out and find an anti-Shrub poster to hang on my wall. Then it occurred to me that I’ve been at least as rude, if not as eloquent as the poster, about our risible President most days here in FmH, and in the public record no less. Should I expect my Secret Service visit soon? Would it help if I playfully suggested we could start referring to them by their initials, “S.S.”? I know you, or your ilk, are out there, with your Echelon and your Carnivore, trolling for verbiage like this…

Here’s a link to the National Lawyers’ Guild pamphlet Know Your Rights — what to do if agents come to question you.

[via Medley]

Jerry Westerby wrote me in response to my Safire query:

I can’t remember (and a cursory search of my files was fruitless) who first speculated this but the hypothesis goes that Safire is furious at Karl Rove et.al. for using him and his column to disseminate the “we had solid information that the White House was going to be attacked” lie that was used to justify W being sent to an underground bunker on 9-11. If you remember the lie, the person who called in the threat had knowledge of some kind of inter office codes that made the threat creditable. Safire then speculated in print that there must be a terrorist mole in the White House. Rove confirmed the story to Safire. When the story was exposed as a huge lie, Safire was apparently irate, not only at being lied to, but also for being used like some common reporter for disinfo, being made to look the fool for the mole nonsense, and being left out in the cold by his friends as if he had made it all up himself. This story is plausible, but then again Safire has always had a discernible if slight libertarian streak in him, so maybe his criticisms of the administration are nothing but sincere horror.

William Safire continues his broadside: Kangaroo Courts: “President Bush’s initiative to

create military tribunals turns

back the clock on all

advances in military justice,

through three wars, in the

past half-century.” NY Times [My cynical side, a.k.a. the iceberg beneath the tip, conjectures that there’s something beyond just journalistic integrity and the courage of convictions behind Safire’s public denunciation of an administration whose values would appear to be so close to his heart. If anyone knows, or can point to, more detailed analysis, I’d love to hear it. TIA. –FmH]

The Wrong Time to Fight Iraq: “The world would be a safer place with

Saddam Hussein’s cruel dictatorship

removed. At this point, however, there are no

good short-term options for getting rid of

him.” NY Times editorial

Eric Tilton writes (and permits me to reprint):

Seeing the PinealWeb logo on your blog was a strange experience. I’ve been a longtime reader of your (excellent) page, and I really enjoy the wide ranging list of thought-provoking links you provide. So, when I saw PinealWeb sitting there, I at first didn’t register it — I’ve grown so used to seeing the image at the bottom of my own page, I just filtered it out. You see, I created the image.

PinealWeb grew from a few colliding memes. Too much Illuminatus, for one thing. The foiled idealism of an early attempt at an HTML style guide (“can’t we all just write browser independent HTML?”), for another. It was hard to resist a little culture pranking when earnest and lazy web “designers” were busy optimizing for Netscape or IE and leaving those of us with weirder machines in the cold (Mosaic on BSD Mach in 1997 was a trip, let me tell you. Internet Explorer on a Mac in 2001 isn’t too much better).

I’m curious how you came across the image. I know it’s scattered here and there on people’s personal pages. I used to be a member of the Flat Earth Society mailing list, which was certainly one vector; I also still seem to get hits on an early, sketchy HTMLification of the Principia Discordia, which is doubtless another.

FDNY action figure sells

briskly as department

markets name and logo The Salem Evening News

Human embryo clone created — ‘ United States company says it has created a

human embryo clone … the

first time a research

institute with an

established track record

in the use of cloning

and other novel cell

technologies has come

forward with this sort of

announcement.

The company, Advanced Cell Technology

(ACT), is stressing that its aim is to use the

embryo as a source of stem cells – not to

create a human being.’ BBC

‘The structure will develop small, helicopter-like

accessories, which will fly down in autumn’.There’s no work of art as fascinating as a

tree. Independent UK