SF-180 update

Editor & Publisher covers the story of the still unreleased-to-the-public Kerry files:

The Boston Globe and The Los Angeles Times initially refused to confirm or deny that they had a copy, or had even seen a copy, of the Standard Form 180 (SF-180) by which Sen. John Kerry’s “complete” military records were released over the past several days. This threw serious doubt on whether either newspaper took sufficient reasonable care in evaluating the chain of transmission by which they received the Kerry documents.

In response to my story in the Chicago Sun-Times on Thursday, the Managing Editor of the Boston Globe, Mary Jane Wilkinson, has now told Sun-Times editors that the Globe does indeed have a copy of Kerry’s Standard Form 180 used in delivering the documents to the Globe. That is reassuring, but it remains to be seen whether the Globe will release copies of the SF-180 in their possession, and that is important.

According to MarkSullivan, a former Navy JAG officer who worked directly for the Secretary of the Navy, the SF-180 can release anything and everything and nothing much at all, depending on how it is executed. So it is incumbent upon anyone relying on statements, much less making them, concerning the production of documents to
examine its wording carefully. One must evaluate it the same way an attorney would examine a request for discovery document in a legal case to see if it is artfully worded in a way not easily apparent to a non-specialist that excludes vital material.

HT: Powerline.

7-11 to criminals: Please rob us!

7-11 is putting out a notice to criminals: "Please rob us! Our employees aren't allowed to stop you."

David Kopel:

In Feliciano v. 7-Eleven, a masked woman with a gun attempted to rob the 7-Eleven where Feliciano worked. While the robber was distracted by another employee, Feliciano grabbed her gun, and held her captive until the police arrived. "Following this incident, 7-Eleven terminated Feliciano, who was an at will employee, for
failure to comply with its company policy which prohibits employees from subduing or otherwise interfering with a store robbery."

The West Virginia Supreme Court ruled that employees can't be fired for defending themselves. But how stupid for 7-11 to have a public policy telling robbers they won't be stopped.

HT: Say Anything via Ace.

What's worse, the grades or the picture?

So what was John Kerry hiding all this time? Which would have been more damaging to the candidacy? His dumber-than-Bush grades at Yale, or this picture?

HT: Samizdata (via Alarming News), in an excellent post about the fact that Kerry apparently still has not released all of his records, and those he has released were released only to his friendly hometown paper. Neither Kerry nor the Globe will release even the partial records to the public.

Bush = Hitler, and other things you should know

OpinionJournal on the Party who cried Hitler:

Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League is outraged over a comment Rep. Charles Rangel made the other day, the New York Daily News's Lloyd Grove reports:

The Iraq war "is the biggest fraud ever committed on the people of this country. . . . This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed," the 74-year-old Harlem Democrat insisted during a Monday radio appearance on the WWRL-AM morning show with Steve Malzberg and Karen Hunter. "The whole world knew and they were quiet about it because it wasn't their ox being gored.

When interviewer Malzberg challenged Rangel's analogy, the congressman replied: "I am saying that people's silence when they know things terrible are happening is the same thing as the Holocaust." . . .

Foxman retorted: "It is so outrageous that I think he owes an apology not only to the families of the victims of the Shoah, but he also owes an apology to the soldiers who are fighting for freedom. . . ."

It's good that there are people like Foxman around who are paid to remind us that such comparisons are outrageous. For our part, we can barely muster the energy to roll our eyes. We have simply become desensitized to exorbitant liberal-left rhetoric. Bush = Hitler! Little Eichmanns! Guantanamo is a Gulag! By now what can one offer in response but a weary "whatever"?

This is a problem not only for those who resist the trivialization of evil but also for the liberal left itself. Shock can be a useful rhetorical device, but only if used sparingly--for the listener's capacity for shock quickly diminishes. That's why Republicans see Howard Dean as a laughingstock rather than a threat.

Kerry-bashing

It's still so fun!

Amnesty International goes off the deep end

There goes my respect for a once-noble organization. Amnesty International says that foreign governments have a legal obligation to capture and try President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzalez and others.

Foreign governments that are party to the Geneva Conventions and/or the Convention against Torture—and that is some 190 countries—and countries that have national legislation that authorizes prosecution—and that is at least 125 countries—have a legally binding obligation to exercise what is known as universal jurisdiction over people accused of grave breaches of the Conventions. Governments are required to investigate suspects and, if warranted, to prosecute them or to extradite them to a country that will. Crimes such as torture are so serious that they amount to an offense against all of humanity and require governments to investigate and prosecute people responsible for those crimes—no matter where the crime was committed.

Amnesty International’s list of those who may be considered high-level torture architects includes Donald Rumsfeld, who approved a December 2002 memorandum that permitted such unlawful interrogation techniques as stress positions, prolonged isolation, stripping, and the use of dogs at Guantanamo Bay; William Haynes, the Defense Department General Counsel who wrote that memo, and Douglas Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, who is cited in the memo as concurring with its recommendations.

Our list includes Major General Geoffrey Miller, Commander of the Joint Task Force Guantanamo, whose subordinates used some of the approved torture techniques and who was sent to Iraq where he recommended that prison guards “soften up” detainees for interrogations; former CIA Director George Tenet, whose agency kept so-called “ghost detainees” off registration logs and hidden during visits by the Red Cross and whose operatives reportedly used such techniques as water-boarding, feigning suffocation, stress positions, and incommunicado detention.

And it includes Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who called the Geneva Conventions “quaint” and “obsolete” in a January 2002 memo and who requested the memos that fueled the atrocities at Abu Ghraib; Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, former Commander of US Forces in Iraq, and Sanchez’ deputy, Major General Walter Wojdakowsi, who failed to ensure proper staff oversight of detention and interrogation operations at Abu Ghraib, according to the military’s Fay-Jones report, and Captain Carolyn Wood, who oversaw interrogation operations at Bagram Air Base and who permitted the use of dogs, stress positions and sensory deprivation.

While this is by no means an exhaustive list of those who deserve investigation, we would be remiss if we ignored President George W. Bush’s role in the scandal. After all, his Administration has repeatedly justified its detention and interrogation policies as legitimate under the President’s powers as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. And President Bush signed a February 2002 memo stating that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to Taliban or al Qaeda detainees and that their humane treatment should be contingent on “military necessity.” This set the stage for the tragic abuses of detainees.

What will happen to AI's funding, which comes largely from American donations?

Well, they'll still get donations from Al Gore.

HT: Lorie Byrd and Captain's Quarters.

How to make national health care affordable

Make the service so bad that anyone with the means will opt out for private care.

The two-tier system: it seems to work in Australia, Britain, and now Canada.

Come to think of it, we have a two-tier system in the U.S.: private insurance and Medicaid. The only difference is the gap in the middle: those not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid, but who can't afford or don't qualify for private insurance.

Obvious solution: take the Canadian route. Make Medicaid available to everyone, but make the service so bad that people will want to buy private insurance.