Sporadic updates

Due to lots of school stuff (and a little EV Nova), I've been away for a bit. I'll likely not post any more until after the Tiger release at 6 tonight. Meet me at the Bethesda Apple store if you want to revel in your own nerdiness (or just mine).

Pope, continued.

I heard just the last phrase from an NPR program as I woke up this morning.

"... there will never be another John Paul II. This is (reporter) from Managua."

The "Managua" makes me think it might've been a piece on Liberation Theology. I'm trying to find a transcript; anyone know where to look for recent NPR programming?

Ha.

Tom Delay, on activist judges:

One way would be for the House Judiciary Committee to investigate the clause in the Constitution that says "judges can serve as long as they serve with good behavior," he said. "We want to define what good behavior means. And that's where you have to start."

Ha. Ha. Ha.

on the Pope

I have to say I'm disappointed. I really expected a Latin American, not an old-school European who actively campaigned against the liberation theology that meant to such to so many there. I'm not sure where the church is headed under Benedict XVI, but it ain't social justice. The scorecard:

Anti Liberation Theology = Church support for dictatorships
Anti-condoms = Church apathy towards AIDS pandemic
Anti-homosexual, Anti-divorcee = Anti-compassion

Riveting

I don't think I've ever seen more exciting programming on C-SPAN; I'm watching the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's meeting on John Bolton's nomination to be US ambassador to the UN. It'll be broadcast again at 8 tonight on C-SPAN 2.

Some goodies:

"The position at the United Nations is not terribly important, I'll give you that. What Mr. Bolton did is." - Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT). Dodd questioned the wisdom of confirming Bolton, whose actions are likely largely to blame for the one-sidedness of US intelligence in justifying the war in Iraq, while at the same time working to rebuild US intelligence efforts and reestablish US credibility. Powerful.

Chairman. Lugar (R-IN), meanwhile, tried to cut off discussion half an hour into the meeting, claiming there'd been spirited debate. Sen Sarbanes (D-MD) shut this down, luckily.

"Every time Mr. Bolton tried to get someone fired, he was overruled." - Sen Biden (D-DE).

Regarding Bolton's lies about a subordinate having stolen government property, "Would you even hire a staff member who did that?"

... more awesomeness:

"I don't feel comfortable voting for Mr. Bolton" - Sen Voinovich (R-OH).

... the Washington Post has more.

A damned lie

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is set to engage in politics of the worst sort later this month. He'll be aligning himself with our version of the Taliban to claim that Democrats are using the filibuster to prevent people of faith from making it to the federal bench. The whole vile thing will be telecast from what the Times calls a "Kentucky megachurch." Check out the flier:



When a politician participates in such an event, they must take some responsibility for the views expressed. Frist's spokesman claims the Senator will be projecting a message like that which his speeches elsewhere have held, namely that the Democratic filibuster threat is unfair to Bush appointees. But by joining in this event, Frist most definitely endorses the extremist, vile rhetoric of its planners, one which seeks to divide our already strained nation. And it's clearly run by a bunch of self-interested liars - there's no way to honestly claim that Democrats are out to block Christians from anything. This is on par with the ridiculous "Kerry wants to ban the bible" filth spewed during the election.

What did we win when we got Trent Lott demoted? Frist seems like the same sort of bigot or panderer. Lets make sure that Delay's ouster actually means a change in who fills his shoes.

... AmericaBlog has a decent perspective, too.

Crappy HIV Testing

GW offered free HIV testing today.

The Student Global AIDS Campaign has been pushing for free or cheaper testing all year, since current costs for a full spectrum of STD tests runs upwards of $80. So what was the reaction from SGAC here on campus? Joy? Elation? Relief?

Well, we thought so. Then some of us tried to get tested. Oops!

Seems there were only 25 test kits available. I went around 12:30 and was the 40th student turned down for testing. The event was scheduled to run from 11 am to 3 pm, so I can only imagine how many more were left untested.

This is bad news for GW administrators, who've been relying on arguments of low demand and personal responsibility to justify not offering lower-priced testing at the student health center. Well, demand was high today.

Now, the claim made when I visited was that Washington Free Clinic was providing the tests, and their resources are better spent on folks who can't pay for testing, rather than rich college students. Hmm, aren't 80 percent of GW students on some form of financial aid? Aren't college students some of the most indebted people out there, especially as a percent of annual income? I don't know too many people who can shell out 80 bucks right now. I'll accept that the clinic has other priorities, though. Which is exactly why GW, whose priority is its students, needs to finance affordable testing.

Police State

Some of my friends spent this morning being interrogated in one of the House office buildings. They had challenged President Bush's badly skewed AIDS program, which ordinarily wouldn't be cause for detention. However, as they did so during a congressional hearing, specifically the testimony of Randall Tobias, there was, as should be expected, some to do. Read about the issue here.

What wasn't expected was the manner in which the protesters, my friends, were treated after their removal from the committee room. I'll grant you that proper governance likely demands some level of decorum in legislative proceedings, and that freedom to express one's self is with reason more limited in a congressional office building than it is immediately outside of it. What isn't right is that the group of dissenters, whose protest extended only to a verbal and visual disturbance, should be threatened with jail time and other heavy penalties.

I know people who've done identical protests before and have been escorted from the chamber long enough to stop the protest, then allowed to reenter on the condition that they sit quietly. Todays dissidents were taken to a separate room where a friend who'd accompanied them was not permitted to enter. Capitol police officers were not responsive to questions about their arrest status, and instead attempted to interrogate the non-involved friend.

This is the kind of behavior our bill of rights is meant to prevent. Law enforcement is meant to be a transparent process, one in which the accused know their status, and others are able to verify this status. Without transparency, we have no defense against totalitarianism.

I didn't know they could do that...

Congress is thinking about adding two months to daylight savings time, one on each end. For some reason it never occurred to me that it's Congress that tells me what time it is.

Anyway, we stand to conserve the equivalent energy of something like 10,000 barrels of oil per day during the extended daylight time. Now if we could only do something about the rest of the 20 million barrels we use each day...

Lobby Visits

As a closing activity of this weekend's FAIR conference, I went with some fellow activists to the Washington offices of Senators Specter and Clinton.

Both aids we met showed positive feelings towards increased AIDS funding, with Specter's aide specifically saying that his boss wants to push funding for the Global Fund beyond the $800 million provided for by the Durbin/Santorum amendment to the budget. He brought up Specter's push last year as evidence of his past action, but most significantly said this was going to be the Senator's future commitment as well. Charles is just an LC, but I left confident that Santorum's office will be the place to go for leadership on the Fund.

Clinton's aide walked in with a beaded AIDS ribbon pin much like the one I was wearing, which provided a significant amount of reassurance for me; we don't know where Clinton stands on a lot of foreign policy issues, but it's good to see that her aides are at least conscious of the issues at hand. And that AIDS activists are important enough to have a pin around to placate us. The meeting was depressing on the Global Fund side - Ann expressed skepticism of efforts to increase funding because of the harmful 1/3 limit of US funds as a share of global contributions, and practically laughed off efforts to change funding rules on other moneys. What was great, though, was when we got to CAFTA - she specifically credited AIDS activists with having contacted her on the issue.

Sadly, the Senator still has no position on the trade agreement. She'll likely come out better than Specter's weak "for free and fair trade," but it'd be nice if the democratic leadership would come out and say something. I can understand their reluctance, though, since NAFTA is so popular (cough, cough).

Flickr is back

After a nearly interminable wait, I have regained flickr-viewing abilities. For info, check here. For funny, here.

In retrospect, it was fun to be part of the whole ordeal, kind of a bonding experience with random flickr denizens akin to earlier iPhoto plugin issues. Still, I'm glad it's over.