look at the bright side, indiana: at least you aren't kentucky

sure, mitch daniels might be massively unpopular. and yes, the one-two punch of president bush and governor daniels packs such a whallop that democrats are sure to make gains in this november's elections. but hey, at least mitch isn't ernie fletcher, governor of kentucky, who has just been indicted:

The special grand jury that’s been investigating state government hiring practices today indicted Gov. Ernie Fletcher on three misdemeanor charges of conspiracy, official misconduct and political discrimination.

The jury also indicted former transportation Cabinet official Sam Beverage with perjury, which is a felony. And the jury also submitted to Franklin Circuit Judge William Graham 14 more indictments that are under seal.

Those indictments cover crimes that may have occurred before Aug. 29, 2005 when Fletcher pardoned all administration officials except himself.

a sitting governor has been indicted. that's big stuff. amusingly, the slogan at the top of fletcher's website is "together, we can move kentucky forward." forward to where? why, forward past fletcher's scandals, of course.

fletcher's office has a statement on his website:

This has been a politically motivated, media-driven investigation from the start.

As Governor Fletcher has said repeatedly, his conscience is clear. He has done nothing wrong.

We are evaluating the charges and, likewise, we are studying our recourse of action in the wake of this malicious prosecution.

Because of the politicization of this entire investigation, we are filing a motion at this time to disqualify Greg Stumbo and his entire office from further participation in this matter.

if the governor did nothing wrong, why did he need to issue a blanket pardon to his administration? ¶

they know when you are sleeping. they know when you're awake.

the NSA is tapping your phone.

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

The NSA program reaches into homes and businesses across the nation by amassing information about the calls of ordinary Americans — most of whom aren't suspected of any crime. This program does not involve the NSA listening to or recording conversations. But the spy agency is using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity, sources said in separate interviews.

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

just how big does a database need to be to be the biggest in the world? that's bigger than google. in other words, it's a texas-sized database full of your phone records.

1. are you involved with al qaeda?
2. do you use telephone service from at&t, verizon, or bell south?

if you answered yes to either of these questions, a detailed list of every phone call you've made or received is on file with the government. your phones are being monitored for your safety. pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. (that man behind the curtain, general michael hayden, is the president's pick to succeed porter goss as head of the CIA.)

we were previously assured that only those who answered yes to #1 were being monitored. oops. i guess that was a lie. those three corporations gladly handed over all their customer records to the NSA, without a warrant, in controvention of federal law (FISA). their participation was entirely voluntary. but one company said no.

According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest's CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA's assertion that Qwest didn't need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers' information and how that information might be used.

Financial implications were also a concern, the sources said. Carriers that illegally divulge calling information can be subjected to heavy fines. The NSA was asking Qwest to turn over millions of records. The fines, in the aggregate, could have been substantial.

Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. "They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them," one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

if you are lucky enough to use phone service from qwest, you're safe from the prying eyes... assuming you never call anyone who uses at&t, verizon, or bell south.

Qwest's refusal to participate has left the NSA with a hole in its database. Based in Denver, Qwest provides local phone service to 14 million customers in 14 states in the West and Northwest. But AT&T and Verizon also provide some services — primarily long-distance and wireless — to people who live in Qwest's region. Therefore, they can provide the NSA with at least some access in that area.

despite repeated denials, we've suspected for a long time that this was happening. the EFF filed a class-action lawsuit accusing at&t of illegally collaborating with the NSA. a couple weeks ago, the bush administration desperately tried to get the case dismissed, claiming the states secret privelege. it's kind of a moot point now, but kudos to the EFF for once again drawing attention to an important issue before it's on most people's radars. and beaucoup kudos to qwest for refusing to participate in the NSA power grab.¶

if you live in terre haute, you have to look out your window

the other day, the daily show aired a segment mocking WTWO, terre haute's nbc affiliate. WTWO has been airing what can be only be called an "attack ad" against rival WTHI's weather team. the ad boasts that its weather team shares 45 years of collective experience, compared to a paltry 30 at WTHI, and suggests that the location of WTHI's antennas causes a "doppler dead zone", preventing WTHI from adequately predicting terre haute's weather.

the daily show segment turned a few hoosier heads and an article soon appeared in the terre haute tribune-star:

WTWO general manager Duane Lammers, who helped create the weather commercial, said The Daily Show "must have been pretty hard up for material ... I didn't quite understand the point."

the point was that jon stewart thinks you're a pompous ass.

Tuesday Lammers said the weather commercial was his work and that of is promotions director. He said it had gotten a lot of attention in the TV industry and that "people who work in our business think it's a great spot."

He insisted jabs at WTHI were "not personal — we don't say anything bad about anyone at WTHI. We pointed out technical flaws."

WTHI's chief meteorologist, Kevin Orpurt, does not concur.

On air with the weather at WTHI since 1984, Orpurt said the WTWO commercial "really kind of hurt my feelings because we pride ourselves here on giving the best coverage we can, and the implication was that we do not."

Known to come into the station and appear on air in the middle of the night during tornado watches and other severe weather events, Orpurt said WTWO's "implication that WTHI's coverage has a dead zone is simply not true."

"I guess it's funny if you watch [the Daily Show]," Lammers said, but he doesn't think Stewart's program is "particularly mainstream."

what does lammers, who is also the COO for nexstar, know about what's mainstream?

the tribune-star article got a response on tonight's daily show: host jon stewart started off the episode with a sarcastic apology, commenting "i did not realize that that part of indiana had the cable yet" and going on to call lammers and WTWO "pussies" for not airing the controversial nbc show the book of daniel back in january.

how's this for mainstream? lammers and WTWO made national headlines last winter for being the first station to announce that it would not air the book of daniel, a drama featuring aidan quinn as a pill-popping episcopalian minister who has regular discussions with an easygoing jesus. the show was eventually cancelled for low ratings, though this surely would have happened even faster if the actions of lammers and others hadn't attracted the show so much attention. i personally would never have heard of the show if not for squeamish affiliates like WTWO who refused to air it.

let's go again to the tribune-star, this time from january:

Insisting that it is not censorship because "anybody can get in their car and drive 20 miles to view this show if they want," WTWO general manager Duane Lammers made the decision earlier this week to "pre-empt" the series premiere. At the time he announced the move on the station’s Web site, Lammers had not seen "Daniel," which didn't matter because his decision wasn't about the content of the program, he said.

drive 20 miles and view it where? i'm sure the local bar would be willing to turn off the game when that episcopalian preacher show comes on.

In a midweek telephone interview, Lammers told me he was trying to make a point about the heavy hand of network regulatory practices, not become the poster boy for the American Family Association's ferocious nationwide campaign to keep the controversial new series about a troubled Episcopalian priest off the air.

"It's not about this program, it's about the system in general, the regulatory environment," Lammers said Wednesday. "I don't know why the American Family Association picked my name out of a hat ... They're misstating my reasons for doing this."

in lammers' original statement, he explained his brave stand against the regulatory environment thusly:

Our relationship with NBC has always provided for the right to reject programming. I am reaffirming that right to let them know I will not allow them to make unilateral decisions affecting our viewers.

Second, I want to draw attention to the worst offenders of indecency on television ... the cable industry, which faces no decency regulations, nor a license renewal.

If my action causes people in our community to pay more attention to what they watch on television, I have accomplished my mission.

so he wanted to protest the filth on cable by refusing to air a network show, which he hadn't seen? i'm not sure what he thought he was standing up for. but fortunately, he soon sat down, watched 20 whole minutes of daniel, and patted himself on the back for censoring it sight unseen:

"In the 20 minutes I watched I didn't see one redeeming quality at all."

Also the chief operating officer for WTWO's parent company, Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Lammers said he has watched a lot of television in his time, but never seen anything like "Daniel." One scene, he said, "was so bad, I can't even tell people about it — I don't talk that way."

apparently duane has never seen law & order: svu, which continues to air on WTWO and features gobs of rape, molest, and dead children. i like filth and mature themes as much as anyone, but let's be honest: if lammers has never seen anything like daniel, he hasn't been watching his own network.

terre haute has a bad enough reputation as it is, even among hoosiers, and duane lammers and WTWO sure aren't helping. ¶

i was just a boy when the infidels pwned my village

oh noes! islamists are taking over our video games!

The makers of combat video games have unwittingly become part of a global propaganda campaign by Islamic militants to exhort Muslim youths to take up arms against the United States, officials said on Thursday.

Tech-savvy militants from al Qaeda and other groups have modified video war games so that U.S. troops play the role of bad guys in running gunfights against heavily armed Islamic radical heroes, Defense Department official and contractors told Congress.

One of the latest video games modified by militants is the popular "Battlefield 2" from leading video game publisher, Electronic Arts Inc of Redwood City, California.

Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts, said enthusiasts often write software modifications, known as "mods," to video games.

"Millions of people create mods on games around the world," he said. "We have absolutely no control over them. It's like drawing a mustache on a picture."

"Battlefield 2" ordinarily shows U.S. troops engaging forces from China or a united Middle East coalition. But in a modified video trailer posted on Islamic Web sites and shown to lawmakers, the game depicts a man in Arab headdress carrying an automatic weapon into combat with U.S. invaders.

"I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters," a narrator's voice said as the screen flashed between images of street-level gunfights, explosions and helicopter assaults.

first they hijack planes; now they hijack games! what kind of world do we live in where someone would create military training video games?

there's only one problem. that video, the one that was supposedly made by a jihadist, was made by a typical american gamer, simply to show up his 1337 bf2 skills.

oh, and another thing: that quote about the infidels invading a village? it's actually the voice of south park's trey parker from his puppet movie team america: secret police (and is even on the imdb quotes page).

oh yeah, and that stuff about how terrorists are modding the game... well, game modding is cool and all, but that video didn't require any mods. it uses the special forces expansion pack (created by EA, the game manufacturer) right out of the box.

oh, and one more thing. (how many things is that, four?) just in case you didn't click the link above, the US army has a free online first-person-shooter game to get kids snazzed about going overseas and shooting some brown people. if it's good enough for the goose...

so basically, just about nothing in the story is true. the story, which has been spreading through the media since thursday, is about a "global propaganda campaign by islamic militants" but the reality is it's just a bunch of kids playing shoot-em-up.

so what is the most absurd aspect of this story? is it that dan devlin, a DoD public diplomacy specialist, showed a gamer's fan-video to a congressional subcommittee claiming it was al qaeda propaganda?

is it that reuters' david morgan wrote and filed this story, clearly without doing any more research than calling someone at EA for a statement? (if he'd spent a few minutes on google, morgan could've discovered the truth behind the video and had a much better scoop: dan devlin is full of crap.)

for that matter, is it that EA's jeff brown had the opportunity to debunk the whole story but instead offered that silly duchampian quote about "drawing a mustache on a picture"? (in fairness, brown surely doesn't lurk on forumplanet and might not have seen the video before morgan called him, but he could have said "terrorists are modding our games for a global propaganda campaign? that's news to me; let me look into it and i'll get back to you.")

personally, my vote for the most embarrassingly ridiculous thing about this story is that wired news even bought into it, and to date hasn't posted a correction. i can accept that dozens of clueless media outlets worldwide eagerly ran the story, including the presitgious washington post. the media loves this kind of fact-free alarmist claptrap. but wired really should know better. and even accepting that wired bought into the hype and ran it, the gamer community has been laughing its ass off about this since at least friday. that's more than enough time to post a correction: sorry, we got pwned.¶

the flogger hits the web

i hadn't expected to use this flogger photoshop again (especially only a few days after i made it), but i had to use it one last time to commemorate greg "the flogger" walker getting a new website!

advance indiana and tdw both have posts noting the appearance of theflogger.com, a new website mocking state senate candidate walker. you might recall that walker defeated long-standing senate pro tem bob garton in last week's republican primary, in part buoyed by support from fundamentalist christians and pro-lifers.

the site only has one page to date, but it does feature this quote from a letter to the editor walker wrote to the columbus republic back in 2003:

Flogging would have a high deterrent factor, be inexpensive, would not keep the perpetrator from working to support himself and any dependents, could be administered swiftly, and most importantly, would alter behavior. If properly, publicly administered, the corporal punishment would steer the offending citizen to chose constructive recreational alternatives to drug abuse.

"recreational alternatives to drug abuse"? you mean, like, bondage or sadomasochism?

[warning: site contains gratuitous midi of devo's "whip it"] ¶

goss is gone

cia director porter goss suddenly and unexpectedly resigned today. could it be because of the investigations into watergate 2: electric boogaloo, the scandal surrounding felonious congressman duke cunningham and his lobbyist buddy wilkes? last week, goss denied ever attending one of wilkes' famous baccanals, with poker in the front and hookers in the rear. was that a lie? does goss have some other connection to this exploding story?

the current rumor is that goss was asked to resign because of issues involving kyle "dusty" foggo, who is an old buddy of wilkes who attended numerous poker parties, and whom goss plucked from obscurity to appoint as executive director.

tpm muckraker has been all over this scandal all week, and is full of the latest updates on this and other scandalous stories.¶

the adventures of the disenfranchised

the mighty captain election, in his alter ego of mild-mannered secretary of state todd rokita, has been boldly proclaiming his defeat of chicken little since tuesday afternoon. but we all knew that great supervillains, like superheroes, never truly die—their smoldering bodies disappear from the crime scene and they reappear soon enough to menace the world again, maybe with a new body or an improved battle suit.

so it goes in the hero biz. just when you think you've vanquished the enemy, you realize something bigger is going on. and so it has been in the captain's battle to defend the voter id law, as stories of voter disenfranchisement have finally hit the indiana media. tdw points us to this one:

One aspect of Tuesday's primary election troubles DeKalb County Clerk Jackie Rowan.

Her voice trembled as she described having to turn away a handful of veterans who tried to use their Veterans Administration medical cards as the required photo identification.

Rowan said the veterans became upset, refusing to cast provisional ballots, when she explained to them they could not use identification that did not have an expiration date or a stamp indicating that it never expired.

"(It was) bad," she said. "They all accused us of not wanting them to vote.

"I feel their pain. They served in the service for us, and they worked hard and paid taxes."

these veterans had a perfectly good state-issued photo id that enabled them to get along in life just fine, thank you very much. but because their ids didn't follow the unusual requirements of the voter id law—and because they aren't julia carson and weren't surrounded by tv cameras when they voted—they were turned away.

voter id defenders and apologists will eagerly point out that such voters are allowed to fill out provisional ballots. but they are not so eager to mention that, in order to get your provisional ballot counted, you must appear in person at your county clerk's office within 10 days with an id that's valid under the law. if you're working a day shift, it's hard enough to get to the dmv to get an id in the first place; locating your county clerk's office and making it there during office hours would surely be an even bigger challenge for most voters.

but that's just a few veterans, right? and i've heard that the VA will start issuing new ids with expiration dates, so problem solved, eh? the city of townsville has been saved, yeah?

so it would have seemed, but now the big reveal... chicken little has been reborn as howard dean! dean is (or was) in town, helping the indiana democratic party file an appeal to the voter id law. how will our hero defend the law?

Dean, in his second trip to Indianapolis in recent weeks, and Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker said Tuesday's primary election showed some Hoosiers were denied the right to vote. A hotline set up by the national party received a few hundred complaints, with more still coming in.

Dean cited some of the complaints the party has received about the law, which requires a government-issued photo ID with an expiration date. One was a newlywed in Marion County who was turned away because her photo ID showed her maiden name.

Another, he said, was a Vanderburgh County woman who went to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to get the required government-issued ID. She was turned away, and lost the right to vote, because her voter registration card, Social Security card and medical card weren't enough proof of identity, and she didn't have her birth certificate.

our hero valiantly struggled to parry dean's blow, but fumbled:

Rokita said the biggest problem in Tuesday's primary election came not from the new photo ID law, but from the fact that many polling places had been changed in order to make them accessible to the physically disabled.

Democrats in Congress insisted on those changes, which Rokita said "caused more disenfranchisement than anything else. . . . Yet you don't hear them complaining about that."

speaking of valiant struggles, i had a devil of a time figuring out what rokita was talking about here. making polling places handicap-accessible caused disenfranchisement? maybe something was lost in translation from the original kryptonian. rokita seemed to be admitting to a significant amount of disenfranchisment—if democrats have received "a few hundred" complaints then surely he must be talking about dozens or hundreds of people himself—that nobody was complaining about. surely he couldn't mean the disabled, who were probably miffed that they once again could not vote without assistance, but that's hardly the fault of democrats or congress that marion county and others were forced to violate federal law because the touch-screen voting machines wouldn't work. blame for that would seem to fall on the vendor, ES&S, and maybe on some state/county officials. and at least now the disabled can get inside the building.

finally i discovered this muncie star-press piece, confirming the only interpretation that made sense: some polling places had been relocated to newer handicap-accessible facilities, and confused voters got lost.

maybe our humble secretary thought this would be a devastating blow to his opponent, but even now that i know what he's talking about, i'm still not sure. so some polling places had to be moved because of the help america vote act. how many people got lost because of this? how many of them didn't vote? how much did the state do to inform these viewers that their polling places had moved? sure, there was the website where you could look up your polling place. i even checked that website, and it listed my correct polling place, though in 2004 it was wrong so i could only assume that i would be voting in the same place i had last time. if i had shown up and the polls had vanished, i don't know what i would've done.

i'm sure captain secretary rokita meant "oh yeah, well democrats caused more disenfranchisement than we did!" but couldn't you also say that this was yet another thing the state (and the counties) bungled, by failing to adequately inform voters that their polling sites had changed?

and this was just a low-turnout primary. the real test is yet to come. can our hero protect the national election in november?¶

star-spangled bending

scroll down for mp3s!

first off, can someone explain what's so offensive about the national anthem being translated into spanish? don't we want more people singing the anthem, rather than fewer? doesn't translating american documents like the anthem—or the constitution, or the bill of rights—actually help to "spread democracy" as they say? isn't it a good thing?

some republicans, including the president, have been frothing over a new recording of the anthem in spanish. never mind that the anthem had already been translated into spanish as early as 1919, or that the US state dept actually has four translations posted on its website.

the whole thing is silly, and in protest bloggers have been doing things like posting the pledge of allegiance in spanish. but i want to talk about this boingboing post by xeni jardin titled American national anthem "sung" in more code-forms . here's how it starts:

In response to panicked partisan panty-bunching caused by Spanish remakes of The Star Spangled Banner, we pointed this week to a Morse Code MP3 and a binary expression of the American national anthem.

BoingBoing reader Remy Porter kindly translated that binary code into this sound file (157K MP3 Link). It's an unsigned 8-bit PCM rendition at a 2400Hz sample rate. If it sounds like monotone noise, well, that's 'cause it is. Remy explains:

Generally binary data ends up coming out like that. For a fun experiment, grab a JPG and a linux box and type:

cat /path/to/jpg > /dev/sound

- being far more random, those have much more noise; bleeps and bloops across a wide range. ASCII text- which I assume this was encoded from- has a much smaller randomness- a VERY small randomness, and it ends up sounding about the same.

now, i love this idea. converting the national anthem to an mp3 by interpreting the ascii data as sound... why, that's databending! however, the actual mp3 is a bit boring. it's just a few seconds of tone. i'm not sure how he created it; i'm guessing he created an ascii text file of the lyrics in binary and ran it through a cat command like the one he describes.

unfortunately, remy's comments about "randomness" are a bit imprecise. maybe he just didn't have time to fully explain. but randomness is about the last thing you want, because when you're talking about an audio signal, randomness translates into noise. and by noise, i don't mean "bleeps and bloops" but white noise or pink noise. i love noise (some would call me a noise artist), but in this circumstance, it's probably not what you're looking for.

if you sonify and listen to a lot of jpegs, a few blips and bleeps aside, you'll start to notice that most of them sound pretty much the same, and what they sound like is static. this is because of the file compression inherent in the jpeg format. compressed or encrypted data "looks" almost completely random, and when it is sonified you typically end up with pure noise, the aural equivalent of snow on your tv screen. occasionally you'll get a good one, but most jpegs are pretty dull-sounding.

if you're sonifying data in this fashion (i like to use the term databending), and you're looking for interesting sounds, what you really want is patterns, not randomness. data that's full of patterns will give you all kinds of bleeps, swooshes, and tones you're never heard before. data that's truly random will result in static. (in files like jpegs, the most sonically interesting part of the file is often the header and/or footer, the part that is not compressed.)

in fairness to remy, he is on the right track about why the sonified ascii file isn't all that interesting. the limitations of the ascii set mean that ascii data has a limited range of values, so the range of possible sounds is much smaller than with binary data. (this is particularly true if your text is simply a string of 0s and 1s, as remy's aparently was.) this is a big part of why binary data tends to sound more interesting than ascii data: you do want a wide variety of values in your data; you just don't want it to be truly random. the other reason is that text documents tend to be so damn short! sometimes you just need more data.

if you're sonifying data in this way—using the method remy describes in unix/linux or by opening files in a wav editor in windows (tip: set your "file type" to either "all files" or "raw")—the files that will sound the most interesting will generally be unencrypted, uncompressed binary formats. i've had lots of success with uncompressed image formats (BMP, TIF, and PSD) and executable binaries. just make sure you don't accidentally make a change to an executable and then save over it... the program will be ruined.

in keeping up with the theme, and hopefully to demonstrate what i'm talking about, i found a colorful website and took a screenshot of it. (i like this page in part because it mentions that the anthem is sung to the tune of to anacreon in heaven.) i saved this screenshot in three different formats—JPG, BMP, and PSD—then i opened up all three in sound forge (mono, 8-bit, 22,050Hz) and converted the waveforms to mp3s.

mp3s begin here

anthem-jpg.mp3: the screenshot as a JPG converted to MP3. the first two seconds or so are interesting; that's the header and the start of the image data. the remaining 13-14 seconds are little more than white noise. this is pretty typical-sounding for a JPG.

anthem-psd.mp3: the screenshot as a photoshop file converted to MP3. uncompressed, so this is much longer, about 1:34. low grumbling sounds, static washes, and occasional onslaughts of clicking. i've heard much cooler-sounding PSDs, but this one's not too boring.

anthem-bmp.mp3: the screenshot as a BMP converted to MP3. at almost 3 minutes long, this one could almost fit on an industrial record. highly rhythmic and relatively listenable.

anthem-bmp-44100.mp3: the BMP again, this time converted at 44,100Hz. it sounded interesting at 22,050, but the tempo seemed off so i tried listening to it again at 44,100, 11,025, and 8,000. i thought 44,100Hz was possiblythe most interesting of the three.

anthem-bmp-8000.mp3: again, this time at 8,000Hz. what the hell, i'll put this one up, too. converting at the low rate of 8,000Hz stretches the BMP out to more than 8 mins long, so this file is bigger (7.5MB). it still sounds very crunchy, but at this tempo is pretty danceable.¶

tahoe ads deleted

remember the chevy tahoe ad contest, where users were invited to create their own tahoe ads but mischievious users started making subversive ads instead?

now that the contest is over, chevy has silently deleted the whole site. chevyapprentice.com now redirects to chevrolet.com/tahoe and all the video links result in an error.

of course, we all knew they wouldn't stay up forever, though i'm a bit surprised they came down after less than a month. i guess they were eager to delete all that unflattering content. at least some of the videos got posted to sites like youtube before the deletion. (mine were not, so unless one of you has my ads saved to your hard drive, they're gone forever. oh well. it was fun while it lasted.)¶

may 6 is free comic book day

that's right, may 6 is free comic book day. yes, it's a shameless ploy by comics companies to draw in new readers. but hey, free comics! how cool is that?

it's easy. just stop by your local comic shop on saturday (if you don't know where one is, there's a handy locator on the website) and take your pick of any one of these comics for free! (descriptions here and here)

yes, it's just that simple. it's looks like there's some good stuff available, so if you enjoy comics (and i know many of you do), take a few minutes saturday to support your local comic shop, and i know they'd appreciate it if you buy some stuff while you're there, too.¶

flogging to victory in the primaries

after all yesterday's primary-blogging, i'm almost obligated to comment on the results. blogger has been experiencing an error this afternoon or i would've posted earlier, but that did give me some time to play around with photoshop. (if you don't get the joke, just hold on a sec...)

the biggest upset in yesterday's primary was the bob garton, who has been president pro tempore of the indiana senate for 26 years (and has been in office 36 years), has been unseated. now some might rejoice at the downfall of any prominent republican, but garton was relatively moderate, which is partly how he got deposed. the pro-life crowd has been crowing for garton's head they blame him for the failure of legislation that would have defined life as beginning at conception and forced doctors to inform patients that fetuses can feel pain (which isn't exactly true). though this wasn't his only problem.

garton was defeated by greg walker, who home-schools his children, hates abortion, and loves public flogging. (be sure to read llamajockey's comment for links to further reading about the christian flogging movement.)

in my district, julia carson easily destroyed kris kiser and her other no-name opponents, getting something like 80% of the vote. in november, she will face off against car salesman eric dickerson. dickerson's primary win is another embarrassment for the local GOP, which had its money on dickerson's opponent, ron franklin. that choice was always puzzling, considering franklin has a bit of a reputation: in 2001, franklin pled guilty to firing a handgun at a truck full of people. before that, he managed to get acquitted of drug charges on two different occasions, both times claiming the drugs in his car were not his (perhaps they belonged to his weed carriers?). and just a couple weeks ago he got in hot water over questionable comments about gays and people with disabilities.

beyond that, there were some republican upsets but not many democratic upsets. overall, democrats fared well. in three US congressional districts currently represented by republicans, democrat voters handily outnumbered republican voters, which suggests that these republican incumbents will have quite a challenge holding on to their seats come november. and in the 6th district, progressive barry welsh, who has been blogging on dailykos won his primary and will face off against mike pence.

secretary of state todd captain election" rokita and others have been boasting about the relatively low number of voting irregularities in this election. according to them, the fact that the election didn't totally fall to pieces proves that the system isn't messed up. while it's true that the number of reported regularities seems to be low, we must keep in mind that this was only a primary election with a small turnout. this was nothing more than a pilot test. the first real test of the system will come in november.

see masson's blog and advance indiana and of course news sources like the indy star and other local papers for more coverage.¶

it's captain election!

indy star political columnist matt tully has a blog, possibly the best of the star blogs (and easily the best of the star's political blogs).

today he's been live-blogging the primaries, with updates every couple hours about election glitches and other developments, like the poll worker whose car was stolen this morning with ballots and election materials inside.

at 2:56, tully posted this update, titled "Captain Election!":

Nothing is generating more punchlines today than word that Secretary of State Todd Rokita has a state helicopter on standby, ready to fly around the state in case of election problems.

This news has conjured up images of Rokita as Captain Election, steering his helicopter around Indiana, clad in a superhero's outfit and saving voters from ballot problems.

Forget those images.

Rokita's spokesman said the helicopter would more likely be used by technicians racing to out-of-the-way counties in need of assistance. The spokesman said it is unlikely Rokita would actually join the technicians on a trip. But, he added, the helicopter is a sign that Rokita is thinking "outside the box."

Of course he is. Most superheroes do.

i'd been thinking of posting something snarky about the rokita-copter, but i really don't have anything new to say, so instead i have photoshopped this image. it's a little sloppy and arguably not very inspired, but i was bored, so here it is. enjoy.¶

reports from the future

what is up with this indy star article, titled "Voters are few and so are problems"?

first up, take a look at the dateline: 12:00 AM May 3, 2006. if you don't see anything unusual about that, check the date at the bottom of this post. according to the dateline, the star article hasn't even been filed yet, and won't be for another 9 hours. that's impressive.

if that isn't weird enough, check out this passage (emphasis mine):

Secretary of State Todd Rokita, inspecting a voting station that included six precincts at the Indianapolis Children's Museum, this morning predicted a statewide voter turnout of between 20 and 25 percent.

The Marion County turnout may be even lower -- between 12 and 15 percent of registered voters, County Clerk Doris Anne Sadler predicted.
That would be consistent with turnouts in non-presidential election years. The rainy weather also may be dampening turnout.

As of 11 p.m., only about 100 people had voted in the museum's six precincts combined.

11pm? i thought polls closed at 6pm! (this is probably a typo and should've said 11am, but the two glitches together make for an amusing coincidence.)

since the star is apparently filing articles from the TARDIS, you would hope they would go ahead and tell us who wins, but no dice. i guess we'll have to wait for that news.

the article also includes this anecdote:

Rep. Julia Carson, D-Ind., caused a momentary problem when she showed her congressional ID to precinct workers. The ID does not have an expiration date as required by the new state law. A Republican poll inspector declared it a valid ID and Carson cast her ballot.

it's nice that the poll worker decided not to disenfranchise julia carson. even though her congressional id is technically not legal according to the voter id law, the last thing todd rokita needs is a bunch of news stories about our congressional representative being forced to use a provisional ballot.

update: the story has been updated, and the dateline changed. but that bit about only 100 people voting by 11pm is still there.¶

primary day

if you live in indiana, are registered to vote, and haven't done so already, you still have a few hours to get to the polls and vote. so do it.

don't know where your polling place is? here's a website where you can find it. (in 2004, when i used this site, it actually gave me the wrong polling place, but this year it lists the correct place.)

i must confess that while i've voted in a number of november elections, this was the first time i've voted in the primary. it was pretty uneventful, though filling in all those ovals while using a super-wobbly privacy booth was pretty tricky, and i had to remind my precinct worker to check my id.¶

book packaging

this will probably be my last post relating to kaavya viswanathan, but i wanted to briefly touch on book packaging.

in my previous post on the topic, i mentioned that viswanathan's book had been "shaped" by a book packaging company called 17th street productions. at some point, 17th street was bought out by a company called alloy entertainment (a subdivision of alloy marketing). this acquisition actually happened years ago, but the 17th street name has still been in use. though curiously, i can't seem to get the 17th street website to work; i could swear that it worked last week when the plagiarism allegations first broke. the alloy site still works, though.

the revelation that viswanathan's book contained some 40-odd plagiarized passages has shone a spotlight on 17th street/alloy, which have operated in relative obscurity despite being involved in a number of hit teen books and upcoming movies (including one the already-released sisterhood of the traveling pants movie). i'm not the only one who was curious about 17th street/alloy's role in viswanathan's book and whether it had a hand in the plagiarism. (at the very least, alloy, being the ones who edited the book, are the ones who should have caught the plagiarism before the book went to print.)

tom tomorrow looked into book packaging and found this primer on the subject, which is a bit dated (it refers to IDG, now known as wilye, and macmillan, which has been pearson education for 6-7 years now). still, it's a good read if you're not familiar with the concept:

Book packagers (also known as book producers) act as liaisons between publishing houses and everyone who works to put together a book--authors, artists, editors, photographers, researchers, indexers, and sometimes even printers. Publishing houses often don't have enough in-house resources to handle all of the books they want to publish, so they out-source certain projects to third parties. In addition to assembling the other components necessary for a finished book, these packagers are responsible for hiring authors to write manuscripts.

Sometimes, packagers pitch their own ideas to publishers, and other times, the publishers hire packagers to develop projects they've originated. Packagers function as an interesting conglomerate of agent, editor, and publisher. They are an integral part of the publishing industry, yet even major book distributors aren't aware that the books they carry were created by companies other than the publishing houses.

There are two main reasons for a publishing house to hire a packager: labor-intensive books, and series books.

Anything other than a standard, text-only book by a single author qualifies as a "labor-intensive book." Books that are highly illustrated or contain lots of photographs, require several authors, or utilize special gimmicks and merchandise (for example, a gardening book that includes packets of seeds as a "bonus," or a book about tarot card reading that includes a deck of cards and silk cloth) fall into this category. Commonly, these include coffee table books, textbooks, reference books, and children's books, though packaged books can really run the gamut. They cover every genre and book style.

Packagers are also known for producing series books. Quite often, a successful series will become a "fill-in-the-blanks" exercise, wherein talented writers and artists can easily continue the series. In these cases, publishing houses may develop an outline, then pass it over to a packager to bring it to completed project. The packager then sends the outline to a commissioned author. Once complete, the packager delivers the final product to the publisher in print-ready condition. Occasionally, they even handle the printing.

in my 8 years at pearson education, we definitely worked with book packagers for some smaller series, though obviously i didn't work on those books (because the packagers were doing the editing). but most of our books were done in-house. still, i'm very familiar with this kind of workflow, because in the non-fiction realm is the norm rather than the exception (at least in the technical, reference, and lifestyle markets; there are extremely few authors in these markets who can sell books on namepower alone). we did the work in-house most of the time, and our authors got their names on their books, but otherwise, the workflow was much the same:

development and acquisitions editors research the market to determine subjects and market segments that are (theoretically) being under-served. the acquisitions editor locates author(s)—very often more than one—who hopefully have the expertise and writing skills for the job. the author and development editor devise with an outline and the book is proposed to the editorial board for approval. if it's approved, the book is written and goes through a series of editing passes, including a technical edit, development (what we would call "shaping"), copy edit, and so forth before the book is eventually laid out and published. of course, a lot of other stuff is also going on: marketing, cover design, and all kinds of decisions about print run, page count, number of colors, and so on... and that's just for a series book: for a one-off, you also need to come up with a design and make decisions about paper stock, cover special effects, and so on.

the advantage of using a book packager is that the packager does most of this stuff for you. this helps the publishing houses cut costs (and payrolls) while maintaining a high title count (number of new titles published per year). title count is fundamental to publishing's bottom line because so many books fail that you need to publish a lot to ensure that enough will succeed. the disadvantage, besides a lack of oversight as demonstrated in the viswanathan case, is that the pacakging house owns half the copyright to the packaged books. that can mean a lot of money if the book is a bestseller.

bloggers aren't the only ones who've been asking questions about 17th street productions and alloy entertainment. jon liu, in an article in last week's harvard independent has some interesting quotes from lizzie skurnick, "a former editor at GLC, a 17th Street subsidiary":

For her part, Skurnick thinks that the realities of the market, but not any malicious plagiarism on Viswanathan's part, may account for the similarities with Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. "They seem like very brief and stupid phrases to copy," Skurnick said after reading the passages in question. "I'm sure the same phrases are in like 20 teen novels... I think in the case of teen fiction, obviously there are stock characters, there's a stock plot often, there’s sort of these stock areas — the boy, the body, the family, the friend."

Skurnick continues, "The impulse at a place like the 17th Street is to have a house voice. There are just reams and reams of stuff that's written... It's unavoidable that certain phrases will be recycled or said in a certain way... Often what you'll find is that, it's not that anyone is copying, it's just that [these phrases] are the first things a mediocre writer would reach for."

But was Viswanathan the mediocre writer doing the reaching, or were the stock phrases in question implanted, consciously or otherwise, by the professional packagers at 17th Street? Skurnick — who admits to knowing little about the specifics of the case — could not say. She did insist, however, that Viswanathan's borrowings, if they were hers, would have been almost impossible for editors to catch: "It sounds like the market is geared to a certain type of book, and [17th Street] just worked on that with her, and some stuff slipped though — God knows why... But I have to say, [as a] teen editor, you just see the same shit over and over again."

i don't buy the idea that all the similarities to mccafferty's books were just coincidence, but the whole "inside 17th street" section of the article is worth a read.

a couple days later, the nytimes reported a very interesting coincidence:

The relationships between Alloy and the publishers are so intertwined that the same editor, Claudia Gabel, is thanked on the acknowledgments pages of both Ms. McCafferty's books and Ms. Viswanathan's "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life." Ms. Gabel had been an editorial assistant at Crown Publishing Group, then moved to Alloy, where she helped develop the idea for Ms. Viswanathan's book. She has recently become an editor at Knopf Delacorte Dell Young Readers Group, a sister imprint to Crown.

Ms. Gabel did not return calls for comment. But Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for Random House, the publishing company that owns Crown, said Ms. Gabel, who worked at Alloy from the spring of 2003 until last November, had left the company "before the editorial work was completed" on Ms. Viswanathan's book.

"Claudia told us she did not touch a single line of Kaavya's writing at any point in any drafts," said Mr. Applebaum, who added that Ms. Gabel was one of several people who worked on the project in its conceptual stage.

of course, it's possible that gabel lied about the extent of her involvement with opal, but more likely it's yet another omen of what you could call the increasing network-ization of the literary world. as sara nelson said in publisher's weekly:

Enter book packagers, who traditionally respond to a perceived market opportunity by researching, commissioning and producing books for publishers. Our bookstores are filled with decorating and entertaining titles, film and TV tie-ins, many of which are sumptuously produced, well marketed and perfectly fine this way. But in recent years—and this is what is disturbing—the kinds of books packagers do has widened. As is now generally known, a packager called Alloy Entertainment not only shares the copyright with Viswanathan on Opal, but has had a serious hand in the making of some of the most successful YA books around. The packaging of Opal has caused a particular stir because it has been published, despite its young themes, as a novel for adults. Such "real" novels we consider to be personal works of art, or entertainment, anyway, not something produced by a committee awash in demographics.

Okay, call me naïve. Before the withdrawal, one longtime book packager told me she thought packaging of "crossover" books was just beginning. But, she said, it's not so much about subjugating good old-fashioned publishing to a marketing survey, but about the fact—maybe you've heard this one already?—that most in-house editors "don't have the time" to put blue pencil to paper on all the manuscripts they buy; they're way too busy lunching and acquiring and managing up.

We've known for years that publishers, probably including Little, Brown, have long employed freelance editors and "book doctors," of which packagers are just an institutional version. But Little, Brown has to resort to this? Realizing that a major house is willing to pay major money for a book that executives knew was going to require major work smacks of something majorly disturbing. It suggests that even the most well-bred publishing houses are not as desperate to find promising writers and great novels as they are to find attractive authors (preferably with interesting backstories) with whom they can match up test-marketed, packaged stories. And then they can take all the credit.

Or blame, as the case may be.

as i know all too well, having been laid off a couple months ago, after living through several other layoffs, including a significant purge of in-house editing staff back in 2000, the publishing industry has been increasingly moving toward a business model centered around freelancers and outsourcing. i hadn't realized that book packaging was quite so prominent in the world of fiction, but i can't say i'm shocked by it. this doesn't have to mean that quality will go down (though it often does), but it does mean that the job market for full-time editors has shrunk to near-microscopic proportions.¶

worst election ever?

the good news about this week's indiana primary election is that the state has certified microvote macines! that means counties will not have to break state law by having voters use uncertified machines, nor will poll workers have to hand-count thousands of paper ballots (at least, we hope not). however, as doug notes, it sounds like the equipment was certified because it would've been awkward not to, not because the software was actually ready. here's how mary beth schneider explained it in the indy star:

Commission member Tom John stressed that the commission did not certify the equipment to help MicroVote.

The action was taken, he said, "for the sake of hundreds of thousands of voters who otherwise would have voted on pieces of paper" and would have had to wait weeks while the ballots were counted to learn the results.

that's all well and good, but there's only one good reason to certify the machines: if the machines work, they should be certified. if they don't, they shouldn't. maybe john thought that was implied in his statement, but it wasn't.

however, just because one issue seems to be resolved doesn't mean other problems aren't cropping up. the latest foul-up involves school board elections (again) in pike township, where voters are supposed to vote for three candidates but the ballot instructions say they should vote for four. oops. poll workers will put up signs telling people to only vote for three board members, and hope to configure voting machines to sound an alarm if people vote for too many candidates. matt tully has a column in today's star mocking the story. as tully says:

This one should have been caught. Election officials "proofread" and signed off on the ballot before it was sent out, and so did Pike Township Schools Superintendent Nathaniel Jones.

With the foul-up, there is now talk of post-election legal challenges. All because people couldn't count to three. People including the superintendent of schools. Is it any wonder Johnny can't count?

no wonder the job market for editing is so tough: everybody seems to think they can do it themselves. then we end up with ballots with the wrong candidates listed or other blatant errors like this. but enough about my job-hunting troubles; we're talking about the elections here.

marion county clerk doris anne sadler, who has overseen two or three screwed-up elections now and is tiring of it, will be looking for a new job, too:

5. You've said you're not running again for clerk. Are you getting out of politics to find saner work? And how much does the clerk's job pay?

Yes. At least for now. I love doing this job, despite everything and as crazy as that sounds. I love doing public service. At some point, if the offer was right, I might come back into politics. But for a while, I would like to get out in the real world and make some money. The clerk gets $78,000.

how my heart breaks thinking of sadler trying to scrape by on that meager $78k salary. let's hope she finds a job in the real world and starts making some money soon.¶

kiser vs. bilerico

yesterday, marla stevens wrote a post on bilerico called "Kiser revisited or Here's a real "Word" for the wise..."

what did it say? i don't know; it's been deleted:

Editor's Note: This post has been removed under threat of litigation by the Kiser campaign. We're a small independent blog that doesn't even sell ad space. We have no means to fight the litigation. While we're big believers in the right to free speech and the author has credible sources, until those sources will go on the record officially, this post has been removed.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

-Bil Browning

note that one of her older posts is still there, so either that one wasn't as objectionable to kiser, or kiser didn't realize/remember it was still there.

i tried finding a copy of this post in the google cache, but it's not there. i guess it was deleted early enough to be kept out of the index.

update: steph has a rundown of the whole story here, along with a copy of the deleted bilerico post, which she pulled from the RSS feed.

2nd update: bilerico editors jerame davis and bil browning discuss their meeting with the kiser campaign and decision to delete the post. advance indiana details some of the kiser campaign's financial troubles.¶

watergate 2: electric boogaloo?

since the media likes to add the suffix "-gate" to the name of any scandal, what do we do now that there's a new scandal involving the watergate hotel?

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether two contractors implicated in the bribery of former Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham supplied him with prostitutes and free use of a limousine and hotel suites, pursuing evidence that could broaden their long-running inquiry.

Besides scrutinizing the prostitution scheme for evidence that might implicate contractor Brent Wilkes, investigators are focusing on whether any other members of Congress, or their staffs, may also have used the same free services, though it isn't clear whether investigators have turned up anything to implicate others.

In recent weeks, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have fanned out across Washington, interviewing women from escort services, potential witnesses and others who may have been involved in the arrangement. In an interview, the assistant general manager of the Watergate Hotel confirmed that federal investigators had requested, and been given, records relating to the investigation and rooms in the hotel. But he declined to disclose what the records show. A spokeswoman for Starwood Inc., Westin's parent company, said she wasn't immediately able to get information on whether the Westin Grand had been contacted by investigators.

Mr. Cunningham, a Republican from San Diego, was sentenced March 3 to more than eight years in federal prison after he admitted taking $2.4 million in bribes. The bribes were taken in exchange for helping executives obtain large contracts with the Defense Department and other federal agencies. Mr. Cunningham, who resigned from Congress in November, pleaded guilty to two criminal counts, one of tax evasion and one of conspiracy.

i first posted about deposed rep. cunningham back in july when his bribery scandals were first coming out. since then, he's been convicted and gone to prison, but the story keeps on giving.

it's hardly surprising that someone as notoriously crooked as the duke would want to dally with a prostitute now and again. but a congressional prostitution ring that involved some half a dozen congressmen and lasted for 15 years?

there are also rumors that CIA director porter goss was involved, and that he might have met his new third in command, who nobody had heard of before goss appointed him, at duke's hooker parties.

and what about the limousines? ken silverstein at harper's makes some interesting revelations:

It gets even more interesting: the man who has been identified as the CEO of Shirlington has a 62-page rap sheet (I recently obtained a copy) that runs from at least 1979 through 1989 and lists charges of petit larceny, robbery, receiving stolen goods, assault, and more. Curiously—or perhaps not so curiously given the company's connections—Shirlington Limousine is also a Department of Homeland Security contractor; according to the Washington Post, last fall it won a $21.2 million contract for shuttle services and transportation support. (I tried to contact Shirlington but was unable to get past their answering service.)

the CEO in question is a man named christopher baker, who is not only the CEO, but was apparently a personal chauffer:

Two of Wilkes' former business associates say they were present on several occasions when Shirlington Limousine & Transportation Service of northern Virginia brought prostitutes to the suite. They say they did not see lawmakers in the suites on those occasions, though both had heard rumors of congressmen bringing women to the rooms.

Shirlington's attorney, Bobby S. Stafford, confirmed in a letter that from the company's founding in 1990 through the early 2000s, Shirlington President Christopher Baker "provided limousine services for Mr. Wilkes for whatever entertainment he had in the Watergate."

Stafford's letter stated that Baker was "never in attendance in any party where any women were being used for prostitution purposes."

note that the phrasing: "never in attendance in any party" means that black could have driven and/or slept with any number of female prostitutes, but he didn't attend the parties. (maybe he wasn't invited?) and what about this phrase: "women... being used for prostitution purposes"? what about men being used for such purposes? digby reminds us of an old story suggesting that cunningham, who is publicly very anti-gay, "has admitted to romantic, loving relationships with men." so what gender were the prostitutes? i imagine at least some, probably most of them were female. but were there any males in the mix? this scandal will be that much bigger if the public finds out there were, since the republican base tends to be disgusted by such things. (the poor man hopes one of the prostitutes was jeff gannon.)¶

how opal mehta got cancelled

kaavya viswanathan's career, soaring high just a few days ago, is in freefall. it might not be ruined forever, but it is severely damaged for the time being. her first novel, which apparently plagiarized from megan mccafferty, is being pulled from the shelves:

Just weeks after her book was released with a first printing of 100,000 and a wave of favorable attention, publisher Little, Brown and Company announced Thursday that it would be pulled from store shelves and that retailers had been asked to return unsold copies, CBS News correspondent Bianca Solorzano reports.

Viswanathan, 19, has apologized repeatedly to author Megan McCafferty, saying she had read McCafferty's books voraciously in high school and unintentionally mimicked them.

Similarities to McCafferty's books, which include "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings," were first spotted by readers. They alerted McCafferty, who then notified her publisher. Crown alleges that at least 40 passages "contain identical language and/or common scene or dialogue structure."

Little, Brown has said the book will be revised as quickly as possible, but in its statement made no reference to a new edition. In its statement, Little, Brown did not say how many passages would be changed.

Viswanathan's misdeeds could be blamed on inexperience, or her involvement with a book packager, 17th Street Productions, which helped her shape the story.

i had wondered about the involvement of 17th street productions, which is some kind of youth marketing firm that was brought in to mold the book into something they thought would be more marketable. viswanathan could have pulled a domenech and blamed 17th street for the plagiarized text making it into her novel, but she did the mature thing and admitted culpability. of course, she said it was all subconscious, which sounds rather like a cop-out, but it is possible that she had simply read the books so many times that she didn't realize all those words were coming from her memory rather than her muse.

also atrios points out an aspect of the story i hadn't picked up on. viswanathan got her publishing deal because she showed her novel-in-progress to her college counselor, who happened to have contacts in publishing. i had assumed that this was simply her high school guidance counselor, and thought it unusual but believable that this counselor happened to know important publishing people. but that's not quite what happened:

Her parents were not immune to the competitive pressure, however. Because they had never applied to an American educational institution, they hired Katherine Cohen, founder of IvyWise, a private counseling service, and author of "Rock Hard Apps: How to Write the Killer College Application." At the time IvyWise charged $10,000 to $20,000 for two years of college- preparation services, spread over a student's junior and senior years.

But they did have limits. "I don't think she did our platinum package, which is now over $30,000," Cohen said of Viswanathan.

so a rich girl's family buys around $20,000 in college counseling and gets a $500,000 book deal. sounds like a good investment. it must be nice to be rich and have these kinds of opportunities handed to you.¶

the year of the plagiarist

2006 could shape up to be a scandalous year in the writing field. the year began with the dual revelations that oprah-acclaimed author james frey's so-called memoirs were in fact a failed novel and that hot novelist jt leroy doesn't exist at all. (these stories, primarily frey's, were parodied in this week's otherwise-forgettable episode of south park.)

then there was last month's embarrassment at the washington post, when the post hired a new conservative blogger named ben domenech. liberal bloggers, who already felt that conservatives far outbalanced liberals at the post blog, started digging into domenech's past writing and immediately turned up evidence that he was a plagiarist. domenech confessed and resigned, and the post's red america blog was dead within four days of its birth.

now there's a new scandal brewing around hot young indian-american author kaavya viswanthan. viswanthan is a freshman at harvard, who started writing her just-published novel how opal mehta got kissed, got wild, and got a life while still in high school. thanks in part to her massive $500,000 book deal, viswanath has been generating a lot of buzz, especially among the indian-american community.

with her book just out and attracting attention (like this fluffy profile that appeared in yesterday's indy star), this should have been a happy time for viswanthan. but then the harvard crimson, viswanthan's school paper, published that how opal mehta got kissed contains a number of passages that are strikingly similar to passages from two novels by megan mccafferty. the crimson also published examples of these similarities, giving nine examples of material similar to mccafferty's first novel and four examples from mccafferty's second novel.

taken together, these examples are convincing. the first is definitely the strongest:

From page 6 of McCafferty’s first novel: "Sabrina was the brainy Angel. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: Pretty or smart. Guess which one I got. You’ll see where it's gotten me."

From page 39 of Viswanathan's novel: "Moneypenny was the brainy female character. Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: smart or pretty. I had long resigned myself to category one, and as long as it got me to Harvard, I was happy. Except, it hadn't gotten me to Harvard. Clearly, it was time to switch to category two."

both contain the exact same string: "Yet another example of how every girl had to be one or the other: Pretty or smart." of course, one or two examples could be a fluke, as the more banal a sentence, the more likely that someone else already wrote it. but 13 examples, several sharing very specific images or turns of a phrase? that's a clear indication of a pattern of literary dishonesty.

i suspect that viswanath's rising star will fall fast with these revelations.¶

a yacht rock moment

virago & i were driving around the other day listening to the radio when virago flipped to a station playing warren g and nate dogg's "regulate". i'm not sure what station it was: WZPL maybe? really it's irrelevant; it was some pop station, and definitely wasn't jack—it was a station that has actual djs (presumably local).

i've always found warren g to be one of the most unintentionally ironic artists of the '90s: warren epitomizes the '90s trend (arguably started by his cousin dr. dre) of talking about how tough and badass you are on top of the softest backing music possible. as such i've never been able to take him seriously. but this time we cranked it up and rocked out, largely because the song had been featured not too long ago on yacht rock.

yacht rock is a wonderful webshow that centers around the untrue adventures of michael mcdonald and kenny loggins and their friends & rivals as they wrote and recorded the "smooth music" of the '70s and '80s. episode 7 revolves around how warren g and nate dogg's #1 hip-hop single "regulate" samples from mcdonald's "i keep forgettin'", so we were pleased at the chance to listen to the song again, with a new perspective. i commented to virago that i was amused by all the lyrics about forming a new "g funk era" considering where the music had been sampled from.

mere seconds after i made this comment, the dj cut in. apparently someone had called in saying she couldn't listen to "regulate" without thinking about michael mcdonald. she never used the words "yacht rock" and as far as i know she'd never seen the show, but here she was on the radio talking about sampling michael mcdonald. the dj seemed surprised by the revelation, saying he'd never thought of it before. (and in fairness, i'm not sure i'd ever thought of it before yacht rock.) then the dj started playing "i keep forgettin'" for comparison, and i'll be damned if he didn't let the whole song play out afterward.

it was a surreal moment of synchronicity where subversive internet entertainment jibed with corporate pop radio. i'd like to think koko's ghost was smiling on us at that moment.¶

catch and release, or should i be a thief or an immigrant?

the indy star has more on the undocumented immigrants who were arrested wednesday and then given court dates and released:

With no prospects for work in Mexico, Arturo Cuagtle figured he had two choices: turn to robbery or leave his family and emigrate north.

So, seven years ago, he left Mexico for Indiana. He was working at IFCO Systems on Wednesday, assembling wooden pallets for 30 cents apiece, he said, when federal agents arrived and began arresting people.

At IFCO, he said, he averaged $600 to $700 a week if he made about 600 pallets a day. He said he pays taxes, and the money he earns supports his family -- a wife and three children, ages 6, 5 and 4, who live in Mexico.

"It was a necessity to leave them," Cuagtle said after his release Thursday afternoon. "It's hard in our country, and there's nothing else to do unless you rob someone, and it's more shameful to rob people than it is to be an immigrant."

i wonder if those who are so angry about immigration would be happier if people like arturo had remained in mexico and become thieves instead.

anyway, it looks like indy's ifco employees were making more than those in san antonio:

$0.30/pallet × 600 pallets/day = $180/day
and let's assume he's working the same 10-hour days, to keep the math easy:
$180/day ÷ 10 hours/day = $18/hour. can this be right?

the article mentions $600 to $700 a week, which would have to after taxes for the math to make any sense: remember that, despite what the people on the star message boards think, these workers were all paying income taxes, having the normal taxes withheld from their paychecks just like the rest of us do. but because they are using fake social security numbers, they can't file tax returns or else they could get caught. this means they don't get their refunds, and in essence, many undocumented immigrants are actuallly paying more taxes than US citizens are.

moving on:

As for the workers, immigration officials said they did not have the facilities to hold them indefinitely.

With 20,000 detention beds nationwide, Immigration and Customs spokeswoman Gail Montenegro said the agency has to prioritize. It focuses on holding illegal immigrants with criminal backgrounds. She said the system is not set up to detain every immigrant found to be in the country illegally.

"We need to conserve our detention space for illegal aliens that are dangerous criminals or who have been previously deported," Montenegro said.

If the arrested men don't show up at their hearings at a Chicago immigration court, a judge will order them deported in absentia, she said, and they will be classified as fugitives.

read that again: "the system is not set up to detain every immigrant found to be in the country illegally." we only have 20,000 detention beds, and despite the new halliburton contract to build more, we still have more illegal immigrants than detention beds by a ratio of almost 600-to-1. clearly criminalizing undocumented immigration, making it a felony or misdemeanor like many republicans want, isn't going to do a damn bit of good because enforcing such a rule is laughably unachievable.

but some people are upset that these immigrants aren't being detained indefinitely. i bet you can already guess one name: john hostettler, who wanted to arrest last week's protesters:

But at least one key congressional leader criticized the decision to release the Indianapolis workers.

U.S. Rep. John Hostettler, R-Ind., chairman of the immigration and border security panel on the House Judiciary Committee, blasted federal agents for not doing a better job of enforcing immigration laws after widespread protest marches April 10.

In an e-mail Thursday, he expressed disappointment at the release of the detainees.

"While I was initially encouraged by this apparent change in the administration's policy regarding the enforcement of our immigration laws," the e-mail said, "the return to the failed policy of catch and release leaves me less than optimistic that lessons have been learned."

i guess hostettler missed the ICE memo that these new raids are supposed to be targeted at employers who hire undocumented workers, and are not simply an excuse to round up a bunch of brown people and ship 'em over the border.¶

the un-clinics

virago just forwarded me an unsettling story:

An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend to one of Indiana's Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a "crisis pregnancy center" run by an anti-abortion group -- one that shared a parking lot with the real Planned Parenthood clinic, and was designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.

The group took down the girl's confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their "other office" (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby). When she arrived for her appointment, not only did the Planned Parenthood staff have no record of her, but the police were there -- the "crisis pregnancy center" had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.

The "crisis pregnancy center" staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl's home and calling her father's workplace. Our clinic director reports that she was "scared to death to leave her house." They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion.

the story isn't exactly new, and it's hardly exclusive to indiana. you've probably seen the ads for these places on billboards and benches near highways and in poorer communities: pregnant? need help? many of these are actually fake clinics established by religious fundamentalists to browbeat or otherwise scare pregnant women into going to term.

rep. carolyn maloney of new york has sponsored a bill (HR 5052) that would bar these non-clinics from advertising themselves as providing abortion services. the ACLU initially came out in favor, raising the eyebrows of those who see it as a free speech issue. a few days later, the ACLU apparently pulled down its recommendation in light of this dispute.

i'm a bit torn about the free speech issue. is there a first amendment right to be deceitful, to defraud people who are looking for one thing by luring them in and giving them the exact opposite? i might be willing to buy it, but not if people are making arguments like this:

"I am troubled by the assumption in the legislation that abortion services, as a matter of linguistics and a matter of law, cannot include discussing with a woman why she shouldn't have an abortion," said Ms. Kaminer, a Boston attorney and author who described herself as "very strongly pro-choice."

i don't know if ms kaminer is being disingenuous or whether she simply hasn't read the bill and thus doesn't know what she's talking about. either way, the bill says nothing of the sort. the actual language of the bill is:

Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Federal Trade Commission shall promulgate rules to prohibit any person to advertise with the intent to deceptively create the impression that such person is a provider of abortion services if such person does not provide abortion services.

the bill then defines "abortion services" as "providing surgical and non-surgical procedures to terminate a pregnancy, or providing referrals for such procedures."

in other words, according to the bill, abortion services includes abortion (makes sense, right?), and places that advertise themselves as providing abortion services must actually provide them. it's pretty straightforward. nowhere does it say that the clinic cannot "discuss with a woman why she shouldn't have an abortion". however, if they discuss it with her and she wants one anyway, they need to perform the service or give her a referral.

if anti-abortion activists want to set up clinics for abortion alternatives, more power to them, but i'm inclined to agree that they shouldn't try to fool people into thinking they actually provide abortions when they don't.¶

primaries in the 7th

i've blogged about some other indiana congressional districts, but haven't said too much about my own, the 7th. in part this is because the incumbent julia carson has a lock on the democratic nomination, and probably the whole election; her challenger kris kiser's campaign is a joke, despite what you might think from his billboard on keystone. and whoever gets the republican nomination will have a hell of a time trying to unseat carson: many have tried and failed.

but things seem to have been heating up in the republican primary between ron franklin and eric dickerson (no relation to the former colts running back). AI alerts us to a post by abdul at indiana barrister regarding some scandalous comments franklin made in a recent interview:

In an interview conducted last month, Franklin was asked about gay rights and social security. On the gay rights issue, Franklin says the Indianapolis city county council was wrong to pass the human rights ordinance. He says marriage should be between a man and a woman, however he concludes the interview by saying "he likes it better when they [gays] kept it in the closet."

Later in the interview after touching on other issues he comments on people on social security disability (SSI). He says he's seen too many people getting disability and tells his office manager to not rent to them. Franklin manages the Mosell Sanders public housing complex on east 38th Street in Indianapolis.

Franklin says he knew he was being set up by his opponents so he gave answers that weren't to be taken seriously.

He blames the entire matter on the Eric Dickerson campaign, which he says has tried to use a number of dirty tricks to derail his campaign. Already the two sides are hinting at legal action against each other over the interview.

if it is true that franklin tells his office manager not to rent to people on disability, that would be a flagrant violation of the fair housing act and the americans with disabilities act and probably a whole bunch of other federal and state laws.

incidentally, is it significant that the first hit when googling "ron franklin indianapolis" is not his campaign website but this 2000 entry in the indy star factfiles?

Former Indianapolis City-County Councilman Ron Franklin was found not guilty of a felony drug charge. It was the second time he was acquitted on drug charges after claiming the drugs belonged to someone else.

sure he was found not guilty (twice!) but it can't help his campaign if the first hit under his name includes the words "felony drug charge". is this some kind of googlewash by the dickerson campaign or other operatives, or just an amusing coincidence? either way, ouch. (though it could be worse; the article could also mention him pleading guilty to misdemeanor criminal recklessness in 2001.)¶