Congressional Forum on Vote Irregularities

The press today was widely not reporting the plans of House Democrats in Washington to hold a Congressional forum on irregularities in the 2004 election, with particular emphasis on Ohio. The details are available at a crazy fringe weblog, BradBlog, which has been promulgating highly plausible wacko conspiracy theories for weeks. While you will evidently not find this kind of unreliable information in the New York Times, CNN, or other media, it seems that these rumors refuse to die. They continue to be spread by shoot-from-the-hip weblogs, such as this one maintained by "The House of Representatives of the United States." Here is an excerpt from the press advisory, written by members of a loose-knit cabal of irresponsible conspiracy theorists called "The Judiciary Committee":

PRESS ADVISORY Congressman John Conyers, Jr. Fourteenth District, Michigan Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary Dean, Congressional Black Caucus ------------FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 3, 2004 CONTACT: Dena Graziano (202) 226-6888 CONYERS AND OTHER CONGRESSMEN TO HOLD FORUM ON VOTING IRREGULARITIES IN OHIO Rep. John Conyers, Jr. and other Representatives will be holding the first congressional forum on election irregularities in Ohio, the pivotal state in the presidential election. The forum will include leading advocates, election experts and investigators who have reviewed the myriad of election day and recount problems in Ohio, as well as numerous individuals who experienced problems and outright disenfranchisement on election day. Among other things, the forum, which is open to the public, will concentrate on many of the issues raised in letters from Ranking Member Conyers and other Members to Kenneth Blackwell (http://www.house.gov/judiciary_democrats/ohblackwellltr12204.pdf). WHAT: "Preserving Democracy - What went wrong in Ohio?" WHEN: Wednesday, December 8th @ 10:00am WHERE: 2237 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. WHO: Rep. John Conyers, Jr. Rep. Melvin Watt Rep. Robert Scott Rev. Jesse Jackson, Founder Rainbow Push Coalition Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio Secretary of State (invited) Ralph Neas, President, People For the American Way Jon Greenbaum, Director, Voting Rights Project, Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights Under Law Ellie Smeal, Executive Director, The Feminist Majority Warren Mitofsky, Mitofsky International, Coordinator of National Exit Poll (invited) Prof. Robert Fitrakis, Editor, The Free Press Cliff Arnebeck, Arnebeck Associates John Bonifaz, General Counsel, National Voting Institute Steve Rosenfeld, Producer, Air America Radio Shawnta Walcott, Communications Director, Zogby International ##JUD-108-12/3/04##

A Seventh Grade Civics Lesson From Michael Powell

Here's the first paragraph of Michael Powell's Op-Ed piece in the Times:

Time to take a deep breath. The high pitch at which many are discussing the enforcement of rules against indecency on television and radio is enough to pop an eardrum. It is no surprise that those who make a handsome living by selling saucy fare rant the loudest - it drives up the ratings. The news media further fan the flames, obsessed with "culture war" stories that slot Americans into blue-state and red-state camps.

Saucy fare sellers and the news media are the villains. Check, and check. Despite making several salient points, all seven of my favorite hackles were raised at the following statement:

But we are not the federal Bureau of Indecency. We do not watch or listen to programs hoping to catch purveyors of dirty broadcasts. Instead, we rely on public complaints to point out potentially indecent shows. In recent years, complaints about television and radio broadcasts have skyrocketed, and the F.C.C. has stepped up its enforcement in response. Advocacy groups do generate many complaints, as our critics note, but that's not unusual in today's Internet world. We are very familiar with organized protests when it comes to media issues, but that fact does not minimize the merits of the groups' concerns.

In fact it does. An organized protest (like a letter or email writing campaign) is designed to get people to participate who otherwise wouldn't. Joe Grabasandwich, who would never sign a petition to censor "Will & Grace" on his own, suddenly finds himself doing so based on the salesmanship of the person handing him the petition. The result is that you have a petition filled with names of people who have no strong objection to the thing being protested. Were the FCC to query each of these people individually, they would receive many more, "Huh? Oh yeah, that thing. Um, yeah, I guess I'm against it" responses than the strong language of the petition might suggest. This should warn the governmental body being petitioned that the group organizing the protest might have some personal, gigantic, disproportionally emphasized axe to grind, and that the group's concerns might not be as meritorious as they'd have it seem. I contend that conservatively-minded petitions tend to appeal to morality and, hence, guilt, when trying to get people to sign them. Progressive petitions tend to appeal to intellect. A petition from a liberal or progressive group is more likely to involve a real, substantive issue, and is likely to include names of people who are reasonably familiar with the issue and have actually formed an opinion on said issue before having a petition shoved in front of them. You might even say that this is the source of a large number of the Democratic Party's ills: they insist on appealing to intellect instead of bizarre, Christian moralist guilt.

det ((radio)I - A) = 0

I'd never seen this before, but perhaps you had. From the site:

Eigenradio plays only the most important frequencies, only the beats with the highest entropy. [...] Eigenradio makes its optimal music by analyzing in real time dozens of radio stations at once. When our bank of computers has heard enough music, it will go to work on making more just like it. Since we listen to so much music all the time, Eigenradio is always on and always live. What you hear on Eigenradio is the best of the New Music, distilled and de-correlated. One song on Eigenradio is worth at least twenty songs on old radio.

The process is explained here [pdf]. Be sure and check out the Singular Christmas mix. Neato.

The Greatness that is America.

This article is brilliant. Brilliant. To know that I share my country with these kindly folk, I swell with pride and painful gas. Some excerpts are below. Boldface added by me. [blockquote] The way they used to teach the origin of the species to high school students in this sleepy town of 1,800 people in southern Pennsylvania, said local school board member Angie Yingling disapprovingly, was that "we come from chimpanzees and apes." Not anymore. ...The idea of intelligent design was initiated by [b]a small group of scientists[/b] to explain what they believe to be gaps in Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, which they say is "not adequate to explain all natural phenomena." ...The intelligent-design theory makes no reference to the Bible, and its proponents do not say who or what the greater force is behind the design. But Yingling, 46, who graduated from Dover High School in 1976, and other supporters of the new curriculum in this religiously conservative slice of rural Pennsylvania say they know exactly who the intelligent designer is. "There's only one creator, and it has to be God," said Rebecca Cashman, 16, a sophomore at Dover High. She frowned when asked to recollect what she learned about evolution at school last year. "Evolution -- is that the Darwin theory?" Cashman shook her head. "I don't know just what he was thinking!" Patricia Nason at the Institute for Creation Research, [b]the world leader in creation science[/b], said her organization and other activist groups are encouraging people who share conservative religious beliefs to seek positions on local school boards. "The movement is to get the truth out," Nason said by telephone from El Cajon (San Diego County). "We Christians have as much right to be involved in [b]politics[/b] as evolutionists. We've been asleep for two generations, and it's time for us to come back." ...John West of the Discovery Institute in Seattle, the main sponsor and promoter of intelligent design, defended the theory he says addresses "evolution follies." "[b]Mainstream criticism[/b] should be raised in classrooms," West said. ...The drive to bring more religion and what have been labeled "moral values" into the classroom goes beyond challenges to Darwin's theory, Scott said. The Charles County school board also proposed to censor school reading lists of "immorality" or "foul language" and to allow the distribution of Bibles in schools. In Texas, the nation's second-biggest school textbook market, the State Board of Education approved health textbooks that defined abstinence as the only form of contraception and changed the description of marriage between "two people" to "a lifelong union between a husband and a wife." ...Brown, the former school board member, says he is not arguing with other people's religious beliefs. ..."A guy came up to me and said, 'Wait a minute, you believe in God and evolution at the same time? [b]Evolution isn't in the Bible![/b]' " said Brown, nibbling on a deep-fried mozzarella stick at the Shiloh Family Restaurant on Route 74. As he became more agitated, his voice grew louder, and other customers -- mostly gray-haired women and elderly men in baseball hats -- turned their heads to look at the couple. Carol Brown kept putting her index finger to her lips, gesturing for her husband to be quieter. After the Browns left the restaurant, a waitress in her 30s slipped a note to a Chronicle reporter. "Beware," it read. "[b]God wrote[/b] over 2,000 years ago that there would be false prophets and teachers. If you would like to know the truth read the Bible." [/blockquote]