The latest in case mods for the iPhone 3G is coming from Russian manufacturer iCustom and is showing off the internal guts of the iPhone thanks to a clear replacement back cover. Looking at the image, I am finding it hard to look away, almost like a car crash. I am not sure that I [...]

Robert Nelson

Whenever I find myself being quizzed about the new media and what it all means - and it happens all the time these days - I find myself thinking back to Max and Gabe. No one ever captured the spirit and essence the way they did:

Download | Play    Download | Play

Chris Matthews and Christopher Hitchens take on Michael Smerconish for his pro-torture views. Smerconish uses the "ticking time bomb" scenario which is a ridiculous argument and one better left for the screen writers of 24. Hitchens has really come around on this issue since volunteering to undergo waterboarding himself and if Chris Matthews could stop talking over him every once in a while, he might have had a better chance making his arguments against Smerconish. That said the two of them do manage to make Smerconish look as foolish as he is for taking this stance. Waterboarding does not produce reliable information and it's a war crime and Smerconish is just dead wrong.

John Amato:

Smerconish is also staking out the position that torture is a wonderful thing no matter if the ticking time bomb scenario is in play or not. Whatever it takes is his mantra and I expect as soon as Obama takes the presidency, the right wing zealots will ramp this thing up to insane proportions.

It is truly sickening to witness this in real time. We prosecuted the Japanese for torture on our own troops, but to justify some sick sense of loyalty to the Conservative movement on Smercs part---he's willing to compromise the moral high ground to go on the air and praise the use of torture just shows us how far the Conservative movement has fallen .

More transcripts below the fold:

MATTHEWS: Michael, you're an attorney. What happens if it's determined by the courts at some point in the near future that we do have to apply the Geneva Conventions code with regard to torture or non-torture of prisoners, even when they're non-state detainees? What happens to the president in that regard? He found in his-in his document I've got in front of me in 2002 that we can torture, basically, we're not obliged to follow the Geneva Conventions.

Is the president legally culpable here under some future tribunal in this country for having decided that he can ignore the Geneva Conventions in this case?

SMERCONISH: I think not. Frankly-well, frankly, the law doesn't say much of anything in this regard. I mean, I think I know what went on here. They turned to John Yoo, who, frankly, was at a third level in the administration, and they asked him to create new law in this regard. Now, oddly enough, he's out at Berkeley.

The direct answer to your question is al Qaeda doesn't wear the uniform of any particular nation. They're not a signatory to the Geneva Convention. They're not going to play by those rules, so why should we? If they were playing by them, maybe I'd have a different posture in this regard.

MATTHEWS: So you're consistent...

HITCHENS: I don't believe you would, sir. I mean, what if some-the next conspirator is an identifiable member of the Pakistani armed forces? Are you going to tell me that what you just said, that all measures are allowable, doesn't apply because he's wearing a uniform, but he's the mastermind of what happened in Bombay, what might be going to happen in London tomorrow? You can't be serious.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Michael, would you apply the Geneva Conventions if one of the people...

SMERCONISH: Christopher...

MATTHEWS: ... who committed a horrible act against us was, in fact, a state official? Would you apply the Geneva Conventions there or not, or do whatever it takes?

SMERCONISH: Christopher is correct. I would not apply the Geneva Convention there, either. One of the individuals from the Mumbai attack, one of the terrorists survived and is in custody. And if that individual was believed to have actionable intelligence about a future attack, any means necessary to exact the information from him I would support.

Listen, the Indians apparently used truth serum, and I don't hear anybody beefing-I've read all about it in the U.K. press. They've detailed it. Nobody's beefing about the means that are being used in India about this...

HITCHENS: Well, what if they...

MATTHEWS: Well, let me-let me try to apply this...

(CROSSTALK)

HITCHENS: What if it was a blowtorch?

MATTHEWS: What about the Japanese soldiers, the generals or whatever, the officer corps who were convicted of war crimes for using waterboarding against some of the flyers who were part of the Doolittle raid over-you know, the "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" heroes? I mean, from their point of view, they were operating in self-defense. Would you say that they were operating morally by waterboarding one of our flyers? I'm just asking you tit for tat here, from their point of view, the Japanese point of view.

SMERCONISH: In that...

MATTHEWS: I don't defend the Japanese...

SMERCONISH: No...

MATTHEWS: ... empire in one instance, but where do you draw the line morally on what's in and what's out, or does it just depend whether you're American or not? Is that it, if you're American, anything goes?

SMERCONISH: Chris, I'm all about defending American interests.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: In other words, your moral system is based on, if you're an American, anything goes. If you're in the other country, we try you for war crimes. You lose the war, we cut your head off, or whatever it takes, we execute you. In other words, your morality is entirely nationally based. I'm just asking.

SMERCONISH: And I'm going to answer, if you'll give me the chance. Yes, my moral code is dictated by the fact that I want our leaders to be guided to protect American lives first.

MATTHEWS: OK, so a Japanese colonel...

SMERCONISH: Chris...

MATTHEWS: ... or general...

SMERCONISH: Chris, we...

MATTHEWS: ... who operates under the same code and waterboards an American flyer, how would you judge him morally or legally? You, as an attorney.

SMERCONISH: That is not the current-that is-that is...

MATTHEWS: No, I'm asking you to judge...

SMERCONISH: ... not the current circumstance with al Qaeda.

MATTHEWS: No, I'm asking you, what would you do? You said anything goes in terms of defending this country. That's pure nationalism. I accept it. I'm close to you on that, except I think there are limits. I'm just asking if you have any.

SMERCONISH: I don't have any limits relative to al Qaeda. None.

Heather

You've got to be kidding me.

DISGRACED evangelical leader Rev. Ted Haggard will finally break his silence - to promote an HBO documentary about his own fall from power.

The coming out is set for next month at a convention of TV critics in LA.

"We look forward to presenting the film, Ted Haggard and his family at a press tour in LA next month," said a spokeswoman for HBO.

In 2006, Haggard was fired as the senior pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs and lost his post as the president of the National Association of Evangelicals after a former male prostitute said the reverend had been a regular customer for sex and methamphetamines.

When the scandal broke, Haggard was paid a year's salary, about $130,000, and agreed not to talk about it publicly...read on

What could we possibly learn about this religious hypocrite other then the fact that he embodies many of the qualities that inhabit Conservatives today.

John Amato

December 16, 2008 C-SPAN
Marine scientists and a deep sea photographer described the cumulative and unintended consequences of human activity on marine life. In their illustrated presentations they focused on global impacts of overfishing, oil extraction, toxic pollution, and climate change. They presented their recommendations to policymakers and the new administration about what should be done now to prevent further damage and a potential collapse of fisheries by mid-century. They responded to questions from reporters in the audience at the National Press Club. Pat Rizzuto moderated. See more CSPANJunkie Videos here

CSPANJunkie

Obama is apparently preparing to carry through on his campaign promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and Bob Gates has instructed the Pentagon to draw up contingency plans for doing so (h/t Kat). Steve Benen and Kevin Drum are both happy that Obama isn't backing away from his promise, and so am I. But the plan seems to involve closing Gitmo within two years, and that's too long.

It means that for two years detainees, many of them innocent of all charges as even the Bush administration nowadays has been forced to admit, will either continue to be subjected to kangaroo courts rebranded as "tribunals" or held in illegal imprisonment if tribunals are suspended. It means that those who ordered illegal rendition, torture, years of imprisonment without trial, repudiation of the Geneva Conventions and the trashing of America's legal system so as to allow evidence obtained by torture to be admissable while habeas corpus pleas were not will have an extra two years to argue by proxy that criminal charges would be politically inadvisable.  It will mean two years in which Obama's administration and its foreign policy goals will be tarred abroad with the brush that Bush fashioned, because the rest of the world looks at America and doesn't distinguish as carefully between administrations as do partisan Americans.

And most importantly, it means two more years of the greatest gift to terrorist recruitment, which means more people will die. "Matthew Alexander", the Air Force Major who was an interrogator in Iraq and has been highly critical of "enhanced interrogation" told Scott Horton in an interview published Friday:

The number-one reason foreign fighters gave for coming to Iraq to fight is the torture and abuse that occurred at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. The majority of suicide bombings are carried out by foreign fighters who volunteered and came to Iraq with this motivation. Consequently it is clear that at least hundreds but more likely thousands of American lives (not to count Iraqi civilian deaths) are linked directly to the policy decision to introduce the torture and abuse of prisoners as accepted tactics. Americans have died from terrorist attacks since 9/11; those Americans just happen to be American soldiers. This is not simply my view–it is widely held among senior officers in the U.S. military today. Alberto Mora, who served as General Counsel of the Navy under Donald Rumsfeld, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that “U.S. flag-rank officers maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq–as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat–are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.”

It's quite possible to close Gitmo far faster. If the U.S. can make a case against any detainee without using illegally obtained evidence, let it do so without delay in either ordinary civilian or military courts with the full panoply of law available. Such accused should be held in normal civilian or military custody while their trials progress For those it cannot, if the U.S. can make a case without using illegally obtained evidence that they would ordinarily be granted admission to the country, let them be deported - again without delay. Anyone not in those two categories should be released without prejudice and citizens of a free nation which upholds certain standards will just have to accept any danger concomittant with restoring those standards which the Bush administration has so widely trampled. We accept the same danger of further crimes every time an accused murderer or rapist is tried and might be aquitted, or is released on technical grounds because the normal course of law was not followed - as we should - so what's the problem? That is the only answer consistent with the universal rule of law, and could be implemented on Day One.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Cernig

Sure, most people who still like their iPhone to be jailbroken have seen the bad news about the latest update to OS X, you remember, the one where 10.5.6 broke the ability to enter DFU mode. Well, thanks to volkspost from the Hackint0sh user forums we now have a nice set of instructions showing us [...]

Robert Nelson

Reader Stephanie is ready to plunk down some cash for a web hosting provider, but wants to know which are the most reliable and affordable. She writes in:

Finally I'm taking the leap into setting up my own domain name and blogging software to start my own web site. I'll need a host that supports PHP and MySQL and lets me install something like WordPress pretty easily. I looked for recommendations on good web hosting providers, but this thread is over three years old and I figured things have changed. What are the top web hosting providers for individual web sites these days?

Help Stephanie out in the comments and let us know who you've had a great (or terrible) experience with hosting your web property. (Note: If you work for a web hosting service, please tell us that in your comment, which may otherwise look like spamming. Thanks!)

Gina Trapani

Reader Stephanie is ready to plunk down some cash for a web hosting provider, but wants to know which are the most reliable and affordable. She writes in:

Finally I'm taking the leap into setting up my own domain name and blogging software to start my own web site. I'll need a host that supports PHP and MySQL and lets me install something like WordPress pretty easily. I looked for recommendations on good web hosting providers, but this thread is over three years old and I figured things have changed. What are the top web hosting providers for individual web sites these days?

Help Stephanie out in the comments and let us know who you've had a great (or terrible) experience with hosting your web property. (Note: If you work for a web hosting service, please tell us that in your comment, which may otherwise look like spamming. Thanks!)

Gina Trapani

A.C. Thompson has a devastating piece in The Nation this week describing the all-white militia that took up arms to defend one of the few neighborhoods in New Orleans to stay dry after Hurricane Katrina broke the levees in 2005:

Facing an influx of refugees, the residents of Algiers Point could have pulled together food, water and medical supplies for the flood victims. Instead, a group of white residents, convinced that crime would arrive with the human exodus, sought to seal off the area, blocking the roads in and out of the neighborhood by dragging lumber and downed trees into the streets. They stockpiled handguns, assault rifles, shotguns and at least one Uzi and began patrolling the streets in pickup trucks and SUVs. The newly formed militia, a loose band of about fifteen to thirty residents, most of them men, all of them white, was looking for thieves, outlaws or, as one member put it, anyone who simply "didn't belong."

It started out as a classic case of white paranoiac overreaction to fears of looting and rioting and whatever else it is those black people do -- rather like the reaction you saw in sundown towns in the 1920s, which were similar in being "defended communities," to supposed threats of black depredations -- but quickly morphed into something else altogether:

Fellow militia member Wayne Janak, 60, a carpenter and contractor, is more forthcoming with me. "Three people got shot in just one day!" he tells me, laughing. We're sitting in his home, a boxy beige-and-pink structure on a corner about five blocks from Daigle's Grocery. "Three of them got hit right here in this intersection with a riot gun," he says, motioning toward the streets outside his home. Janak tells me he assumed the shooting victims, who were African-American, were looters because they were carrying sneakers and baseball caps with them. He guessed that the property had been stolen from a nearby shopping mall. According to Janak, a neighbor "unloaded a riot gun"--a shotgun--"on them. We chased them down."

Janak, who was carrying a pistol, says he grabbed one of the suspected looters and considered killing him, but decided to be merciful. "I rolled him over in the grass and saw that he'd been hit in the back with the riot gun," he tells me. "I thought that was good enough. I said, 'Go back to your neighborhood so people will know Algiers Point is not a place you go for a vacation. We're not doing tours right now.'"

He's equally blunt in Welcome to New Orleans, an hourlong documentary produced by the Danish video team, who captured Janak, beer in hand, gloating about hunting humans. Surrounded by a crowd of sunburned white Algiers Point locals at a barbeque held not long after the hurricane, he smiles and tells the camera, "It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it." A native of Chicago, Janak also boasts of becoming a true Southerner, saying, "I am no longer a Yankee. I earned my wings." A white woman standing next to him adds, "He understands the N-word now." In this neighborhood, she continues, "we take care of our own."

Janak, who says he'd been armed with two .38s and a shotgun, brags about keeping the bloody shirt worn by a shooting victim as a trophy. When "looters" showed up in the neighborhood, "they left full of buckshot," he brags, adding, "You know what? Algiers Point is not a pussy community."

... Some of the gunmen prowling Algiers Point were out to wage a race war, says one woman whose uncle and two cousins joined the cause. A former New Orleanian, this source spoke to me anonymously because she fears her relatives could be prosecuted for their crimes. "My uncle was very excited that it was a free-for-all--white against black--that he could participate in," says the woman. "For him, the opportunity to hunt black people was a joy."

"They didn't want any of the 'ghetto niggers' coming over" from the east side of the river, she says, adding that her relatives viewed African-Americans who wandered into Algiers Point as "fair game." One of her cousins, a young man in his 20s, sent an e-mail to her and several other family members describing his adventures with the militia. He had attached a photo in which he posed next to an African-American man who'd been fatally shot. The tone of the e-mail, she says, was "gleeful"--her cousin was happy that "they were shooting niggers."

I'm just waiting for some Republican to tell us once again that "racism is dead."

David Neiwert

Dan Radosh remembers a telling moment in Rick Warren's career of reaching out to those who disagree with him. It occurred this summer when a group of gay families asked to talk with Warren and explain their lives at his church. Newsweek and other outlets reported that Warren had agreed to meet with gay Christians from the religious group "Soulforce." And Warren responded with the following statement:

(You) were correct in assuming Newsweek quoted a Soul Force press release headline that was 100% false. We did not invite this group and I will not be meeting with them. They invited themselves to draw attention to their cross country publicity stunt.

My staff has already told them that neither my wife nor I will meet with them for any discussion or debate. This weekend, both Kay and I are receiving awards from two different universities so we’ll be out of town! Also, it’s Father’s Day and I’m spending the holiday with my children and grandchildren, as are all my staff.

Apple’s CEO always puts on one hell of a show. In honor of what appears to be the end of an era with yesterday’s announcement that Steve’s Macworld keynotes have come to an end, here’s a tribute to some of the last quarter century’s greatest Stevenotes.(author unknown)

Apple’s CEO always puts on one hell of a show. In honor of what appears to be the end of an era with yesterday’s announcement that Steve’s Macworld keynotes have come to an end, here’s a tribute to some of the last quarter century’s greatest Stevenotes.(author unknown)

Apple Evolution - Visual History of Apple Products, from the Apple IIe, iMac to the iPhone(author unknown)

Apple's decision to pull out of future Macworld Expos after the 2009 edition caught much of the tech world by surprise. John Siracusa explains why Apple's decision is par for the course.(author unknown)

Fabulous: Jon Ronson’s documentary Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes — “A biography of a remarkably talented man as seen though the rich collection of material he left behind” — is now available in its entirety on Google Video. I posted a few still frames from the film in July, regarding Kubrick’s collection of notebooks and stationery.

(Via Andy Baio.)

 ★ 

Retina-X Studios have announced a new version of Mobile Spy for the iPhone. For those unfamiliar with Mobile Spy, it is a program that runs in “total stealth mode” and keeps track of your calls and SMS messages. This means that unless you have installed it yourself, or were told that it was installed you [...]

Robert Nelson

A recently released app is bringing on-demand television to your iPhone or iPod touch. The app is appropriately dubbed Television and can be found in the App Store for $2.99 US or 2.39 EUR. As for features, Television is aggregating content, which includes (at time of posting) “50 shows from 30 channels.” It is currently [...]

Robert Nelson

One of the reasons I was glad to leave journalism is that it's now run by media owners who are much more interested in profit margins than in any kind of public service. Newspapers, as far as I know, are still profitable. They simply don't make the kind of obscene profit margins demanded by Wall St. analysts and investors.

What this means, in real terms, is that far fewer reporters will be watching the Beltway store. That's good news - and bad news. Good news that fewer reporters will be tempted to write gossip-driven, negative stories based on their personal dislikes. The bad news is, there will be far fewer journalists watching the store. I predict that once Congress members figure out they're flying under the radar, bad behavior will escalate:

The year was 2000, and Cox Newspapers had about 30 people in Washington to cover the new Bush administration.

Eight years later, a similar transformation is under way, the stakes heightened by two foreign wars and the worst economic collapse in decades, but Cox will not be there to cover it. Cox, the publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Austin American-Statesman and 15 other papers, announced this month that its Washington bureau would simply close its doors on April 1.

Cox is not alone. Another major chain, Advance Publications, owner of The Star-Ledger of Newark, The Plain Dealer of Cleveland and other papers, just closed a Washington bureau that had more than 20 people.

Like a number of smaller papers, The San Diego Union-Tribune recently shuttered its bureau, which had four people at the end. Three years ago, the parent company, Copley Press, had an 11-person bureau in Washington, but it has since sold most of its papers.

Those that remain have cut back drastically on Washington coverage, eliminating hundreds of journalists’ jobs at a time when the federal government — and journalistic oversight of it — matters more than ever. Television and radio operations in Washington are shrinking, too, although not as sharply.

The times may be news-rich, but newspapers are cash-poor, facing their direst financial straits since the Depression. Racing to cut costs as they lose revenue, most have decided that their future lies in local news, not national or international events. That has put a bull’s-eye on expensive Washington bureaus.

Susie Madrak

LogMeIn has recently introduced a new iPhone and iPod touch app, which, of course can be found in the App Store. Just as the name implies and similar to the current desktop version, LogMeIn Ignition will allow users to login and control your computer from a remote location. So aside from the cool factor of being [...]

Robert Nelson