I rarely post about anything political, and for future reference, I rarely will, but I came across a site a few months ago that I think might strike a chord with some of my readers. You may have noticed the big button on the left advertising Unity ’08. I am not paid nor do I receive any monetary benefits by placing the link. I simply want to spread the word about something I feel is important. Here is a brief summary of the idea behind Unity ’08:

Unity08 believes that neither of today’s major parties reflects the aspirations, fears or will of the majority of Americans. Both have polarized and alienated the people. Both are unduly influenced by single-issue groups. Both are excessively dominated by money.

For most of the 20th Century, the contest for the U.S. presidency was waged over those “in the middle.” Recent Presidential elections, however, have not been focused on the middle but on the turnout of each party’s special interest groups — with each party’s “base” representing barely ten percent of the American people.

We believe that, while the leaders of both major parties are well intentioned people, they are trapped in a flawed system — and that the two major parties are today simply neither relevant to the issues and challenges of the 21st Century nor effective in addressing them.

As a result, most Americans have not been enthusiastic about the choices for President in recent elections, the key issues they ran on, or the manner in which the campaigns were conducted.

Therefore Unity08 will act to assure that an alternative ticket is presented to the American voters in 2008.

If you are at all interested, go to www.unity08.com or click the button at the top of the left sidebar. A more detailed description of the goals and ideas behind Unity ’08 can be found.

What happens when you don’t give credit when credit is due?

If you are presidential hopeful John McCain you get your MySpace profile hacked. Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine, decided to take matters into his own hands when he wasn’t given credit for the MySpace profile he designed for the senator.

Davidson hacked into the senators profile and changed a few things, ok a few major things, that shocked readers when the visited McCain’s MySpace page. The following is from Mike’s own Newsvine Page:

You see, John McCain’s people commandeered my world-renowned MySpace design template and did a few things wrong:

1. They did not credit me for the template, even though the template explicitly requested credit.
2. They used my own unmodified imagery, specifically for the “Contacting John McCain” table.
3. As if #2 wasn’t bad enough, the McCain crew is actually pulling their image directly from my server on each page load. So every time someone visits the McCain MySpace page, my bandwidth is being used to deliver part of the page! Bad McCain!

When are people going to learn that you shouldn’t mess with computer experts? I give a nod to Davidson and say, “Nice Work.”

The U.S. government would like to begin testing what a college student learns during the course of their education. The secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, will be meeting with college leaders later this month to “discuss the findings of Commission on the Future of Higher Education and it’s plan to assess learning through one or a number of standardized tests.” (US News – March 12th, 2007)

American students are becoming notorious for their failure to keep up with foreign students in the academic arena. The federal government is trying to discover the factors causing this phenomenon and believe that by assessing what students know when the enter college , then comparing it to what they know when they leave, will enable them to get an authentic picture of the quality of higher education in the United States. This data would then be compared to other colleges across the nation and used to rate and rank universities, much like primary and secondary schools do in the case of No Child Left Behind.

This idea of standardized testing at the college level is absurd. It is a waste of taxpayer money and students time. Instead of testing students once they are in college we should do a better job of filtering out people who do not belong there in the first place. This would prevent many of the problems we currently have. (See my previous post, Not Everyone Should go to College) American students aren’t necessarily getting dumber; the requirements for admission to college are just becoming less and less. This, in turn, is lowering the ability of a college or university to properly and affectively educate students. A bachelors degree may still get you a job but it is quickly becoming as worthless as a high school diploma in the job market. To attain any position that demands a high level of pay and has staying power, a masters degree is becoming a must-have.

You can discuss this in the forums or leave a comment.

As observed by writer Gar Smith in the environmental magazine The Edge , in the U.S.’s “230 years of existence, there have been only 31 years in which US troops were not actively engaged in significant armed adventures on foreign shores…The arithmetic is daunting. Over the long course of US history, fewer than 14% of America’s days have been marked by peace. The defining characteristic of our nation’s foreign policy for 86% of our existence would appear to be a bellicose penchant for military intervention.”

For the full article, click here.

For a few good reads that take this topic into its depths, I recommend the following (which I have read):

As thousands of burned-out soldiers prepare to return to Iraq to fill President Bush’s unwelcome call for at least 20,000 more troops, I can’t help wondering what the women among those troops will have to face. And I don’t mean only the hardships of war, the killing of civilians, the bombs and mortars, the heat and sleeplessness and fear.

I mean from their own comrades — the men.

I have talked to more than 20 female veterans of the Iraq war in the past few months, interviewing them for up to 10 hours each for a book I am writing on the topic, and every one of them said the danger of rape by other soldiers is so widely recognized in Iraq that their officers routinely told them not to go to the latrines or showers without another woman for protection.

The female soldiers who were at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, for example, where U.S. troops go to demobilize, told me they were warned not to go out at night alone.

“They call Camp Arifjan ‘generator city’ because it’s so loud with generators that even if a woman screams she can’t be heard,” said Abbie Pickett, 24, a specialist with the 229th Combat Support Engineering Company who spent 15 months in Iraq from 2004-05. Yet, she points out, this is a base, where soldiers are supposed to be safe.

Spc. Mickiela Montoya, 21, who was in Iraq with the National Guard in 2005, took to carrying a knife with her at all times. “The knife wasn’t for the Iraqis,” she told me. “It was for the guys on my own side.”

Comprehensive statistics on the sexual assault of female soldiers in Iraq have not been collected, but early numbers revealed a problem so bad that former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld ordered a task force in 2004 to investigate. As a result, the Defense Department put up a Web site in 2005 designed to clarify that sexual assault is illegal and to help women report it. It also initiated required classes on sexual assault and harassment. The military’s definition of sexual assault includes “rape; non-consensual sodomy; unwanted inappropriate sexual contact or fondling; or attempts to commit these acts.”

Read more

Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you’ll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Practically speaking, your driver’s license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards.

washingtonydc from Digg.com had this to say:

The thing is, we’re not just talking about an unprecedented national ID card–which should be enough to give most Americans pause. We’re talking of a national database. While the FAQ, which is a bit out of date, did not delve into this too deeply, not only are states supposed to link your information to nation-wide system, but they’re supposed to archive the documents you present them. For example, if you show your passport or social security card as proof of identity in order to get a new license, the state keep a paper copy of it a minimum of seven years or an electronic copy for a minimum of ten years.

While this may not phase a lot of people, think about it for a minute. We’re creating this huge nation-wide database of all American identities that is easily readable (not only by the government, but by anyone with an RFID or barcode reader). This already makes it a boon for marketers, identity thieves, etc. But to top it all off, we’re going to archive everyone’s personal documents in state facilities. The same states that don’t even have the budget to enact this system–you think they’re going to be able to safeguard this data?

read more from CNet

For more info, check out these video’s discussing Real ID:

Video 1, Video 2

The Must Do List

The Bush administration’s assault on some of the founding principles of American democracy marches onward despite the Democratic victory in the 2006 elections. The new Democratic majorities in Congress can block the sort of noxious measures that the Republican majority rubber-stamped. But preventing new assaults on civil liberties is not nearly enough.

Five years of presidential overreaching and Congressional collaboration continue to exact a high toll in human lives, America’s global reputation and the architecture of democracy. Brutality toward prisoners, and the denial of their human rights, have been institutionalized; unlawful spying on Americans continues; and the courts are being closed to legal challenges of these practices.

It will require forceful steps by this Congress to undo the damage. A few lawmakers are offering bills intended to do just that, but they are only a start. Taking on this task is a moral imperative that will show the world the United States can be tough on terrorism without sacrificing its humanity and the rule of law.

Today we’re offering a list — which, sadly, is hardly exhaustive — of things that need to be done to reverse the unwise and lawless policies of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Many will require a rewrite of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, an atrocious measure pushed through Congress with the help of three Republican senators, Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham and John McCain; Senator McCain lent his moral authority to improving one part of the bill and thus obscured its many other problems.

•Our list starts with three fundamental tasks:

Restore Habeas Corpus

One of the new act’s most indecent provisions denies anyone Mr. Bush labels an “illegal enemy combatant” the ancient right to challenge his imprisonment in court. The arguments for doing this were specious. Habeas corpus is nothing remotely like a get-out-of-jail-free card for terrorists, as supporters would have you believe. It is a way to sort out those justly detained from those unjustly detained. It will not “clog the courts,” as Senator Graham claims. Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the Democratic chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has a worthy bill that would restore habeas corpus. It is essential to bringing integrity to the detention system and reviving the United States’ credibility.

Stop Illegal Spying

Mr. Bush’s program of intercepting Americans’ international calls and e-mail messages without a warrant has not ceased. The agreement announced recently — under which a secret court supposedly gave its blessing to the program — did nothing to restore judicial process or ensure that Americans’ rights are preserved. Congress needs to pass a measure, like one proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein, to force Mr. Bush to obey the law that requires warrants for electronic surveillance.

Ban Torture, Really

The provisions in the Military Commissions Act that Senator McCain trumpeted as a ban on torture are hardly that. It is still largely up to the president to decide what constitutes torture and abuse for the purpose of prosecuting anyone who breaks the rules. This amounts to rewriting the Geneva Conventions and puts every American soldier at far greater risk if captured. It allows the president to decide in secret what kinds of treatment he will permit at the Central Intelligence Agency’s prisons. The law absolves American intelligence agents and their bosses of any acts of torture and abuse they have already committed.

Many of the tasks facing Congress involve the way the United States takes prisoners, and how it treats them. There are two sets of prisons in the war on terror. The military runs one set in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. The other is even more shadowy, run by the C.I.A. at secret places.

Close the C.I.A. Prisons

When the Military Commissions Act passed, Mr. Bush triumphantly announced that he now had the power to keep the secret prisons open. He cast this as a great victory for national security. It was a defeat for America’s image around the world. The prisons should be closed.

Account for ‘Ghost Prisoners’

The United States has to come clean on all of the “ghost prisoners” it has in the secret camps. Holding prisoners without any accounting violates human rights norms. Human Rights Watch says it has identified nearly 40 men and women who have disappeared into secret American-run prisons.

Ban Extraordinary Rendition

This is the odious practice of abducting foreign citizens and secretly flying them to countries where everyone knows they will be tortured. It is already illegal to send a prisoner to a country if there is reason to believe he will be tortured. The administration’s claim that it got “diplomatic assurances” that prisoners would not be abused is laughable.

A bill by Representative Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, would require the executive branch to list countries known to abuse and torture prisoners. No prisoner could be sent to any of them unless the secretary of state certified that the country’s government no longer abused its prisoners or offered a way to verify that a prisoner will not be mistreated. It says “diplomatic assurances” are not sufficient.

•

Congress needs to completely overhaul the military prisons for terrorist suspects, starting with the way prisoners are classified. Shortly after 9/11, Mr. Bush declared all members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban to be “illegal enemy combatants” not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions or American justice. Over time, the designation was applied to anyone the administration chose, including some United States citizens and the entire detainee population of Gitmo.

To address this mess, the government must:

Tighten the Definition of Combatant

“Illegal enemy combatant” is assigned a dangerously broad definition in the Military Commissions Act. It allows Mr. Bush — or for that matter anyone he chooses to designate to do the job — to apply this label to virtually any foreigner anywhere, including those living legally in the United States.

Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively

When the administration began taking prisoners in Afghanistan, it did not much bother to screen them. Hundreds of innocent men were sent to Gitmo, where far too many remain to this day. The vast majority will never even be brought before tribunals and still face indefinite detention without charges.

Under legal pressure, Mr. Bush created “combatant status review tribunals,” but they are a mockery of any civilized legal proceeding. They take place thousands of miles from the point of capture, and often years later. Evidence obtained by coercion and torture is permitted. The inmates do not get to challenge this evidence. They usually do not see it.

The Bush administration uses the hoary “fog of war” dodge to justify the failure to screen prisoners, saying it is not practical to do that on the battlefield. That’s nonsense. It did not happen in Afghanistan, and often in Iraq, because Mr. Bush decided just to ship the prisoners off to Gitmo.

•

Prisoners designated as illegal combatants are subject to trial rules out of the Red Queen’s playbook. The administration refuses to allow lawyers access to 14 terrorism suspects transferred in September from C.I.A. prisons to Guantánamo. It says that if they had a lawyer, they might say that they were tortured or abused at the C.I.A. prisons, and anything that happened at those prisons is secret.

At first, Mr. Bush provided no system of trial at the Guantánamo camp. Then he invented his own military tribunals, which were rightly overturned by the Supreme Court. Congress then passed the Military Commissions Act, which did not fix the problem. Some tasks now for Congress:

Ban Tainted Evidence

The Military Commissions Act and the regulations drawn up by the Pentagon to put it into action, are far too permissive on evidence obtained through physical abuse or coercion. This evidence is unreliable. The method of obtaining it is an affront.

Ban Secret Evidence

Under the Pentagon’s new rules for military tribunals, judges are allowed to keep evidence secret from a prisoner’s lawyer if the government persuades the judge it is classified. The information that may be withheld can include interrogation methods, which would make it hard, if not impossible, to prove torture or abuse.

Better Define ‘Classified’ Evidence

The military commission rules define this sort of secret evidence as “any information or material that has been determined by the United States government pursuant to statute, executive order or regulation to require protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national security.” This is too broad, even if a president can be trusted to exercise the power fairly and carefully. Mr. Bush has shown he cannot be trusted to do that.

Respect the Right to Counsel

Soon after 9/11, the Bush administration allowed the government to listen to conversations and intercept mail between some prisoners and their lawyers. This had the effect of suspending their right to effective legal representation. Since then, the administration has been unceasingly hostile to any lawyers who defend detainees. The right to legal counsel does not exist to coddle serial terrorists or snarl legal proceedings. It exists to protect innocent people from illegal imprisonment.

•

Beyond all these huge tasks, Congress should halt the federal government’s race to classify documents to avoid public scrutiny — 15.6 million in 2005, nearly double the 2001 number. It should also reverse the grievous harm this administration has done to the Freedom of Information Act by encouraging agencies to reject requests for documents whenever possible. Congress should curtail F.B.I. spying on nonviolent antiwar groups and revisit parts of the Patriot Act that allow this practice.

The United States should apologize to a Canadian citizen and a German citizen, both innocent, who were kidnapped and tortured by American agents.

Oh yes, and it is time to close the Guantánamo camp. It is a despicable symbol of the abuses committed by this administration (with Congress’s complicity) in the name of fighting terrorism.

Q:“Umm…can we have a study guide for the test?”

A:It’s called a textbook. Read it.

Q:“What’s going to be on the test?”

A: Please refer to previous answer.

Q: “Are you going to curve the test?”

A: Raising your grade from a “D-” to a “D+” isn’t going to help that much.

Q: “Will the test be multiple choice?”

A: Seriously?

Q: “Why did I get a “D” on this paper?”

A: Read the first sentence – then you tell me.

As I listen to students in my collegiate classes I’m often embarrassed to call them peers. I find myself wondering, “Who is letting these people in?” I thought college was about pursuing “higher education”.

The big push is for every American to pursue a college degree. While more high-school graduates are attending institutions of secondary education than in previous decades, the result has not been an increase in the intellectual assets of American society. Instead, the educational system has “dumbed down” and is requiring less competence than ever before. The screening process for college applicants has fallen to sub-par levels and is admitting more stupid people per year than our border is letting in illegal immigrants.

I have attended two universities. One, a Big Ten school in Indiana, the other, a medium-sized university in Michigan. I chose the first for their computer science program and the later for its top-ranked education program. Both schools, though vastly different in size and specialties, suffered the same problem — a massive influx of students ill-prepared for the intelectual demands of advanced degrees. How could this be? Both colleges have respected programs and their graduates are usually quite successful. Both colleges have minimum requirements for admission including G.P.A., S.A.T or A.C.T. scores. Both colleges are nationally respected. So why all the idiots?

That’s my question. I’m going to research an answer. I’ll report back soon.

A site entitled TechPresident.com is a “group blog that covers how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and vice versa, how content generated by voters is affecting the campaign.”

The popular video-sharing website, YouTube, has a “YouChoose ’08” section that provides a selection of video-clips for each of the candidates.

In a report by PEW Internet & American Life Project, they found that over 50 million Americans use the Internet as their primary source for daily news and 6 million Americans get their daily news via RSS (what’s RSS?). These numbers continue to increase respectively to the number of households that have broadband Internet access.

How is this going to affect the 2008 Presidential election? I think the obvious answer is “A LOT”. My biggest concern is where Internet users are going for this information. The Internet is chock-full of erroneous and incorrect information. Hopefully this site is not one of them. I do my best to throughly research every link I post and comment I make. I would tell surfers to stick with major news outlets for majority of their information. Most major newspapers have on-line editions which are researched and accredited. If you go looking for information elsewhere be sure to check their sources.

I want to hear your opinions. What role will the Internet play in the 2008 Election? Will it be positive or negative?

Although election day is almost 2 years away the race for the Democratic and Republican nominations for president is well under way. The forerunners for the Democratic nomination are Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards. On the Republican side you have Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. Although there are others registered with the FEC these candidates are probably the only ones you need to know. This fact is unfortunate but until 3rd party candidates gain enough power to be a force in Washington you might as well get used to the fact that you are going to be seeing only one of two parties in contention for president.

Here are a few sites to bring you up-to-date on the issues:

www.ontheissues.org

www.votesmart.org

www.npr.org/politics

www.declareyourself.org

Take the time to become informed on your candidates. Read the news, watch CNN, find out about the issues. Voting is a right that should not be taken lightly. It is your responsibility to take action. Our country was founded on the citizens right to make changes in government. An individual can make a difference. Every vote counts.