Wampum

I've learned quite a bit from Chris. First, to look past Indy's failings to meet all my expectations, and the memories of an earlier canine, Katie, to his gifts to all of us -- his history as Jonah's ride and Jonah's pillow, his joy in snow and leaves and chase -- before age and the gimlet eyes of people who cage all dogs on public lands -- all slowed him down. That's Zeke's Gift.

Chris writes about finishing his book on Joshua Trees:

...

It's worked before, after all. About a year ago I asked people to chip in for a generator for the Wampum folks, and asked other people with blogs to add the appeal to their sites. I understand we covered the cost of the generator in a few hours. The year before that CRN spearheaded a multi-blog campaign to send Lauren to the BlogHer conference. We had airfare, hotel room, and Lauren's lost wages paid for in 18 hours.

I have little problem asking people for money on others' behalf. It's much harder -- mortifying, in fact -- to rattle the tip jar for my own work. But I'm going to suck it up here and do just that.

I'm asking for your help in meeting the expenses involved in my finishing the Joshua tree book.

The budget is open-ended, because the project is open-ended. Twenty bucks would pay for half a tank of gas. Fifty would cover duplication expenses and postage for a relevant dissertation. Two hundred would cover living expenses for three weeks of field observation, or a few days' room and board while I interview land managers in the USGS Las Vegas office.

...

Read the whole thing. The Blogging Thing versus the Book-Writing Thing

Posted by EBW at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Why NAAWT? (badaboom!)

At ICANN's 30th meeting in LA earlier this month, what with the new generic top-level-domain (gTLD) process approaching the sticking point where rational proposals risking rational amounts of money for rational purposes may tendered, people asked me if I'm going to do a top-level domain for Indians. People I've helped in the past, people who understand that name spaces can be nation-states, or viable business, and even both at the same time, people who want to help, and people who know the costs and risks.

When I proposed the sponsored top-level-domain (sTLD) model to ICANN, the example I gave was .NAA -- a gTLD jurisdictionally scoped to North America, with a policy model of registry delegation to, and registry operation by, the Indigenous Nations and Peoples of North America. This became the first proposed new gTLD in the ICANN process in mid-2000, followed shortly by dozens of commercial proposals risking absurd amounts of actual cash and junk bonds in the weird black tulip months prior to the crash of the tech sector. I didn't roll the dice, most who did, lost.

People haven't forgotten .NAA. What is more, people haven't forgotten that while some characters in Cherokee script resemble upper-case ASCII characters, banning Cherokee from the set of scripts made possible through the development of "Internationalized Domain Names" (IDN) wasn't the only, or the best choice available at the time, or now.

So I've been asked .NAA? And I've been asked .GWY? The latter has the amusing property of being self-similar in ASCII and Cherokee, and therefore a test case for an IDN domain name that looks like an ASCII domain name, but without any confusion as to meaning if both refer to the same underlying named resource.

There are issues with each.

Doing NAA would mean going to the NCAI, which is putting Chad Smith's breech of trust, law and treaty and the full embrace of nation-as-race and assimilated virulent racism by ruling thinbloods in Oklahoma on a pedestal, plus the more endemic problems of the NCAI or routing around the damage.

Doing GWY would mean accommodation with Chad Smith (see above), or routing around the damage.

The first is pan-tribal, and if you peek behind the covers of our circa 1997-2003 work, there were Maoris, Hawai'ians, and South American Indians, and treaty law or draft treaty law, that incorporated the cultural, civil and intellectual property (aka "traditional knowledge") protection of indigenous peoples, so it wasn't just changing the playpens for the generally dysfunctional 500+ tribal governmental websites in the US and the equally dysfunctional 500+ tribal government websites in Canada.

If anything, it resembles .EU.

The second is not pan-tribal, it simply can be associated with the needs of a large number of Indians, just as .DINÉ could be associated with the needs of a still larger group which also has a unified tribal government.

If anything, it resembles .CAT, the cultural and linguistic top-level domain for Catalonian people and the Catalan language. Think Barcelona if that helps.

I'd like some advice. I'm not the first Indian to try this, and I won't be the last if I decide to work on something else. There is .BERLIN and .PARIS and ... well, I'll always have .PARIS.

Oh, the reason we can't use NA for "North America" is because NA is already used by Namibia, and the real reason I used NAA is because "na'a" is "mom" in Siksika, and my mom's always said we were undocumented Siksika. Another reasonable choice is NAI for North American Indian, as is anything that "means" nothing except that it is being used as the label for that portion of the Internet's name space that is of, by, about, for, with and because of ... Indians. And their moms.

Update: I'm going with pan-* and NAI for North American Indigenous.

Posted by EBW at 09:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

LSAT-retake this weekend. Then apps go out by Dec. 21. I plan to return by Christmas. Or when the Cobell decision is announced, whichever comes first.

Posted by MB Williams at 05:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

07-375 Aroostook Band of MicMacs v. Ryan, Patricia E., et al.

The 1st Circuit has ruled that all Maine tribes are subject to state jurisdiction under the 1980 Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement Act, even the Aroostooks, who weren't even included in the 1980 Act, and who's 1991 Act doesn't contain the "state jurisdiction" language. The people who wrote Bush v Gore couldn't be bothered.

In separate news, Alaska and Hawai'i have been ordered to relocate to the area bounded on the west the Mississippi river, and on the east by the Ohio river, in accordance with the Ordinance for the government of the territory of the United States North West of the river Ohio, which became law in 1787.

Afterthought: I suppose we Abenakis can now bring an federal cause of action against Maine for failing to subject us to state jurisdiction, since no matter when we are Federally Recognized, and no matter what the US Congress has to say about the conditions attached to a government-to-government relationship, the 1st Circuit will support the state of Maine's claim that its jurisdiction is supreme. So what's Steve Rowe's excuse for failing to paper us?

A proactive prophylactic legal pyrotechnic.

Posted by EBW at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You know, if a continue-the-program Dem wins the Oval, the mid-term in 2010 will be Dem vs Dem on the war, and some competitive campaign for a state house will run on Chris Miller's issue -- the State's authority to compel the Return of the Guard.

And we'll be looking at LBJ's appendix scar again, and hoping that this Bobbie isn't gunned down the night California, the late, safety primary, now lost to early contest foolishness, votes for peace.

Continue-the-program is just pass-the-pinstripes. At Hague & Nuremburg outlets everywhere.

Posted by EBW at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I spent a portion of my early afternoon explaining that it takes the Folgers seats (price point < $10/mo) plus the Latté seats (price point > $40/mo), that's narrow-band plus broad-band to the caffine impaired and/or tea drinking demographic, to make user-centered (and therefore possibly "progressive") policy proposals to States Legislatures for data networks. It was a recitation (with a wicked temporal offset) from what I wrote at Larry Lessig's blog the day after Howard Dean wrote off the urban and rural demographics in his quest for activist mindshare in the primary phase of the last cycle. Reruns.

I spent another portion of my early afternoon explaining that, in Maine at least, if you want to form an effective coalition to keep Verizon from ripping off (a) the State, and (b) the subscribers, and (c) the CWA, and (d) the independent telcos and finally (e) the Maine ISPs that form the Maine ISP Association, that it is wicked useful to talk to (d) and (e), especially (e), rather than say, just stylish advocacy groups and the CWA (most of who's employees in Maine work for Verizion or its rip-off successor in the Northern New England wire-line market).

Translated from the geek, it means page bloat sucks, the digital divide is real, and if you can't get little-r-republicans (half of whom are business owning Dems) on the theory of competition vs monopoly, then you loose, with or without an extra helping of Progressive Vangardism.

How were your hours between lunch and tea?

Posted by EBW at 06:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The FCC has the authority to regulate cable if and only if (a) 70 percent of all U.S. households are able to subscribe to a cable service with at least 36 channels and if (b) 70 percent of those households subscribe to such service. The first threshold was crossed years ago, and the FCC is now informed by an independent audit that the second threshold was crossed this year. In the trade this is "the 70/70 provision".

It is reasonable to question if the study that made finding (b) is correct, and even Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, a Democrat who favors unbundling (or how we stop paying Rupert Murdoch for Fox when all we wanted was culture or sports or ... ) and the positions of record of Consumers Union, has doubts. Of course, Commissioners Robert McDowell and Deborah Taylor Tate, both Republican appointees, doubt the validity of the study which if accepted, would trigger the 70/70 provision and put cable within the jurisdictional reach of the FCC.

The cable industry (Comcast, TimeWarner, Fox) response is that DirecTV, Dish, ... and Verizon and AT&T have just enough market share to prevent the 70/70 provision from being triggered.

The Senate Commerce Committee's Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), John E. Sununu (R-N.H.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) and Gordon Smith (R-Ore.), wrote a nice piece of fiction, words to the effect that innovation would be stifled if ... let me know what "innovation" you've seen and been benefited by (so no citing rotating visuals that actually hurt your eyes, blinking cursor kind of eye candy). John Boehner and 23 other House Republicans wrote another bit of corporate lobby cover.

Meanwhile, something interesting is happening at the ITU-D which I'll write about soon, and something else is happening, also interesting, in the French internet market, which I'll also write about soon. As for us in the USofA, the FCC vote on whether 70/70 has been triggered was delayed, so Fox won the day.

Posted by EBW at 03:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Chris submitted a question via YT to the pending Republican YT candidate debate.

Posted by EBW at 08:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Walking across central Geneva Friday morning on our way to the office, my companion asked "What did 'Support the Troops' actually mean?"

In a few minutes we went from The Ribbon Base to Karl Rove to Victor Klemperer's Lingua Tertii Imperii: Notizbuch eines Philologen.

Posted by EBW at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It is amazing what an election can do. Kevin Rudd spent Day One doing the correct things, getting Oz into Kyoto, and getting Oz out of Iraq.

Labor got 53 percent of the vote and at least 83 seats in the lower house, with the Liberal-National coalition getting 46.6 percent of the vote and 47 seats, and Howard's own seat is too close to call.

According to Bush Fanatics not yet completely defunct, let alone forgotten, in fact they will fill the Inside The Beltway Sunday Political Religion Show (several outlets and times) today, the Objectively Pro-Saddam Average Aussie Voters have committed Treason, doomed Western Civilization, "Dishonor the Troops" and so on, and they should have trusted the Lib-Nats to continue to run the economy ... and ... ah ... look! a shiney object!! And it isn't the sub-prime melt-down!!!

Peace, climate change, education, health and a high-speed Internet network, how's that for administration priorities?

Posted by EBW at 08:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Chief Technical Officer of CORE that is.

Posted by EBW at 07:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

What do we want?

We have a mechanism that allows all Federally Recognized Indian Tribes to use the DNS.

Every government which wishes to do so may request from the .US operator to create a third-level domain under the second-level domain .NSN.US, and proceed to use that namespace for websites and email addresses.

Of course, the name used must be the name in the Federal Register, though it is possible in theory to use a shorter version, and the .US operator¹ is no more interested in the utility and corectness of any .NSN.US delegation than it is in any .STATE-NAME.US delegation, which is to say, not interested at all, and any attempt to create an operational service, member cooperative or not-for-profit or for-profit, has to take place outside of the DNS.

None of these and others I've not mentioned are necessarily fatal to the effective use of the DNS by tribal governments, or groups of tribal governments, or Indian NGOs, Indian business, and Indian civil society, but very little actually happens in .NSN.US. Most Indian use of the net makes use of .COM and .ORG, more or less at random.

Do we want a mechanism that allows tribal governments to individually or in groups or as classes, e.g., the class of governments dependent upon the BIA in the US and the DIAND in Canada, and those recognized by the governments of some states in the US and having constitutional status in Canada, and all Indian schools and Indian NGOs and Indian businesses and Indian social and cultural organizations, and ... all Indian lawyers, academics and geeks, to operate a top-level domain, like Switzerland or France?

What are the shapes of the birds we want? The turkeys we may give thanks for each November in the future?

What is it we want? What we have, or something else?

written Thursday, November 22nd, 2007, in Geneva, Switzerland.

¹ NeuStar, for which I wrote the technical components of its bid to the US DoC for .US, then operated by the IANA, for which I consult from time to time.

Posted by EBW at 02:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday's Le Temps, a daily in the Geneva media market, headlined "What can be done about the fall of the US Dollar?". Inside was a long piece on China's alarm (at the Party Chair level and on record) at the decline of value of China's investment portfolio in dollar denominated accounts.

Today the news is that the Euro has cross the $1.48 point, and that crude oil is at $99 per barrel, that FreddieMac and FannieMae et al are coming unglued, ...

From Switzerland, George Bush's USA looks like an economic wreck. One of my collaborators said over fondue yesterday evening "You're American, didn't you realize that the price of oil would go up when you attacked Iraq?"

Posted by EBW at 06:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I've known Vint for decades, and he's done two things I'm going to mention.
First, from A personal note of December, 2006:

It is two years since the Boxing Day Tsunami. One affected area was the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, which have restricted access, both to protect tribal populations, and because a semi-clandestine Indian national security asset is located there. Médecins Sans Frontières and Oxfam delivered relief supplies and emergency medical supplies for tribal populations to Port Blair, where it was held by the Indian Army. By January 6th I was able to thank Dr. Vint Cerf, who I know in a professional context, and who was in India the previous week. Dr. Cerf had relayed my concerns to the staff of the President of India, Dr. Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, and to the US Ambassador to India, Dr. David C. Mulford. A few days later the MSF/Oxfam shipments were released from the Army hold and distributed to the tribal people who survived the tsunami.

Second, during the Rome ICANN meeting, Vint had the sense to come over to the bar where Amadeu and I were having a beer. He sat down and asked what we were plotting. It wasn't a silly question, as it happened, we were putting together the core of what became the first "cultural" top level domain proposal for Catalan, and therefore, for Catalonia. It has been live for over a year now at .cat. Vint didn't panic because Amadeu and I were overthrowing Spanish and French state monopolies over Catalan and its speakers as an identified group, and creating the precedent for future escapes from the confines of the existing states regimes.

Posted by EBW at 05:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm in Geneva preparing for a meeting of a which has a non-trivial connection to themes like Internet Governance, Legal Intercept (wiretap) and National Jurisdiction, and so on, and will be held within the physical infrastructure of the ITU, and it occurs to me that there are issues more important than responding to Emanuel responding to Tancredo responding to Spitzer. We've got to stop FISA.

If FISA isn't stopped, speaking familial Spanish across the US/MX border can be legally intercepted, and using a phone while Mexican will be as dangerous as driving while Mexican.

I can't begin to describe how far reaching the electronic surveillance issue appears from my perspective, and this time I'm not in Beijing, at a significant confluence of wires and policy, I'm in Geneva. At a significant confluence of wires and policy.

Posted by EBW at 01:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I spent part of Saturday afternoon in a waiting area at Monterey Airport where CNN was shown on an overhead monitor. When did CNN become simply unwatchable? When did it become so absurdly partisan? It seemed more foreign than UniVision or TeleMundo.

Posted by EBW at 06:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I saw the film before nodding off on the red-eye between SFO and Frankfurt.

Good work Michael. Really good work.

Posted by EBW at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've got three systems in test that have been dark (incremental disk failure) for some time. Oh joy! By the end of the year (touch wood) I'll have 5x2x36GB of raw store sitting on 5x2x1GHz-pIII processors with 5x1GB of RAM. Not state-of-the-art sexy, but state-of-2001 sexy, and sufficient to play more games with.

Posted by EBW at 06:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Michael Heath is doing his level best to replace Susan Collins (R-ME) in the US Senate with Tom Allen (D-ME-01) from the US House. The Christian Civic League, Heath's organization, is trying to force Collins to repudiate the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which he styles as the "federal special homosexual rights bill".

That line Sex outside of marriage is wrong. is an uncomplicated declarative statement, forming the fifth para of Heath's press release, paras four and six stating that EDNA is an evil idea.

Meanwhile, the price of heating oil is now over $3/gal, up 300% over the price point when we sold our home in Portland and its not-yet-skyrocketing ARM and started to travel with the kids, and $50 doesn't quite put 15 gallons of 87 octane in the 4x4's tank or buy a single snow tire.

Dean Scontras is just as lost in space. His latest is on the horrors of allowing people with valid Mexican drivers licenses and valid Mexican vehicle liability insurance to obtain valid Maine drivers licenses and valid Maine vehicle liability insurance ... because ... I kid you not ... they might be ... Al Qaida in Maine (AQM) operatives. Dean is running against Charlie Summers, and possibley Steve Abbott, Collins' Senate chief of staff, for Tom Allen's seat.

Posted by EBW at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A 7.7 magnitude earthquake occurred an hour ago. The USGS link is here.

I've gone to the South American Explorers homepage for the following from the August 7.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Lima, which may be predictive for the next few days for news and relief organization.

Updates and relief contacts in subsequent posts.

PERU EARTHQUAKE

• A 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit the coast of Peru at 18.41 on Wednesday 15th August. Epicentre was beneath the Pacific Ocean, about 90 miles south-east of Lima. Four strong aftershocks from 5.4 to 5.9 followed.
  

• More than 500 people killed and 1,500 injured. All but one of the deaths occurred in the coastal province of Ica, to the south of Lima. At least 60 people died in the regional capital, also called Ica, 165 miles south of Lima. One person was killed in Lima.
  
  

• The towns of Pisco and Chinca were badly hit, with the majority of buildings destroyed. Power failures occurred in these towns as well as several other towns along the south coast. In Lima there was also power failure and some buildings collapsed.
  
  

• Parts of the South Pan-American Highway were blocked by falling boulders and cracks at several points along the coast. No travel to Pisco is possible by road or air, the main road has split and part of it has dropped nearly 2 meters.
  
  

• Helicopters from Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia are assisting in the rescue attempts
  
  

• Telephone and mobile phone services were knocked out in Lima and across the south coast of Peru but have been restored.
  
  

• All flights from Jorge Chavez International Airport were temporarily suspended, but are now running as normal.
  
  

• The Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami warning for the coasts of Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama. A tsunami watch was issued for the rest of Central America and Mexico and an advisory for Hawaii. The center canceled all the alerts after about two hours, but it said the quake had caused an estimated 10-inch tsunami near the epicenter.
  
  
  

Posted by EBW at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today I started the shutdown. I'll be closing up the site and doing the FEC paperwork to close the PAC.

Posted by EBW at 08:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jonah spins a great deal. Sometimes with his arms outstreached, others with one eye partially closed and one hand cupped around that eye, which is how he sits next to any car or truck, just below the side mirrors, watching the light wrap around the curve of the wheel fairing. An RV pulled in at dusk yesterday with a 1973 VW bug in tow and Jonah appreciated the sensuous curves of the classic Beetle.

Posted by EBW at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The photo was taken in 1890. The work was stolen in 1973. A portion was recently restored to Vétheuil (Val-d'Oise). The work dates from the first decade of the 1500's. I thought it an interesting image to reflect upon today.

Posted by EBW at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Armistice Day, the hour, day and month set by the general commands of the belligerent states for the cessation of offensive operations, after the abandonment of the policy of political gain by military operations by the governments of the belligerent states.

It is not endorse-political-gain-by-military-operations day, its the reverse. It is not veterans day, it is the day of no more veterans. The first day of 1918 when boys turning 17 were not called up for training, the first day of 1918 when boys 17 and a few months older were not sent to the trenches.

Today is Armistice Day. The hour, day, month that the Great War in Europe ended. The day of the putting down of guns. The day thousands of Indians, painted in clay, climbed up out of the trenches and embrassed the ksisisttsomo'koan soldiers, the pointed hats, saying "Brother, it is good to see you live."

Posted by EBW at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I was a KuDem in the last cycle, even a Kucinch delegate. I'm not a Dem anymore, and the rationale for remaining so seems more elusive at the end of this week than it did at its beginning.

Posted by EBW at 07:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Now that the Democratic Leadership has pretty much decided that Dick Cheney is an unimpeachable witness to history, rather than the more self-evident impeachable witless actor of hysteria, reading Gareth Porter's Cheney Tried to Stifle Dissent in Iran NIE is academically, though not politically, interesting.

Recommended, unless you happen to have an office on the Hill, in which case this is useless anti-knowledge.

Posted by EBW at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cassidy and Associates just dumped Gen.Musharraf. The C&A Pakistan contract was managed by Senior VP Robin Raphel, a former assistant secretary of state for South Asia (1993 to 1997). C&A represents Orcs, so this is surprising.

Posted by EBW at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You know things are over the top when making a face constitutes terrorism.

A reader sent me a pointer to a paper on the allegations of terrorism made mid-October by the New Zealand state in the context of police operations against Maori in the Tuhoe (North Island). The paper is Back in the Mists of Fear, by Moana Jackson, who founded the Nga Kaiwhakamarama I Nga Ture (the Maori Legal Service), and was also a judge on the Hawai`i International People's Tribunal in 1993.

You can write to Roy Ferguson, who's a career diplomat and the current NZ ambassador to the US, at 37 Observatory Circle, NW, Washington D.C. 20008, and ask if everyone from Aotearoa is a terrorist, or just the Pakeha (Anglo-Kiwi Settlers).

It helps if you squint your eyes and tilt your head and look at it ... sideways. If you look carefully you'll see it ... the European at the right of the frame is ... a skinhead!

Posted by EBW at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Rear Adm. Greg Smith, "These individuals have been assessed to be of no continuing value, nor do they pose a further threat to Iraqi security."

Democrats voting in favor of Kyl/Lieberman:

Akaka (D-HI), Baucus (D-MT), Bayh (D-IN), Cardin (D-MD), Carper (D-DE), Casey (D-PA), Clinton (D-NY), Conrad (D-ND), Dorgan (D-ND), Durbin (D-IL), Feinstein (D-CA), Johnson (D-SD), Kohl (D-WI), Landrieu (D-LA), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Levin (D-MI), Menendez (D-NJ), Mikulski (D-MD), Murray (D-WA), Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE), Pryor (D-AR), Reed (D-RI), Reid (D-NV), Rockefeller (D-WV), Salazar (D-CO), Schumer (D-NY), Stabenow (D-MI), Whitehouse (D-RI).

Hohum hysteria. Ebb and flow. All but one senator from every state I've resided in for the past five years, Maine, Pennsylvania, and California, Snowe, Collins, Spector, Casey, Feinstein ... only Boxer voted "nay".

Posted by EBW at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by MB Williams at 12:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Three out of five special election races to fill seats in the Maine House of Representatives went to Maine Dems -- House Districts 72, 83 and 99, bringing the total for the MDP to 90, vs 59 for the MRP, with a couple of Maine Green Independents and unenrolled (aka "Independent") on the margins of party and partisans.

This kind of margin should quell the TABORites but I expect that some form of TABOR will be on the ballot.

The Passamaquoddy Racino bill passed in the Maine Legislature, and John Baldacci forced it onto the off-year low-turnout ballot, where it lost by 4%. This sucks, and heating fuel is going to go over $4/gal this winter.

This amusing bit of nonsense shows up in comments at MaineToday.com (the Portland Press Herald):

ebw ebw of portland, ME
Nov 6, 2007 11:27 PM
Its unfortunate that we keep electing the same "dead weight" to the Council. If we want change in Portland, its not going to happen by re-electing members like Jill Duson.

I don't know how many Portlanders are "ebw", once or twice, but I supported Jill when she was considering going for Tom Allen's seat, and when she decided on the at-large race.

Posted by EBW at 10:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over on HuffPo Tim Giago writes:

I wonder if Ms. Watson has ever visited the Cherokee Nation? It is easy enough to ask Bert Hammond, her legislative aide, but the answer is yes. Congresswoman Watson held meet-and-greets in Tulsa with Cherokees, it was reported in the Muskogee Phoenix, which counts as "the home page" inside the District.

... the ballot in March of 2007, 76 percent of the citizens of the Cherokee Nation voted NO. Actually, the correct statement is that of the approximately 8,700 ballots cast in the March 2007 special referendum, by approximately 48,160 registered voters, or on a 18% turnout, approximately 6,600 ballots, or 13.7% of the registered vote, supported Chad Smith's disenfranchisement text. Substitute "14 percent" for "76 percent" and "currently registered voters" for "citizens" and Tim's text is correct. What 6.6k votes cast and 250k total citizens works out to is ... 2.6%.

I'm a Dawes Rolls Cherokee and I suppose I should get off the dime and enroll in the CNO and register to vote. However, I spent my Spring running the Leeds/Vann campaign website and while in Telequah shuttling the kids between the pool and the library while my spouse helped Stacy and Raymond in the campaign office. I'm OK with that.

And I have the CNO voter file. All 48,160 records. And I'm OK with that too.

Posted by EBW at 11:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I mentioned this a few weeks ago in Criminals, careerists and courtiers at Al Asad Air Base.

Elsewhere, Pakistani elites are carrying on pretty much as if nothing is forecast that would dampen the political quadrille around the presidential election, which means that neither Musharaff or Bhutto have been briefed that a movement order is pending that would zero out their respective domestic calculations.

In my view, the skirmishes in the NWFP and Baluchistan areas of operations are unremarkable, insufficient to motivate either non-accommodation with the political opposition parties, or yesterday's sudden coup d'etat, which could just as easily tilt towards civil resistance as military relaxation.

Is the better explanation Iran?

Posted by EBW at 09:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Of the nineteen justices on the Supreme Court, fifteen, including Chief Justice ftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, were "removed" and arrested over the weekend. Of the twenty seven justices on the Sindh High Court, twenty three judges, including Chief Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed were "removed" and arrested over the weekend.

The device employed is a requirement to "take oath" under the Provisional Constitutional Order (PCO) that was issued by the Musharraf Regime directly after its proclamation of a "state of emergency" on Saturday.

Thomas Moore refused to swear the Oath of Supremacy of 1534, which made Henry Tudor head of the Church of England, was charged with praemunire, tried for treason, sentenced to death, and beheaded at London Tower. His last words were The King's good servant, but God's First. The translation to modern Pakistan, or the US after Gore v Bush, substitutes "Constitution" for "God".

Shaukat Aziz has just made the first official announcement of the scope of the arrests -- between 400 and 500 "preventative arrests". At this point, just about anyone you could name from the bench or the courts or the opposition parties is either in custody or has been issued a "30 day house arrest", so its Burma write a bit larger, with nuclear weapons, and $11,000,000,000 in military aid from the Bush Regime, which held its own coup in December 12, 2001.

Posted by EBW at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

My friend Susie points us to a NYTimes article on the rise and fall of Bernie Kerik, a close friend and former business partner of purported Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani. It's not pretty, for either Kerik or Rudy:

Mr. Giuliani defended Mr. Kerik, a friend and business partner, whom he had recommended to the Bush administration. But he also tried to shield himself from accusations that he had ignored Mr. Kerik's failings.

"I was not informed of it," Mr. Giuliani said then, when asked if he had been warned about Mr. Kerik's relationship with Interstate before appointing him to the police post in 2000.

Mr. Giuliani amended that statement last year in testimony to a state grand jury. He acknowledged that the city investigations commissioner, Edward J. Kuriansky, had told him that he had been briefed at least once. The former mayor said, though, that neither he nor any of his aides could recall being briefed about Mr. Kerik's involvement with the company.

But a review of Mr. Kuriansky's diaries, and investigators' notes from a 2004 interview with him, now indicate that such a session indeed took place. What is more, Mr. Kuriansky also recalled briefing one of Mr. Giuliani's closest aides, Dennison Young Jr., about Mr. Kerik's entanglements with the company just days before the police appointment, according to the diaries he compiled at the time and his later recollection to the investigators.

The additional evidence raises questions not only about the precision of Mr. Giuliani's recollection, but also about how a man who proclaims his ability to pick leaders came to overlook a jumble of disturbing information about Mr. Kerik, even as he pushed him for two crucial government positions.

But it's important to note that Kerik was not the only friend who Giuliani has promoted to the Bush Administration. First, there was current Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff:

Giuliani hired Chertoff as an assistant in the 1980s, and Chertoff prosecuted high profile organized crime cases. The first President Bush named Chertoff U.S. attorney for New Jersey, and President Clinton retained him.

Giuliani pushed for Chertoff to be nominated as the new Attorney General. However, when vocal opposition arose in the Senate, Giuliani was fortunate to get a second fan into the nomination seat, Michael Mukasey. From Wikipedia:

Mukasey's son, Marc L. Mukasey, leads the white-collar criminal defense practice in the New York office of Bracewell & Giuliani. The Mukaseys have a professional relationship with Rudy Giuliani; Mukasey and son are also justice advisers to Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign. Mukasey swore in Mayor-elect Giuliani in 1994 and 1998.

Most interesting, however, is Giuliani's post-mayoral connection with the bankrollers of the Bush crime family. I'll tackle that in part two (Eric is at ICANN in LA for a week, and my time blogging has been thus extremely curtailed.)

Posted by MB Williams at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)