almost a diary

The NYT’s Brian Stelter looks at some interesting similarities between the last two seasons of “The West Wing” and the current Presidential campaign in the US -

Following the Script – Obama, McCain and ‘The West Wing’

Without words. Via Stefan Niggemeier, who got it from Andrew Sullivan, who apparently got it from Aidan Nak.

in the NYTimes after the US House of Representatives voted “no” on the Wall Street bailout plan. He’s right of course, that “flip-flopping” on issues like this in the way it happened isn’t exactly a sign of a well functioning representative democracy. On the other hand, it’s also true that this vote is a sign that Congress still matters, even if it needed a figure with 11 zeros to balk at the administration. So, does that make the US a Banana Republic as Krugman argues? I think the decision on that is still out – after all, the bailout plan would/will have distributive consequences that would have/will make made the US income structure even more reminiscent of a classic Banana Republic.

Paul Krugman – OK, we are a banana republic

You know, back in 2000, I said that Americans were so confident in their way of doing things that they actually believed they could afford someone like the current President to be in charge. Now, a couple of years later, they may no longer be too confident about the situation they find themselves in, militarily, diplmatically, economically, and politically. But in a move that illustrates to a scary degree the extent of polarisation of the American electorate, John McCain picked his Vice Presidential candidate according to the simple rules of electoral maths, and we’re now facing the possibility of a President Sarah Palin. And that would probably be when we’d all begin to fondly remember the days of President Bush. If there’s anything the choice of Mrs Palin, just as the Congressional hearings regarding the imminent 700bn bank-bailout, indicate, it is that US politics seems to have become completely dysfunctional now.

Here’s Sarah Palin making that point to CBS news anchor Katie Couric. It would funny, if weren’t so sad and scary.

Via netzpolitik.org ein Clip, der wohl heute morgen im ARD-Frühstücksmagazin gelaufen ist. Dort gibt es eine Rubrik names “Kinderreporter”. Heute befragten die Kinderreporter Politiker zum Thema Überwachung. Am Ende des kurzen Beitrags mache ich mir vor allem Sorgen über die technische Kompetenz derjenigen, die für die gegenwärtig anstehehende Kodifizierung grundsätzlicher technischer Fragen des menschlichen Zusammenlebens verantwortlich sind. Und natürlich stelle ich mir die Frage, ob man von der Antwort des Innenministers Wolfgang Schäuble auf die Fragen der mit einer Minikamera spielenden Kinder (“Wir wollten Ihnen mal zeigen, wie es ist, wenn man überwacht wird oder ausspioniert.”) auf sein Menschenbild bzw. Demokratieverständnis schließen kann.

“Wir tun aber die Leute nicht ueberwachen und ausspionieren. Nur wenn es ganz schlimme Boesewichter sind, wo die Polizei hingucken muss, aber so brave Kinder wie ihr ueberwachen wir nicht.”

Hier ist das Video -

Kein Wunder, daß die Bundesregierung nichts von den illegalen CIA-Gefangenentransporten durch deutschen Luftraum wußte – sie wollte ja gar nichts wissen…

Bundesinnenminister Schäuble hat es vor dem BND-Untersuchungsausschuss abgelehnt, dass der Verfassungsschutz die Aktivitäten von US-Geheimdiensten in Deutschland mit nachrichtdienstlichen Mitteln beobachtet. Die US-Regierung habe erklärt, dass sie im “Kampf gegen den Terrorismus” die Souveränität und Gesetze anderer Staaten achte. “Ich habe keinen Anlass, daran zu zweifeln”, sagte Schäuble. (via fefes Blog)

Wow. Who would have ever imagined that I would recommend something written by William Safire? Certainly not me. But there you go. Here’s his interesting take on the ethymology of “water boarding.”

Why did boarding take over from cure, treatment and torture? Darius Rejali, the author of the recent book “Torture and Democracy” and a professor at Reed College, has an answer: “There is a special vocabulary for torture. When people use tortures that are old, they rename them and alter them a wee bit. They invent slightly new words to mask the similarities. This creates an inside club, especially important in work where secrecy matters. Waterboarding is clearly a jailhouse joke. It refers to surfboarding” — a word found as early as 1929 — “they are attaching somebody to a board and helping them surf. Torturers create names that are funny to them.”

This is probably what Obama’s campaign will focus on next – if Hillary Clinton doesn’t win pretty much all of the upcoming primaries, and the bigger ones with a, say, 60-40 ratio, she will not be able to get more pledged delegates at the Democratic convention than Barack Obama. Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter draws the conclusion that this means that winning Texas and Ohio by only rather small margins actually dealt her campaign a technical K.O.

“Hillary would then have to convince the uncommitted superdelegates to reverse the will of the people.”

Sure, in that case, everything would depend on the votes of the unpledged superdelegates, and I think it is fair to assume that most of them would not want to risk alienating “the will of the people”. Alas, or fortunately, that’s not as easily done as it seems, simply because “the will of the people” cannot be as evident to a party official from, say, California, as it appears to a journalist looking at the nation-wide delegate count. What’s more important to said superdelegate? Supporting the candidate chosen by the voters in his or her home state? Or the one with the higher total number of pledged delegates (assuming they are not the same)? As superdelegates do not appear to be representing states proportional to the number of superdelegates, I’d suggest that the nomination is indeed still an open race, and possibly will be even at the Convention should both campaigns still have the same “momentum.”

Maybe it’s deal time now that John McCain is officially the Republican nominee. Why not have an “unbeatable democratic ticket” by guaranteeing Obama an active vice presidency to get the experience he still needs (at least for the campaign) and let the two agree that Hillary Clinton will not run for a second term… we’ll see.

Just seen on nytimes.com while checking the latest primary results -

Arizona Weighs Bill to Allow Guns on Campuses – Horrified by recent campus shootings, a state lawmaker proposes that allowing adults to carry concealed weapons might deter future incidents.

Striking down state (Land) legislation from Nordrhein-Westfalia that allowed the use of trojan software to spy on individual’s computers, the German constitutional court (Bundesvrfassungsgericht) has derived from the fundamental legal premises of the German constutiton a new basic right to “privacy and integrity of information processing systems” (my quick and dirty translation). As a basic right, it can only be infringed given very specific circumstances – in this case, the court explicitly mentioned “specific” threats to the life and liberty of individuals, or “concrete” threats to the state.

It will obviously depend on legislative interpretations of the court’s ruling to see whether it’s possible to speak of a “loophole” in the basic right, as Spiegel Online English does. My guess is not, as politicians will not want to get slapped in the face by the Constitutional Court again, and the court will rule on two more privacy related cases soon.

While the court’s ruling will have to be studied in detail to understand its intentions more clearly, this is clearly a landmark decision with respect to the question of how to balance the state’s desire to gather information to protect its citizens and ensure the rule of law with the citizens’ right to privacy.

The Chaos Computer Club’s Andreas Bogk’s, who serves as an expert at the court, likenes the verdict to the census ruling in 1983, which derived a basic right to informational self determination and paved the way for privacy protection legislation.

Netzpolitk.org (German) has everything and then another link and quote regarding the verdict and the unfolding media coverage.

Some more links in English – BBC, WSJ, Bloomberg.