This is a sad, disturbing, and in my opinion damning article. I am glad to see the press cover this issue more.
New Republic Article (or as PDF)
John Dean was convicted during the Watergate trials. He is now a professor and has written what I think is a very insightful article that deals with what the Bush administration said regarding WMD as compared to what appears to be the actual case.
People were starting to crash by friday. I know I was worn out and I was starting to loose my voice. 8:00 am - Continental breakfast
The food at this conference has been wonderful. I haven’t mentioned it before, but it was. Thursday night’s dinner was a wonderfully marinated salmon. I can’t imaging what it must be to cook salmon perfectly for 1500 people at a time.
We had a very in depth discussion over breakfast on why the message of the ACLU is often difficult to sell to the average american. I took the posistion that the messages of the republicans was a much simpler message that centered around simple, immediate personal issues (like a tax cut) that cause instant gratification. The ACLU’s issues are more abstract and focus more on long term or at least not immediate advantages. And that in order to get a larger base of support we need to bring the issues down to simple concrete ideas that can be presented.
I think that the messages that Anthony Remoro has been giving is just right as I mentioned a few days ago, short and too the point.
We got so involved in our conversation that we almost missed our next sessions. Those are great conversations to have.
9:00 - Online Strategies: Activism Gone Digital
This was a panel discussion talking about issues that relate to building online activism websites and using the internet to lobby. I found it very interetsing and suprising that studies have shown that Legislative offices pay as much attention to emails from people who identify themselves as constiuents as they do paper letters.
11:00 am - Church and State/Government-Funded Religion
This was a depressing seminar. I went to it because it was one I knew very little about, and I am not sure if it was a good plan. The speakers talked primarily about the growth of Bush’s Faith Based Initiatives. These programs are quite scary.
One of the big issues is that not only do they allow government (aka our) money go to religious programs, but in addition, those religious organizations are exempted from anti-discrimintation laws related to religion. As an example, with the new rules, a protestant head-start program can fire a teacher for not being a protestant. Scary, eh?
In addition, the government is spending nearly $100 million to support abstinence-only sex ed classes. (That is more money than is being spent to rebuild Afgahnistan, btw.) And they removed language from the bills that indicated that in order for a program to be funded, it must be shown that it actually is effective.
12:30 - Political Satire - Lunch
This event was given by Jim Morris. He was scary. His impressions of Bush (both of them), Reagon, Clinton, and Nixon were dead on. This was quite a lively event.
3:30 - The New FBI
This was the big show for the day. We were required to vacate the event hall prior to his talk so the FBI could sweep the room.
Robert Mueller’s speach was suprisingly good, especially given the audience he had. I was impressed that he was able to give a speach that was well accepted and even funny in places to what most people would consider a hostile crowd. He even took credit for the large increases in the ACLU membership (although I would guess Ashcroft has a better claim to that).
We obviously didn’t agree on a number of issues, and some of them were even rebutted the next morning, but I give him credit for havinmg the courage to come speak with us.
after
I joined the group from Idaho for the FBI Director’s speach and afterwords there were a few sessions that neither myself, nor Monique and Ridley wanted to attend. We wanted to get out of the conference for a while. So we decided to forgo the dinner and reception and go out on the town for dinner.
As an aside, I was really impressed with Monique and Ridley. This was not exactely a place were one would expect two 17 year old girls to be interested and excited, but they were both very mature and intelligent. I kept forgetting that they were underage; a good sign for their future.
So we went out to Fuddruckers and had a really good and silly dinner. After dinner, Ridley wanted to head back to her hotel room and rest, so Monique and I took the Metro down to Georgetown and wandered around some very expensive and very odd stores. $114 jeans are just too much; and when a store has enough money to hire a DJ to play inside, there is just something wrong.
After killing a few hours and getting steadily more wet in the rain, we headed back to the conference for the event I was looking forward to.
9:30 - Stand up Comics for Freedom
This was great. This was crying and trying not to pee on yourself funny. I was thrilled when I saw on the agenda that Paula Poundstone would be one of the comics at this event. I hear her regularly on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me on NPR, but her routine at lunch was beyond anything I had heard her on before. I wish there was a webcast of her act as there is no way I can describe it.
The other comics were good, but nothing in comparison.
Thursday was the day that I was most nervous about. Going to speak to my representative was not my idea of fun. I don’t think I’ll put any of the lobbyists out of their jobs anytime soon. 8:00 am
All of us from Virginia got together at breakfast and Aimee let us in on the plan for the day. Unfortunately we had to modify the plan as not everyone who said they would be showing up actually did. But things got cleared up. We decided that half of the people present would go to Warner’s office at 10:00 am and the other half would go and see Allen’s office later in the day. In addition everyone would go to their respective Representative’s office in small groups.
The busses to the Hill were not scheduled to leave until 11:00, so those of us going to Warner’s office left early and got a van. Joining us was Greg Nojeim who is the Associate Director of the ACLU Washington National Office. The national office felt that Warner was a key member that needed to be talked with.
9:30 am - Lobby Day
We arrived at John Warner’s office in the Russell Senate Office Building only to find that through a mixup in communication, our meeting had been rescheduled to 2:00 pm. This put a slight hitch in the plan, but one of our group had gotten a copy of the Senate comittee schedule for that day and noticed that the Senate Judical Comittee’s Constiutional subcomittee was meeting starting at 9:30 and that the second item on their agenda was the Victim’s Rights Amendment. So we walked over to that building and sat in.
As an aside, it is interesting to note that their are tunnels going between all of the Senate and House buildings that allow you to move around without ever going outside. That is if you can find your way around as their are almost no signs.
After watching the subcomittee meeting, we walked over from the Senate side of Capitol Hill to the House side to meet with our representatives. We decided that since our groups had each a single person to each Representative that we would split up and have our meetings and then get back together for lunch.
I went to see Jo Ann Davis in room 1123 of the Longworth House Office Building. We knew the chances of actually meeting our Representative were slim to none but I ended meeting with Jonathon E. Kidwell, a Legislative assistant. He couldn’t have been much older than 22, and was quite pleasant but knew very little about the issues. I talked with him for around 10 or 15 minutes and then headed down to wait for everyone else.
As I was waiting to talk with Jonathon, another staffer came and gave a warning that there were hundreds of ACLU people walking the halls. They didn’t sound pleased.
12:30 pm
Lunch; not much to say. 1 slice of pizza and a soda.
1:30
We arrived back at the Russell Building and met up with the rest of the people who were meeting with Senator Warner’s staff. Thankfully this meeting went much better. We met with one of his Legislative Assistants (whose card I did not get), but more importantly, his Deputy Legislative Director/Legislative Counsel, Christopher J. Yianilos. The 12 of us from Virginia talked with him for nearly 45 minutes on many issues. It was an intelligent discussion even though we obviously didn’t agree on many issues. I hope that it will at the least give Senator Warner a better picture of who the people behind the ACLU are and that we are not a bunch of loonies.
After the meeting we got a bus ride back to the hotel.
4:30 - Reception
This reception was the event that really tipped the scale for me and convinced me to go to the conference. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who does not have a website, weird) came to speak. At least she tried to speak in the beginning. There were significant microphone issues, and eventually Anthony Romero held a microphone for her entire set of comments.
She is a very quiet and soft spoken woman and I am afraid her speach was not all that interesting, but it was very interesting to learn that she was once a lawyer for the ACLU.
In addition to Justice Ginsburg, Dennis Haysbert, who plays the president of the United States on the TV show 24 spoke. He was very impassioned and I can’t remember a thing he said except that he was very popular with many of the audience.
6:00 pm - ACLU Awards Dinner
I sat at the dinner with a group of people from Idaho. This included two high school students, Monique and Ridley. It was great to see intelligent young people getting involved. We had fun talking prior to the actual ceremonies.
David Chappelle was the host for the evening and was quite amusing. He was able to give both a funny and serious talk about the evenings award winner, Muhammad Ali. I learned about Ali’s history with the ACLU and I can certainly see why the ACLU created an award named after him: The ACLU Muhammad Ali Champion of Liberty Award for Heavyweights in the Arts, Business, Science, and Sports.
other things
There was one article in the newspaper that I saw on Thursday:
This was the official first day of the conference, so the events did not begin until 11:00 so I was able to rest in the morning and get ready. pre 11:00
Since Monday, the ACLU was also having it’s Biennial Meeting where the various ACLU boards from around the country get together to decide policies and stands for the whole organization. I was able to sit in one of their sessions and watch the inner workings of the ACLU. Parliamentary proceedings are not very exciting.
11:00 am - Next Generation Orientation
The ACLU was really pushing to get youth involved in the events and the organization. Of the 1500 people who attended the conference, nearly 400 were in the youth category, granted that was helped by the fact that the age range was 16-27, but given the demographics of the members, it worked. And I would say from what I saw that probably 1/3 to 1/2 of the youth were in high school; very impressive.
This opening session was a rally for the younger crowd, of which I was near the oldest. We were introduced to some of the youth advisory board members as well as some notable persons in the audience. These included the student who sued his high school after being expelled for wearing a “Bush is a Terrorist” t-shirt. Very cool.
1:00 pm - Official Opening of the Conference
The opening remarks by Nadine Strossen (President) and Anthony Romero (Executive Director) were amazing. Here is a link to a webcast of Anthony’s speech. Both of them have learned that in order to move into the next generation the organization needs to adapt to the modern 30 and 60 second sound bite culture we live in and the speech he gave is designed both as an excellent whole and also as a serious of excellent smaller remarks.
3:00 pm - Congressional Mobilization for Freedom
This was the preparation for Thursday’s big event on the Hill. The idea being that having 800 of the 1500 ACLU members attending go to the hill and visit their congressional members. There were a total of 27 people from Virginia but not all were planning on attending.
Aimee took the leadership role and she started planning out different groups of people to go to different offices. We did have one scheduled visit at 10:00 am with Senator Warner’s office. I was the only person who lived in Jo Ann Davis’ district, so I was to be the primary speaker at that meeting.
The speakers at this session gave brief talks about the issues they wanted us to cover including the Victims Rights Amendment, Patriot Act (I and II), the Flag Desecration Amendment, and End Racial Profiling Act. They also gave us a scorecard of how our representatives voted on these issues; all of the ones I would be visiting had straight negatives. Tomorrow would be an interesting day.
As the event was going on, I talked with Aimee as I had learned that she was responsible for the VA ACLU website. She had taught herself HTML but still had some questions. She hopefully will take me up on my offer to help her learn more HTML so the site can better represent the needs of VA.
7:00 pm - Freedom Fair
This was a social event with some free food and very expensive drinks ($4 sodas). I hung around there for an hour or so with one of the other Virginia members and talked with people from around the country. There was also a Youth event at the same time that I wandered over to and talked with some of the people there.
after
As I was heading back towards my room, I ran into Kent Willis (the Execuive Director of the VA Chapter) and his wife about to head to dinner with one of the VA board members (whose first name was George and whose last name I have since forgotten). George and I had eaten already, but we joined Kent and his wife to a mediterranean restaurant called Medeterra. It had very good martinis (I had the Sour Apple) and we had pleasant conversation on all sorts of topics.
After being rained on as we walked back to the hotel, I made my way to my room and bed. I found it hard to sleep and ended up watching most of Black Hawk Down.
Over the next few days I am going to try to type in my experiences at the ACLU Inaugural Membership Conference. Overall it was a great experience and I would recommend in future years that people attend; Not to mention join this wonderful organization that is doing great work for all of us every day.
There is considerable information on the ACLU website about the conference and I will attempt to link to the relevant items and even some webcasts when appropriate.
Read on for my first day experiences. Tuesday, June 10th
This was travel day, in more ways than I originally expected. I had been invited to a reception being hosted by the VA ACLU chapter, so I needed to get up the hotel a day earlier than I had originally planned. I left Williamsburg around 1:30 ish and got in to DC and my hotel (the Omni Shoreham) relatively uneventfully. This trend was not to continue. The reception was occurring in Alexandria and started at 6:00 pm and, according to the directions I had, the house where it was hosted was 17 miles away. I did not want to arrive right at 6:00, so I decided to leave my hotel at 5:45, expecting that it would take me 20-30 minutes to get there. That was not to be; after getting lost I arrived at the reception at 7:00. I hate DC.
I only caught the tail end of the two speakers: Barry Steinhardt, the director of the Technology and Liberty Program (whom I was able to meet later, thankfully), and Dalia Hashad, the Arab, Muslim, and South Asian Advocate, both from the National ACLU office. Aside from that, I had a very good time. I was able to meet all of the members of the VA ACLU office and talk with them. I was slightly surprised that Kent Willis, the Executive Director of the VA ACLU had found my website and we spent some time talking about that. I spent an enjoyable time with their Legislative Director, Aimee Perron talking about many issues. She and I are both about the same age and we got along well in the subsequent days.
When describing my driving adventure to some of the assembled guests, they indicated that on my way back there was a far more efficient way to get back. In a lack of brilliance I decided to try this more efficient but undocumented way to get back to my hotel instead of the way I knew would work. Sadly it didn’t work and it took me an hour to get back to the hotel. ::sigh::
Say goodbye to Bush’s slimy little minion! Woo Hoo!
Bush Spokesman Ari Fleischer to Resign
Don’t let the doorknob hit you in the ass on the way out Ari!
Unlike similar previous services, Apple’s has more user-friendly options. There is no subscription necessary, customers can keep the songs indefinitely, they can burn unlimited copies of the songs onto CD’s, and, as with any Apple product, get to feel as if they are giving the finger to Bill Gates and Windows every time they use it.
Need we say any more?
This is what happens when I read books that cover security. I just finished reading Bruce Schneier and Niels Ferguson’s book, Practical Cryptography and it was wonderful. It had sections that made my brain hurt (group theory, argh) but the concepts presented were very important. It made me reconsider many of the technologies I had helped to develop at 3GI (and made me realize that much we had done was purely to fool the ignorant, not provide real security). The result that often happens when I read books that make me think about security is that I realize the mistakes I make in my own security precautions. So I have been going on a small campaign to secure my credentials better.
Passwords are a hard one. According to the book (and other literature I have read) the English language provides about 2 bits of entropy per letter. This is not so good, especially when you are using an 8 character password (which is about the best anyone can remember). What this means is that you may have a nice huge 1024 bit RSA key, but if it is protected by an 8 character password, guess which is the weak point someone might try to exploit?
The alternative (on systems which support it) is to use a phrase or sentence that you come up with. It takes longer to type, but you get a much more secure system.
So I have replaced my pidly password on the high security items with 30-40 character passphrases.
At least my typing will have to improve.
P
GRADE COURSE HOURS F GRADE DATE AUDIT INSTRUCTOR(S)
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