The NY Times today highlights a crazy case out of Pennsylvania where a girl was threatened with being charged for child pornography because someone took a photo of her in her bra on a cell phone. With the help of the ACLU-PA she's suing the DA. From the docket we learn this:

The district attorney has asserted that the girls were accomplices to the production of child pornography because they allowed themselves to be photographed. The district attorney has not, however, threatened to charge the individuals who distributed the photos.

This is a prosecutor projecting paranoia and shame onto an unsuspecting and innocent teen. Do they really think these kids were out to create child pornography? That by being photographed someone becomes a producer?

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Nice shot of NJ Governor Corzine waiting an hour and 45 minutes outside his polling place to vote.

Rachel Maddow had a great editorial about how embarrassing it is that we have long lines to vote in some districts. She says it amounts to a poll-tax, which is an undue burden on citizens to excercise their constitutional rights.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/27508339#27508339

The polls at one of the districts in my city is in complete disarray. I'm exit polling people to see if they had any problems voting and I'm getting a lot of complaints. The wait now is two and a half hours, but seems to be dying down as people are going to work, or giving up on voting entirely. Many could be planning to come back tonight, but I have no idea if it's gonna be better or worse this evening.

I had the chance to quickly poll NJ Governor Corzine and asked him when he arrived in line. He said it had been 6:25AM. He didn't vote until 7:10AM. There were camera crews all around and Corzine gave a little press conference after speaking with me.

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I'm now registered as a non-partisan poll monitor to work tomorrows election. I'll be conducting exit polls asking voters if they've encountered any problems. I worked a bit during the primaries, but this time, since I'm registered, I'll be able to stand closer to the polling place and will have authorization by the county. I won't be able to talk to people before they enter, but have a survey for people to take when they leave.

I'll work the place that the Governor will be voting at, and last year there was a delay and he wasn't able to vote for 45 mintues. I'm wondering what tomorrow will be like. I bet there's be a bunch of TV cameras and junk. Should be exciting.

This song may not be as bad as "Hillary for You and Me" but it's close.

"I dread the deaths of certain super-celebrities. Not because I care about them, but because of all the s--t I have to endure on television when one of them dies. All those tributes and retrospectives. And the bigger the personality, the worse it is."

George Carlin

When the US went to war in Iraq in 2003, no one in the mainstream media would admit that it was about protecting US interests in Middle Eastern oil. I always felt that it was really the ONLY legitimate reason to go to war there, but our cynical politicians knew they couldn't sell that idea to the American people.

Our economy and way of life is dependant on a steady stream of energy from fossil fuels. Iraq has one of the largest oil fields in the world, but it was controlled by the state of Iraq. Our oil was under their sands! Of course we needed to invade. We can't be assured of continuing our way of life if we're reliant on the whims of a ruthless dictator. So we need to establish control.

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When the movie Saving Private Ryan came out I talked to my late grandfather about it. He had fought as a Marine in the Pacific theater during WWII and I was curious about the reality of the film. He had made landings in Guam on one of Higgins boats featured in the beginning of the film. I asked if he'd seen the movie and he said bluntly "No, I don't want to see that **** again."

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Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”

What struck me the most was the implicit assumption that the Pentagon had to do war for the minds of the American people. "We the People" were the target of a psychological operation to support going into a war-of-choice, and we paid for it ourselves!

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