"We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay whole systems of universe[s,] to be governed by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created at once by special act." (Charles Darwin)
Blagojevich did acknowledge that the truth of his actions might not be flattering in some cases. He referred to taped conversations played earlier in the Senate trial. The tapes appeared to show Blagojevich linking legislation to campaign contributions.I believe him. It's refreshing when you hear a politician actually tell the truth for once, isn't it?
He said that's something "all of us in politics do." (source)
Though few officers will confess to lying -- after all, it's a crime -- work by researchers and a 1990s commission appointed to examine police corruption shows there's a tacit agreement among many officers that lying about how evidence is seized keeps criminals off the street.
To stem the problem, some criminal-justice researchers and academic experts have called for doing polygraphs on officers who take the stand or requiring officers to tape their searches.
A Supreme Court ruling this month, however, suggests that a simpler, though controversial, solution may be to weaken a longstanding part of U.S. law, known as the exclusionary rule. The 5-4 ruling in Herring v. U.S. that evidence obtained from certain unlawful arrests may nevertheless be used against a criminal defendant could indicate the U.S. is inching closer to a system in which officers might not be tempted to lie to prevent evidence from being thrown out.
Criminal-justice researchers say it's difficult to quantify how often perjury is being committed. According to a 1992 survey, prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges in Chicago said they thought that, on average, perjury by police occurs 20% of the time in which defendants claim evidence was illegally seized.
"It is an open secret long shared by prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges that perjury is widespread among law enforcement officers," though it's difficult to detect in specific cases, said Alex Kozinski, a federal appeals-court judge, in the 1990s. That's because the exclusionary rule "sets up a great incentive for...police to lie."
So let me get this straight: everyone in the criminal justice system accepts that police routinely lie to help them gain convictions. Rather than realize that this means something is fundamentally flawed with our system, their solution is to remove the penalties associated with police misconduct? The exclusionary rule is one of the few protections afforded to defendants, and now we're going to weaken it because some cops feel pressured to lie to gain admission of the evidence? Exclusionary rule or not, I really am still stuck on the fact that a fifth of the police department routinely perjures themselves in court, and yet that is not the focus of this article. Let me put this another way: our police are committing criminal acts, and nobody is doing anything to stop it.
Throwing out evidence because of wrongful searches and arrests "is not an individual right and applies only where its deterrent effect outweighs the substantial cost of letting guilty and possibly dangerous defendants go free," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts.
Civil liberties advocates and defense lawyers say losing the exclusionary rule would harm the public. "We'd risk far greater invasions of privacy because officers would have carte blanche to do outrageous activity and act on hunches all the time," says JaneAnne Murray, a criminal defense lawyer in New York.
Excluding illegally obtained evidence "is not an individual right and applies only where its deterrent effect outweighs the substantial cost of letting guilty and possibly dangerous defendants go free." Really? If we follow Justice Robert's statement to it's natural conclusion, then police can do whatever they want, as long as they actually catch some people that have drugs. And just what are these "substantial costs" associated with letting drug offenders go free? It seems to me that there are more substantial costs associated with incarcerating drug offenders than there are in letting them go free. As I write this, the federal and state governments combined have spent over $4.1 billion dollars in the first 29 days of 2009 on the drug war. Police arrested an estimated 872,720 persons for cannabis violations in 2007, the highest annual total ever recorded in the United States, according to statistics compiled by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Of those charged with cannabis violations, approximately 89 percent, 775,137 Americans were charged with possession only. An American is now arrested for violating cannabis laws every 38 seconds.(source)
![[Chart]](http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NA-AV558_EXCLUD_NS_20090128221636.gif)
Studies Find Mercury in Much U.S. Corn Syrup
Corn Syrup Industry Attacks Findings, but Researchers Stick by Studies
Reuters
WASHINGTON
Many common foods made using commercial high fructose corn syrup contain mercury as well, researchers reported on Tuesday, while another study suggested the corn syrup itself is contaminated.
Food processors and the corn syrup industry group attacked the findings as flawed and outdated, but the researchers said it was important for people to know about any potential sources of the toxic metal in their food.
In one study, published in the journal Environmental Health, former Food and Drug Administration scientist Renee Dufault and colleagues tested 20 samples of high fructose corn syrup and found detectable mercury in nine of the 20 samples.
Dufault said in a statement that she told the FDA about her findings but the agency did not follow up.
Dr. David Wallinga, a food safety researcher and activist at the nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, said he followed up on the report to find mercury in actual food.
"When I learned of that work, I said that is interesting but we don't just go out and eat a spoonful of high fructose corn syrup," Wallinga said in a telephone interview.
"We went and looked at supermarket samples where high fructose corn syrup was the first or second ingredient on the label," he said. These 55 different foods included barbecue sauce, jam, yogurt and chocolate syrup.
"We found about one out of three had mercury above the detection limit," Wallinga said.
The Corn Refiners Association challenged the findings.
"This study appears to be based on outdated information of dubious significance," the group said in a statement.
Wallinga and colleagues said they believed the mercury got into the food during manufacture, at plants that use mercury-grade caustic soda produced in industrial chlorine plants, although his team was unable to show this.
"Our industry has used mercury-free versions of the two reagents mentioned in the study, hydrochloric acid and caustic soda, for several years," Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Association, said in a statement.
Wallinga said the studies were based on samples taken in 2005, the most recent available.
Many studies have shown that fish can be high in mercury. Wallinga said consumers should know about other potential sources so they can limit how much they eat. "The best mercury exposure is no exposure at all," he said.
"Even at low levels methylmercury can harm the developing brain. The last thing we should intentionally do is add to it," Wallinga added.
He said his team did not test foods that did not contain corn syrup to see if they were also high in mercury.
In a prior post, I noted that there will be an atheist meet-up next month. Before the meet-up, there will be an an informal gathering where we’ll discuss our agenda for the meet. I plan to pitch my idea for an atheist outreach. The Philippines is a very religious country, with 99.9% of the population believe in a god or higher power, where Catholics have the courage of their conviction to impale themselves like their man-god, where mystics earn a decent living bilking the faithful, and where an oversized action figure can command crowds larger than the Messiah Barack Obama.
In this sea of piety, atheists are few and far in between. Most are lonely, ostracized by society, and ashamed of their unbelief. We should reach out to them. Tell them that they are not alone. Organized atheism in the Philippines must be a support group. There is a time and place for countering religious propaganda, but we must first "be there" for other atheists. In this regard, I’ve thought of starting an atheist ad campaign (coincidentally*, just as other atheist groups are doing the same) so that atheists-at-large would know that we exist. No, we are not going to proselytize to believers (although it is not out of the table). I’ve come up with simple ad ideas which I hope should not be offensive to most believers (it cannot be totally inoffensive, our mere existence is an affront to the truly devoted):
(Click image to enlarge)
(Click image to enlarge)
(Click image to enlarge)
What do you think?
It will be an online campaign (for now). Maybe we can get it advertised on local websites (at last, something useful from the problogging cottage industry!). If the response is promising, we can expand the online campaign or even explore the possibility of advertising to regional newspapers and radio stations (Cebu, Ilocos, etc.) where advertising rates are lower. Funding will be a problem and the financial crisis is starting to impact everyone. This could be met by 1) setting up a fund just for this campaign, and/or 2) start charging for annual membership dues. I have a feeling that option 1 is more acceptable to the group.
* It is a coincidence. I’ve been mulling this idea since 2006.
Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize humankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel.
-Thomas Paine
The local atheists are planning a meet-up:
Who: Any interested Freethinker, Atheist, Agnostic, Secular Humanist, Deist,
Pantheist, and non-dogmatic believer or religionist.What: "1st PINOY FREETHINKER FORUM 09"
Where: A decent and conducive place somewhere in either Makati or Ortigas. (Personally, I’d like it further north, like TriNoMa.)
When: February 22 or 28, 2009 (depends on celebrity blogger Benj‘s schedule.)
Agenda: NO political agenda but mere fellowship with friendly discussion on
freethought topics with some snacks on the side share some insights and
experience about being atheist and last but not the least, to establish
friendship with you guys and gals.Organizer’s contact information are:
Mobile # 0916-4933057
E-mail ad: menagofever AT yahoo DOT com (no idea who, but s/he seems like a good person.)
I’ve only attended an atheist meet-up once, and I’m glad to say it’s not terribly boring. Who knows, if I’m not going to Bulacan to visit the in-laws, or out shooting, I might attend…
I hope someone’s going to pay for the food. 
I’m such a glutton for pain. Yesterday I decided to install Firefox and make it my default browser. I don’t have a problem with Opera itself, but since most sites still fail to support web standards (rather than just the two most popular browsers, IE and FF), I resolved to join the rest of the herd cool kids and use Firefox exclusively.
I’ve been using Firefox on-and-off since it was still called Mozilla Phoenix 0.5, then Firebird, and finally to the name it has now. The last version I used with some regularity was 1.5. The bare-bones default install seems like a good idea, as I can completely customize FF to my liking. Firefox boasts an extensive add-ons library, with new extensions being uploaded every day or so. Finally, since it’s open source, anyone can scrutinize the underlying code. The reality, though, is quite different.
Firefox has never really caught my fancy. It is slow to launch, sluggish to use, and noticeably slower to load pages (important as I still find myself using dial-up connections). The memory issue (it’s not a bug, it’s a feature" – copied verbatim from Microsoft’s quotebook) is well known and, last I checked, still not fully resolved. The much-ballyhooed add-ons library is filled with vanity extensions with no practicable utility, or caters to narrow demographics with no widespread appeal. Most FF users can probably live with less than a dozen core extensions (Adblock, Greasemonkey, FlashGot). It’s also a bit annoying since it requires a restart to take effect. Same with the Theme Editor, wich is a major hassle when I’m shopping around for a new look. In Opera, skins load immediately after downloading, and I can change it just as easily. And I do not understand why search engines must be installed as an extension.
And the open-source nature of FF is oversold. Very few actually look at the code, fewer still would understand it. Being open-source is not a cure-all, as Debian’s broken OpenSSL random number generator has shown. It takes more than eyeballs to make bugs shallow. (Disclosure: I use a lot of open-source applications, I even used to use Linux as my primary OS.)
Since I’m trying to ease into Firefox from Opera, I decided to emulate as much of the built-in functionality from Opera as I can. Opera has a built-in adblocker, which one can update by updating the urlfilter.ini file from the User profile. I decided to use Firefox’s Adblock Plus extension. Opera has an excellent sidebar (called panels), so I downloaded Firefox’s All-in-One Sidebar extension. Opera introduced Speeddial, and it quickly spread to other browsers. I chose Fast Dial as the nearest Speeddial clone. In a surprising change, the refresh and stop buttons in Firefox 3 have been unmerged. Opera popularized the Reload-Stop button, and I prefer it that way, and so I installed the Stop-or-Reload Button extension. Opera again innovated the browser world by introducing the trash button, which can undo closed tabs. The nearest Firefox equivalent is the Undo Closed Tabs Button. Opera’s Wand button is another great innovation, as it’s a better, more secure way to input login data to webpages. Firefox’s Secure Login extension seems like a passable equivalent. Opera can use userscripts to tweak certain websites; and the ability to use them is built-in to the browser. In Firefox I had to install Greasemonkey just to use the userscripts. Opera’s old progress bar (still available by changing the settings) is very informative, and gives me an idea of how fast, or slow, the website is loading, and which elements are slowing it down. In IE and FF, we get a green progress bar. The Extended Statusbar gives Firefox the same effect. Other minor Opera functionalities I can’t live without are emulated in Firefox extensions Bookmark This Page Plus and Copy and Go.
I no longer use Opera’s RSS feeder (having migrated to Google Reader), so I didn’t download the buggy, crash-happy RSS readers in Firefox (Sage, NewsFox, etc.). I also don’t need Notes, the bittorrent client, or the IRC client. I also don’t need the M2 email client (Mozilla Thunderbird Portable is better IMO). Opera has all these and more built-in, yet it’s installer is not appreciably bigger than Firefox’s. And unlike FF, Opera is still snappy and responsive. When I finally installed all the extensions I needed, FF crashed. It refused to run a couple of times, until I closed Thunderbird, which was also running at the time. I guess Mozilla siblings aren’t too keen on sharing the same resources.
But despite all these, I will persevere. Firefox has captured the hearts and minds of the masses, and has therefore become a de facto internet standard. Websites that are coded primarily for IE (including Microsoft sites like Hotmail) will accept FF as an alternative. I will still keep Opera, but I will try not to use it for a month. This gives me enough time to evaluate FF, giving it a fair hearing. I’ve done this before, with FF v1.0 and FF v1.5. I’ve come away disappointed both times. I hope that FF has improved its stability, responsiveness, and speed (1-out-of-3 ain’t bad). Otherwise I’ll come running back to Opera, the best way to experience the internet.
(BTW, I’m using a 3G connection to post this. When I lost my connection temporarily, Firefox froze for a couple of minutes, almost taking this post with it.)
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