GAO tally of federal government money spent on advertising agencies in two years: $1.6 billion. I’m sure that’s a number that all of my conservative small-government friends will be comfortable with. Via TPM and AmericaBlog.

From my Unix fortune cookie just now:

Top scientists agree that with the present rate of consumption, the earth’s supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century. As man struggles to discover cheaper alternatives, we need your help. Please…

CONSERVE GRAVITY

Follow these simple suggestions:

(1) Walk with a light step. Carry helium balloons if possible.
(2) Use tape, magnets, or glue instead of paperweights.
(3) Give up skiing and skydiving for more horizontal sports like curling.
(4) Avoid showers… take baths instead.
(5) Don’t hang all your clothes in the closet… keep them in one big pile.
(6) Stop flipping pancakes.

I’ll be at the Supreme Court next Wednesday.

This requires a bit of introduction. I was inspired to write this in May, 2004, by an email from an old friend apologizing for having to blow off all of us because he was spending the weekend researching the Groh v. Ramirez case, as some sort of oddball requirement for getting a law degree.

I was inspired to post this after reading another friend’s novelization of what really went down in Texas last week.

Therefore, without further ado, Groh v. Ramirez: The One-Act.

[SOUND EFFECT: knocking on battered wooden door]

Homeowner: Yes?

ATF Agent Groh: Hello, I’m ATF Agent Groh, and I’m here to help you.

Homeowner: Do you happen to have any alcohol, tobacco, or firearms?
I’m clear out.

Groh: No, sir, I’m sorry, we’re not allowed to carry those on us. We
keep it all in huge warehouses, and three times a year we hold a huge
fucking party.

Homeowner: Oh, well. Never mind. Didn’t really expect anything.

Groh: I need some assistance. I’m searching for a two-story blue house.

Homeowner: [snorting] A what?

Groh: A two-story blue house.

Homeowner: [looks around theatrically] Mr. Groh. Have you noticed
that this is Montana?

Groh: Er, no. We accidentally incinerated our map somewhere west of
Denver.

Homeowner: Well, here you are. And you might have noticed one or two
features about Montana. For instance, do you see that house over
there?

Groh: You mean that tiny blue dot on the horizon?

Homeowner: Yes. He’s my next door neighbor. Now do you see those
other blue dots?

Groh: Um… sort of.

Homeowner: Well, from left to right, that’s my Uncle Charlie, Joe’s
Bait-and-Tackle Shop, the Big Sky Sufism Research Center and
Chiropractic Clinic, the Wal-Mart, and Helena.

Groh: Er….

Homeowner: Helena’s a mite bigger than Uncle Charlie’s. It’s what we
call here an optical illusion.

Groh: Yes, we have that back in Washington, too. Nonwhites look like
terrorists.

Homeowner: Okay, well, you can discern color, so that will help. But
did you notice that all of those dots happen to be blue?

Groh: Yes. Is that another optical illusion?

Homeowner: No, every house in Montana is blue and two stories tall.
Because we’re the Big Sky Country. And we have more fucking square
miles than we know what to do with, so building a three-story house
makes as much sense as opening a kosher deli. So your search warrant
is going to be a bit of a problem.

Groh: Why does Uncle’s Charlie’s look as large as Wal-Mart?

Homeowner: That’s also an optical illusion. Wal-Mart is a tad
smaller. Lots of square miles, remember? And lots of trees. Well,
until we built the houses, anyway.

Groh: Oh, SHIT. I’m supposed to SEIZE the house, too.

Homeowner: You’re supposed to seize the house?

Groh: [dejected] Yeah.

Homeowner: [looks over Groh’s shoulder] You’re driving a Ford Taurus.

Groh: All of our 18-wheelers and Humvees have been sent to Iraq.

Homeowner: Damn, that really sucks.

Groh: So not only won’t I be able to seize the house, but you’re saying
I won’t be able to *find* the house?

Homeowner: Well, maybe I can help you. ATF, right? I think I know who you’re looking for. Say, are you sure you don’t have a smoke?

Groh: Oh, sure. I was just shitting you before. [lights two Cuban
cigars, hands him one]

Homeowner: [deep drag] Okay, here’s the guy you want to check out.
He’s right down the street, shouldn’t take you more than 3, 4 hours to
get there.

Groh: Uh huh.

Homeowner: Now, the guy’s not actually on the street, so the first
thing you’ll come to is a 30-mile swath of charred prairie grass, about
eight feet wide.

Groh: Charred grass, got it. Lightning?

Homeowner: No, some sort of rocket fuel. If you miss the strip, look
for a large RPG shell casing embedded in a redwood on your right, just
above about 1/8th of a moose carcass. Then double back about a
half-mile.

Groh: Gotcha.

Homeowner: Now, drive along the strip until you get to the first
ballistic crater. It’s, oh, about 20 feet deep, thirty feet wide, and
it’s about half full of this glowing green water. You’ll spot it
easiest by the cloud of blackflies swarming around it.

Groh: Uh huh.

Homeowner: Now, watch out for those blackflies, because there’s
something in the water and they sort of resemble cows. Ever seen
Twister?

Groh: That’s the tornado movie with that goyishe chick?

Homeowner: Yup. It’s like that. Except with mutant fly-cattle.

Groh: Gotcha. What’s next?

Homeowner: The next thing you look for are the desiccated remains of a
few groups of people who got a little too close to the house. If I
remember correctly, first you come on the Greenpeace group, then the
Jehovah’s Witnesses, then a large pyre of mutilated cattle, then the
space aliens who mutilated the cattle. Then you’ve got the Rotary, the
Lions, the Elks, the Oddfellows, Heaven’s Gate, the Flat Earthers,
Elvis, Judge Crater, Jimmy Hoffa, Madeline Murray-O’Hare, and Girl
Scout Troop 537.

Groh: Damn, that’s quite a body count. Do you know what killed them?

Homeowner: Some sort of weird-ass weather they get over there. It’s
like hail, only it’s made of lead and depleted uranium, hollow-point,
armor-piercing, and it travels horizontally at around three miles a
second.

Groh: Good thing it’s summertime!

Homeowner: At that point, you’ll start seeing the close-in craters.
Walk around those carefully, you want to be careful of the landmines
and the Bouncing Bettys. The house you’re looking for is more or less
in the center of the craters. It’s covered up with some brush, a few
artistically placed M1-Abrams, and a coupla hundred iridescent
Andromedan hides.

Groh: But it’s blue?

Homeowner: Was once.

Groh: [slaps notebook shut] Great! Say, how do you know all this?

Homeowner: A couple months ago, four kids showed up with this huge
mangy dog in the ugliest green hippie van you ever saw. The tall lanky
kid and I smoked a bowl, and he told me all about it.

Groh: We get some of our best leads that way. Word back home is that
the first solid evidence on Iraqi WMDs came from this big bear in a
green tie, and a little bear in a bow tie, when they were out looking
for a pic-i-nic.

Homeowner: Ain’t that something.

Groh: Yeah. He was sure smarter than the average bear. Tragically,
they were both killed and eaten by the 417th Army Reserve Unit, and
that’s why we’re still over there looking.

Homeowner: You sure you didn’t run into that tall, lanky kid yourself?

Groh: Pretty sure. Okay, thanks for all your help. Can I get your
name in case we have more questions?

Homeowner: Sure. That’s Hamish, but everyone calls me “Homes”, last
name Moner.

Groh: Homes Moner. Great. Thanks.

Homeowner: Say, what exactly are you looking for?

Groh: [reads warrant again] Er. Fuck me. All it says here is take the
house.

Homeowner: Well, check out the guy’s basement. I hear that he’s got
stuff down there where you can reduce the place to matchsticks and
sawdust in no time.

Groh: Sounds like a plan! Thanks. We’ll send you a little “special
something” at Christmas.

Homeowner: That’s mighty nice of you. Send me a Bushmaster, in case
those meddling kids come back.

Batman beats Superman.

Bill Clinton beats George W. Bush.

It’s all right there in quantitative black and white at the Wikipedia Showdown .

Security expert Bruce Schneier gives a preliminary thumbs up to IE7.

(Pig thumbnail © Image Zoo.)

Kevin Drum links to the list of terrorist plots foiled by GWB, and asks the interesting question:

If it’s now OK to reveal information like this, how about also releasing a list of the terrorist plots broken up in the four years prior to 9/11?

My followup question: how much should we discount these attacks by their credibility? Is the Faris attack here the same one I’ve heard about where they were going to try to use blowtorches on the Brooklyn Bridge?

Tip o’ the hat to Mike Weinmayr:

FCC: All Programming To Be Broadcast In ADHDTV By 2007

I have a bunch of notes and half-assed theories lying around here for an essay I’m working on about General Michael Hayden’s speech defending NSA wiretapping. But it’ll probably be a while before I get a chance to write that (and by then, we’ll have moved on to the scandal of spy technologies being used to take nude pictures of Hill interns).

So in the meantime, to tide you over, two worthwhile articles from Ars Technica:

NSA wiretap followup: Why computer-automated mass surveillance is a bad idea

Revenge of the Return of the Son of TIA, Part LXVII

Via Boing Boing, truly horrible Star Wars-themed Valentines.

“It is well that war is so terrible—otherwise we should grow too fond of it.” Robert E. Lee is about to be obsolesced by technology, according to this William Saletan article in Slate.

Following up on a discussion with Brian about the Cheney shooting. What’s amusing is that I was listening to a podcast today where the speaker proposed that it would be legal for Bush to walk up and shoot a man on the street as part of his presidential war powers. He didn’t mention whether the vice president gets the same privileges.

Editor and Publisher raises some interesting questions about why it took so long for the rest of us to find out about this. Via Crooks and Liars, which is worth viewing for the shot of Dick with his shotgun.

Reuters reports on a man in Pennsylvania arrested for attempting to conspire with al-Qaeda.

More power to the FBI—they caught someone who clearly wanted to be a Bad Guy. But let’s note, before getting into a tizzy about the terrorists amongst us, that this guy did not exactly pose a threat. He was looking for money from the sting agent; i.e., he had no resources of his own. He was unemployed, with a criminal record.

The article notes what he wanted to do; it perhaps should put a bit more emphasis that this man would be as likely to win a gold medal in Italy as to actually find a backer, or to accomplish what he set out to do.

A major scientific publication discusses possible alternatives for energy production if humanity exhausts its primary fossil fuel.

Nothing new—in fact, rather old, as the publication is the September 28, 1889 edition of Scientific American, and the fuel in potentially short supply is coal.

Kevin Drum raises some interesting questions about the change in meaning of some legal terms when computers are used in the decision:

The nice thing about probable cause and reasonable suspicion and other similar phrases is that they have a long history behind them. There are hundreds of years of statutory definition and case law that define what they mean, and human judges interpret them in ways that most of us understand….

But the NSA’s domestic spying program doesn’t rely on the ordinary human understanding of these phrases. Instead, it appears to rely primarily on software algorithms that determine whether or not a person is acting in a way that merits eavesdropping.

Some fun you can have on your next snow day:

1. Google for the Constitution.

2. Go to the first “I’m feeling lucky” response, which is the US House of Representatives.

3. Click on the full text link for the Constitution.

4. Thrill in horror as the House of Representatives specifically disclaims any responsibility for the content of said Constitution.

What Tom said.

Dahlia Lithwick on the disturbing ways in which Zacarias Moussaoui is right.

I have trouble with the idea of calling Moussaoui a show trial—but then again, what do we really think the odds are that he’s just going to be sent to jail?

Peter Daou documents a week’s events, all of which could be front-page news and political embarassments. His theory: there are just so many that disorganized Democrats and distractable media can’t stick with one long enough to get people to care.

I read this as an indictment of the Democrats, but worth checking out to be reminded how many things pop up in a single week.