Posted: 05 Jan 2010 08:37 PM PST

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has inserted language into the federal jobs Web site explicitly banning employment discrimination based on gender identity.

The protection is expected to apply to the small transgender population — people who identify their gender differently from the information on their birth certificates — and it merely formalizes what had been increasingly unchallenged government practice over several years.

But civil liberties and gender rights groups welcomed it on Tuesday as the clearest statement yet by the Obama administration that such discrimination in the federal workplace would not be accepted.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said, "The largest employer in the country is doing what all the other large employers in the country are doing, so that's really great news."

But the new standard brought instant criticism from cultural conservatives.

"We at the Family Research Council oppose including gender identity as a category of protection," said Peter S. Sprigg, senior fellow for policy studies.

Mr. Sprigg said his group believed that what it calls "gender identity disorder" should be "treated with therapy to help people be comfortable with their biological sex rather than affirming and celebrating and protecting those who want to deny their biological sex."

When the administration foreshadowed the change back in June, it was thought the guidelines would be in an updated federal handbook for managers and supervisors. Their inclusion instead in the equal-employment opportunity notices on www.usajobs.gov, the federal jobs site, was viewed as even more significant.

"This is frankly a bigger deal," said Christopher E. Anders, senior legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union.

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Top intel officer slams work of U.S. spies in Afghanistan - CNN

Posted: 05 Jan 2010 06:36 PM PST

Washington (CNN) -- U.S. spies "can do little but shrug" when commanders ask for the information they need to fight the Taliban insurgency, the top U.S. military intelligence officer in Afghanistan said in a blistering report.

U.S. military intelligence officers in Afghanistan spend too much time focusing on enemy groups and tactics and not enough on trying to understand Afghanistan's culture, people and networks, Maj. Gen. Michael Flynn wrote in a report published Monday.

American military intelligence gathering is "ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced, incurious about the correlations between various development projects and levels of cooperation among villagers, and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers," Flynn wrote

Click here to have your say on the damning intelligence report

His report comes out less than a week after seven CIA officers and a Jordanian intelligence agent were killed by a double agent who set off a suicide bomb inside their base in Afghanistan.

But the report is about military intelligence gathering, not the CIA's work, one of Flynn's co-authors, Marine Capt. Matt Pottinger, told CNN.

"This is primarily about improving intelligence within the Department of Defense," he said via e-mail

"Our timing was independent of the tragic event in Khost Province," he said, referring to the attack that killed the CIA officers.

Flynn co-wrote the report with Pottinger and Paul Batchelor of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency for a Washington think tank, the Center for a New American Security.

Flynn's boss, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, backs the report, a spokesman for U.S. forces there told CNN.

"We support this kind of activity. Gen. McChrystal is looking for ways to make things better," Adm. Greg Smith said.

But Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said it is "a bit irregular" that a report of this kind would come out through a think tank.

"I think it struck everybody a bit curious," he said. "My sense is this was an anomaly and we won't see it again." He said he was not sure Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had seen the report, though he had been provided with a copy on the day of publication.

"The most I will say is that it was an unusual and irregular way to publish a document," Whitman said.

The report said some good work is being done on the ground, and that local intelligence officers "know a great deal about their local Afghan districts." But, the report said, they "are generally too understaffed to gather, store, disseminate and digest" information.

And, critically, they do not have the resources to gather information which could give Americans a better understanding of Afghanistan, such as census data, patrol debriefs, minutes from councils with local farmers and tribal leaders, polling data, translated summaries of radio broadcasts that influence local farmers and the like.

"This vast and underappreciated body of information.... provides... a map for leveraging popular support and marginalizing the insurgency itself," Flynn and his colleagues argue.

As a result, "U.S. intelligence officers and analysts can do little but shrug in response to high level decision-makers seeking the knowledge, analysis and information they need to wage a successful counterinsurgency," they say.

The report claims they cannot answer basic questions unrelated to the military fight against the Taliban, such as: "Is that desert road we're thinking of paving really the most heavily trafficked route? Which mosques and bazaars attract the most people from week to week? Is that local contractor actually implementing the irrigation project we paid him to put into service?"

CNN's Richard Allen Greene, Pam Benson and Mike Mount contributed to this report

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The Relentless Misery of 1.6 Gallons - Lewrockwell.com

Posted: 05 Jan 2010 08:52 PM PST

by Jeffrey A. Tucker

Recently by Jeffrey A. Tucker: If You Believe in IP, How Do You Teach Others?

My order at my favorite Chinese takeout was taking too long. I stopped into the men's room. There I witnessed a common scene: the modern toilet disaster. An otherwise clean business had a restroom calamity on its hands, one so grim that I hesitate to describe it.

The conjectural history is not difficult to reconstruct. The toilet apparently had trouble flushing. There was a plunger by the toilet, of course, as we see everywhere today. The toilet was plunged to get rid of the obstruction, while the obstruction itself spilled all over the floor and stuck to the plunger too.

The customer probably left the ghastly scene in a rush. Management knew nothing. But now customers were coming and going into this bathroom, surely losing all inspiration to eat or order food.

It would be easy to blame the restaurant owners. What is with these people and why can't they at least have a clean restroom? But reacting this way would be unjust. The hidden hand behind this unsanitary calamity is the US government. The true origin of the mess was not in the hour before I arrived but back in 1994, when Congress passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act.

This act, passed during an environmentalist hysteria, mandated that all toilets sold in the United States use no more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush. This was a devastating setback in the progress of civilization. The conventional toilet in the US ranges from 3.5 gallons to 5 gallons. The new law was enforced with fines and imprisonment.

For years, there was a vibrant black market for Canadian toilet tanks and a profitable smuggling operation in effect. This seems either to have subsided or to have gone so far underground that it doesn't make the news. I've searched the web in vain for evidence of any 3.5 or 5.0 gallon toilet tanks for sale through normal channels. I wonder what one of these fetches in the black market. This possible source has no prices and an uncertain locale.

The toilet manufacturers, meanwhile, are all touting their latest patented innovations as a reason for the reduced hysteria surrounding the toilet disaster. I suspect something different. We have all gotten used to a reduced standard of living – just as the people living in the Soviet Union became accustomed to cold apartments, long bread lines, and poor dental care. There is nothing about our standard of living that is intrinsic to our sense of how things ought to be. Let enough time pass and people forget things.

So let us remember way back when:

Toilets did not need plungers next to them, and thank goodness. Used plungers are nasty, disease carrying, and filthy. It doesn't matter how cute the manufacturer tries to make them or in how many colors you can buy them. In the old days, you would never have one exposed for guests. It was kept out in the garage for the rare occasion when someone threw a ham or something stranger down the toilet.
Toilet paper was super thick and getting thicker. None of this one-ply nonsense.
You never had any doubt about the capacity of the toilet to flush completely, with only one pull of the handle. The toilet stayed clean thanks to five gallons of rushing water pouring through it after each flush.

These were great cultural and civilizational achievements. In a state of nature, the problem of human waste and what to do about it is persistent. Do the wrong thing and you spread disease and misery.

Indoor plumbing since the time of the ancient world has been a sign of prosperity and human well-being. Indoor toilets that flow into a sewer have been around since 1500 B.C., but every new settlement of people in a new area presents the problem anew. In rural America, indoor toilets weren't common until the 1930s. That today everyone assumes them to be part of life is a testament to the creative power of economic progress.

Read the rest of the article

January 6, 2010

Jeffrey Tucker [send him mail] is editorial vice president of www.Mises.org.

The Best of Jeffrey Tucker

Ay, caramba! ‘Simpsons’ reach new milestone - MSNBC

Posted: 05 Jan 2010 06:50 PM PST

NEW YORK - To speak of the latest milestone by "The Simpsons" seems to restate the obvious.

Long before now, enduring life for "The Simpsons" and its brightly jaundiced folk was simply assumed. What began 20 years ago as a fluke then erupted into a pop-culture juggernaut has continued to spin yarns, spawn characters and lampoon society with no end in sight.

On Sunday at 8 p.m. EST on Fox, "The Simpsons" is airing its 450th episode. "Once Upon a Time in Springfield" will be followed by an hourlong documentary from Morgan Spurlock ("30 Days," "Super Size Me"), fancifully titled "The Simpsons 20th Anniversary Special in 3-D on Ice."

During this season, when NBC's "Law & Order" boasts of having tied "Gunsmoke" as TV's longest-running prime-time drama, "The Simpsons" has seized the mantle as TV's longest-running scripted nighttime series — period. Ay, caramba!

"I think we could do it for another 20 years, actually," Matt Groening, "Simpsons" uber-creator, told The Associated Press at a recent "Simpsons" tribute by Los Angeles' Paley Center for Media. Then he dissolved into giggles.

"Omigod! Another 20? We'll TRY," he chortled. "We'll do our BEST!"

Big roles
Here's hoping the spectacular ensemble of voice talent keeps talking to the end. After 20 years, Dan Castellaneta remains full-throated as portly, dimwitted dad Homer, Julie Kavner is tower-tressed mom Marge, Nancy Cartwright is lippy first-born Bart and Yeardley Smith is oversmart daughter Lisa.

Of course, these off-screen stars of "The Simpsons" are well served by visual artistry that, among things, keeps them shielded from the passage of time.

The show's writers play a huge role, too, with fastidiously crafted scripts that, by comparison, leave most sitcoms in the dust. (Granted, some fans may complain "The Simpsons" isn't as sharply realized as in earlier years, but still.)

"What I love about 'The Simpsons' is, it's so collaborative," Smith said. "The actors do a third, the animators do a third and the writers do a third. That's how I see it."

Also part of the acting troupe is Hank Azaria, a go-to guy for numerous characters including police Chief Wiggum, Comic Book Guy and convenience-store owner Apu Nahasapeemapetilon.

Rounding out the core cast is Harry Shearer, whose stable of roles includes Mr. Burns, Waylon Smithers, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Kent Brockman, Dr. Hibbert and Principal Skinner.

Besides "The Simpsons," Shearer, 66, is best-known from his role as bassist Derek Smalls in the 1984 mock musical documentary "This Is Spinal Tap," and subsequently in the real-life group that film inspired.

But Shearer, who began his career as a child actor on such early TV series as Jack Benny's weekly show, keeps a multiplicity of projects under way. These currently include a new DVD, "Unwigged & Unplugged," reteaming him musically with Tap bandmates Michael McKean and Christopher Guest. He hosts his own signature channel on the "My Damn Channel" comedy Web site.

And for a quarter-century, he has churned out "Le Show," a mostly solo act of wry humor, satirical sketches and blistering commentary, plus music (some performed by his singer-songwriter wife, Judith Owen).

"Le Show" is available through numerous radio and Web outlets, and by podcast. It's a weekly passion project that Shearer has always done gratis — which means he's free from any vexing business entanglements.

"I never have a meeting, I never see a memo," he says. "It's between me and my audience."

Sipping an early morning orange juice during a recent stopover in Manhattan, Shearer describes "Le Show" as a place for him to give voice to whatever's on his mind.

"I'm an insatiable news junkie," he says, "so the reading that I do, I would do anyway. The show just gives me a way to answer back."

The sensibility of "Le Show," and much of Shearer's creative output, is conveniently echoed by "The Simpsons," even though he plays no part in its writing.

"Matt has a satirical, anti-authority streak," says Shearer. "From the beginning, 'The Simpsons' was taking the side of the family against all the authority figures and institutions that buffeted them in the modern world. Certainly, that resonated for me."

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Anti-whalers hurl stink bombs at Japanese fleet - Big Hollywood

Posted: 05 Jan 2010 08:44 PM PST

Activists Wednesday hurled stink bombs at Japanese whaling ships after finally catching up with the fleet, blaming "spy planes" for disrupting their Antarctic harassment campaign.

Anti-whalers threw rancid butter-filled Christmas tree baubles "like baseballs" at the Japanese ships to make their decks too foul to work, spokesman Paul Watson told AFP.

"They can't work on the deck with these stinkbombs and it makes life very unpleasant on board," he said. "In East Africa they shoot elephant poachers, down here we just throw stinkbombs."

Watson said the Sea Shepherd activists latched on to the Japanese ships just before dawn, about a month after setting out from Australia on their annual bid to stop the slaughter of hundreds of minke and fin whales.

He accused the Japanese of chartering planes from Australia to pinpoint his Steve Irwin vessel and of sending a pursuing ship, sparking a chase among icebergs which set back their campaign by weeks.

"We didn't think anything of it at the time, we thought they were Australian government planes, routine," he said.

"And then about six hours later the Shonan Maru was on our tail so we figured out that the planes had given the location so that the Japanese could tail us."

He said he only shook off the ship -- after skirmishes involving water cannon, a laser-type device and a military-style sonar weapon -- when he returned to port and then left under low cloud cover, making air surveillance impossible.

"I think spent about 20,000 dollars on that search, about 12 hours in total, and they didn't find us and we were able to slip past," Watson said.

Watson said the super-fast Ady Gil powerboat, newly commissioned this year, and the Bob Barker, another ship being used for the first time, were now pursuing the whalers in Antarctica's Commonwealth Bay.

"There's a whole pursuit down there along the ice edge," Watson said. "They're not killing any whales today, they're running from us," he added.

Sea Shepherd activists have harassed the Japanese fleet over the past six hunting seasons and claim to have saved the lives of hundreds of whales.

An international moratorium on commercial whaling was imposed in 1986 but Japan kills hundreds each year using a loophole that allows "lethal research" on the animals.

Japan makes no secret of the fact that whale meat ends up on dinner tables, and accuses Western nations of not respecting its culture.

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Cultural

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

“U.S. Job Site Bans Bias Over Gender Identity - New York Times” plus 4 more

“U.S. Job Site Bans Bias Over Gender Identity - New York Times” plus 4 more

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