Spent a lot of the day laughing at the posturing over the latest Wikileaks release.  No surprises in the substance or tone State’s diplomatic traffic.  Nothing unexpected in how the United States conducts its foreign policy or manages its embassies either.  Jaw-dropping shock and awe (in a ROTFLMAO sort of way) though that the procedural security for handling of classified information has devolved in the 14 years since I left the government to the point that government spokesmen can plausibly claim a 23 -year-old Army PFC not only had access to so many documents that he had so little need to know, but that the technological safeguards in place did nothing to prevent him from downloading and e-mailing hundreds of thousands of documents to whoever he wanted, even while sitting in the middle of Iraq.

I know individual accountability has all but vanished in federal service, and in the nine years I worked with Diplomatic Security I was only aware of one Agency (certainly not mine) that held supervisors accountable for the security lapses of the sections and staff, but I’m really having trouble reconciling the concept that the federal government can properly handle information in the modern age with what PFC Manning is alleged to have been able to do single-handedly.

Very glad though that the First Amendment still has enough life left in it that the voters are able to see the sad state of the government’s information security efforts, not that it matters.  The problems are deep enough and systemic enough that I can’t see any politician having the courage to make the information colander in Washington an issue.

Banned Books Week is back, running from today through October 2.   Going back through the archives, I’m a little disappointed that I haven’t made more progress on the list as it stood in 2004.  Fortunately for me, if not for society, this year’s list has drifted more toward my tastes, and I was pleasantly surprised at the inclusion of modern works such as Stephen King’s Survivor Type on one of the lists.  I score much more deviant on this list of 100 banned classics, having read 20 out of the 100, with another two ready to contaminate my mind on the Nook.

While I support Banned Books Week for the attention it brings to the issue, I don’t care how much of a rebel it will make me feel like: I have no interest in reading the Twilight series.

Just doing a little shout-out for the First Amendment and the federal judiciary here today.  Many of the amendments *coughFourthcough* *coughFifthcough* have been battered in recent years, but the First still comes through strong.  Yes, being able to say whether you’re gay (or not) is speech.  Yes, being able to write or draw something on your skin is speech.  Maybe I’m just amazed that either of these issues needed to be litigated at all.

Holding the Vice Presidential debate during Banned Book Week is simply priceless. The timing opens up so many possibilities for the candidates to distinguish themselves on their attitudes toward literary freedom, the role of libraries in a modern society and their respective reading tastes and levels.

There’s a list of some Southern California events at the L.A. Times.

Giggling at small-town cops having to deal with pictures of nearly nekkid flesh this afternoon.  OMG its obscene!  The store manager didn’t follow our blatently unconstitutional demand to remove the material.  It’s an Abercrombie and Fitch store in a mall – what do you expect?  I take it they don’t have Victoria’s Secret down there. 

[The police spokesman] confirmed that one [of the photos] depicts three shirtless young men from the back, walking through a field. The man in the lead appears to be about to pull up his jeans, which have slipped down enough to reveal his upper buttocks.
The same image is displayed on the Abercrombie Web site.
The other image is of a woman who is topless and whose “breast is displayed with her hand covering just the nipple portion,” Bernstein said. “You could still pretty much see the rest of the breast.”

The full article at the Virginian-Pilot’s site includes the allegedly obscene photo [quite safe for work].  I wonder what they’re going to do now that the local newspaper has posted one of the seized photographs online.  Stop the intertubes.  No more nekkididity in ‘merika. 

This list of the 100 most banned books was over on a post over at Sardonic Bomb this afternoon. I’ll have to admit I’m curious why some of them are there. Regardless, I’m probably more ashamed that I’ve only read twelve of the hundred, and only two of the fifty most banned than I am for actually having read any of the works listed. Looks like I’ve got my summer beach reading cut out for me.

Read on if you want to see what’s been corrupting my mind over the years. Those I’ve read are in bold, and although I’ve seen film versions of a number of the others, I’m not going to give myself the credit until I’ve been subjected to the original author’s unadulterated bad influences.
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“[There is] no conveyance of ideas, expression, or anything else that could possibly amount to speech. The court finds that video games have more in common with board games and sports than they do with motion pictures.”

That piece of #$% jurisprudence is from a federal judge’s ruling last month that video games aren’t entitled to First Amendment protection, as reported at Salon.com [via Ernie the Attorney] and CNN.com. Fortunately, this idea is already in conflict with a previous ruling from the Seventh Circuit and thus, hopefully, dead on arrival.

I suppose the question I should be asking is why people get so hung up on the medium rather than the contents of the message? The case at hand involved graphically violent video games. I prefer a game called Civilization: Call to Power (and I loved its predecessor, Civilization, on my old Amiga, and later on the Mac). The goal of the game is to lead your civilization to global domination. Among other strategic actions, players must weigh the benefits of internal vs. international trade; weigh industrialization vs. environmental damage; budget for the competing concerns of scientific research and military hardware; and evaluate which government structure is best for their goals (despotism, fascism, democracy, communism, etc, all have strengths AND weaknesses to be evaluated and reevaluated as situtations change). If people got together face-to-face and discussed these issues, even in the context (or pretext) of a game, the conversations would have to be entitled to the highest level of First Amendment protection. Why should the standard be any different because the medium is new?