Emerging from this Week's Digestive Haze to Vomit Up What the News is Shoveling Down

Phawker has an excellent break down of the shoddy "Yes, Sir" reporting that passes for contemporary journalism. Specifically, the Philly Inquirer's coverage of a big suburban pot bust.

Being treated in an ER for a marijuana overdose? Um, yeah. Maybe the Mainline suburban police state wants to further pacify its population by characterizing them as crybabies. You know, the sort who when confronted by the "bad funny" feeling toking occasionally brings, and their parents can't helicopter said feeling away, the tears break out and the ambulance is called. Clueless cops or weak-stomached suburbanites trying to mythologize weed as "hard life" cred aside, a professional reporter taking every assertion by a police spokesperson at face value is just sad.
I mean why bother having journalists? Everyone can just find unvarnished truth through everyone else's web press release and public relations machinery anyway, right?

Cheesesteak's been slow on getting back into a blog rhythm post Thanksgiving, he knows that. He will get it together, just wait.

"War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength

Karl Rove claims that Congress pushed Bush to war in Iraq and that Rove did not want the war to be politicized. Get the scoop over at huffingtonpost.com.

Re-issues of 1984 perhaps should be re-named to "The Bush years: 2000-2008".

"Timely" Declassification of PA Electoral Infrastructure

A follow up to our inaugural post. Looks like the good governor has rescinded the state's policy of keeping a lid on its polling locations.

So, while the state of PA no longer looks like Chicken Little on the homeland security front, the measure comes a bit too late for the activists organizations who had hoped to use this data to coordinate their efforts leading into next week's election.

(Thanks to Midnight Armadillo over at Democratic Underground's discussion boards. Look Coddy, someone's read us!)

PA election infrastructure now a "state secret"

So here we have various PA agencies colluding to not publicize a statewide list of polling locations, an action explained with a vague gesture to "security reasons." This whole thing just smells off. For one thing, the powers that be in PA homeland security cite the threat of terrorism, particularly the terror bombings in Madrid right before Spain's '04 elections as motivation. Someone in the "keep the people afraid dept." at PA homeland security should get re-examined on his or her knowledge of recent historic events. The Madrid bombings may well have affected Spain's election outcome, but they targeted a larger part of the county and city's infrastructure, its train and transit system. So I guess, by that logic my twice weekly commute out of Philly is going to have to be subjected to randomized time tables and a massive dog and pony show of PA paramilitary might come election day.

Huh, I'm not going to see that? Democracy will be defended simply by keeping "classified" a comprehensive accounting of the very places in PA where democracy is itself actually held up for account? In the minds of the homeland security "professionals", this may well be about security, but all this really accomplishes is the frustration of resource-strapped get out the vote campagins and other organizations invested in political participation, particularly those serving candidates outside of the political status quo. That real effect begs citizens to ponder more cynical calculations at play. The best way to ensure democracy is to make sure only the systemically entrenched can work the system.

This is homeland security alarmism via red herring threats to our civil fabric.