Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Bits and Pieces – July 28, 2009

A report that Uzbekistan is doing better than I thought.

Photographs from James Fallows at the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual Oshkosh (Wisconsin) Fly-In. More here.

Do patents stifle innovation?

Does Macedonia, a country born out of the rubble of the former Yugoslavia, have the right to call itself what it wants? Greece says no. And by the way, Alexander of Macedon was a Greek, not a, er, Macedonian.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that national defense protects nuclear plants from attack.

More information suppressed by the Bush administration becoming available: spy satellite photos of ice loss in the Arctic and mountain glaciers. A few images are available at ThinkProgress and Reuters, but they are very difficult to find at the US Geological Service site that Reuters links.

And, speaking of secret Bush stuff, the news that Dick Cheney wanted to use the US Army to arrest alleged terrorists in Lackawanna, New York, is more than scary. Scott Horton reads John Yoo’s memos as being crafted to support Cheney in this effort. Emptywheel seems to agree with Horton for the most part. I find it disturbing that these memos and incidents are coming out piecemeal, obscuring their interconnections. Emptywheel is following them, though, and hopefully we can expect a unified explanation from her when enough material is available. I can’t help but wonder whether that CIA program that Leon Panetta stopped as soon as he was read into it is part of all this.

While the Birthers are getting all the attention, Jon Kyl (R, AZ) is trying to make sure that the followon START treaty is dead on arrival. His colleague John McCain (R, AZ), however, is considering supporting the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty when it arrives in the Senate again for ratification, as President Obama has promised. AP styles Kyl’s support by Jeff Sessions (R, AL) and Joe Lieberman (I, CT) as “the Senate.” Hey AP, the R’s are in the minority! Maybe this kind of thing is why AP doesn’t want their stuff quoted.

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