Randy Barnhart

Important Frontline Episode - WikiSecrets

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Thanks - Navy SEALS

The firm gratefully acknowledges the courage and commitment of the NAVY SEALS. Their ethos is quoted below:

My Trident is a symbol of honor and heritage. Bestowed upon me by the heroes that have gone before, it embodies the trust of those I have sworn to protect. By wearing the Trident I accept the responsibility of my chosen profession and way of life. It is a privilege that I must earn every day. My loyalty to Country and Team is beyond reproach. I humbly serve as a guardian to my fellow Americans always ready to defend those who are unable to defend themselves. I do not advertise the nature of my work, nor seek recognition for my actions. I voluntarily accept the inherent hazards of my profession, placing the welfare and security of others before my own. I serve with honor on and off the battlefield. The ability to control my emotions and my actions, regardless of circumstance, sets me apart from other men. Uncompromising integrity is my standard. My character and honor are steadfast. My word is my bond.

We expect to lead and be led. In the absence of orders I will take charge, lead my teammates and accomplish the mission. I lead by example in all situations. I will never quit. I persevere and thrive on adversity. My Nation expects me to be physically harder and mentally stronger than my enemies. If knocked down, I will get back up, every time. I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my teammates and to accomplish our mission. I am never out of the fight.

We demand discipline. We expect innovation. The lives of my teammates and the success of our mission depend on me - my technical skill, tactical proficiency, and attention to detail. My training is never complete. We train for war and fight to win. I stand ready to bring the full spectrum of combat power to bear in order to achieve my mission and the goals established by my country. The execution of my duties will be swift and violent when required yet guided by the very principles that I serve to defend. Brave men have fought and died building the proud tradition and feared reputation that I am bound to uphold. In the worst of conditions, the legacy of my teammates steadies my resolve and silently guides my every deed. I will not fail.

 

Patterns of Misconduct: FBI Intelligence Violations from 2001 - 2008

In a review of nearly 2,500 pages of documents released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a result of litigation under the Freedom of Information Act, EFF uncovered alarming trends in the Bureau’s intelligence investigation practices. The documents consist of reports made by the FBI to the Intelligence Oversight Board of violations committed during intelligence investigations from 2001 to 2008. The documents suggest that FBI intelligence investigations have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed.

via www.eff.org

We have met the enemy, and it's our guys ....

Cyborg Anthropology

Happy New Year 2011

From Wine Spectator:

CHAMPAGNE

CHARLES ELLNER Brut Champagne Réserve NV Score: 92 | $45

A baked apple pie flavor—with all the ripe apple, pastry crust, nutmeg, anise and cinnamon notes—runs through this well-meshed Champagne, which is enlivened by fresh, almost lightly chalky acidity and good cut overall, with a smoky finish. Drink now through 2016. 20,000 cases made. —A.N.

LALLIER Brut Champagne Grande Réserve NV Score: 92 | $55

This is rich, with a viscosity buoying its honey, toast, peach and nascent coffee flavors. The vibrant structure keeps it all balanced and drives the lingering finish. Drink now through 2014. 20,000 cases made. —B.S.

DUVAL-LEROY Brut Champagne NV Score: 91 | $45

There's a creamy edge to the quince, biscuit, honey and ginger flavors in this well-cut Champagne, which help to balance the firm acidity. Vibrant and expressive, with a zesty finish. Drink now through 2014. 40,000 cases made. —A.N.

AYALA Brut Champagne Majeur NV Score: 90 | $40

A creamy, opulent style, offering honey, apple tart and grapefruit notes, with hints of roasted nut and coffee. This has the structure to stay persistent and fresh, with a crisp, chalky finish. Drink now. 41,665 cases made. —B.S.

ANDRÉ CLOUET Brut Champagne Grande Réserve NV Score: 89 | $49

Fresh, citrusy acidity winds through this wine, enlivening the biscuit, blackberry and blossom notes and driving the spicy intensity through to the tangy finish. Drink now. 10,000 cases made. —A.N.

GARDET Brut Champagne Pol Gardere NV Score: 88 | $28

Well-defined, with chalky acidity and flavors of gingersnap, fresh orange zest and spring blossoms. Modest finish. Drink now. 6,500 cases made. —A.N.

OTHER SPARKLING WINES 

MUMM NAPA Brut Napa Valley Prestige NV Score: 90 | $20

Crisp and elegantly styled, with floral apple and yeasty spice aromas that lead to layered flavors of baked pear, citrus and creamy vanilla. Drink now. 125,000 cases made. —T.F.

ROEDERER ESTATE Brut Anderson Valley NV Score: 89 | $23

Crisp and refreshingly minerally, offering tart Gala apple and lemon aromas and focused flavors of yeasty citrus and anise. A hint of cherry lingers on the finish. Drink now through 2013. 80,000 cases made. —T.F.

DOMAINE CHANDON Brut California Classic NV Score: 88 | $22

Crisp and lively, with apple and spicy anise aromas and citrus, kiwifruit and vanilla flavors. Drink now. 350,000 cases made. —T.F.

GLORIA FERRER Brut Sonoma County Sonoma NV Score: 88 | $20

This bubbly bursts with fresh apple and citrus fruit and lively spicy lemon, tart pear and anise flavors that finish with a clean note. Drink now. 52,669 cases made. —T.F.

J Cuvée 20 Russian River Valley NV Score: 88 | $20

Vibrant and fresh, with floral apple and anise aromas and crisp yet creamy pear and spicy yeast flavors. Drink now. 22,800 cases made. —T.F.

SCHARFFENBERGER Brut Mendocino County NV Score: 88 | $19

Crisp and light on its feet, with fresh and creamy citrus and raspberry aromas and supple tropical fruit and anise flavors that finish with a note of minerality. Drink now. 25,000 cases made. —T.F.

DOMAINE STE. MICHELLE Brut Columbia Valley NV Score: 87 | $12

Bright and lively, featuring delicate apple and floral aromas and flavors that echo nicely against fine bubbles. Drink now. 191,540 cases made. —H.S.

MIONETTO Extra Dry Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore NV Score: 87 | $16

This balanced, creamy version offers rich flavors of baked apple, pastry, lemon curd and toast, with a modest, frothy finish. Drink now. 64,000 cases made. —A.N.

KORBEL Extra Dry California NV Score: 86 | $12

Crisp and succulent, with lemon sorbet aromas leading to slightly sweet vanilla, apricot and spice notes. Drink now. 235,000 cases made. —T.F.

JAUME SERRA Extra Dry Cava Cristalino NV Score: 85 | $10

This light-bodied cava finds balance between its citrusy acidity and honeyed flavors of ripe pear, pastry and kumquat. Creamy and well-textured, with a juicy finish. Drink now. Tasted twice, with consistent notes. 50,000 cases made. —A.N.

 

Global Politics - Power in the 21st Century

Salute - Veterans Day - 2010

History Through A Supreme Court Justice's Lens

Excerpt from an NPR article (link follows):

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has sparred for years with Justice Antonin Scalia on the printed pages of legal opinions. The two have even debated about constitutional interpretation in public. And now Justice Breyer has taken his argument to the printed pages of a book written for popular consumption.

In his first interview about the new book, Breyer's targets are the ideas of originalism and textualism advocated by Scalia — the notion that the framers of the Constitution meant what they said and no more — and that the provisions of the Constitution are limited to what they covered back in 1789.

Breyer's book, Making Our Democracy Work, A Judge’s View, is a combination of history and legal philosophy. It argues that there are no easy, color-by-the-numbers answers to many legal questions and that to suggest there are is an illusion.

via www.npr.org

This book by a sitting justice is perhaps worth more than all the blabber by the politicians every time they have to vote on a Supreme Court nominee. I may get this on my iPad.

From amazon: "Justice Breyer discusses what the Court must do going forward to maintain that public confidence and argues for interpreting the Constitution in a way that works in practice. He forcefully rejects competing approaches that look exclusively to the Constitution’s text or to the eighteenth-century views of the framers. Instead, he advocates a pragmatic approach that applies unchanging constitutional values to ever-changing circum-stances—an approach that will best demonstrate to the public that the Constitution continues to serve us well. The Court, he believes, must also respect the roles that other actors—such as the president, Congress, administrative agencies, and the states—play in our democracy, and he emphasizes the Court’s obligation to build cooperative relationships with them."

US National Ocean Policy - About Time!

In July (2010), by executive order, the US finally established a national ocean policy. Why haven't we had one since 1776?

Here are the highlights:

It is the Policy of the United States To:

• Protect, maintain, and restore the health and biological diversity of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems and resources;
• Improve the resiliency of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems, communities, and economies;
• Bolster the conservation and sustainable uses of land in ways that will improve the health of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems;
• Use the best available science and knowledge to inform decisions affecting the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes, and enhance humanity’s capacity to understand, respond, and adapt to a changing global environment;
• Support sustainable, safe, secure, and productive access to, and uses of the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes;
• Respect and preserve our Nation’s maritime heritage, including our social, cultural, recreational, and historical values;
• Exercise rights and jurisdiction and perform duties in accordance with applicable international law, including respect for and preservation of navigational rights and freedoms, which are essential for the global economy and international peace and security;
• Increase scientific understanding of ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems as part of the global interconnected systems of air, land, ice, and water, including their relationships to humans and their activities;
• Improve our understanding and awareness of changing environmental conditions, trends, and their causes, and of human activities taking place in ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes waters; and
• Foster a public understanding of the value of the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes to build a foundation for improved stewardship

Nice rhetoric; let's hope that real progress is made to return the beauty to our blue waters. BP is already back-pedaling on their promise to clean up the Gulf spill. To rely on the "best available science and knowledge to inform decisions affecting the ocean" means no politics about the health of our oceans.

Google's Earth, by William Gibson - NYTimes.com

We never imagined that artificial intelligence would be like this. We imagined discrete entities. Genies. We also seldom imagined (in spite of ample evidence) that emergent technologies would leave legislation in the dust, yet they do. In a world characterized by technologically driven change, we necessarily legislate after the fact, perpetually scrambling to catch up, while the core architectures of the future, increasingly, are erected by entities like Google.

via www.nytimes.com

Is there any hope for those walking-backward apes we send to Washington every 2 years?

National Broadband Plan - This Is Important

The FCC recently published the National Broadband Plan, and an excerpt is below:

Civic engagement is the lifeblood of any democracy and the bedrock of its legitimacy. Broadband holds the potential to strengthen our democracy by dramatically increasing the public’s access to information and by providing new tools for Americans to engage with this information, their government and one another. Increasingly our national conversation, our sources for news and information and our knowledge of each other will depend upon broadband. The transition to new information technologies and services can open new doors to enhance America’s media environment, but with traditional sources of news and information journalism under severe stress in the current media and economic environments, we confront serious challenges to ensure that broadband is put to work to strengthen our democracy.

The First Amendment guarantees no law abridging the freedom of speech or press.  Both speech and press are now virtually synonymous with he internet.

Of special interest to lawyers, however, is the FCC's recommendation 15.1, reproduced verbatim below:

Recommendation 15.1: The primary legal documents of
the federal government should be free and accessible to the
public on digital platforms.

➤➤ For the Executive Branch and independent agencies,
this should apply to all executive orders and other public
legal documents.

➤➤ For Congress, this should apply to all votes, as well as
proposed and enacted legislation.

➤➤ For the Judicial Branch, this should apply to all judicial
opinions.

Every person who is subject to the laws of this country should
have free access to those laws online. Online legal documents
should be appropriately digitally watermarked to preserve their
integrity. For the Executive Branch and independent agencies,
this means publishing all executive orders and other public legal
documents on the Internet and in an easily accessible, machine readable
format.

For the Legislative Branch, this means that
Congress should publish all votes, as well as proposed and
enacted legislation, in a timely manner, online and in a machine-
readable and otherwise accessible format.

Finally, all federal judicial decisions should be accessible
for free and made publicly available to the people of the United
States. Currently, the Public Access to Court Electronic Records
system charges for access to federal appellate, district and bankruptcy
court records. As a result, U.S. federal courts pay private
contractors approximately $150 million per year for electronic
access to judicial documents. While the E-Government Act
has mandated that this system change so that this information
is as freely available as possible, little progress has been made.

Congress should consider providing sufficient funds to publish
all federal judicial opinions, orders and decisions online in an
easily accessible, machine-readable format.

Agreed. See the entirety of Chapter 15 here. What's your take?

Book - A Colossal Failure of Common Sense

A Colossal Failure of Common Sense—The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers by Lawrence G. McDonald
 
McDonald tells his own story of breaking into the securities industry in Massachusetts and achieving his life’s dream becoming a bond trader at one of Wall Street’s legendary investment houses.  McDonald and his colleagues in the distressed assets department watched with growing alarm as Lehman’s Mortgage Bond Department put together deal after deal involving subprime mortgages, “Alt A Loans” and “Liar Loans”.  Lehman mortgage bond packagers found the way to con the rating agencies to rate packages of  junk loans as top-rated bonds.   McDonald is a bit full of himself and some of his story seems too complimentary of his close circle of colleagues at Lehman.  At one point he loses much of his credibility when he says the mortgage salesmen in California, Arizona and Florida were the cause of Lehman’s failure.  Certainly, the mortgage brokers were writing loans for people who had no means to pay them off after the rates were adjusted.  However, Lehman and the other big institutions provided the money the brokers used to make the lousy loans.  Lehman failed because its senior management was blinded by the enormous profits generated by the mortgage bond people and management’s refusal to look behind the operation to detect the enormous risks which were being undertaken.

Poll - Are Lawyers Good for a Republic?

Do you agree with Tocqueville's remark that: No republic can hope to preserve its existence if the influence of lawyers in its affairs did not grow in proportion with the power of the people?

Absolutely, spot on.

No way, not now, not ever.

Uh, if I thought about it I might agree a little.

or View Results

Create your own poll at Flisti.com

Can't remember on what page but the remark is somewhere in Democracy in America.

Love Your Local Public Library

"No Cable? No Problem!" says the Denver Public Library. And who says libraries just have dusty old books? Check out these video selections from the SyFy Channel (f/k/a the Sci-Fi Channel):

• Andromeda
• Battlestar Galactica
• Being Human
• Caprica
• The Dresden Files
• Eureka
• Farscape
• Ghost Hunters
• The Invisible Man
• Merlin
• Mystery Science Theater 3000
• Painkiller Jane
• Sanctuary
• Stargate Atlantis
• Stargate Universe
• Swamp Thing
• Tripping the Rift
• Warehouse 13

Lawyers, legal actions, depositions, motions, ... and the cosmos

As reported by the BBC.

"The picture is the first full-sky image from Europe's Planck telescope which was sent into space last year to survey the 'oldest light' in the cosmos. ... A major quest for Planck is to find firm evidence of 'inflation', the faster-than-light expansion that cosmologists believe the Universe experienced in its first, fleeting moments."

In a word: perspective

TED Video - Social Networks

Nicholas Christakis explores how the large-scale, face-to-face social networks in which we are embedded affect our lives, and what we can do to take advantage of that fact. He is, at Harvard, a Professor of Medicine, Health Care Policy, and Sociology. More here.

The last 4 minutes are especially intriguing. Around the 15-minute mark, the speaker explains how different properties emerge from different kinds of connections between things. From the different connections between carbon atoms you can get the lead in a No.2 pencil or a sparkling diamond. Similarly, and this is his point, from different configurations of connections between people, different entities with different properties result, the different possible ties between people make for different wholes all of which are greater than the individuals connected. Worth watching.