Stewart Baker – volokh.com – Sept. 29, 2010:

Al-Qaeda is apparently planning Mumbai-style commando attacks on European, and the US has reportedly launched drone strikes in an effort to break up the plot.

One way to keep these terrorists out of the country is to heighten border scrutiny of Europeans and Americans who’ve traveled to Pakistan and spent months there without visible means of support. To do that, of course, border authorities need to know who’s been traveling in and out of Pakistan. Then they can use that information to flag visitors for additional questioning.

So how is the European Commission helping the US get the information it needs to protect itself from European terrorists trained in Pakistan?

It’s not. In fact, it’s campaigning to make sure we never get it.

The European Commission has announced that it will negotiate deals to prevent countries like Pakistan from providing travel data to the United States — except when the US already suspects a particular traveler or is otherwise investigating a particular case. In other words, the European Commission wants to bar the kind of wholesale data exchange that’s needed to spot at the border terrorists who have successfully disguised themselves as tourists. And it plans to withhold all European travel reservation data from Pakistan unless the Pakistanis agree to join a data boycott of the United States.

Remarkably, Brussels is pursuing this data boycott despite a solemn promise to the United States that it would not take such action.

Since 2003, privacy zealots in the European Union have been fighting – so far unsuccessfully — to keep the US from fully using that data to screen air passengers. Under pressure from the European Parliament, this month the European Commission launched its fourth attack in seven years on US use of such data.

Interestingly, the principles wouldn’t prevent Pakistan from giving the same information to European countries. Quite the contrary. The EU’s new principles for negotiation will require such sharing: “Information about terrorism and serious transnational crime resulting from the analysis of PNR data by third countries should be shared with EUROPOL, EUROJUST and EU Member States.”

Former US vice president Dick Cheney is expected to spend the weekend in hospital in Washington after his latest health scare.

Mr Cheney, 69, who has suffered five heart attacks since he was 37, was admitted to hospital after telling his doctors he felt unwell. He is undergoing tests, his office said.

“On the advice of his physicians, he was admitted to the (George Washington University) hospital for further testing. He is expected to remain in the hospital over the weekend,” said a statement released by his office.

The hawkish Republican was the most influential vice-president in recent history during his eight years alongside George W Bush and remains extremely popular in conservative circles, despite leaving office with extremely low public approval ratings.

He played a key role in US decisions on Iraq and Afghanistan and has emerged as one of his party’s most outspoken critics of the national security policies of President Barack Obama.

A Portland massage therapist gave local police a detailed statement last year alleging that former Vice President Al Gore groped her, kissed her and made unwanted sexual advances during a late-night massage session in October 2006 in a suite at the upscale Hotel Lucia.

“The case was not investigated any further because detectives concluded there was insufficient evidence to support the allegations,” the Portland Police Bureau said in a prepared statement Wednesday, responding to inquiries from all over the world after the National Enquirer broke the story on its website.

In her detailed Jan. 8, 2009, statement to a Portland sexual assault investigator, the woman said she was called to the hotel about 10:30 p.m. Oct. 24, 2006, to provide a massage for Gore, who was registered under the name “Mr. Stone.” Once inside his ninth-floor suite, she said he pushed her hand to his groin, fondled her buttocks and breasts, tongue-kissed her and threw her down on the bed as she tried to thwart his advances.

She called him a “crazed sex poodle” and tried to distract him, pointing out a box of Moonstruck chocolates on a nearby table. He went for the chocolates and then offered her some, cornering her, fondling her and shoving his tongue in her mouth to french kiss as he pressed against her.

She said he tried to pull her camisole strap down.

She said she told him to stop it. “I was distressed, shocked and terrified.”

She said she was intimidated by his physical size, calling him “rotund,” described his “violent temper, dictatorial, commanding attitude” — what she termed a contrast from his “Mr. Smiley global-warming concern persona.”

Later, she said, he tried to lure her into the bedroom to hear pop star Pink’s “Dear Mr. President” on his iPod dock. She said Gore sat on one end of the bed and motioned for her to join him.

Suddenly, she said, he “flipped me on my back, threw his whole body face down over a top me, pinning me down.”

She said she loudly protested, “Get off me, you big lummox!”

The therapist said she injured her left leg and knee and sought medical care for several months.

A Balinese teenager caught in the act of intercourse with a cow passed out on Friday when he was forced to marry the animal in a ceremony witnessed by hundreds of curious onlookers.

As the Jakarta Globe reported earlier in the day, Ngurah Alit, 18, an unemployed youth from the seaside village of Yeh Embang in Jembrana, was caught stark naked positioned behind the cow in a rice paddy field.

In his defence, Alit admitted to the act of bestiality but claimed the cow, which he believed was a young and beautiful woman, had wooed him with flattering compliments.

As part of a Pecaruan ritual, a ceremony to cleanse the village of the unholy act of a man mating with a cow, Alit was forced to “marry” the animal.

Alit, however, according to Detik.com, passed out surrounded by locals and police, who were attempting to prevent a number of journalists from covering the spectacle.

It is unclear whether or not he got to say “I do.”

Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women?

In the ’90s, when Ericsson looked into the numbers for the two dozen or so clinics that use his process, he discovered, to his surprise, that couples were requesting more girls than boys, a gap that has persisted, even though Ericsson advertises the method as more effective for producing boys. In some clinics, Ericsson has said, the ratio is now as high as 2 to 1. Polling data on American sex preference is sparse, and does not show a clear preference for girls. But the picture from the doctor’s office unambiguously does. A newer method for sperm selection, called MicroSort, is currently completing Food and Drug Administration clinical trials. The girl requests for that method run at about 75 percent.

Even more unsettling for Ericsson, it has become clear that in choosing the sex of the next generation, he is no longer the boss. “It’s the women who are driving all the decisions,” he says—a change the MicroSort spokespeople I met with also mentioned. At first, Ericsson says, women who called his clinics would apologize and shyly explain that they already had two boys. “Now they just call and [say] outright, ‘I want a girl.’ These mothers look at their lives and think their daughters will have a bright future their mother and grandmother didn’t have, brighter than their sons, even, so why wouldn’t you choose a girl?”

A small publishing company is under fire after putting warning labels on copies of the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence and other historical documents.

Wilder Publications warns readers of its reprints of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, Common Sense, the Articles of Confederation, and the Federalist Papers, among others, that “This book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today.”

The disclaimer goes on to tell parents that they “might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work.”

The warning seems to be offending more people than the documents themselves.

California’s white population has declined since 2000 at an unprecedented rate, hastening the day when Hispanics will be the state’s largest population group, according to newly released state figures.

Analysts said the decline can be attributed to two main causes – a natural population decrease as Baby Boomers enter their later years and die at a faster rate than younger whites have children, and a migration from California since 2001 among whites who sought affordable housing as real estate costs soared.

The study also confirmed projections that a steadily growing Hispanic population will surpass whites as the state’s largest racial demographic in 2016. Hispanics are expected to become a majority of all Californians in 2042, Heim said.

John has posted previously about the movement to take Southwest states from the US.

A University of New Mexico Chicano Studies professor predicts a new, sovereign Hispanic nation within the century, taking in the Southwest and several northern states of Mexico.

Truxillo, 47, has said the new country should be brought into being “by any means necessary,” but recently said it was unlikely to be formed by civil war. Instead, its creation will be accomplished by the electoral pressure of the future majority Hispanic population in the region, he said.

West Word – June 2, 2010:

More than a decade after the attack on Columbine, the high school’s name remains a buzz word — and an infinitely flexible one.

Example: Public Broadcast Service talk-show host Tavis Smiley used the massacre as an example of violence done by Christians — a position that’s earned him criticism from PBS’s own ombudsman.

Tavis: I guess I’m trying to understand where the evidence is that suggests that all of us who happen to be Christians or enlightened in some other way need to take on Muslims here in the West.

Ali: The people who are engaged in terrorist activities look like you and me. They look like everybody else here. Major Nidal Hasan, the military guy who in November shot 13 of his colleagues and injured 32, he’s going to be on trial pretty soon, I think this week, the young man, Faisal Shahzad, in Times Square who tried to blow innocent people that he doesn’t know up, these guys are acting on conviction. Somehow, the idea got into their minds that to kill other people is a great thing to do and that they would be rewarded in the hereafter.

Tavis: But Christians do that every single day in this country.

Ali: Do they blow people up (unintelligible)?

Tavis: Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that’s what Columbine is — I could do this all day long. There are so many more examples of Christians — and I happen to be a Christian. That’s back to this notion of your idealizing Christianity in my mind, to my read. There are so many more examples, Ayaan, of Christians who do that than you could ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country, where you live and work.