(no subject)

Ok this just about killed me:

What's going on in my life

Ok so here's the latest update, first I have achieved new heights of Cool Aunt-i-ness by having tracked down and successfully procured a Wii for my niece. Before you question my sanity allow me to qualify this by saying her parents are going to give it to her, they just couldn't lay hands on one back East and asked me to work my mojo out here. Fortunately my gift-fu remains strong and I got the last one in the store and picked up a copy of Endless Ocean as my own element of the gift.

Beyond that I had a voicemail regarding an actual interview with an honest to god company. No more recruiters, woo! I left a message with the gal who'd called me as we seem to be playing phone tag, but this has given me a new injection of optimism. My resume actually isn't as bad as I'd feared, somebody's interested in it...glory hallelujah! Sure it's not a job yet, but it's a step closer to one.

I'm still having issues finding out what's going on with my one and only prescription. My new insurance company is dicking me over about it but I'm supposed to have an answer of some sort by tomorrow. I intend to harass them until I get some sort of satisfaction. And I confirmed that I should have a big unemployment check coming to me today so that's taking a little of the pressure off.

Of course as soon as I got home I got notice that my rent will be going up hugely again when my lease is up June 1. I have two words to cover my response to this, "Fuck that". I love this apartment, believe me I do, but this is getting nutty. So while I've got the free time I'm getting shit boxed up and ready to be moved. Yeah I know the idea of moving while starting a new job seems as nutty as being forced out of my last apartment between Christmas and New Years, apparently I'm just going to be moving under extremely high stress circumstances for a while.

Rodney's Angels

Ok the embed isn't working, but OMG, moonlightnrain you must see this vid:

Rodney's Angels

I am so totally reading this fic...

The This Hurts Me More Than it Hurts Yoo Doctrine

Brad at Sadly, No! points to this piece in the Washington Post that just made my jaw drop:

The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president’s ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes. […]

“If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network,” Yoo wrote. “In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions.”

Interrogators who harmed a prisoner would be protected by a “national and international version of the right to self-defense,” Yoo wrote. He also articulated a definition of illegal conduct in interrogations — that it must “shock the conscience” — that the Bush administration advocated for years.

“Whether conduct is conscience-shocking turns in part on whether it is without any justification,” Yoo wrote, explaining, for example, that it would have to be inspired by malice or sadism before it could be prosecuted.


In comments Bitter Scribe adds:


Punishable offenses committed by enemy civilians do not, until further notice, come any longer under the jurisdiction of the courts-martial….

Persons suspected of criminal action will be brought at once before an officer. This officer will decide whether they are to be shot.

With regard to offenses committed against enemy civilians by members of the Army, prosecution is not obligatory even where the deed is at the same time a military crime or offense.

—Directive by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, May 1941

The more things change...