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The BBC (and others) report that three of the six Guantanamo prisoners who are to face a military tribunal are citizens of US allies. Specifically, Moazzam Begg and Feroz Abbasi are British and David Hicks is Australian. Apparently, while we don’t try our own citizens in front of a military tribunal, we’re OK with trying Aussies and Brits in a closed court. There’s really no excuse for this. In particular, Australia has suffered Al Qaeda attacks — but Australian courts aren’t good enough to try Mr. Hicks? How insulting. ...

Vancouver won the 2010 Winter Olympics (original). While the main competitor was thought to be Salzburg, in Austria, that bid was eliminated on the first ballot. The final vote was between Vancouver and Pyongyang, and the Canadians won by a mere 3 votes. Fortunately for Canada, all but two of the Salzburg voters switched to Vancouver on the second ballot. Apparently, all the Europeans voted for Vancouver, because if the Olympics is in North America in 2010 it’s unlikely to be in North America again in 2012. That pushes New York further out of the running. London’s going to have to be the coalition of the willing representative, with Paris flying the standard of the opposition. (Madrid and Moscow are less likely candidates.)

I tossed this off in a friend’s comment section, but now I want to save it. Excelsior. It’s Las Vegas. 1960. The Rat Pack is headlining the Sands. And the Angel Pack is patrolling the skies… Jack Diamond: he’s a hard man, the hardest, skin like diamond and quips like knives. You couldn’t scratch him with a .45. (Note: parallel evolution (original).) Angie “Angel” Spencer: team leader, irreverent British heiress, with immense white overarching wings. She flies, and she knows when you’ve been naughty. ...

I was just browsing around the Apple iTunes Music Store, contemplating the new Liz Phair album. Despite the warnings of friends, yeah. I was all geared up for the experience of buying the thing and being hugely disappointed by a sellout. Then I noticed a Clean Lyrics badge on the album. Clicked it, and discovered that the album was an expurgated version. (Didja hear about the expurgated Liz Phair concert? “Hi, thanks for coming out! It’s gonna be a great night! I hope you enjoyed my show, and have a safe drive home!”) ...

Between this post (original) and this post (original), Howard Dean raised over a million dollars from Internet contributions. That’s 45 hours. His total fundraising income for the quarter is over seven million. It’s significant because Dean almost certainly outdid every other Democratic candidate this quarter, and he’s solidly in the top tier because of that. This is a major difference from insurgency candidacies such as McCain’s, Tsongas’, and Bradley’s. It’s interesting because the average contribution was $66.85. By my count that’s around 15,000 contributors. That’s both a lot of eyeballs looking at a political website and not very many eyeballs at all when compared to the number of votes Dean needs. Sort of the first trickle of a dam breaking, I suspect. I don’t see the Internet having an immense effect on this election cycle, but 2008 should be interesting.

Don Park’s philosophy of life is admirable, and not that far from mine. He calls it the Selfish Pig (original). Smart guy. I wish I was as capable of detaching appropriately as he is; life’s not really all that complex. Also: hi, John! I am sorry I was a flake last year; it was a bad year for me, but that’s no excuse.

I have seen an interesting political meme a few times of late. It says that third party candidates are always spoilers, and cites the Republican dominance of the Presidency between 1896 and 1932 as partial evidence. The argument is that Eugene Debs pulled votes away from the Democrats, causing them to lose. It also cites other examples, but it’s the turn of the century example I’m going to address here. (Because it’s the one which is wrong. The others are pretty much accurate.) I’m making this post because I spent a while putting together the data and I don’t want to lose it; also because I believe in spreading accurate information, where such is available. My data source is David Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. Content moved into the extended entry because it was messing up the front page.

Dave’s shut it down. So I’m shutting down Scripting News now, to give me some time to think, and to give you all a demo of what it would be like if it weren’t here. These last few days have been really awful. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have so many people screaming at you. It’s inhuman, especially considering that my health isn’t that good. The only conclusion I can come to is that I shouldn’t be doing this. ...

Bill Frist, Senate Majority Leader, is all about criminalizing gay marriage (original). It’s a pretty odd argument, too. Let’s step closer, shall we? His fear is that “this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually — or I’m concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned.” That’s a little stumblemouthed on the face of it, actually. If criminal activity within the home was being condoned, that’d be expanding the zone of privacy. Not encroaching upon it. Still, I think you can see what he meant. ...

Katharine Hepburn, rest in peace.