Cascajun

I went on three day tour of the Pacific Northwest following the conference I attended last week in Portland, Oregon. We rented a car and drove from Portland to Astoria and then drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to Eureka, California. We then turned east and drove through the mountains to Redding. On Monday we drove I-5 north from Redding to Portland, then took the Amtrak back to Bellingham, WA after lunch at the Bridgeport Brewpub. We watched the sunrise over Mt. Shasta and the sunset on Mt. Baker…that’s the Cascades from end to end in one day!

Here are a few photographs I took along the way.

In a videotaped statement Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, disclosed some shocking details of the housing bailout legislation being rushed through Congress:

• The two troubled federal mortgage agencies, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, will be given unlimited access to the U.S. Treasury without requiring any further approval from Congress.
• The U.S. national debt ceiling will be raised by $800 billion, which suggests that the bailout is expected to cost a lot more than the country is being told.
• All credit card transactions will have to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service, as if the country isn’t under enough government surveillance already.

“…dealing with bad politicians is like playing Space Invaders. The more you zap the more they come. Still, everyone plays simply because they have to and in the vague hope that maybe, just maybe, they can beat the game.”

Richard Fernandez

I’m heading down to Portland, OR this evening to attend the Internet Strategy Forum Summit on Thursday and Friday.

I saw Eilen Jewell & her band at the Green Frog last night. They were really good.

I bought two CDs:

• Letters From Sinners and Strangers; and
• The Sacred Shakers.

I like ‘em both. Here’s a video from YouTube.

The Telegraph writes:

The Russian state was behind the killing of the former secret agent Alexander Litvinenko, a senior official has disclosed in private.

“We very strongly believe the Litvinenko case to have had some state involvement, there are very strong indications that it was a state action,” the senior security official told the BBC.

Marina Litvinenko, the widow of the murdered agent, has been pressing for official recognition that the use of radioactive polonium 210 must have been state-sanctioned.

To date the Government has remained silent on the responsibility for the killing merely requesting the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi, a former KGB bodyguard who is the main suspect in the case.

Referring to a later attempt to assassinate the businessman Boris Berezovsky, who employed Litvinenko, the security source said the “continued willingness” of the domestic security branch the FSB to “consider operations against people in the West” was causing major diplomatic problems.

I rowed out to the Lummi Island DNR Campground on Thursday and spent two nights, returning this morning. Here are a few photos.

The Arizona Republic reports:

Six men with guns and body armor ambushed and killed a man in his Phoenix home Sunday, firing over one hundred rounds into the house.

[…]

As more investigators came to help, they noticed a red Chevrolet Tahoe driving suspiciously in the neighborhood. Detectives followed the vehicle to 7th Street and Coronado Road where Daniel Garcia-Saenz, 24; Manual Garcia-Trejom, 25; and Rodolfo Madrigal Lopez, 19, jumped out and ran from the vehicle before being apprehended by authorities.

All three suspects were wearing law-enforcement-like body armor. Helmets and various weapons were recovered from the suspect’s vehicle.

Stratfor has analysis:

The fact that the Mexican men involved in the Phoenix case were heavily armed and dressed as police comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed security events in Mexico. Teams of cartel enforcers frequently impersonate police or military personnel, often wearing matching tactical gear and carrying standardized weapons. In fact, it is rare to see a shootout or cartel-related arms seizure in Mexico where tactical gear and clothing bearing police or military insignia is not found.

[…]

While it now appears that the three men arrested in Phoenix were not former or active members of the Mexican military or police, it is not surprising that they employed military- and police-style tactics. Enforcers of various cartel groups such as Los Zetas, La Gente Nueva or the Kaibiles who have received advanced tactical training often pass on that training to younger enforcers (many of whom are former street thugs) at makeshift training camps located on ranches in northern Mexico. There are also reports of Israeli mercenaries visiting these camps to provide tactical training. In this way, the cartel enforcers are transforming ordinary street thugs into highly-trained cartel tactical teams.

[…]

Although the victim in the Phoenix killing, Andrew Williams, was reportedly a Jamaican drug dealer who crossed a Mexican cartel, there are many other targets in the United States that the cartels would like to eliminate. These targets include Mexican cartel members who have fled to the United States due to several different factors. The first factor is the violent cartel war that has raged in Mexico for the past few years over control of important smuggling routes and strategic locations along those routes. The second factor is the Calderon administration’s crackdown, first on the Gulf cartel and now on the Sinaloa cartel. Pressure from rival cartels and the government has forced many cartel leaders into hiding, and some of them have left Mexico for Central America or the United States.

[…]

Other cartel targets in the United States include Drug Enforcement Administration and other law enforcement officers responsible for operations against the cartels, and informants who have cooperated with U.S. or Mexican authorities and been relocated stateside for safety. There are also many police officers who have quit their jobs in Mexico and fled to the United States to escape threats from the cartels, as well as Mexican businessmen who are targeted by cartels and have moved to the United States for safety.

[…]

However, the aggressiveness of cartel enforcers and their brutal lack of regard for human life means that while they do not intentionally target civilians, they are bound to create collateral casualties along the way. This is especially true as they continue to conduct operations like the Phoenix killing, where they fired over 100 rounds of 5.56 mm ball ammunition at a home in a residential neighborhood.

Christopher Hitchens tries waterboarding (’cmon, everybody is doing it) and concludes:

I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.