Remember those prisoners — I’m sorry, “enemy combatants” — at Guantanamo Bay? You know, the ones who, for the most part, hadn’t actually been charged with anything and were, in probably more than a few cases, guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time? Well, if the current administration has its way, they won’t be going anywhere anytime soon:

“It’s outrageous,” [USC law professor Erwin] Chemerinsky said. “There are no signs that the war on terrorism is nearing an end, so the government is saying it can hold people indefinitely and likely for the rest of their lives without complying with the requirements of international law.”

Brought to my attention by Erik Wilson, who also shares a number of links (including this one), about the ease with which the results of the 2004 presidential election might be fixed:

Diebold is the company that wants to get the contract to provide and program voting machines in every state for the 2004 election and O’Dell is raising money exclusively for President Bush and the Republican National Committee (RNC). O’Dell, in a fundraising letter on August 14th, committed “to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year” according to the Associated Press. In the 2002 election cycle, O’Dell gave $5,965 to the RNC while Diebold gave the RNC $95,000

And I was worried when I thought it was just crappy voting software.

I seem to have pretty much exhausted my interest in the Friday Five already, but if you really want to know:

1. I’ve never changed my name.

2. I haven’t given it much thought.

3. I’m named after my father. (And his father. And his father.)

4. Again, I haven’t given it much thought.

5. Not even remotely. Every indication is that the Kabalarians are either a scam or a cult or both.

I’m sorry, but I refuse to call today Patriot Day. Let today be a day of rememberance, even a national holiday if it must, but not Patriot Day. That’s as empty and meaningless as the Bush administration’s broken promises to help New York City following 2001’s World Trade Center attacks. Given everything that’s happened in the past two years, I’m inclined to agree with Oscar Wilde who called patriotism “the virtue of the vicious.”

For those of you paying attention (is anyone paying attention?), I’m no longer getting the wrong weblog when I log in. Blogger Support writes:

We apologize that you ended up with someone else’s blog when you went to login to Blogger. This was a temporary problem that affected only a few users and has now been fixed. Please know that we are very concerned about keeping the information in your blogs secure. As such, we’ve made additional changes to ensure this type of mistake doesn’t happen again.

Good to know.