An Open Letter to My Bedbugs is funny as hell.

On a more serious note, bedbugs are spreading rapidly throughout the U.S. and Canada (more in the states than north of the border).  They are being spread in used furniture, they are rampant in hotels and often brought home unwittingly in luggage and on clothing, and infestations spread easily by innocent means.  Once you have them, it take months—up to a year—of constant treatments to get rid of them, and even then they can survive in unexpected placed and reemerge quickly.  And they reproduce like rabbits.  Because hotels aren’t required to document or report infestations, you’re essentially on your own if you pick them up from or are assaulted by them in a hotel.  Legal action is spreading because people are finding themselves covered with bites or bringing them home at alarming rates, but hotels are fighting back and denying it all.  What are the recommendations?  Do not buy or accept used furniture.  While there are ways to clean an infestation before doing so, it’s tedious and unreliable and you might end up with a home full of the critters anyway.  When staying in a hotel, check everything carefully before packing up and heading home.  They hide in small crevices and spaces that aren’t normally accessible to you (including in walls and electrical outlets), so keep that in mind when securing your things before leaving a hotel.  It only takes one to create an army of them.  Also, they’re patient and long-lived.  They seem to sense to a degree when you’re asleep and won’t come out until then.  An adult can go for months without a meal (which is why an infestation can crop up even after months of treatment; one adult can hide somewhere safely and create a whole new gang of friends once extermination treatments end).  Check your bedding regularly—between the mattresses, under the box spring, in every nook and cranny, under bed covers and sheets, and everywhere else.  Check carpeting and walls and closets and furniture and anyplace where it’s dark most of the time and where you don’t normally clean (this includes clothing not used regularly).  Basically, prevention is the best offense and defense in this case.  Once you have them, you’ll find it’s more difficult to get rid of them than it is to just get rid of everything you own and move to a new location.

Typical Nazi asshole.  America’s own Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says anyone who questions the government’s illegal domestic spying program is a threat to national security.  No, really, that’s what he said.  Basically, if you think your constitutional rights are important, you’re a terrorist and a threat to America.  “Gonzales told about 400 cadets from the Air Force Academy’s political science and law classes that some see the program as on the verge of stifling freedom rather that protecting the country. ‘But this view is shortsighted,’ he said. ‘Its definition of freedom one utterly divorced from civic responsibility is superficial and is itself a grave threat to the liberty and security of the American people.'”  Forget the fact that the Constitution and FISA both declare the program illegal.  Forget the fact that America has never been a police state and should never be one.  Forget the fact that liberty and freedom are more important that giving up what makes us America in the name of false security (because we’re not safer with all the loss of rights we’ve suffered).  What a fucked up idiotic dick.

But let’s not haggle over what the law might or might not be with regards to FISA.  Let’s go directly to the sacred Constitution of the United States of America, specifically Amendment IV:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Any questions?  It’s rather clear to me.  Without probable cause and the judicial review by oath or affirmation, not to mention specific details on who and what and where is to be searched, the Constitution strictly forbids any government or government entity from surreptitiously spying on us.  Period.  That is the Fourth Amendment, poppets, and it’s non-negotiable.  Again, period.  How did this man get into that position if he doesn’t even know or understand our most cherished and revered laws, namely those in our nation’s highest document?

Kudos to Mexico City!  “Defying fierce opposition from Roman Catholic leaders and conservative groups, Mexico City lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a bill Thursday legalizing same-sex civil unions in the Mexican capital. With a vote of 43-to-17, Mexico City became only the second Latin American city to authorize gay unions after Buenos Aires in 2002.”  It’s spreading (remember South Africa recently legalized gay marriage).  Hopefully Americans will get off their discriminatory high horses and do the right thing soon.

This is a really cute picture.  I believe it’s an African grey.  The bird’s just hanging on the stool and peeking over.

More on the Jose Padilla case and the torture and endless detention of people—even American citizens like him.  “After he was arrested in 2002, Jose Padilla was considered so dangerous that he was held without charges in a military prison for more than three years — accused first of plotting a radiological ‘dirty bomb’ attack and later of conspiring with al-Qaeda to blow up apartment buildings with natural gas. But now, nearly a year after his abrupt transfer into a regular criminal court, the Justice Department’s prosecution of the former Chicago gang member is running into trouble. A Republican-appointed federal judge in Miami has already dumped the most serious conspiracy count against Padilla, removing for now the possibility of a life sentence. The same judge has also disparaged the government’s case as ‘light on facts,’ while defense lawyers have made detailed allegations that Padilla was illegally tortured, threatened and perhaps even drugged during his detention at a Navy brig in South Carolina. The Justice Department denied the allegations of torture last week and is pursuing an appeal of the conspiracy ruling in hopes that the charge will be reinstated.”  I mean, four years later and they still can’t get a case put together against him, their charges are being broken down by judges who see no evidence of the crimes they’re claiming, the original “dirty bomb” allegations were dropped long ago as being without merit, and the man—again, an American citizen—is still being held.  Add to that the torture issue, something we already know our government is doing and supports, and what you wind up with is a huge mess that violates every tenet of our society.  Police state?  What police state?

I think this is an interesting use of MP3 player technology.  “A man in Manchester, England has been convicted of using an MP3 player to hack cash machines. Maxwell Parsons, 41, spent £200,000 of other people’s money after using the machine to read card details. Parsons plugged his MP3 player into the back of free standing cash machines and was able to use it to read data about customers’ cards. That data could then be used to ‘clone’ cards and use them for bogus purchases.”