Today, Peruvian police seized 1,540 lbs of cocaine hidden in frozen giant squid destined for Mexico and the United States.

The drugs were covered in pepper to divert sniffer dogs and sealed in several layers of plastic and other wrappers. Police had been on the trail since August.

Seven people were arrested in the drug seizure. Police said the haul would have a street value of about $17.5 million.

I may be wrong, but I thought that giant squid was very rare. I know that one washes up on a beach every now and then, but it’s usually treated as a big news event and what’s left of the dead squid goes off to some lab or another to be studied. One wonders what the delivery address on that package was? That’s a lot of squid, to hide 1,540 lbs of coke.

I started speculating what would happen if that giant squid shipment got mixed up with a shipment of more common calamari destined for, say, McCormick’s or Jake’s.

What would the chef do with our coke-enhanced giant squid? Would it be served with a … special… breading? Would happy hour be really, really happy? Would customers eat it with that much pepper on it?

But then, of course, one wonders about the disappointment of the intended target when they received a large shipment of more common, non-enhanced squid with a more mundane street value. But maybe they could sell it to a local restaurant.

Friday, Scott Peterson was convicted. Due to unusual circumstances, I happened to be in my car when the verdict was read in court. All of the news stories and broadcasts I’ve seen or heard say pretty much the same thing: Scott Peterson was convicted of killing his wife, Laci Peterson, and her unborn baby.

If I hadn’t been listening to the radio when the verdict was read, I would have missed it. Here’s a link to the audio: Court bailiff, reading guilty verict in killing of unborn son.

For those of you who don’t have Real Player installed, here’s the transcript of the sound bite:

[woman's voice speaking] We, the jury in the above entitled cause, find the defendent, Scott Lee Peterson, guilty of the crime of murder of baby Conner Peterson.

Do you see the key words there: “baby Conner Peterson.”

Scott Peterson was prosecuted under California’s fetal homicide law. This was a precursor to the Federal Unborn Victims Of Violence Act (UVVA), renamed “Laci and Conner’s law” or (as referred to in Bush ads during the election) “The Laci Peterson Law that protects women against violence.” UVVA defines an unborn child as “a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb.”

Nation Right To Life claims that the law does not cover reproductive health rights and was meant to protect women. The law actually does nothing to prevent violence against women. It totally ignores the fact that any assault that harms a pregnancy is inherently a harmful attack on a woman.

What the law does do is to define a human life as starting at conception and provide separate legal rights for a fetus. Both erode a woman’s rights to reproductive choice and the latter is in direct conflict with Roe v. Wade, which held that a fetus is not a person under the 14th Amendement to the Constitution.

A different act, the Motherhood Protection Act of 2003, that would have supplied the same punishment for violent conduct agains a woman causing in an interruption of the normal course of a pregnancy resulting in harm to the pregnancy (including termination) as UVVA, but that did not give separate rights to the fetus, didn’t make it through committee.

Lest anyone think I’m exaggerating NRL’s intent, the day that the Scott Peterson verdict was handed down, KOIN News interviewed a representative from the Oregon Christian Coalition who said, basically, “Thank God we have a verdict and now we can overturn Roe v. Wade.” (Unfortunately I did not catch the name of the person being interviewed, and I cannot find mention of this on KOIN’s web site.) And, lest anyone still think I”m exaggerating, here’s an article by Jay Sekulow, Executive Director and Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, a right-wing group founded by Pat Robertson that claims to be “dedicated to protecting your religious and constitutional freedoms” but that is actually dedicated to “defending and advancing religious liberty, the sanctity of human life, and the two-parent, marriage-bound family.” Any doubt as to the ACLJ’s actual mission can be clarified by reading any of their position statements.

Quoth Sekulow regarding the Peterson verdict:

How does recognition of the value of the Peterson child’s life affect the pro-life movement? Well, it certainly gives us the momentum, if you will, to argue that this is a life worthy of protecting under the Constitution, when the murder of an unborn child is recognized as a separate and distinct crime under constitutional law.

We stand on a very slippery slope on which a woman’s rights to basic reproductive health care are at grave risk of being curtailed or eliminated. There is no medication other than contraception that is so rarely covered by health insurance. There is no medical procedure other than abortion that requires the patient to be subjected to waiting periods and the provider to be required to dispense unscientific information.

Other items to be aware of and write your representatives and senators to express your disapproval of:

Today on Fox News Sunday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said that Arlen Spector, a Republican Senator who supports women’s reproductive health rights, has yet to make a persuasive case that he should head the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Spector said after the election that Bush still lacks enough Senate votes to stop a Democratic attempt to block nominees that would overturn Roe v. Wade. Spector has been accused of having a pro-choice “litmus test” for judicial nominees, and conseratives are urging Senate Republicans to disregard his seniority and reject him as Judiciary Committee chair. Bush is expected to have a chance to fill several Supreme Court vacancies, and many conservatives have overturning Roe v. Wade as a top priority.

Frist called Spectors comments “disheartening” and said:

I would expect Chairman Specter … if it’s Chairman Specter … to have a strong predisposition to supporting that nominee sent over by President Bush.

I guess it never occurs to either Frist or the other unnamed conservatives that they have their own “litmus test.”

Yesterday, Andy pointed out - rightly - that my CSS wasn’t validating.

I checked the XHTML, and when it didn’t validate, for reasons other than invalid characters in the newsfeed, I decided to work on it first. One of the invalid characters was in one of the items under Listen/Read/Watch. When I logged in to fix it, I found that the link to the cg-amazon plugin was missing. So I deactivated and then reactivated the plugin. And therein hangs a tale.

I don’t know what I did, but somewhere in there all of the post text (what you’re reading here) got lost. No post displayed, either on the main page or the archives. Comments were OK. But there was no way to read what somebody had commented on.

I spent all morning trying to figure out why, with little luck. A post to the Wordpress support forum yielded no clues either.

After lunch, I uploaded a brand new copy of Wordpress to a new directory. Post showed up. I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out why. I tried overlaying my “real” WP install with part of the test one to see if I could get the text to display. No luck.

Finally this evening I did what I should probably have done to begin with: I deleted the “real” WP install (after making a backup of course) and copied in the test one. Then I spent hours uploading and reactivating plugins and reapplying various customizations and hacks.

If you’re reading this, I was successful. But it wasn’t fun.

I’m glad it’s over.

And, yes, it validates, except for one CSS item in there to trick IE into floating the columns correctly.

For anyone who might wander here on a Mac, how does this site look? If this skin looks sucky, are any of the other skins better? I’m especially interested if you are using Safari. I have no access to either a Mac or Safari, so I have no way of telling of the CSS is broken or not.

Leave a coment and let me know!

Thanks!

This statement come from Pappas Telecasting Companies, one of the companies that declined to air Saving Private Ryan on its ABC affiliates last night:

Many ABC affiliates are airing the extraordinary film ‘Saving Private Ryan’ Thursday night in Prime-time. However, Pappas Telecasting Companies has decided that the interests of the viewers of KHGI, in the Lincoln-Hastings-Kearney, Nebraska market, are best served by pre-empting this program.

[...]Pappas Telecasting and its management have been in the forefront of regulatory efforts to eliminate profanity, indecency, and gratuitous violence from network programming, particularly during times when children may be watching. Moreover, as is evidenced by recent decisions of the Federal Communications Commission, stations that air network programming with indecent or profane content are subject to significant fines and the threat of license revocation. For these reasons, although we have aired ‘Saving Private Ryan’ in years past, we are pre-empting it Thursday evening and instead are airing the feature film ‘Father of the Bride 2,’ starring Steve Martin and Diane Keaton, from 7-9 p.m., followed by ‘America’s Next Top Model,’ hosted by Tyra Banks, from 9-10 pm.

I could argue that, as a viewer, my interests are best served by allowing me to decide for myself whether or not to watch a show. I could argue that the violence and profanity in Private Ryan are not gratuitous. I could argue that Father of the Bride 2 and America’s Next Top Model are rather strange choices to honor our veterans.

But here’s what really gets my goat.

Saving Private Ryan aired on ABC in both 2001 and 2002. There was a complaint. It was disallowed. Yet the more than 20 ABC affiliates that declined to air Ryan this year are pleading fear of fines and citing the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” incident during the Superbowl half time show, and Bono’s use of the “F” word during the Golden Globes as examples of the FCC’s crack-down.

The infamous “wardrobe malfunction” may have been planned by Jackson, but was apparently a surprise to the broadcaster. It was a very brief breast shot (with covered nipple), missed by many viewers, during an event that was peppered with ads for medications promising relief from erectile disfunction. Bono’s effish utterance was, likewise, a one-time, short occurance, unplanned by the broadcaster. It would have been difficult in either case for the broadcasters to air warning to viewers.

Not to state the obvious, but Saving Private Ryan is a movie. It is a planned event, shown on station schedules, and aired with disclaimers and warning regarding the language and violence. Viewers can make an informed choice whether or not to watch, and whether or not to allow their children to watch. If they don’t like it, they can change the channel (what a concept!).

Comparing Bono and Ryan is comparing apples and oranges. These are in no way the same kind of incident. ABC was so sure that the FCC will not levy fines that it promised to cover any incurred by their affiliates.

Of course, the affiliates that have chosen not to air Ryan insist that they really, really want to air such a fine tribute to our veterans, but they just can’t because the FCC might slap them with fines they don’t have to pay.

Are the ABC affiliates really that afraid of the FCC? Or is this just another sign of the backlash and fear coming out of the “value based” election? Afraid of the FCC? Or afraid of the neocon right?

I’m glad that Steven Spielberg has the clout to insist that his film be aired intact and uncensored. I wish that more directors could.

And… welcome to George W Bush’s new America: Don’t bother to think. We’ll take care of that for you.