From LEITER: Lying 24-Year-Old Republican NASA Hack-Czar Leaves

NASA Presidential Appointee in a Million Little Pieces (Edmundson)

[From the Leiter Reports]
The blog The Scientific Activist [permalink] has exposed the 24-year-old creationist political hack, George C. Deutsch, as a fraud. Deutsch's skullduggery has been described on this blog [Leiter] and in media accounts. Although Deutsch did (apparently) work for in the Bush 2004 campaign's "war room," and for the Bush 2005 inaugural committee, he did not earn a B.A. in journalism from Texas A&M--contrary the resume he gave NASA. Deutsch has resigned, but NASA will not comment. Helluva job, Deutschy! (Can we go to Mars now?)

Posted by wedmundson on February 07, 2006 at 08:17 PM in Guest Blogger: William Edmundson

BREAKING: Now in the New York Times! From the article:

Mr. Deutsch, 24, was offered a job as a writer and editor in NASA's public affairs office in Washington last year after working on President Bush's re-election campaign and inaugural committee, according to his résumé. No one has disputed those parts of the document.

According to his résumé, Mr. Deutsch received a "Bachelor of Arts in journalism, Class of 2003."

Yesterday, officials at Texas A&M said that was not the case.

"George Carlton Deutsch III did attend Texas A&M University but has not completed the requirements for a degree," said an e-mail message from Rita Presley, assistant to the registrar at the university, responding to a query from The Times.

Repeated calls and e-mail messages to Mr. Deutsch on Tuesday were not answered.

Remarks from the Scientific Activist:
"[I]nstead of the story being about a 24-year-old lying, it should be about this: how did this guy, who already had dubious qualifications, make it into NASA with such an obvious lie on his resume? To work for a federal agency, including NASA, extensive background checks are usually required. If I was able to uncover the truth about Deutsch in one phone call, then he must have been placed in his current position without any investigation, due to his loyal service on the Bush presidential campaign."

"For a president that paints himself as a champion of national security, the NASA incident is a major blow to Bush’s credibility. This isn’t the first time either, with George Deutsch now joining the ranks of Michael Brown, the embattled former director of FEMA, and Harriet Myers, Bush’s Supreme Court nominee who was subsequently withdrawn. Congratulations, Deutsch, this is a pretty elite circle!"


see also: George Deutsch's college writing
see also: Iraq Hack

Scalia Sodomy Commenter Makes Statement

Eric Berndt, the student who, so wonderfully, asked Scalia what Scalia would have policemen asking everyone else ("Do you sodomize?"), has made an explanatory statement -- well worth reading!

From The Nation, 18 April 2005:

Debriefing Scalia

Editors' Note: Justice Antonin Scalia got more than he bargained for when he accepted the NYU Annual Survey of American Law's invitation to engage students in a Q&A session. Randomly selected to attend the limited-seating and closed-to-the-press event, NYU law school student Eric Berndt asked Scalia to explain his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court case that overturned Bowers v. Hardwick and struck down the nation's sodomy laws. Not satisfied with Scalia's answer, Berndt asked the Justice, "Do you sodomize your wife?" Scalia demurred and law school administrators promptly turned off Berndt's microphone. As Berndt explains in his post to fellow law school students, it was an entirely fair question to pose to a Justice whose opinion--had it been in the majority--would have allowed the state to ask that same question to thousands of gays and lesbians, and to punish them if the answer is yes. We reprint Berndt's open letter below.

Fellow Classmates,

As the student who asked Justice Scalia about his sexual conduct, I am responding to your posts to explain why I believe I had a right to confront Justice Scalia in the manner I did Tuesday, why any gay or sympathetic person has that same right. It should be clear that I intended to be offensive, obnoxious, and inflammatory. There is a time to discuss and there are times when acts and opposition are necessary. Debate is useless when one participant denies the full dignity of the other. How am I to docilely engage a man who sarcastically rants about the "beauty of homosexual relationships" [at the Q&A] and believes that gay school teachers will try to convert children to a homosexual lifestyle [in oral argument for Lawrence]? [more at LINK]

Major Human Rights Conviction (Spain/Argentina: Scilingo)

SPAIN: ARGENTINE OFFICER CONVICTED
New York Times "World Briefings" 20 April 2005, p. A8


The National Court convicted Adolfo Scilingo, a former Argentine naval officer, of crimes against humanity during Argentina's 1976-1983 military dictatorship. It was the first conviction under a law that allows courts here to prosecute crimes in other countries if they constitute violations of international law. Mr. Scilingo is expected to serve 30 years in prison. He admitted throwing dissidents from planes into the sea but later retracted the confession. Renwick McLean (NYT)

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Much more detailed article here:

'I don't try to justify myself'
The Guardian
Thursday April 21, 2005

This week a former Argentinian naval officer who threw 30 prisoners to their deaths from planes was jailed for 640 years. In court he protested his innocence, but Giles Tremlett recalls the day he heard his chilling confession [more at link]

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I just read these articles tonight after watching Polanski's film, [second link -- spoiler warning-->] Death and the Maiden... Great film, incredible coincidence. Netflicks it today while the news is still warm.

Republicans invoking Stalinist anti-communism

This is incredible: as reported in the Washington Post (and which I read about on AmericaBlog), the "culture of life" Republicans, at a meeting to discuss how to crush judges who oppose killing children, declared that Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy (who voted against killing children) "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law" [as lawyer Edwin Vieira put it] given that he had voted to decriminalize sodomy.

Their solution for routing out such communist behavior? A Stalinist one (!!) "Vieira continued by saying his 'bottom line' for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. 'He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: "no man, no problem," ' Vieira said. The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem.' "

Major 'Sanctity of Life'-Dissonance

Bush rushes at midnight to sign a bill to block Terry Schiavo from being allowed to die, presumably because of his bottomless feeling for the sanctity of life.

And yet it turns out that the same man, back in Texas, made law (the "Texas Futile Care Law") the proposal that a person should be removed from life support , regardless of their stated wishes, if their guardian cannot afford insurance. So, apparently, what's important is not life, but rather, money (who would have thunk it, in such an oligarchy?) -- in particular, whether one has insurance in a society where Bush is 'insuring' that fewer and fewer have insurance!

Whether or not one believes that the Schiavo decision should be taken out of the husband's hands or not, what is clear is that Bush is grandstanding, and does not care one fig for the sanctity of life. According to his desires, the preservation of people's lives should rest on whether their caretakers have money. According to his adminstration's policy, prisoners in our care should be tortured to death. Against his wishes, it was decided that retarded people and children could not be executed (for the unaware, that means, killed).

Further lies can be 'enjoyed' from Bush's new decepticon, McClellan, who stated that the Texas Futile Care law "was there to help ensure that actions were being taken that were in accordance with the wishes of the patient or the patient’s family" -- even though the law itself [Section 166.046, Subsection (e)] states that "If the patient or the person responsible for the health care decisions of the patient is requesting life-sustaining treatment that the attending physician has decided and the review process has affirmed is inappropriate treatment, the patient shall be given available life-sustaining treatment pending transfer under Subsection (d). The patient is responsible for any costs incurred in transferring the patient to another facility. The physician and the health care facility are not obligated to provide life-sustaining treatment after the 10th day after the written decision required under Subsection (b) is provided to the patient or the person responsible for the health care decisions of the patient..."

(Thanks to the Daily Kos for the documentation, information, and language.)

I respect Michael Schiavo for his remarks:

"Instead of worrying about my wife, who was granted her wishes by the state courts the past seven years, they should worry about the pedophiles killing young girls," Schiavo said, referring to a local case. "Why doesn't Congress worry about people not having health insurance? Or the budget? Let's talk about all the children who don't have homes."He said U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who is leading a charge to extend Terri Schiavo's life, is a "little slithering snake" pandering for votes."

Creepy, creepy Direct TV ad...

One of the most soul-stilling ads I have seen in a long time is a relatively new "Direct TV" ad (it's entitled, "Life Changes," and apparently first made its debut during the superbowl). It begins showing a child (a boy) watching a TV, and follows him through his entire life, as he ages, finally ending with him as an old man, walking from each stage of his life, as if from one room to another, each time leaving everyone in that stage of his life (each room) behind, the only thing following him being a television set, while the voiceover talks about how, in our devotion to television, we are "loyal to the end."

It is very, very creepy. And, what is more, beyond the fact that it reduces this guy's life to television watching, or turning the omnipresent TV into some sort of all-knowing protector (oppressor?) God, is that the ad ultimately becomes a condemnation of the viewer — because you (or I), the viewer, experience the utter emptiness of watching this person rushing toward their own death, and all they do, the only marker in their life, is their watching of television, and then you (I) realize, "Oh ... my ... God — that's me, now, wasting my entire life watching television..." Very depressing, very hope-crushing, very soul-draining.

Searching on the web, I found these like-minded remarks (in response to very enthusiastic comments about the ad from someone looking for a link so they could 'enjoy' it again) from "nonplussed":

"[T]his thing made me sick to my stomach. It's telling you that your whole life is inextricably fused with the world of TV. That you are born into a room with a television, and that watching commercial media tripe is also among your final acts before exiting this world. It even claims, explicitly, that our nation has been "transfixed" by TV. You know what transfixed means? There is no positive connotation associated with the word. Quite literally, it means speared, impaled, skewered, etc. Right through the brain, in this case.

I am utterly horrified by this ad, first, because it's accurate and true in boasting our total intellectual subjugation, but even more so because so many of us are not only willing to watch it without any sense of irony, but even gleefully accept the unending rape and pillage of our very minds and then go looking for the mp3 to pipe into our ears as we go about our decrepit day."

This just in: I actually submitted something for publication.

Yes! I finally did it! Apropos the original heading for this blog, viz., "An academic battles against himself to get something written", I used the month of January to work on an article, have sent it off, and have gotten notification that it was indeed received!

Now the only problem: in order to be "sending things off for publication," — which I must do — I must immediately set to work on my next submission, for, if I don't, then it will only be true that I did send something for publication, not that I am sending things off for publication.

Nonetheless: I sent something!