You know that feeling you get when everybody is talking about a movie that you didn’t see or a book you didn’t read or a snowfall that somehow missed your street? That’s a bit how it was yesterday with our earthquakes. I slept through the first one. So did the dog, but that’s another tale. So all day at work, everybody was yammering about the quake this and the quake that, and all I could do was smile and nod. I even missed the second one. I caught up with the last quake, at 9:15, so I went to sleep happy, knowing that I was now part of this itty-bitty crumb of history ...
A 2.6 earthquake is one of those great events of nature. No damage and destruction. No tsunamis. Just a firm reminder that mother nature is out there, giving us shakeup calls when we get too uppity. Although we covered the story both in print and online, the power of the Net was in full force yesterday. Just before our morning planning meeting, we posted an update and asked readers to tell us what they felt. 20 minutes later, I had 30-some emails from readers about the rocking and rolling. It is amazing to see how many different ways we can say that a)we were sleeping b) a big crash of sorts woke us up. c) we wondered what it was. d) we were glad it wasn’t North Korea sending us a present… There are some really descriptive writers out there.
This is citizen journalism, i.e. people reporting what happened, participating in a news event. It’s hard to even imagine how long it would have taken us to track down 30 people to get the same comments. They did their part. We did ours. And it was very natural and unforced, which is how I think these sorts of things should work.
And for those earthquake junkies, this is a pretty cool site.
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from
Nothing on habeas corpus? A shallow Bloomberg cut ‘n’ paste and an Opinion piece that missed a, no, THE key point in Bush’s signing? No blog post, considering what this means for journalists?
For crying out loud.
Now that the emotion is out of the way, let’s examine the ramifications:
1. The key point in this law is that it allows the President and/or Secretary of Defense to declare, without a check or balance, ANYone an enemy combatant. This applies not just to foreign fighters, but to U.S. citizens.
2. Once declared an enemy combatant, U.S. law allows for that person to be detained indefinitely (read: spirited away to any location on earth and held there literally until the unfortunate soul should perish).
3. That person may be held for the remainder of his/her natural life without ever being told why they were held or being charged with a crime.
“This will only be used against terrorists,” you say. Innocent people won’t get swept up in this. Okay… Let’s examine historical record:
1. President Adams used the Alien and Sedition Acts to jail journalists. (Ken! Hello?! Ken!)
2. President Wilson used the Espionage Act to jail thousands who protested against the war.
3. President Roosevelt used Executive Order 9066 to put over 110,000 U.S. citizens into containment camps. Recall General DeWitt telling Congress, “It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen — he is still a Japanese.”
And citizens fiddled while we burned.
According to the website to which you linked, as well as the USGS website, they upgraded the big ‘uns to 2.8s. Might be interesting to do a little box feature, if the Journal ever does another earthquake article, on how earthquake grades change.
Mike: I hear ya. I will confess that I am not as knowledgable about the new law as I ought to be. I know the rough details, but I tend not to rant about things where I feel that I’m only bringing heat, not light, to a discussion. It’s on my reading list, which is piling up ...
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