As part of an ongoing effort to improve Off on a Tangent, I’ve been making a lot of seemingly-small changes to the site over the past couple of weeks. This comes as I continue to hone what I want the site to be and how I want it to be presented to the world, and—meanwhile—begin technical preparations for a major CMS upgrade tentatively scheduled later this year.
Red Alert: Terror Plot Uncovered
The United States Department of Homeland Security has raised the terror alert level to Red (Severe) for the first time. The red alert applies only to international commercial flights from the United Kingdom to the United States, while the alert has been raised to Orange (High) for all U.S. commercial air travel. This after U.K. authorities uncovered a highly-developed terrorist plot to blow up U.S. airliners.
9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes
There was a fascinating Vanity Fair exclusive that came out earlier this week about the 9/11/2001 attacks. Michael Bronner, one of the associate producers from the film United 93, was able to obtain tapes from NORAD’s northeast headquarters that were recorded during the 2001 attacks and wrote out an in-depth examination of them, including transcript snippets and audio clips.
Checking-Off To-Dos, etc.
Things are going pretty well, although I’m still feeling pretty swamped from a busy couple of weeks. I have a mile-long to-do list, but I’m checking things off one-by-one. As of today I can check off ‘Respond to emails,’ ‘Wash the car,’ ‘Computer backups,’ and now ‘Write a Life Entry,’ among a few other random things. Huzzah, hoorah, and hooray.
Bush’s ‘Signing Statements’ [Updated]
According to the American Bar Association (ABA), President Bush violates the Constitution when he signs a bill into law with an associated ‘signing statement’ expressing misgivings about the constitutionality of that law. In these ‘signing statements,’ Bush claims a right to (quoting the AP article) “revise, interpret, or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds.” It may surprise some of you that I agree with the ABA in this case.
Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.