A few months ago, I was supposed to get some help on my job. Specifically, someone to work on the .NET side of things, which would free me up to do the job I was actually hired to do: PHP development. He wasn’t my first choice, but he was second, in large part because of his masters degree and (minor) experience with .NET. In reality, though, finding someone to do .NET CF development is a total pain, let alone on a startup company’s budget.
On his first day, he never arrived. I called and called, and three days later he informed me that he was in India on an emergency, and had asked a friend of his to return my calls if/when I called him. His “friend” never did, so it fell through. About a month after that, the first-choice candidate called me up out of the blue and asked if we were still looking for developers.
I said sure, and he came onboard for the same salary as choice #2 (the main sticking point for him the first time around). He was supposed to start on or about the first of November, though the owner and him had those conversations and it was never quite clear what exactly was said as far as a definite start date (if anything was). So last Monday, I called him up, and he was in Austin. We worked out that he would start yesterday at 8am.
He too, never showed up.
Five more messages and 30 hours have passed since he was supposed to start working here. Reading Glen Greenwald today, I come across this little tidbit, which he quoted from an Associated Press story from Monday (emphasis is Greenwald’s):
In court documents filed with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., the Justice Department said a new anti-terrorism law being used to hold detainees in Guantanamo Bay also applies to foreigners captured and held in the United States.
Immigrants arrested in the United States may be held indefinitely on suspicion of terrorism and may not challenge their imprisonment in civilian courts, the Bush administration said Monday, opening a new legal front in the fight over the rights of detainees.
The story also goes on to note that the “test case” of this is a Quatari programmer living in Peoria, IL (yes, that Peoria)—about an hour and a half south of my house. Nice that some geek is now simply a test-case of Presidential TortureAlternative Interrogation Procedures, not a human being with a wife and four kids. If I were an immigrant, I’d get the fuck out of the country and not look back as well.
Of course, it’s also possible that dude is just an asshole, and the whole “we can disappear you” thing is just a coincidence. Not that it really makes the “we can disappear you” thing much better, simply less immediate.
BTW, where are the Democrats on this? Or was the plan to just get elected and let Bush’s phony “bipartisanship” nonsense prevent them from actually doing anything lest the media paint them as “Terra-loving San-Franciscamites”?
[Kinda sorry something this snarky is the first post to PGO in months, but this particular paranoia-kicker is a little close.]
Update: Turns out dude had a “personal life crisis” that meant he had to stay in Austin, and would’ve called except for his dead cellphone battery. I guess Texas is worse than I suspected, since they apparently don’t have pay-phones or e-mail there either… *fume*
James Cape 
Give the Democrats time to actually get into office- in January- for now there is still a Republican majority in Congress, and they will continue to attempt to escalate this behavior to the very last.
I know the politics of it—keep the Democrats off balance/busy with today’s fresh evil so they don’t have time to dig up dirt on the older ones. The White House has said as much (albeit in their native crazy-eese) when the talked about the inadequecies of the “reality-based community”—namely, while those of us in the real world are trying to figure out what the hell is happening, whether it’s good, and how to react, they’ll be busy acting, trying to create new scenarios.