[Cross-posted @ ePM. If there is another diary on this let me know in comments and I’ll dissappear this one.]

TomDispatch has announced a new project, and requested submissions for Casualties of the Bush Administration:

“The Fallen Legion
Casualties of the Bush Administration
[edit]
Nick Turse has created the beginnings of a “wall” to quite a different legion of the fallen; in this case, the governmental casualties of Bush administration follies, those men and women who were honorable or steadfast enough in their government duties that they found themselves with little alternative but to resign in protest, quit, or simply be pushed off the cliff by cronies of this administration. [emphasis mine]”

The “wall” they are attempting to create may eventually stretch a very long way, given that Executive Branch appointments number close to 7000.  [See the Forward [.pdf] to the Plum Book].

I think patterns will emerge from the raw data. [cont’d below]
Pattern Recognition

Primarily used in computer science, the definition fits the work done by researchers in the often murky depths of politics:

Pattern recognition (also known as classification or pattern classification) is a field within the area of computer science and can be defined as “the act of taking in raw data and taking an action based on the category of the data” [1].

Translated to Journalism 101:  who, what, where, and when.  The “techniques” below could describe the final two elements:  why and how:

Pattern recognition is typically an intermediate step in a longer process. These steps generally are acquisition of the data (image, sound, text, etc.) to be classified, preprocessing to remove noise or normalize the data in some way (image processing, stemming text, etc.), computing features, classification and finally post processing based upon the recognized class and the confidence level.

The categories for the research into this administration’s personnel and policies appear to fit into narrow, and overlapping categories.  A few I can think of are:  neo-con; fundamentalist christian; economic conservative; and loyalist.

Simply stated:  who are these people, and what are they doing to my country?  More precisely, what are they doing that goes beyond what other administrations have done?  All those 7000 appointments couldn’t be strict partisans, could they?

So much research, so little time.  If you have any names to add to the “casualties”, just follow the link above.  For nominations submitted to the 109th Congress (and earlier nominations), go here.

Enjoy your search.

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