The Marriage Amendment

The WaPost gives a piercing article on the political coalition pushing forward the federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage here. The wedge issue is "marriage" vs. "civil unions".

There are 3 drafts circulating: the leading one has already been introduced as a bill in the House and Senate, and is meant to stop gay "marriage" but is silent on civil unions.

Number two looks to ban civil unions, too -- and it is being drafted by a veritable Hall of Doom: James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of American Values, William J. Bennett of Empower America, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Sandy Rios of Concerned Women for America and Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation. These are the conservative base of the Republican party. I can't recall seeing this band of True Believers united behind any previous cause quite like they do here, which means that they see themselves marching into a great battle, for which they need to be shoulder to shoulder.

Number three is a ridiculous piece which has no chance, looking to ban any legal notice on "non-marital sexual relationships", ignoring the legal conflict with the common-law marriage.

So we have number 1 and number 2. Number 1 is already in play, but number 2 is more politically interesting, since that group is not one any Republican can afford to ignore, and because it seeks to ban civil unions. They are lining up to make this the Republican issue of 2004.

Diebold gives up on the memos

The electronic voting machines manufacturer Diebold has given up attempting to press charges for theft of internal memos using the DMCA
according to this slashdot posting (and Diebold's court filing referenced within).

Now, if we can just convince them that using the DMCA to protect their code and operations of voting machines is illicit, that would make me happy. Because our need for transparent voting -- and a stable democracy -- trumps their need for profit from trade secrets.

So far, governments using electronic voting have permitted manufacturers to keep secret the programs which operate them. This is dangerous, because the programs are entirely responsible for tallying the vote, in an unverifiable way. Naturally, that is exactly where elections are stolen.

The only argument for permitting them to keep their programs se cret is the DMCA -- that is, protection of trade secrets. But we're trying to run a free and open democracy here, and our need for reliable, verifiable voting procedures which underpins our free and open democracy takes precedence over their desire to make a buck from clever programming secrets (and there are probably zero programming innovations in that program).

If they want to make money from clever programming secrets, they should do it for consumer products -- like a web browser -- not for voting.

Tyrannical Judiciary Sighting

Holy Matrimony - There's one.

New meme to watch for

"Judicial Tyranny" seems to be the phrase that the far right yells every time a judge hands down a ruling that they don't like. When GW Bush signed the law banning partial birth abortions, and a judge in Nebraska issued a limited temporary injunction, the far right started yelling "judicial tyranny!". When Judge Moore was compelled to move the Ten Commandments monument....judicial tyranny! When the Massachusetts supreme court "undermined traditional marriage"...JUDICIAL TYRANNY! When the phrase "...under god" was removed from the pledge of allegience..well, you get the picture.

When searching google for this term, it is interesting to see the domains associated with this phrase: renewamerica.com, family.org, traditionalvalues.org, reclaimamerica.org, dutyisours.com, christianity.com, heartland.org. If one makes a snap judgement about who owns these domains, it is clear that the far right is frequently using this term to describe what is going on inside the borders of the U.S. I would not hesitate to think that if Hitler were running for office today, and promised these "freedoms" in his campaign, that the right would be falling over themselves to get that guy in office (come to think of it, they never did find Hitler's body...). As a sidenote, presidential tyranny almost never shows up in google, and certainly not in reference to Bush.

Possibly the earliest this phrase was used in American History was when Patrick Henry (1736-1799), a member of the Continental Congress said:

"Power is the great evil with which we are contending. We have divided power between three branches of government and erected checks and balances to prevent abuse of power. However, where is the check on the power of the judiciary? If we fail to check the power of the judiciary, I predict that we will eventually live under judicial tyranny."

In a time where we are living under the rule of the worst president in U.S. history, whose legacy will be the erosion of civil liberties, I would like to advance another common phrase to describe what is occuring within our judicial system: damage control. The American public is staring down possibility of not just four but eight years of presidential ineptitude, and with congress controlled by the Republicans, the only branch which appears out of step (to the right) is the judicial branch. The only thing keeping us from having to wear name badges around our neck all day, and keeping our forces out of Iran and Syria, is not GW's fully developed sense of right and wrong unfortunately; it is (at this point) the judicial system. A few millenia from now, when "The Rise and Fall of the American Empire" (a more complete and well documented version of its Roman cousin) is standard reading, the American judicial system will be credited with stemming the tide of imperialism, and maintaining liberty in the "homeland". Liberals at this point were left standing around chanting a different Patrick Henry quote:

"...give me liberty, or give me death !"

21 Grams: The Title

Without seeing any part of this no-doubt wondrous movie (and as referenced in a previous post), I have already taken offense to one aspect - the title. As explained in the movie's publicity materials:

They say we all lose 21 grams
at the exact moment of our death...
everyone.
The weight of a stack of nickels.
The weight of a chocolate bar.
The weight of a humming bird...

Perhaps even... the weight of a soul. Or so we are supposed to think. But first, I'd like us to consider a few more "21 gram"-equivalents:

21 grams...
The energy of 450 kilotons of TNT.
The energy of 22.5 Hiroshima A-bombs.
517,500 Kilowatt-hours.
451 Billion Calories.
Enough energy to feed a person for 412,000 years...

CA Does Something Right: Paper Audit Trails at the Electronic Ballot Box

Good news for those who have read enough history to know that people steal elections when they can.

Movie of the Year, Quoth Elvis

Okay, read this and then tell me you don't want to race right out and see 21 Grams.

In spite of the unphysical title premise.

Perle admits that Iraq invasion was illegal

According to this, Richard Perle admits that the US invasion of Iraq was illegal. The most contemptuous quote from Perle: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

Sorry about that whole "law" thing getting in the way. I can just picture Martha Stewart's trial right now "I found out that the stock was going to plummet, and the law stood in the way of doing the right thing. Me keeping my money."

The Story is Written, but Continues to Unfold

One day after Javier Solana was quoted by London's The Independent as saying the US is going to place its troops under international control (see Steve's entry below), Colin Powell makes a plea that Germany and France join in on managing the post-war Iraq.

Solana's quote has not been reported in US media. Such a major shift in US policy would be an important story -- so what's the deal? Why are US news services piddling after the crumbs of Powell's seeking help from Europe, when, according to the EU Foreign Minister, the US has already made up it's mind to hand the whole thing off?

My read on this is that the Bush administration has decided that there are no more domestic political points to be scored, so that 'tis time to turn tail and stampede on out of there. If they do so, they will have robbed the Democrats of the issue which has bolstered all their candidates, most notably the front-runner Dean, who would then presumably follow Bush and turn to the economy as an issue.

Then There Were Two

Is David Brooks just another name for Maureen Dowd?

Sen. Barney Frank (D- Ma.) to Wed?

The NYTimes reports that the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has ruled that there is nothing in the state's constitution to ban same-sex marriage, and that the state has identified no compelling interest to bar it.
They have given the Massachusetts Legislature 180 days to come up with a remedy, before they act (for those of you scoring at home, 180 days is May, just as the Presidential campaign is getting into full swing).

This was where the states of Hawaii and Alaska -- who previously had this same situation -- passed constitutional ammendments defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Massachusetts is less likely to go down that road.

Colinwatch

The issue has been discussed extensively offline between Derek and myself, but so much so that I can't remember if it was Derek or I who came up with the idea (I'm guessing it's Derek).

The KillerApp for the Republicans now would be for Cheney to announce that he is not going to run for VP in 2004. Given the general failure in Iraq (Saddam is not dead or under arrest, and it appears we are about to pull out of there so that Bush doesn't have to stare down an unpopular and futile police action during an election year), Cheney can be hung with it, and, out with the old, in with the new. Cheney will be an increasing liability, as there are no more political points to be scored in Iraq (except for the capture of Saddam Hussein).

The best time to do this? Probably just before the Democratic Convention (July 26-29), thus overshadowing the excitement there, and giving them a month to build up the replacement for the August 30-Sept 2 Republican National Convention.

And who will that replacement be? It's obvious, no? Colin Powell. He wants to be President, has held on these years with great intestinal fortitude, and if he's VP in 2004, he's a shoe-in as VP [ What I meant here was President, NOT VP! -- BobR] in 2008. Imagine the Powell-Hillary matchup! He's practically a Democrat anyway, so the crossover would be huge.

Of course, he will be no conservative's favorite, but those guys can run in the primaries against him. A Bush/Powell ticket might be vulnerable to a Buchanan Progressive Party assault from the right. Even so, they would probably gain more from the left than they'd lose from the right, and it would set up the Republicans with an heir apparent with strong cross-party credentials for 2008.

Let's watch for those "Powell not Cheney" signs in the months to come.

US putting troops under international control in Iraq

The Independent reports that the US is willing to bring its forces under international control to avoid failure.

Crash, Take 2

So about those helicopter crashes - apparently there was some enemy fire in the area at that time.

No worries though. The reason the crashes (as they are still called) happened was that one of the helicopters swerved upwards in an attempt to avoid the enemy fire. And that's why they crashed. Not because any helicopter was actually hit.

Are we all clear on this story now?

Crash

2 More Helicopter "Crashes" in Iraq ( Mosul)


Calling these events "crashes" is ludicrous. The helicopters are in a war zone, they're most likely being shot down, not falling out of the sky. To treat these events with the spin "Now, we don't know what happened exactly, and we don't want to be alarmist, so let us get to the bottom of this before we mislead anyone..." is like calling a corpse in a casket a "man who fell down".

The Good We Do

Kristof reports and comments on the fact that opium production in Afghanistan has soard by a factor of 19, from 185 metric tons in 2001 to 3600 in 2003, the second largest in Afgahn history. The net of the illicit production is twice the budget of Hamid Karzai's government.

He also mentions that the Taliban and conservative mullahs are having a resurgence. It's Columbia, and we haven't done anything about it -- and, yes, it's our responsibility to, since the country is de facto under our control.

I Approved This Message

Apparently, it's now the law that Presidential Candidates, appear in their ads, identify themselves, and declare that they approved the message of their commercials. So far, of the ads I've seen, the candidate has been shown, facing the camera, stating "I approved this message." It's pointed out in the article above that this may well limit negative campaigning ("George Bush is a no-account dirty rotten son-of-a-bitch, and I approved this message" is probably not going to endear one to the electorate).

This is a good trend.

168 to 4

The Great Big Republican Fillibuster, of 30 hours of planned talking regarding Judicial nominees, was called by Senate Republicans to call attention to what Majority Leader Bill Frist calls "Democrat's partisan obstructionism", regarding the Democrat's refusal to let 4 Bush Judicial nominees come to a floor vote.

But the Senate has approved 168 federal judges. So why the whine-fest by Republican's over these four? Is it just another example of brooking no dissent?

Bush as Pedro Martinez

Hear ye, hear ye: Slate conservative Mickey Kaus has some advice for the Democratic contenders for President - and the Party at large - and it's pretty good: Bush is Pedro Martinez.

The Great Divide

Oligatory Kristof link: Hold the Vitriol

And response:

Dear Editor,

Nicholas Kristof warns Democrats to heed the "God Gulf" separating them from the religiously faithful ("Hold the Vitriol" Op-Ed, Nov 12). But how should we react to public figures, like Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, who declare publicly that they do not believe in evolution or the big bang? This is not a point of view that an educated person can respect. The same holds for President Bush's "compromise" decision on Federal funding of fetal stem cell research. A curious compromise that was: While failing to save a single fetus, it has brought a once-promising avenue of medical research to a near standstill.

If this confusion of faith and politics - embodied, as well, in the recent "partial birth" abortion ban - is what Mr. Kristof has in mind, then I think the Democrats are better off keeping their principles, and the God Gulf, intact.

Sincerely,
Derek Fox

Soros Wants Bush Out

Usually, we decry the fact that elections, apparently, can be bought.

But maybe, with George Soros against Bush, we'll start being glad about it.

Hey, Where Did Trotsky Go? Time Magazine is Hiring Stalin's Editors?

Remember learning in grade school how under Stalin -- the murderous Soviet and ruthless pogromist -- those Bolsheviks, when confronted with an inconvenient fact in their history, or a face in a picture of a murdered colleague, would simply change the fact, and airbrush out the picture? "Does their insanity know no bounds?" your 7th grade history teacher might have said. "You cannot simply re-color history to suit the politics of the moment. It is a dishonesty, which does not end at being a lie. It is an attempt to control the population by making it appear that history has always backed the present regime, and so, therefore, should you."

The political linguist Orwell thought enough of the grotesque dangers of re-writing of history that he made his protagonist Winston Smith of 1984 a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Information, where he would excise those nettlesome little double-plus-ungood passages containing that Information which conflicted with the politics of the moment.

Well, step back Stalin and Big Brother, because Time Magazine is on the job.

The Memory Hole writes that an essay which appeared in Time's 2 March 1998 issue by George Bush, Sr. and Brent Scowcroft has disappeared in totality from their website, and has been scrubbed from that issue's on-line table of contents. In this essay, the former President and his National Security Advisor (what's a past tense verb for "to give the reasons which are now politically inconvenient?") delineated their reasons for not removing Saddam from power -- many of which would apply to Bush the Younger's invasion. (Here is another on-line archived copy at a political blog , the Time article is also excerpted in the San Jose Mercury News , and in the Minnesota Daily .)

So what is this? A mistake? Would such a visible national magazine want to re-write its pages to suit the politics of the moment? Even if they wanted to, who in journalism -- even in the McDonald's journalism of Time Magazine -- would think that you can simply unwrite essays? Could it be there's a legal issue, since Bush and Scowcroft's essay excerpted from their Knopf book?

Let's watch.

Why Isn't This Man Running for President?

I mean, after all, he says all the right things.

And before you post, Robin, I know the real answer. But I was watching a bit of John Edwards on "Meet the Press" today (taped from this morning) and he was dissembling on his pro-war and pro-PATRIOT act votes and you know, I just... sigh.

P.S. Here is the full text of his remarks.

Corrections/Comments

*Bluetooth iPod - I believe I wrote "I guarantee that none of these other things will come to pass" in reference to Bluetooth on an iPod. I maintain my position that Apple will never build it in, but that doesn't mean that a 3rd party won't develop it (and have Apple sell it online). The Register reports that a 3rd party is developing exactly this.


*Helicopter "crash" vs. "shot down" - After reading Bob's comments regarding the media's propensity to report Helicopters taken down by hostile fire as "crashes" (mainly in the headlines, the story bodies always suggest that it was "probably shot down" I immediately did a search on news.google, and came up with an interesting statistic. Many of the newspapers that report the helicopter as being "shot down" are mainly small foreign newspapers (UK, New Zealand, Austrailia, Ireland). After reading an article on the most recent "downing", I believe there was _some_ doubt as to how the helicopter was brought down. A heat seeking missile (which would probably be the most successful weapon against a helicopter) would destroy the exhaust ports on the helicopter. In this case, they happened to be intact. Since there are no survivors, it took a little longer for the military to confirm exactly what happened. Meanwhile, small, independent, foreign newspapers are reporting a "downing due to hostile fire", and US media outlets are reporting "Helicopter down, cause unknown" (I'm paraphrasing here). In this particular case, I would actually call this good reporting since the media is supposed to be reporting the "facts" (even if the sources aren't fully trusted).

What I think is notable about the major media outlets in these cases, is that they eventually do report the truth, once it is uncovered, but they seem to bury it. For example here, here , and here. Note, in the first link, I couldn't find a link to this story from their main/international page and only found it through a search at news.google, the second link is reuters.co.uk (which I couldn't find from their main site doing a search for "helicopter shot down", I found it also through news.google which either says that reuters is burying it, or their search engine is poor), the third was from CNN (which I had assumed incorrectly would be the least likely to report what actually happened), and actually had a link from their World/Middle East headlines page, but was buried down at the bottom, and wasn't even a major headline. Also notable is that I can't find an Associated Press article in reference to this event.

The bottom line? Major newspapers do seem to be printing the facts as they become available, but their follow ups are not found on the front page. The feeling we're left with is that they're not reporting "the truth". Whose fault is that? Media consumers. CNN, (MS)NBC, Fox News, are all catering to the media consumer with the most sensational headline they can find (as is evidenced in the media by the recall election's focus on Schwarzenegger). If the majority of consumers actually cared about the follow-up (e.g. WMD claims, our Governor's manhandling of women, helicopter crashes), the headlines wouldn't be filled with the latest bombing news, "Miss Florida is in critical condition!", and Rolling Stone magazine investigative report discovering that Brittany Spears had sex with all the members of Hansen. (I made that last bit up, but wouldn't it be a great rumor to start?).

WMD in North Korea

A CIA assessment delivered to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on August 18 says that North Korea has a working nuclear bomb (see also the original remarks kept by the Federation of American Scientists).

Let's review: The CIA confirms that this country and its megalomaniacal leader possess nuclear weapons ready for use. They have sold such technology in the past to anyone who wanted it, and also use its strategic threat to blackmail neighbors and the United States at the diplomatic bargaining table.

There is no upside to this. The US has failed in its foreign policy to curb North Korea's nuclear ambition, and so North Korea has joined the nuclear club. N. Korea regards ambiguity about their possession of nuclear weapons to be a strategic advantage, so we will not obtain overt confirmation.

By the way, all the hub-bub during the yellowcake scandal was regarding the CIA's not correcting the White House's view that there was no material to possibly make nuclear weapons that might have left Nigeria, bound for Iraq. Here, we have a far worse warning of actual nuclear capability from the CIA -- and strangely, not only the the White House not pick it up, they are not pressing forward with it publicly. What gives? I hope that the answer is that, with Kim, they know they are dealing with a highly irrational character, and that kicking up a lot of dust on it just stengthens his hand. Nonetheless, I also hope they are aggressively pressing on the issue behind the scences and through covert means. Otherwise, it won't be long before N. Korea begins making demands at the diplomatic table that we aren't willing to concede. Or one of their bombs gets sold to someone we like even less.

My Secret Plan to Win the War Against Racism in the Southern United States

Krugman's distillation of the devil's bargain between Southern whites and the Republican party does not pay proper attention to the perception of the economic benefits of racism -- both in Mississippi and New Jersey. This came out, because Krugman wanted to point out that Dean's "I want the votes of guys with Confederate Flags on their trucks" comment (the Reagan democrats) are natural Democrats, but vote Republican against their own economic interesets, because they think Republican's are with them.

In relatively affluent and better educated New Jersey, racism is percieved as diminishing the economic potential of a significant sub-population. In doing so, it creates lower income for the sub-population, lower economic activity, and all boats sink with the tide. Witness the decline in median family incomes over the past 2 years of $400/yr -- a short-term cost which negates the tax benefit of voting Republican (assuming you blame, as I do, this economic downturn on the party in power), making the far-greater and long-term economic costs too great a negative to overcome.

Down home in blue-collar Mississippi, racism is perceived by working-class whites as diminishing the labor pool. The simple math is, drop the labor pool by 10% (the average population fraction of African-Americans), my wages increase by 10%. So, the perception is to working-class people, it's all gravy as long as We Stick Together.

The Democrat's problem in addressing the South's devil's bargain -- which elected Nixon 35 years ago on the Southern Strategy, which has held Republicans in good stead in the South for 3 decades since -- is convincing working-class people, as opposed to white-collar people -- to take the long view in suppressing racism. That is, that it is to the working-class' own long-term economic benefit to let all people maximize their labor potential through education and salaried jobs, and that this outweighs their short-term benefit.

How can the Democrats overcome the Republican's Southern Strategy?

The way you do that is you offer, from the Federal level, the means for the working-class and poor -- whose ranks include the African-Americans whose joblessness benefits the working-class whites in the short-term -- to change their dominating economic interest from the short term (that is, wages for labor) to the long-term (salary, for valuable educated skills). Doctors and Lawyers don't drive trucks with Confederate flags on them, the argument goes, because the value of their labor is not subject to short-term fluctuations, and averages out to be very high over a life-time, if (and here's the anti-racism part) there is sufficient economic activity over the long-term that their services can be paid for. More rich people, the better off they are.

So, for the Democrats to win the South, they should offer huge huge huge Federal government programs to educate working-class people. Call it the National Education Plan. It will remove the unemployed from the rolls by putting them in colleges, where they will graduate to higher-paying (and long-term interested) jobs. It also completely undercuts the working-class' short-term benefit from racism, and moves these voters into the long-term column.

Fly in the ointment? You betcha. What makes me think that you can take working-class people, who are typically working-class due to a lack of education, send 'em to college and presto! Lawyers! Here it is: I'm going to assume that the lack of education is due to a lack of educational opportunity, not a lack of smarts. And, maybe after the non high-school graduate has spent 10 years in the work-force, if they see the opportunity to go to school for 6 more years, paid for by the Federal Government, and come out at age 34 with a much higher paying job, they've had enough hard knocks to know a good deal when they see it.

But, even if that's wrong, just offering the program will divorce the Stars+Bars Chevy-driver from weighing the short-term benefit against the long-term benefit, and letting the short-term benefit win. It will equally benefit the victims of societal racism.

An Awful Lot of Crashes

Reuters is reporting another "crashed" helicopter near Tikrit. Have you noticed that media is reporting these downings as crashes, and not as aircraft being "shot down"? Of course, they are getting their information from military sources, who aren't impartial, and would rather the public hear of them as if they were accidents, and not another example of the resistance on the ground in Iraq. After all, no one pays attention to helicopter crashes, but everyone pays attention to helicopters being shot down. I suggest we all pay attention to both, and consider a "crash" to be the military's short-hand for "shot down".

He's Coming For Them

Governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to hire private investigators to go after those who came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct during his campaign.

Statements like he's going to turn over their results to state Attorney-General Bill Lockyer are disingenuous. He seems to be oblivious to the fact that a governor cannot hire his own thugs for investigations into illegalities -- especially his own illegalities. It is a corrupt practice, because PIs do not promise to protect the rights of the victims of the potential crimes, they protect the interests -- regardless of how sordid that interest is -- of the client.

That he could conceive that hiring PIs to investigate his accusers would be a good idea -- and not a corrupt one -- drives home the difference between a public-minded politician and an egotist of an ex-actor, and that voters in California don't seem to care about the difference.

Good News for NPR

Maybe now KPCC can fire Larry Mantle.

Sees, Seeks, but who cares?

Robin forwards the TalkingPointsMemo link, which notes that Bush said in a speech to Austrailian Parliment (being quoted worldwide, and the blogger has the original PDF speech): We see a China that is stable and prosperous, a nation that respects the peace of its neighbors and works to secure the freedom of its own people." when clearly there's serious oppression in China.

So, it seems last week the WHouse simply changed the text of the speech which is posted online, to read, "We seek...". Big difference. This version actually makes sense.

But who cares? We already know Bush is a moppet, and none too deep a thinker. He said "sees" because his speechwriters were sloppy that morning. He doesn't actually "see" a China which respects the peace of its neighbors and works to secure the freedom of its own people. Nobody does. You'd have to be delusional. Okay, sure, I'll give you Bush is delusional -- but his speeches don't reflect his thoughts, they reflect those of his administration. His speech-writing staff is not delusional. Clearly, they don't "see" such a China, they "seek" that China.

The bar is low for this whitehouse. The president doesn't know what he's talking about, and by god are we ready to forgive him the completely ridiculous and non-sensical errors, because the real errors in policy you can drive a Mack truck through, with room for the Sweedish Bikini Team to form a kick-line on top of the rig.

And, yes, I would like to see that.

Vietnam

I've recently been reading "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers" by Daniel Ellsberg. I'm maybe a fourth of the way into it but, already, it's chilling. The story is enough on its own: policy decisions made behind closed doors in the pentagon, intelligence spun for political ends, analysis of alternatives to war kept secret, and outright lying to the public. But what's especially chilling is how much it all smells like the situation in Iraq. The characterization of the Viet Cong as "terrorists" is a particularly interesting paralell. Tom Friedman recently dismissed the comparison of those attacking US troops in Iraq to the Viet Cong and compared them instead to the Khmer Rouge. However, that dismissal seems inadequate in light of what I've been reading.

Diebold Exposure Increasing

The Diebold insecure e-voting situation (first addressed in this 13 Dickinson St post, but see also this post) is finally hitting the mainstream media: New York Times; CNN/AP.

Diebold has been taking a page from the Scientology strategy book and suing the students who provide web access to internal company documents (which prove the insecure nature of their machines/procedures, and detail sundry violations of state and Federal elections laws) for - you guessed it - copyright violations.

We really, really, really, really, really need to kill the DMCA. I mean, for the sake of our very democracy (such as it is).

MIT's Music Service Shut Down

The innovative MIT on-campus streaming-music service has been shut down by the RIAA. It appears that the company they purchased their $35,000 of digitized music from has been forced to recant their claim that (for that $35,000) they were providing MIT with a legal license to do what they were doing.

Can we all say, "Record industry strong-arm tactics"? It seems pretty clear that Loudeye thought they had such a license - and perhaps they even did - until the MIT service started making nationwide headlines.

Feds Deaf to CA Pleas

If you recall the (non-)response of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to California's electricity crisis of 2001, this will sound familiar. In April of this year, Gray Davis put in a request with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for financial aid to clear California's fire zones of dead trees felled by the recent bark beetle infestation. This was a serious issue: on Mt. Palomar this summer you could see that about 50% of the big trees were dead or dying, and in consequence the Observatory made sure there were crews out most of the summer clearing the dead wood.

However, after taking six months (all of summer and most of fall) to "consider" the request, FEMA denied it. Last Friday. As the first wildfires were already burning.