Dean

As reported at CNSNews, Howard Dean, speaking to the College Democrats of America last Friday,

"said the president was partly responsible for a recent Supreme Court decision involving eminent domain.

"'The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is 'okay' to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is.'"

Blaming Kelo on Bush is absolutely ridiculous -- it's as though Dean didn't even bother to check to see who voted with the majority: Breyer, Stevens, Bader-Ginsburg, Souter, and Kennedy. Not exactly Bush's pocket men.

That guy is either intellectually vacant, or he assumes that young Democrats are. If the latter, at least Democrats are consistent in treating their supporters like they're stupid and naive.

Liberal vs. Conservative

Most conservatives see the opening on the Supreme Court left by retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as a chance to pull the court farther to the right and avoid the frequent 5 - 4 rulings that went against them with O'Connor as the swing vote. Jonathan Rauch writing in the National Journal describes Cass R. Sunstein's theories put forth in his book Radicals in Robes: Why Extreme Right-Wing Courts Are Wrong for America, which a slightly more nuanced view of the positions held by the court members, holding that conservative and liberal do not apply once you are on the court. Sunstein lays out four different philosophies:

• Perfectionism
  
• Majoritarianism
  
• Minimalism
  
• Fundamentalism (Originalism)
  

He goes further into describing what each type means. The book title is off-putting, but his ideas about this sound right. Rauch guesses that Roberts is a minimalist.

The Island

Maegan and I saw The Island tonight. Before we went I listened to the Ebert and Roeper movie review podcast when they discussed this movie, and they said it was like two movies, the first half all sci-fi and the second half all action, and they were right on. I liked it a lot -- the future it was set in is very believable, and the action scenes are fresh and exciting.

The theme of the movie is similar to Gattaca, dealing with the choices humanity will be faced with as science and technology progress.

****/5

First Daschle, now Byrd?

Anyone remember how in an election year, Tom Daschle, Democratic senator behind enemy lines in a conservative "red state," had to praise President Bush in local South Dakota media (the national media helpfully squelched the story for the most part) in an attempt to gain back some ground lost in his many tirades against the war in Iraq?

It looks like Robert Byrd is heading down the same path:

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, one of President Bush's harshest critics, has become an unlikely ally on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr.

"I said to him, 'I am shouting your name from the steeple tops for reaching out, reaching across the aisle,'?" the West Virginia Democrat reported after taking a phone call from Mr. Bush to discuss a replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

After Mr. Bush nominated federal Judge Roberts this week, Mr. Byrd again issued a statement praising the president. "I thank President Bush for reaching out to senators on both sides of the aisle as he worked to select a nominee for the court," Mr. Byrd said. "I hope that this bipartisan cooperation will continue as the confirmation process begins."

The senator's praise of Mr. Bush is turnaround from a year ago when the West Virginian accused Mr. Bush of being a "green and arrogant president" who went to war before exhausting diplomacy...

Mr. Byrd embraced the same judicial philosophy as the president in his memoir, "Child of the Appalachian Coalfields," released earlier this summer. In the book, he repeatedly blamed "liberal judges" and "activist judges" for many of the nation's problems.

"One's life is probably in no greater danger in the jungles of deepest Africa than in the jungles of America's large cities," he writes. "In my judgment, much of the problem has been brought about by the mollycoddling of criminals by some of the liberal judges who have been placed on the nation's courts in recent years."

Mr. Byrd essentially endorsed Mr. Bush's primary stated strategy for picking Judge Roberts and other judicial nominees. "The high court's share of the responsibility for our increasing lawlessness lies in two areas -- its zeal for bringing about precipitous social change, and its overconcern for the rights of criminals and its underconcern for the rights and safety of society," he writes.

Byrd has been a senator in WVA for a long time, and the electorate in West Virginia has become more conservative over the years. In 2004, the state's 5 electoral votes went to Bush by a 13 point margin. This may explain the sudden swerve to the right.

Interesting that though his memoir was released earlier this summer, the mainstream media had no mention of the senator's parallel statements with Bush on the judicial issue. Now with the appointment of Roberts, Kennedy and Schumer are out in front from the Democrats, and Byrd is nowhere to be seen.

I hope he follows Daschle right into retirement.

It's about the empire

Omar Bakri Mohammed:

"I would like to see the Islamic flag fly, not only over number 10 Downing Street, but over the whole world."

This has nothing to do with the "haves" and the "have-nots".

Robotics show Lucy walked upright

BBC:

Australopithecus afarensis, the early human who lived about 3.2 million years ago, walked upright, according to an "evolutionary robotics" model.

The model, which uses footprints to predict gait, suggests "Lucy", as the first fossil afarensis was called, walked rather like us.

This contradicts earlier suggestions that Lucy shuffled like a bipedally walking chimpanzee...

Some scientists maintain she was probably rather stooped and may have shuffled awkwardly, much like a modern chimp does when it is walking bipedally for short distances; while others think she was upright, routinely walking tall on two legs...

Now, a team of scientists from around the UK have used computer robotic techniques to work out the most energy efficient gait for afarensis based on Lucy's skeleton and the Laetoli footprint trails.

They claim to have cleared up the debate by finding that, based on their model, Lucy almost certainly did walk tall.

Here's the best part:

...[I]t doesn't end the argument because there is still the possibility that there were different creatures around at the time.

I would have thought since the science is so clear and definitive that the "shuffled awkwardly" group would have to be convinced. But it seems like they're just going to go on believing what they've always believed, with their usual, almost religious fervor...

Blogs Get a Big Boost from CBS

I can't add anything to this, nor edit any word out -- I'll just copy and paste the Scrappleface piece here verbatim:

In an effort to bring credibility to a media realm populated by "agenda-driven, rumor-mongering, unedited hacks who blur the line between fact and opinion," CBS News announced today it would launch a 'blog' called 'Public Eye'.

"The word 'blog' -- short for weblog -- has traditionally meant an online journal of commentary on the news which uninformed readers often mistake for actual news," said Andrew Heyward, president of CBS News. "Public Eye will bring legitimacy to the medium the way United Nations involvement legitimizes U.S. foreign policy."

'Public Eye' will differ from the vast majority of news-oriented blogs, Mr. Heyward said, "because it will be written by attractive veteran reporters, dressed in business attire, rather than disgruntled journalist-wannabes, lounging in pajamas."

"The blogosphere should welcome the arrival of this 900-pound gorilla of the news business," he added. "The presence of CBS News in the blog market will breathe new life into a dying beast, and rescue it from extinction. The blogosphere will soon be associated with the trust that Dan Rather and other unbiased CBS journalists have earned over the decades."

Priceless.

"This is a horror"

Molly Ivins comes clean:

In a column written June 28, I asserted that more Iraqis (civilians) had now been killed in this war than had been killed by Saddam Hussein over his 24-year rule. WRONG. Really, really wrong.

The only problem is figuring out by how large a factor I was wrong. I had been keeping an eye on civilian deaths in Iraq for a couple of months, waiting for the most conservative estimates to creep over 20,000, which I had fixed in my mind as the number of Iraqi civilians Saddam had killed...

...Ha! I could hardly have been more wrong, no matter how you count Saddam's killing of civilians...

...There have been estimates as high as 1 million civilians killed by Saddam, though most agree on the 300,000 to 400,000 range, making my comparison to 20,000 civilian dead in this war pathetically wrong.

I was certainly under no illusions regarding Saddam Hussein, whom I have opposed through human rights work for decades. My sincere apologies. It is unforgivable of me not have checked. I am so sorry...

OK, she made a mistake, and she apologized for it. I'm willing to accept that.

But where are the gatekeepers? You know, the ones Hillary says are supposed to stop this kind of thing from happening?

Americans expect attack, poll finds

...and by the way, if you read far enough down, the president's poll numbers are up:

President Bush urged Americans on Monday to maintain their resolve in the face of terrorism, even as a poll suggested that last week's bombings in London rattled U.S. residents.

A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll taken after explosions rocked the British capital revealed a surge in U.S. anxiety that there will be further acts of terrorism at home...
...

8 paragraphs later, at the end of the piece...

...
...
...
...
...
...

However, Bush's approval rating rose enough that more Americans now approve than disapprove of the job he's doing — 49% to 48% — for the first time since late May.

The poll numbers don't matter -- Bush is doing what he has to -- but this should be a significant news item. So why is it buried way down in the last paragraph?

Wi-Fi Crime

Looks like a new set of laws will have to be written governing Wi-Fi usage and Wardriving.

"The information age is over. The information is out there," said Jim Guerin, technology director for the city of Dunedin, which will soon be the first city in Florida to go completely Wi-Fi. "Now it's the connectivity age. It opens up a whole new area for ethics, legal boundaries and responsibilities. It's a whole new frontier." There's a dark side to the convenience, though. The technology has made life easier for high-tech criminals because it provides near anonymity....

Last year, a Michigan man was convicted of using an unsecured Wi-Fi network at a Lowe's home improvement store to steal credit card numbers. The 20-year-old and a friend stumbled across the network while cruising around in a car in search of wireless Internet connections - a practice known as "Wardriving."

Lifeblog

Introduced by Nokia, this helps you record and organize your life.

• Nokia Lifeblog automatically builds your diary as you take photos and videos, and send and receive messages.
• To clear up space on your phone, connect to your PC and let Lifeblog save and display your items securely and efficiently.

This would be interesting to try.

Steal (and Share) this Book!

Cyberpunk author James Morris is encouraging people to rip him off -- by buying his book in PDF format and giving it away to as many other people as you want!...

The media establishment is still having trouble coming to terms with the digital revolution. The Internet remains impossible to control, being global, unlike the legal system. The only answer from big content owners seems to be imposing even more draconian restrictions than were in existence before digital technology hit the scene...

Fortunately, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig is trying to forge a way somewhere in between the total copyright control preferred by the RIAA and MPAA, and the free-for-all of the Bit Torrent sites. His new Creative Commons licenses (creativecommons.org) are starting to win favour around the world. It’s copyright informed by a heavy dose of Open Source. Some types of Creative Commons license even give free rein for reuse in new works, although the original creative works are still owned commercially by their authors alone. In all cases, however, non-commercial sharing is entirely freed up...

This why I have chosen to publish my first novel under a Creative Commons license. It’s called The Escapist, and you can read more about it at TheEscapist.co.uk . Creative Commons doesn’t mean that much for a paper printed work. You can share a book around legally already, and photocopying or scanning an entire literary work is too impractical to be much of a danger. But my book is also available as an Ebook – and not just a non-printable, non-copy-able encrypted digital reader format, but a standard PDF you can print or share as much as you like. The only thing you can’t do with it is sell the copies you make. So, if you like the sound of The Escapist and do buy it in one of its forms, please share it around as much as you like. Be my guest and rip me off!

Buy the PDF for BP 1.99 or get the softcover straight from the publisher.

Jaschan and the Sasser Worm

I find it interesting that they called this young man a "boy". Am I to think he did this all as innocent fun and had no idea what the results could be? And as is noted near the end of the article, he is the son of a computer repair shop owner...hmmm.

UPDATE: Silicon Valley has an interesting blog. Seems he got community service.

UPDATE 2: July 12- Liked this Commentary from NYTimes.
It gives much better sentencing ideas- making the punishment fit the crime.

7/7

Bombs go off in London, and the Internet is there:

A pool on Flickr has started up here -- so far they've got over 600 photos taken in London near the bomb blasts.


A very extensive and comprehensive entry in Wikipedia with all the latest info has already sprung into existence:
7 July 2005 London bombings

The media is wrong to back up Judith Miller

So says FindLaw's Louis Klarevas in this great piece examining existing case law regarding confidentiality of sources and the freedom of the press.

Best quote: It's time to chill out on the "chilling effect" clichés.

Victim's Xanga entry leads to capture of killer

A story appearing in the May 17, 2005 NYDailyNews reports that Simon Ng's Xanga entry contained enough information to point police to the man now supect of killing him and his sister Sharon:

...Anyway today has been weird, at 3 some guy ringed the bell. I went down and recognized it was my sister's former boyfriend. He told me he wants to get his fishing poles back. I told him to wait downstair while I get them for him. While I was searching them, he is already in the house. He is still here right now, smoking, walking all around the house with his shoes on which btw I just washed the floor 2 days ago! Hopefully he will leave soon, oh yeah working on the jap report as we speak!
Posted 5/12/2005 at 5:05 PM

From the story:

...Cops said that Ng, 19, let Lin [the suspect] into the second-floor apartment in the late afternoon when Lin asked if he could wait for the 21-year-old Sharon.

Sgt. Michael Breidenbach, head of the 107th Precinct detective squad, said the entry turned Lin's alibi upside down.

"That puts him in the apartment," said Breidenbach, adding that investigators got Lin to confess after confronting him with the entry.

Lin told cops he wanted to rob her to help him buy a plane ticket back to Hong Kong, law enforcement sources said...

As of this date, over 3200 comments have been left on Ng's last entry, most consisting of three letters...

r.i.p.

Interesting suggestion

The NYDailyNews has thought long and hard about this vacancy on the Supreme Court and their recommended replacement for Sandra Day O'Connor is...



No joke.

Confessions of a cut & paste artist

William Gibson has an essay in this month's Wired:

...We live at a peculiar juncture, one in which the record (an object) and the recombinant (a process) still, however briefly, coexist. But there seems little doubt as to the direction things are going. The recombinant is manifest in forms as diverse as Alan Moore's graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, machinima generated with game engines (Quake, Doom, Halo), the whole metastasized library of Dean Scream remixes, genre-warping fan fiction from the universes of Star Trek or Buffy or (more satisfying by far) both at once, the JarJar-less Phantom Edit (sound of an audience voting with its fingers), brand-hybrid athletic shoes, gleefully transgressive logo jumping, and products like Kubrick figures, those Japanese collectibles that slyly masquerade as soulless corporate units yet are rescued from anonymity by the application of a thoughtfully aggressive "custom" paint job.

We seldom legislate new technologies into being. They emerge, and we plunge with them into whatever vortices of change they generate. We legislate after the fact, in a perpetual game of catch-up, as best we can, while our new technologies redefine us - as surely and perhaps as terribly as we've been redefined by broadcast television...

From hammer and sickle

to scissors and pastepot

.