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Well that explains why Rupert Murdoch, the richest & most influential media owner in the world (owner of Fox and myspace.) has ended years of Clinton hating and started cosying up to Hilary Clinton.

Utterly fascinating - he's a powerful, ruthless, pragmatic man, normally the kind of person who gets along perfectly with the current republican administration - but it looks like the christian right's prediliction for censorship is starting to ruffle his feathers.

Anyway, for anyone unlucky enough to be using internet access in a library, I'm sure the circumvention techniques good for the great firewall of china will work inside the US as well. Maybe the BoingBoing guide to evading censorware will be useful too.

Oh - on a side note, check out the spoof Rupert Murdoch Myspace Profiles

Is this the beginning of the end for the global, unregulated, uncensored, Internet?

DUH. Of course it is.

When the citizenry would rather sit on its duff watching TV, what true freedoms could they possibly want or need? Who needs the freedom of speech when nobody wants to say anything? Who needs free flow of information when all anyone wants is entertainment? Who needs indpendence of any kind when everyone expects the government to save them from everything?

If you've lost your freedoms, it's because you weren't using them anyway, and apparently don't give enough of a shit to get them back.

When was the last time you heard someone say "go ahead, it's a free country."?

Not joking.

Read this article for some really good ideas on education reform. It hits on exactly what you were saying - that skills learned in high school often have no use in the career they seek.

I also think it should be harder to get a high school diploma, and kids that are not interested should be encouraged to drop out. They are a drain on the system, and distract kids who really want to learn. But, in many cases, kids are just too smart for their grade, and the school system actually holds them back. This happened to me, and with no options available, I simply lost interest, did the minimum and breezed through without opening the book. The most valuable things I learned from my teachers were life lessons, and had nothing to do with the school's curriculum. Its sad that these teachers were also the ones that were always in trouble with the administration.

Dude, do you even read what you link to? Your 2nd link is to a page that state the Ninth Circuit is NOT the most overturned court.

Also, as others have pointed out, being the most overturned is not necessarily a bad thing.

More seriously, I'm not sure what they might do with this, but their recent Mickey Mouse decision doesn't make it look very encouraging.

playing "what ifs..." is hard and usually pointless. "What if Gore had a better campaign", "What if Gore was President on Sept 11?", "What if {blah, blah, blah}". Mostly because it's hard to understand cause and effect when talking in such broad terms. You keep saying that Nader had no effect on the 2000 election. You won't even commit to saying that there is even a chance. However, statistical analysis tells a different story. Weather forcasting, Hurricane projections, crop yield, even the amount of cereal dropped into a package are all subject to statistical analysis. It's been far too long since, I've done a proper statisical analysis of any data, but I don't believe that it takes a genius to understand that if less than one half of one percent of Florida Nader voters voted for Gore, the results would have been different. Even Nader thinks that 38% of his voters would have choosen Gore (vs. 25% for Bush and the rest non voting).

You most likely are correct that Gore could have run a better campaign, I can't say how statistically (too many variables over too long a time), but I can say that because of the small numbers, even a relatively weak third party canidate, which Nader was and is, did and does have an effect on the 2000 and the 2004 elections. It looks like it will be another 'photo-finish' election, and even a tick on one the horse's backside may decide the winner of the race.

But I am falling back to the same statements that I have gone over before. Personally, I wish that the 2000 election was McCain v. [someone else],

Your exaggeration is pathological

Reread your posts, you are in denial over Gore's failure and desparately want a scapegoat...

If you want Bush to say in office for "4 more Years!", vote for Nader in 2004 (at least in the swing states). I am certainly not the only one who believe that because, Republican operatives in those states have been busy signing him up.

No I am not a "political operative" of any sort.

Some cool links:

• Democratic Underground - Bob Bouderlang is awesome!
• Media Whores Online - Excellent expose of the so-called "liberal" media
• BartCop - Not the brighest spark in the matchbox, but certainly a site well worth visiting.
• The Moderate Indpendent - Quite a good "mainstream" discussion site.

A counter view with actual facts.

Here's a link that addresses the issue with some real numbers. 75% for 9th circuit, 100% for several others. The pundits who say "most overturned court" are looking at number of cases selected by the Supreme Court, not percentages - it's about as silly as Michael Moore's use of numbers instead of percentages for gun deaths in "Bowling for Columbine", and it smacks of the same yellow journalism to report that kind of figure.