Slashdot Mirror

I'm glad to see that Mozilla is striving to mimic IE in every way: http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040709-0 25323-6615r.htm

I want others to know what I read and think when I choose to tell them. Anonymity has value.

Example: Take the DEA looking into purchases made at grocery stores with loyalty cards ( see story here ). Buy too many plastic bags, or too much cold medicine or too much engine starter fluid? Must be a dope dealer. What's too much? Who knows.

Now extend the example to any subject. Buy a book on urban gardening? Must be growing weed. Book on Islam? Terrorist. Book on Secular Humanism? Abortionist. Book by Pat Robertson? Christian anti-abortion sniper.

You point out that right acting people know that just because a person has read Mein Kampf that doesn't mean that person is a supporter of the books ideals. True as far as it goes, but we don't place limits on Governmental power to inconvenience right acting civil servants. We place limits on the Government to prevent abuses.

Give any group unlimited, unchecked authority and someone in that group will abuse that authority.

The ends do not justify the means. Not now, not in 20 years. Falsely accusing a country of various crimes in order to invade and then rebuild them in your own image is abhorrent.

All of this, of course, ignores the fact that when the President of the United States decides to embrace the doctrine of preemptive war, claiming that there is an imminent threat to his own nation, the burdern of proof is on him to support those claims. Let's see the evidence of WMDs in Iraq. How about those aerial drones that could be used against the US? An Iraq-Al Qaeda link? Some uranium from Africa? Anything?

Insugents seek Saddam's chemical weapons. -- CIA has found chemical weapons in Iraq.

Story 1 about bin Laden and a possible Saddam connection, Story 2

Al-Qaeda and Iraq, Atta and Iraq, Sarin and Mustard gas in Iraq.

As well as the fact that Saddam killed a million of his own people, plus the number of UN resolutions he was in violation of.

Well, the guy did say his one purpose with the movie was to unseat George W. Bush. How much more evidence do you need?

Here are some sites/articles that might be helpful:

Bowling For Truth
Washington Post article
Washington Times article

I wouldn't take anything Moore says without a supply of salt. Not that I completely trust the first website, either.

--RJ

They are already doing that in Arlington, VA.

Yeah, who needs those stupid spam countries?


You, for example, if you live in the US or Canada, or Europe... or.... you get the picture.


Certainly, nobody likes the current situation, but suggesting that we send spammers (or people whos boxes have been hijacked by spammers) to prison camps without charge or bomb their countries (How'd you fix the economy? Bomb it?) is clearly stupid.

I'll add a specific example, from last summer. A brief snippet reported on the political opposition to the Patriot Act, and focused exclusively on liberal groups such as the ACLU. Anyone who wasn't more informed would have assumed that the only people fighting the act were left-wing agitators. This is absolutely not true. Some Republicans (including Grover Norquist, who is if nothing else consistent) are remembering that their party is supposed to stand for limited government. And bear in mind that a Republican was responsible for ripping out some of the more nauseating provisions of the act in the first place. I can't prove why Fox didn't see it necessary to mention any of this, but if it's not bias it's certainly shitty reporting.

Fact: AdTI employs James Kilpatrick as a senior fellow. Kilpatrick made a career defending segregation and apartheid.

Fact: AdTI employs John Norquist, the not-so-big-time younger brother of big-time conservative activist Grover Norquist.

Fact: AdTI president Ken Brown's sole research qualification is a BA in English from George Mason. He has built a career out of milking shady publications, agent-of-foreign-power lobby groups, and dubious business-academica-government incest groups.

Half of the links from the AdTI front page are broken. The other half send you to repositories of op-eds and recorded radio shows.

This is not a research institute. Not even a bad research institute. This is a demi-journalistic hack shop where goldbricking bottomfeeders of right-wing policy studies and editorial-writing filch cash from gullible corporations in return for hastily-written hokum.

Please do not post any more from these con artists. I'm sure they get paid by the hit.

The Bear's Lair: The Google gross-out
Martin Hutchinson
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
May 5, 2005

...This is all just an everyday story of tech company greed, of course -- it makes you pity the poor fools who buy the issue on a $25 billion valuation (unless they're lucky enough to sell out fast to even greater -- and soon poorer -- fools.) Of course, their chances of selling out for a quick profit, usually pretty good in a tech sector IPO, are negated in this one because Google has chosen to throw out nearly 300 years of equity market wisdom (the South Sea Bubble share issues in 1720 were done the Wall Street way, and not Google's way) and offer shares by means of a "Dutch auction"...

Indeed, there's something uniquely unpleasant in the hippie rhetoric with which Google surrounds its activities. "We aspire to make Google an institution that makes the world a better place" we are told in the early part of the S-1 statement (the only part that many journalists appear to have read!) "Google is not a conventional company" ... and, in an inspired moment of Bill-and-Ted-speak "Don't be evil.."

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040505-1 14352-5040r.htm

Here is one story...

I swear I remember seeing a Slashdot post about this a while back, but I could be wrong.

Maybe - just maybe - there is still some hope.

A new report from the Commerce Department shows that the U.S. runs a large trade surplus in information technology (IT) services. This is precisely the area where most of the job loss from outsourcing is supposed to be taking place. In 2002, the U.S. exported $3 billion worth of computer and data processing services and $2.4 billion in database and other information services, while importing just $1 billion of the former and $200 million of the latter.

There are also far more jobs using software than producing software. Using outsourcing to reduce software production costs will create more jobs in software use (most of IT) than are lost in software production.

We can and do need to compete better. We still need to improve our math and technical education, as Alan Greenspan says to keep a positive trade balance in IT services.

the best way for Congress to help Americans get and keep good-paying jobs is to improve their math and technical skills so companies won't be tempted to outsource to better-trained workers in China and India.

You bet people are still falling for them...

(Sorry about linking to the moonies. I was gonna say it is a wire story, but it's UPI which is also the moonies of course. Whatever.)

I have here a list of the names of 207 jews
Rumsfeld
Wolfowitz

I have here a list of the names of 207 negroes
Colin Powell
Condi Rice

I have here a list of the names of 207 scumericans
Bush
US Constitution

I have here a list of the names of 207 scumerican opinions
support for nazi-style invasion

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
versus
Censorship
more Censorship

Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
versus
Murder
Gangster justice

Maybe the Iraqis are merely exercising their "Right to bear Arms" in their own country against a foreign invader.

Why is it that so many people refuse to take 'we don't know yet' as an acceptable answer?

The same reason religion and all of it's pitiful, half assed explanations of phenomena are somehow accepted as divine intervention.

Fortunately, science is constantly debunking God's miracles and finding new mysteries that God has not yet horned in on.

Sucks to be us, I guess.

Ignoring the sacrifice of those soldiers in Iraq, and blowing it all off as another "West Bank" is disgraceful,

"Blowing it off"? You're the one who said it wasn't that big of a deal. In fact you said "So what?".

The West bank comment was in regards to the type of combat (as opposed to Vietnam). Iraq is urban combat with a hostile population. Lots of gunmen and improvised explosives, with regular suicide bombings targeting civilians and property. All of this without a clear exit strategy. We can't leave, because Iraq will descend into chaos. We can't stay because they hate us, and they view our hand-picked interm govenrment as a puppet.


Protecting America is a worthwhile goal.

Wow. Your strong statements cower me. There isn't one American who would disagree with that statement. You might as well said "Oxygen is important.".

The problem with Iraq, is that it doesn't have anything to do with protecting America, and there is growing evidence that is counterproductive. (As Rummy said "How do we know we're not creating more terrorists than we're capturing or killing?".) For years the radicals in the middle east said, "America just wants our oil, and they'll take it if we don't give it to them." So what do we do? We invade and occupy an oil rich Arab nation. We do this on the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, when it is now clear that they were destroyed years ago. We used known bad intellegence (i.e. Nigerian yellowcake, Iraq's ties to '93 WTC bombing, Iraq's ties to 9/11), we used intellegence from biased sources with ulterior motives (i.e. Ahmad Chalabi, and the rest of the INC), and when all that wasn't enough, the government created a special group (the Office of Special Projects) to promote "strategic intelligence" and the cost of fully vetting it to support the run up invasion.

Stopping Saddam's men from torturing his own citizens is a worthwhile goal.

So why aren't we stopping China, or North Korea, or the Saudis? There's lot of tyranical regimes who torture their own citizens. Quite frankly it's not our job, and sadly in some instances (i.e Saudi Arabia) not in our interest to knock off these regimes. In the end, it's bad policy to follow feel-good diplomacy. The US government has only one job, promote and protect the vital interests of the United States.

The problem with using the "Think of the children!" rationale for the war is that it wasn't the reason put to the American people. If that's what the war was going to be about, then why wasn't that stated? One could have made the case. I trust the American people to make a well considered decision about whether or not to send our young citizens halfway around to the world to maim and kill, and sadly to be maimed and killed, when told the truth. We weren't.

...back in the seventies. It was different than new school.

Is Christianity becoming the American taliban?

...but things were different in the 1970's.

as opposed to...

mom stoning her children

This organization doesn't have a spine. It's corrupt. It happily changes it's tune when politically expedient.

Because, clearly, the U.S. government is free of all these faults. :)

I think the UN gets an unfair rap. I hear a lot of people speak with the strange idea that the UN is a single cohesive entity, somewhere else, who arbitrarily and unreasonably attempts to impose decisions upon them. Maybe this attitude arises from the habitual American distrust of government.

The UN serves as a convenient political mask for Western leaders who want to distance themselves from distasteful happenings elsewhere in the world. "Sure, it's a problem," they say, "but it's a global problem, so it's the UN's responsibility."

A recent memorable example is the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which was starting up exactly 10 years ago, and could have easily been stopped with a capable intervention force, according to the UN general in Rwanda. His pleas for help in Rwanda were mostly met with indifference by the governments of the entire Western world, which was then preoccupied with the situation in Yugoslavia.

The UN administration also bears some guilt, for not trying harder to convince people, but most of the fault should still lie with the Western countries (specifically the U.S., France, and Belgium) who had troops in the area they could have mobilized and intelligence they could have shared, but chose not to. Yet it was only Kofi Annan who chose to apologize, and I consistently see American columnists describe 1994 as "the UN's failure to act", something which really incenses me.

are you out of your fscking mind. have you heard about the oil-for-food fiasco. please. i'd rather have the boys from enron dole out domains. okay, it's a tie.

• proposing laws to strip American suspects of their citizenship,
• imprisoning American citizens arrested on American soil as "enemy combatants" without recourse to civilian courts or legal counsel despite the contrary dictates of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution, and
• sending non-citizens arrested in the U.S. to be tortured in third countries at the whim of U.S. authorities.

• hasn't bothered to reform an FBI that in the days before September 11th intentionally destroyed translated intercepted terrorist conversations, in order to get the FBI budget increased,
• apparently preferred to invade Iraq rather than deal with the more immediate threat of Osama bin Laden after September 11th,
• and now in the ultimate on ironies, while ignoring the Sixth amendment (and the Fourth) is telling us that a top priority should be, not Iraq, not Osama, but passing a Constitutional Amendment to marginalize gays!

I'm all for it!

First Clear Channel gets fined for Bubba the Love Sponge and Howard Stern and now this. I am glad to see that the FCC is finally taking steps to put a stop to it and I want to know where they have been fro the past several years.

The trend of using profanity has been rolling for a very long time. But, it really shifted into high gear with the advent of the so called shock jocks. These guys have been pushing the edges of the envelope for years and, in my opinion, went way too far years ago.

I'm no prude and I too am guilty of using far too much profanity but, I have never been able to condone its use in public and on the public airwaves. People should not be subjected to it or forced to listen to this stuff and for the past few years it has been unsafe to have the radio on while driving a child to school.

But, the problem goes much deeper than all this. The fact is that the constant liberal use of profanity is eroding peoples ability to communicate intelligently. It may have been funny when Eddie Murphy took the stage and said the F-word as every other word out of his mouth, at the beginning of his career. But today, it is no longer funny and yet so many people speak like this normally. It is F-ing hard to F-ing talk to or F-ing understand someone's F-ing point when the F-word is F-ing well coming out of their F-ing mouth every other F-ing word. Then there is the whole rap lyrics argument. It is way out of control.

Expand your vocabulary. learn to communicate. Try to go a whole day without using any profanity or expletives and I bet you will find that you too might have a problem.

It's been six months since this story, and since then Kazaa:

might be sued by the US government for facilitating IP infringement,
is being sued in Australia for IP infringement, and
is being sued for possible IP infringement of the Kazaa software itself.

BitTorrent *is* cast in the same light as Kazaa, Morpheus etc. according to the media, and as such it will not (in the near future) be seen as legitimate, no matter how Atari or Blizzard uses p2p. Yes, p2p has legitimate uses, but until the world wakes up and realises that you can do more than download Britney_Spears_L33T-N3w-S0ng!.mp3, it will remain as shady as Napster 1.0.

As to the German legal system, if I look only at cases which get international press, I'd think badly of it because of a few cases like how killing and eating a person isn't considered murder and conclude that the German legal system is 'bottom of the rung' in your words.

If you were to point at something general such as the ludicrously high US incarceration rate you could make some excellent points about the US legal system, but claiming that a particular case shows that the "US system" is flawed is like using an anecdote to 'prove' something about the whole.

I suppose that everyone generalizes from a single example. I know I do.

Ask Coca Cola... ;) I'll let someone else post this story properly... but our tap water is "the Real Thing"!!!

Not two weeks ago, slashdot was discussing this.

But how about the angle that the US is known to write software to sabatoge the economies of other countries, making independent, inspectable code a matter of national security. Of course, if it isn't the government sabatoging your economy, then Microsoft clearly is.

We don't stand a chance if the rest of the world sees fit to stand in solidarity against a regime that is precieved to be an agressive bully.

It is pretty unlikely that will happen as some 60 nations are supporting our actions in Iraq in some form. Even Japan has sent combat troops outside of its borders into a war zone for the first time since WW2. Strangely enough, the loudest complaints came from either those who Saddam bought off with oil deals or had arms deals with, like ... France and Russia. Runner up - Germany and the construction firms that built Saddams bunkers.

I just makes no sense to me why with all the resources at our disposal as a nation, we should see fit to best use those resources to make others hate and fear us rather than admire and follow us.

The reason that it makes no sense to you is because you are apparently paying no attention to the ideas of those who wish to do us harm. We in the US are a relatively free, democratic, capitalist, very tolerant, largely Christian nation. Al Qaeda, our main foe, advocate rigid, authoritarian, fanatical Islamist states with sharia law filling the globe. There is no middle ground. We will not willingly change to their ways, and they are willing to die to try to weaken us to the point we can no longer resist their will. Sadly, a nontrivial percentage of the Islamic world is in sympathy with Al Qaeda.

If we really were the terrible nation that some, mainly the left, try to portray the US as, we would nuke them, seed the land with salt, and be done with them. Instead we will end up fighting a long term war until the hearts of enough Muslims turn toward peace, or the governments of the Islamic countries act more responsibly, or we kill all who wish to try and harm us, or are destroyed ourselves.

Your idea that everybody automatically respects peace, democracy, and tolerance is very much a Western liberal notion, and very mistaken.

I have a feeling a coordinated effort by a diversity of determined nations could bleed us dry pretty quick.

Any "collection of nations" that tried to bleed us dry would be grabbing a tiger by the tail. We won the war in Afghanistan and Iraq with essentially a peace-time military. We've called up some reserves, but haven't even considered an actual mobilization for war. 60 years ago the US Army was well over 10x its current size. The Navy was enormous, as was the Air Force. The Marines were more than 2x their current size. We did that with a country 1/2 the size it is now. The methods that we have used have been relatively gentle to date.

We've paid the price to remain free before against nations who exterminated entire peoples. If need be, we will again, or enter into slavery or death. Once again, there isn't really much choice, is there?

• He was and is respected by his squadron mates
• He was considered quite intelligent
• A former instructor puts him in the top 5% intellectuallu
• He's the first US President with an MBA
• He got better grades than Gore

Now, I actually disagree with many of his policies: he's been more of a socialist than Clinton, increasing social spending beyond belief (labour, education &c.). But the man's not an idiot.

Then you're incapable of reading and reasoning, then. Let me describe in the most simplisitc, most childishly plain terms that I can, and perhaps it will register in the dark recessess of your underused cranium: Iraq had the ability to manufacturer chemical, biological, and nuclear arms.

Ah, good. Opening with an insult. That's the best way to present your argument as grounded in firm logic instead of emotion and supposition, isn't it?

I should point out that the experts -- by which I mean David Kay, the man Bush hired to look for weapons programs and not Fox News pundits -- would disagree with you. Saddam seems to have had R&D on chemical and biological weapons, but he had no actual weapons produced, he had no plants ready to produce them, and his nuclear program was a complete shambles with no capacity to manufacture weapons.

Now, if you said that he was clearly deceiving the international community, that he was in violation of UN resolutions to show inspectors around properly, or that he actually had conventional weapons that were in violation of the UN resolutions, then I'd agree with you. I might even agree now that that justified the war. However, if you want to nod your head along with the ludicrous statement that he the capacity to produce "over 25,000 liters of anthrax," "more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin," or "as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent," then I'm going to have to laugh in your face. Saddam's programs were mostly dead by the time the second war started.

[H]is very possession of them could put him in a position of blackmailing the entire world. It doesn't help that, as the formerly most powerful Arabic nation, he could have singlehandedly walked all over Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and more if he chose to do so.

Not without retribution. The entire lesson learned by the war on Kuwait was that he could not do so without terrible retribution. Saddam has bargaining power only because there was international pressure against the US moving. An actual attack with WMDs in the current environment would've seen France, Russia, Germany, and China's (paid-for) political position crumble and support given to walk all over the country. Saddam wasn't a fanatic. He was a cold-blooded, rational dictator who played the game of brinksmanship and lost hard.

Such an action would've caused grave economic damage to this nation ...

Didn't do that much the first time, did it? It actually helped pick up the economy quite a bit when we stepped on his little army the last time.

Again, you completely misunderstand the subtlety involved here.

Again, you miss the fact that Saddam didn't like jihadists like al-Qai'da. (Furthermore, according to the linked article, Osama didn't like Saddam either.) He was more than willing to fund money into Palestinian terrorism because it was a good PR move with other Arabic nations and Palestinian terrorists had a defined goal that wouldn't come back to bite him, but al-Qai'da has made its mission to see Sharia implemented worldwide. That would mean toppling his own secularist government, too. Remember, the reason we allied with Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war was that we saw Iraq as one of the few non-fanatical governments in the Middle East. The Baathists were secularists who oppressed a lot of the more religious minorities in Iraq. This and the flood of foreign fighters is why Iraq is seeing its first waves of suicide bombings. Iraqis were too scared to do this before.

Also, Hussein didn't have to want political gains here. Haven't you noticed that these terrorists aren't trying to make political points?

Once again, Hussein was a ruthless dictator, not a terrorist -- just as evil, but completely different g

Here is a Washington Times summary that doesn't require registration.

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040202-1 23126-8662r.htm

And here is a IHT article which appears to feature the same quote as the NYT article. Same article? I won't register...

http://www.iht.com/articles/127677.html

Josh.

Nothing in the information available to GWB said that there were stockpiles of WMD, yet he repeatedly said that we had proof that there were massive stockpiles and that we knew where they were. That's what's called a lie.

So, which are you, Mr. Powell, or Ms. Rice? You know all the evidence that the president recieved?

And it's presently so safe and peaceful there that no Iraqis are dieing?

What Iraq had before we invaded was not peace. In the same way as Soviet Russia was not at peace during the cold war. Peace is not wondering if you will be abducted from your home or your family killed for being a dissident.

The very nature of your statistics disturbs me. How is it we all know so much about the Iraqi deaths in the years durring which we weren't present (and had demonstratbly bad intelligence) but have only guesses about how many have died while we were there and watching? Dosn't that seem even a little bit odd to you?

Because, after we got there, over threw the former regime, and started sticking shovels into the ground we started discovering these mass graves. Our counts and estimates say 300,000 bodies fill these graves. That is how we know.

Interesting photo site
Washington Times
Fox News
CNN about half way down a reference

By all means, we should do it. Too bad we're broke now, having spent more than we have on that whole arming-to-the-teeth thing.

Explain to me why it is that Iraq had never sent anyone into space? Or perhaps why only three nations in the world have ever sent anyone into space (and China being dubious at best since they built off of Russian tech)? When did the US send people into space? Oh yeah, during the hey-day of space during the col war when we were working on arming ourselves to the teeth, that's right.

Some believe that the function of government is to arm itself to the teeth to protect the life and property of its citizens, not to give health care and schooling and nannying its citizens. Researching space tech falls into the defense of its citizens catagory.

So you're saying you work with George Bush and sit across from John Ashcroft (who swears it's only research)?

So, we have an investigation by the senate sergeant-at-arms with 120 interviews, plus the admissions by prominent republicans that it happened (though not that they had anything to do with it) in one corner. In the other corner we have you making the statement that this is a) commonplace and that b) the liberal media is out to get the poor republicans.

So, uh, I guess my question is, what manner of magic have you obtained to give you such insight into congress? And, perhaps, a bonus followup, how can you in your right mind say there's a liberal media when no one is calling the president on his story in the runup to Iraq, the felonous ouster of a CIA operative, and the continued stonewalling of the 9/11 commission (which, heck, is even headed by a republican).

what, exactly, as counter evidence? ... A Reuter's report quoting ``Save the Children'', a left-wing NGO, and Joshua Micah Marshall, a democratic party blogger.

If you can't argue the facts, attack the messengers?

joblessness has dropped from 6.4% to 5.9% in just six months

Are you forgetting that back in March before the Iraq war, the U.S. unemployment rate was 5.8% ?

One point you don't seem to be taking into account, Neocon, is that the "unemployment rate" as reported by the BLS only represents the number of people who are activly looking for work, and disregards those who have given up and gone on food stamps or moved back in with parents to live off eBay or Google Answers. There are 3,000,000 fewer jobs in the U.S. now than there were in 2000. Most of those people are no longer represented in the unemployment rate, but if history is any guide, they will vote against Bush in numbers far above the turnout percentages of the population at large. This against a backdrop of 50% approval ratings for Bush, the lowest since 9/11.

I hope those two quarters of growth with unemployment higher than it was in March keep away your nightmares of terrible, terrible socialism, Neocon.

What bothers me every time this comes up is 100's of people saying "the bush administration says to hell with all the alzheimer's patients." The simple fact is that ADULT stem cell research has yeilded MANY beneficial results, like this one piece of recent news. Or this about bone marrow derived stem cells. Or this about turning SKIN cells into BRAIN CELLS for alzheimers patients! Why does the news media at large ignore this huge potential and only focus on how the pro-life movement "want's to end stem cell research altogether" ?

Last week, President Bush signed the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, an important measure which should serve as a needed stimulus for that nascent field full of potential.
Nanotechnology deals with the study and manipulation of atoms and molecules -- at about the scale of 1/100,000th of the diameter of a human hair. As its name implies, it is not a field of pure research, but rather an interdisciplinary area with many possible applications. ...

Nanomaterials are already being used in sunscreens and tennis rackets. The oil industry saves an estimated $12 billion each year by using molecular sieves known as zeolites to extract gasoline from crude oil....

In the future, nanotechnology coupled to biotechnology could produce a variety of beneficial products, from better sensors for agents of bioterrorism to custom-built medicines for fighting cancers. Nano-manufacturing processes could reduce waste from industrial production, and nanomaterials could be used to make power systems highly efficient. ...

The nation has needed this federal catalyst to fully develop the breathtaking possibilities of nanotechnology. The bill signed by Mr. Bush should serve well in widening the way.

It appears, based on the article, that this was the product of work by Republican Attorney General Jerry Kilgore. I'm pleased that he's enforcing the law, but by way of background, I should point out why he's choosing to enforce this particular law at this particular time.

Our governor, Mark Warner, is a millionaire hundreds of times over, having made his fortune in tech in Northern Virginia. He got elected on the strength of his business and tech expertise. His term is up in two years, and, under Virginia law, he can't run for reelection. So the race is on between Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine and Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, the presumed Democratic and Republican nominees.

As is often the case with vice-anythings, Kaine is forced to live under the shadow of Gov. Warner for the time being, while Kilgore is under the shadow of nobody. Kilgore tends to spend most of his time ensuring that people aren't having sex (he's working to keep Virginia's ridiculous bedroom laws on the books; sex outside of marriage is illegal, oral sex is illegal, homosexuality is illegal, etc.) and attempting to keep from getting indicted for his role in the recent Republican wiretapping scandal, something that has just been revealed in the past week.

So, Kilgore gets a twofer with this prosecution. Not only is this yet another thing that he can tout on the campaign trail ("Kaine? Tech? Hell, I brought two spammers back from Carolina, hog-tied and all!"), but he's no doubt hoping that this will overshadow, at least for a few precious days, some of the accusations against him for wiretapping charges.

Again, I'm glad to see this law enforced. Virginia's law is badly-written, in the sense that it must be enforced by Commonwealth's Attorneys, and few of them have the slightest concept of how to or desire to do so. It's good that our Attorney General is willing to take the lead in cracking down.

-Waldo Jaquith

Well, the UN has just ruled that "hateful words" are the equivilent of genocide.
Read it here:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20031203-1138 17-3449r.htm

The men who spoke the "hateful words" will spend the rest of thier lives in prison for speaking "hateful words"..

While the rest of the world thought all politicans are elected by one-person-one-vote basis like the rest of the democratic system, he's not elected. He's been appointed by governer, or Chief Executive Officer Mr. Tung Chee Wah.

Therefore, he can always find his "What can you do to me? BLOW ME!" attitude.

You probably don't know him much. Here is a list of good deeds he's doing:

1) He's planning to merge a major university into Chinese Unversity of whom he was appointed to be the president. Though he declines to give favour to Chinese University in the merge, but his intention is so clear. Say, he proposed to sell the properties of victim university to support the cost of merging.
2) He withdraw all his promises made during a meeting with student representatives of all students unions. Promises include not cutting budget of all sub-degree programs, which he advocated in the first place.
3) He refused to talk to students on the issues of huge budget cut on education for the coming years, until recently, thanks to the political climate changed after 5mil+ people hit the street on 1/7/2003

He's not elected, and he's not accountable.

What exactly are the purposes and principles of the United Nations?

Like not serving as a platform for nazis and war criminals ?

Note that the decision in question convicts three broadcasters of genocide for talking about it on the air. Advocating = committing. Oops!

Scenario:
- You flame about some political A-hole, spammer, or annoying whatever on the net and mention that you wish he were dead.
- Somebody kills him.
- You get fried.

Scenario 2:
- You flame about some regime somewhere in the world and mention that it would be good if it were overthrown.
- You get hauled into international court and then handed over to the regime for the "crime" of criticizing it and advocating violence against it.

As to handing such power over to the UN, the US government is empowerd only by the Constitution. This means it cannot hand its citizens over to an international tribunal that considers speech to be the equivalent of action, in violation of their First Amendment rights.

Further, any action by US officials that PURPORTS to do so is (according to the Supreme Court) not an official action, but a personal action by the individuals in question - suitable for being disobeyed by any other government official (such as the police and military personnel charged with executing the order - who have sworn to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign or DOMESTIC) and opening them up to both impeachment and personal responsibility under such laws as the Civil Rights act.

Freedom of speech can never be absolute.

That reminds me of an Abbie Hoffman incident (which I'll paraphrase since I don't have the exact text handy).

Abbie on interview show in front of a studio audience:

Q: So you think freedom of speech is absolute?

A: Absolutely!

Q: But surely you don't believe it's all right to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre?

A: FIRE!

Here

Like not serving as a platform for nazis and war criminals?

Freedom of speech can never be absolute.

If anything I want our governments to crack down on nazis.

Nothing actually hit the space station, and everything is fine. See here, here, here, or just skip them all and see Google.

One to add to the mix. How about the new "SERV" system being setup by the Pentagon to allow voting from overseas?

I have absolutely no evidence of any foul doings here, but I am extremely suspicious of a system that once compromised in just one place, allows those that compromise it to direct a few 'extra', relatively undetectable, votes to any crucial/balance districts in the republic. And is the Pentagon more secretive, and liable to cover up its 'blunders' than Diebold - you bet !

Also, please remember this stuff - election rigging - happens all the time, this is not *theoretical* this is real. Just the other week there was accusations of Election rigging for Shevardnadze in Georgia.

And the US is far from immune to election rigging scandals.

I don't see any reason to exempt individuals. When people file baseless lawsuits against corporations, the costs will ultimately be passed on to the consumer. McDonalds is spending a lot of money defending themselves from baseless obesity lawsuits. Restaurants as a whole will be paying higher liability insurance costs to cover defense of these suits.

When a judge dismisses a case, he/she basically says that the case is so lacking in evidence that even if everything that the plantiff says could be proven true, they still don't have a case and should not have ever filed the suit. For this reason, going to a 'loser pays' system will not harm anyone with a valid reason for a lawsuit. There is no reason why the plantiff (and possibly their attorney) should not have to reimburse the defendant for abuse of the court system.