First of all, the terrorists apparently claimed that they had a bomb. It seems incredibly foolish to rush terrorists in this situation, unless you know that they intend to ram the plane. And nobody knew this.
Secondly, these planes were half-full. It was early in the morning. From hijacking to crash, less than 30 minutes elapsed. Even a large group of non-sleepy travelers would probably assume that hijackers have demands, then take time to steel themselves for a suicidal rush. These people never had time.
Apparently, the passengers on the PA plane did overcome the attackers (although this isn't certain), after realizing that these people intended to kill everybody. They did it, and the plane crashed. These people are heroic-- don't dishonor anybody's memory by making it their fault.
Finally, I guarantee that this will sort of thing will never happen again as long as there is a reasonable number of passengers on the plane. If there are further knife hijackings (even gun hijackings), Americans will assume that the alternative to resistance is death. Armed with the knowledge we have now, I can't imagine any reasonably large group of passengers succumbing. This act that has taken airplane hijacking to a whole new level may well spell an end to the days of hostage-taking style hijacking. From this day forward, no terrorists can count on terror as a weapon to assure passenger cooperation. I hope.
Did you see the specials on the construction of the WTC? It took more than a decade from beginning to end, I believe. In any case, maybe it's not the best idea to start with the same design. Just finding a new architect and design would take a few years.
Regardless, wouldn't you be concerned if gas prices increased by 200-300% overnight? Or if the prices of any necessities increased by that much so quickly.
No. Japan and the US were at war. All of the players in WWII demonstrated their willingness to bomb enemy cities, sometimes indiscriminantly. The Japanese killed many civilians and natives all over the Pacific-- look at what they did in China. This isn't justification for the excess that was Hiroshima (although some feel that it was justified). I'm simply trying to point out that the two countries were at war-- Japan by choice-- and city bombings are an inevitable symptom of large-scale war.
This attack was different. We don't even know why we've been attacked. Are we at war? Will our enemy come forward, or at least tell us that this is the case? Are we guilty of supporting Israel? Think about that. What if we'd dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima simply because Japan supported the Nazis, not because they were actively fighing us? It wouldn't have happened.
2. I strongly disagree with Bush claiming these attacks being "cowardly acts". I think, that organizing and implementing such plan takes extreme courage, even if performed by a mad man, which I don't think is a case. One should have a clear head to plan all this.
Cowardice is not simply about the unwillingness to risk life and limb. Cowardice has something to do with the way you wage your war, the personal honor with which you face your enemy. These men waged war on tired, harmless people by (apparently) carrying a box that they claimed was a bomb. They "fought" against buildings full of innocent people, who had no means of defending themselves. Many, many cowards have held hostages and committed suicide-- it takes no bravery. They stabbed flight attendents quickly, to acheive maximum affect. When the passengers rebelled on one plane (this is the current story), they were unable to even hit a worthwhile target.
The only evidence of "bravery" that you could argue is these men's willingness to die. Does this mean that every suicide is courageous? In any case, I'm not even sure that this constitutes bravery. Many islamic terrorists are conditioned to believe that death is only a door to Paradise. This belief can be so strongly imprinted in somebody that they simply overlook rational emotions such as fear. Is that bravery? Or a form of psychosis? These men were human bombs, and nothing more. They demonstrated no honor, no real bravery, and no strength.
I looked at those pics, and I didn't see any evidence of another small plane. I saw the towers a few minutes after the second crash, and I should point out that there were several helicopters orbiting. Perhaps one of these, or a small plane chartered by a news organization, is the plane you're talking about?
Give me the filename of the particular pic you're talking about, and I'll take a look.
Do you think what happened yesterday is going to do anything to improve the lives of the disadvantaged on this planet? Many, many people all over the world are going to die agonizing deaths before things get better.
I might add that any sympathy for the Palestinian cause has been severely undermined, even though they may have nothing to do with this (?). They're going to be the ones who truly pay for this attack, even if we never launch a single missile.
Any sort of remote control should have strict limitations. It should be essentially a way to force-activate the autopilot, get the plane to a safe altitude, and put it on a particular course. But you're right, it could be hacked and it would be a disaster. I like the sealed cockpit idea better.
I want every man and woman with a concealed carry permit to be allowed to carry their weapon on aircraft from now on.
Which means, of course, that every plane will now be wide open to every nutjob with permit and a score to settle. Watch them come flying out of the sky.
My guess is that those drunk a-holes didn't scare the shit out of the passengers the way these guys did. Kill a couple of flight attendants quickly, grab someone's kid... Then push everyone to the back of the plane and lock yourselves in the cockpit. That's the only scenario I can imagine. Remember also that these planes were half-full.
The solutions?
1) Armed agents on every plane, international or domestic.
2) Better security procedures. No knives whatsoever on planes. Pat downs if necessary. Too many airports have made a joke out of these procedures.
3) Sealed cockpits. This is unfortunate, but it's either this or a ring of fighter planes around every major city.
4) Constant GPS/radar computerized tracking of ever flight. Flights should never be lost or confused the way they were today. The second a flight veers off course, alarm bells should ring at the NTSB headquarters, and all over the country.
This may help with larger planes, but it still leaves a huge question mark over smaller, private planes. A Cessna with a load of explosives couldn't do this much damage, but it could be equivalent to a van full of explosives. And just this sort of van was allegedly forced over by police on the GWB.
If the U.S. decides to seriously go after the states that train, harbor, and encourage terrorists
Amen. Any state that is giving a single dollar to terrorist organizations should be given a strong warning. Give money to terrorists and you'd better find another planet to live on.
PS CNN tells me that we just started bombing Afghanistan. Isn't this a bit soon?
Whether or not it they actually would have withstood such a hit is unknown, of course.
According to the same news everyone else is watching (there's technology!), the design did not give much thought to the secondary effects of the heat on the structure, or to mass-evacuation requirements.
First of all, we learned today (several times), that any security measure can be overcome by somebody with enough motivation. Since these people are the ones we're trying to combat, it's doubtful that increased civilian monitoring is going to prevent this sort of tragedy in the future. The people who will pay the price, in lost freedom, will be regular American citizens.
What your plan will do is convince a lot of Americans that the American gov't can't be trusted. That's certainly going to make us stronger... And don't forget that these restrictions on our freedom will be around long after the immediate danger is gone. Take the first step and we'll always have to live with it.
Most hospitals in NYC are taking blood, but there may be a huge wait time (5 hours in some midtown hospitals.) You may be best served by waiting a little while before you join the line. Also make sure you've eaten something today-- bring something, just in case you have a long wait.
AT&T's board wasn't very motivated to make a deal that would undo much of the strategic acquisions they have made over the last few years, but they had a "due dilligence" duty to the stockholders to at least listen.
First of all, I'd like to agree with you on this one; I own a few shares of T and think that selling the cable unit would be a disaster. I lack your confidence in the matter, however. AT&T is strapped for cash, and they've been known to do some surprisingly stupid things. I think that the major barrier preventing a sale is going to be a failure to agree on price, not some philisophical opposition to selling the cable unit. Remember, even if AT&T doesn't sell the cable assets to Cablevision/AOL/etc, the current plan still involves spinning them off for cash.
But it sure does make a good/. knee-jerk fest to make it sound like the borg is forming around AT&T and AOL/TW, doesn't it?
Not at all. It is a big deal for a couple of reasons. First of all, the fact that AOLTW is considering this sale means that they have some confidence in their ability to circumvent existing cable ownership limits. That's no good, and is worthy of some attention, I would think.
Secondly, even if AOLTW doesn't wind up with AT&T's cable assets at this point, it's entirely possible (read likely) that they may end purchasing some interest eventually. That's a bad thing for consumers, as it places a huge number of TV sets under AOLTWs expanding influence.
Finally, I think it's important that people pay attention to every merger or talk of merger that could potentially affect their lives. The fact of the matter is, AOLTW is already a sort of borg, controlling a lot of assets. And it seems interested in assimilating more. So the "slashdot's making a big deal outa nothing" response seems a little bit careless.
AT&T provides service to something like 60% of the cable households in the USA. It's taken an enormous amount of work (read lobbying) to placate the FCC with this situation. Throw that 60% in with Time Warner's existing share, and you have a megalithic cable company that simply cannot exist under today's regulations. Presumably regulations will find themselves changing to accomodate AOL/TW's needs, and that makes me nervous.
I'm also not thrilled about the idea of a single company controlling such a vast percentage of content and news production, TV distribution and Internet service. If AOLTW weren't a media company, and therefore so able to influence the popular mindset, I wouldn't sweat it so much. But the truth is, AOLTW and its components have shown their willingness to sacrifice just about anything to profits-- including objective news reporting, open access, etc. Such behavior is probably natural for a [very aggressive] corporation, but it's not in our best interest as citizens.
... would want a real pet when one could have a Market Approved robot pet!!
:) You're going to have to sell that line to companies like Purina or Petco. Not to mention the meat-packing industry, which makes tons of money selling their animal biproducts for pet food. One hopes that they agree with Sony's assessment of this matter.
On the other hand, maybe the pet food companies could go into the software biz...
One of the reasons the claim confuses me, though, is that tools like KDevelop and, even MSVC, do still run a command line compiler
Amen. Many of the modern development environments are just wrappers. Although there are IDEs out there-- Metrowerks, for instance-- that don't rely on this crutch, even those environments rarely have significant added functionality vs. CLI tools (though the fully integrated tools at least seem more carefully put together than the wrappers like MSVC++). One of the worst things about these wrapper tools is that the GUI generally lacks a complete interface for controlling the really esoteric options; MSVC++ just punts the problem and forces you to enter them into a text box. Big improvement over CLI there.
While it's possible that GUI tools are potentially capable of doing more than CLI tools, none of the tools in common usage today really make this case. I admit that it may be easier to learn to manage a project using a visual tool, but that's not what this debate is about. I'll wager that somebody with good CLI experience can do everything an equally experienced GUI-tool user can do, in the same amount of time. They might even find that they have more flexibility at their fingertips.
Now, when it comes to interface design, GUI tools can be very helpful. But in most "IDE"s, even the UI design features tend to be poorly integrated. Often they're implemented in clumsy, inflexible ways that make them little more useful than their standalone counterparts. And the fact that so many people use the IDE seriously handicaps the development of better tools by third parties.
The appeals court rejected the breakup because of the way the first judge handled the penalty section. They felt that it was irresponsibly handled, and that a new judge should handle it more diligently. There was absolutely no reason (that I've heard) given to rule out breakup, or make it seem like a longshot.
Decisions are not made to be forgotten. Leaders make decisions and they expect them to be followed. Leaders cannot, however, make each and every single decision that is necessary for an order to be carrired out.
You're saying that Bush didn't micromanage this decision. And I agree. But he did manage it, even if he wasn't making day-to-day decisions about which brief to file, or what the best legal strategy is. That's what delegation is all about. You determine what your overall goals are, you express them clearly, then find people that you can count on to carry them out in detail.
Bush's presidential campaign made it clear that ending/emasculating this case was a priority, and there was a lot of political pressure (and money) riding on the outcome. I doubt that he specifically ordered that this decision be reached at this precise moment, but he did decide that this is the direction he wanted the case to take. He then picked deputies that he was certain would make this happen, and I'm certain that this case was discussed at that time. Not surprisingly, one of the first things those deputies did was replace most of the people working on the case.
What you seem to be telling me is that a president has absolutely no control of his administration. I'd buy it if this were some minor decision about logging rights, or some fraud case we've never heard of. But the Microsoft case is not some minor issue. Bush has maybe 20 to 30 major issues on his plate, and he'd damn well better be able to guide his people on them-- otherwise, he's just incompetent.
Beyond that, I'm not sure what you're saying to me. If my boss hires "Chainsaw" Al Dunlop to head our human resources department, and makes it clear that he wants a smaller workforce, then who do we blame for all of the pinkslips?
Of course he wouldn't. But being president means delegating authority to others, who then make the decisions.
And delegating authority to others means finding people who are likely to share your views, at least on the most important and visible issues. For the DOJ, the Microsoft case is definitely an important and visible issue.
I doubt that Ashcroft's handling of the case has been in any way different from what Bush expected it to be. Otherwise, the Bush crowd would be furious that they nominated such a person.
Bush, despite the perception that he's not very intelligent, has a knack for surrounding himself with very intelligent and competent people.
As to the "surrounding himself with intelligent people" bit... I believe that Bush has found some intelligent people. I just believe that they tend to make the wrong decisions all across the board, and I don't get it. I don't know if it's ideological stubbornness, or if they're just plain bad people. From the tax cut that's eliminating the surplus (notice how the tax cut was a great idea when the economy was good, and a similarly great idea when it was going south), to the silly military decisions (making the military less capable so we can afford a dubious missile shield), to unsupported guesses on the economy (hey, let's run deficits again), it's all been screwy.
It means that when you are the president, you can't possibly stick your nose into every detail of operations and politics.
That's utterly foolish. From the time of Bush's campaign, the Microsoft decision was one of the most visible issues facing this administration. Do you really think Bush & co would really just leave something that important to chance? I'm sure the Bush folks let the minions make plenty of decisions on their own, but if it's one of the twenty-odd issues that they know people will write about (especially if it was mentioned early), you can bet that they're giving it high-level attention. That's just plain common sense, and nobody survives in this game without keeping a close eye on the visible issues.
Do you think the core Bush crowd just delegated the details of the tax cut and forgot about it, or let some underlings deal with the spy plane incident? Please.
Besides, breaking up one monopoly to create two more monopolies does nothing
The problem with Microsoft has primarily been with their use of the OS monopoly to further all of their other business interests. Breaking the OS monopoly into a separate company with strict limitations on it would do a lot to ease the problems.
This kind of political suit often dies after a new administration takes over.
But rarely when two federal courts have upheld such damning findings, and many state AGs (of various political persuasion) are continuing the suit. In fact, given such blatant abuses of power as those admitted by even conservative justices, this action is quite surprising.
On the subject of political suits... I guess when you categorize any anti-trust action as political, since one party despises the idea, your argument becomes self-supporting.
By people that the Bush administration recently appointed to take over the case, after getting rid of most of the people that were running it under Clinton. That's an important distinction.
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, the terrorists apparently claimed that they had a bomb. It seems incredibly foolish to rush terrorists in this situation, unless you know that they intend to ram the plane. And nobody knew this.
Secondly, these planes were half-full. It was early in the morning. From hijacking to crash, less than 30 minutes elapsed. Even a large group of non-sleepy travelers would probably assume that hijackers have demands, then take time to steel themselves for a suicidal rush. These people never had time.
Apparently, the passengers on the PA plane did overcome the attackers (although this isn't certain), after realizing that these people intended to kill everybody. They did it, and the plane crashed. These people are heroic-- don't dishonor anybody's memory by making it their fault.
Finally, I guarantee that this will sort of thing will never happen again as long as there is a reasonable number of passengers on the plane. If there are further knife hijackings (even gun hijackings), Americans will assume that the alternative to resistance is death. Armed with the knowledge we have now, I can't imagine any reasonably large group of passengers succumbing. This act that has taken airplane hijacking to a whole new level may well spell an end to the days of hostage-taking style hijacking. From this day forward, no terrorists can count on terror as a weapon to assure passenger cooperation. I hope.
Did you see the specials on the construction of the WTC? It took more than a decade from beginning to end, I believe. In any case, maybe it's not the best idea to start with the same design. Just finding a new architect and design would take a few years.
Regardless, wouldn't you be concerned if gas prices increased by 200-300% overnight? Or if the prices of any necessities increased by that much so quickly.
This attack was different. We don't even know why we've been attacked. Are we at war? Will our enemy come forward, or at least tell us that this is the case? Are we guilty of supporting Israel? Think about that. What if we'd dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima simply because Japan supported the Nazis, not because they were actively fighing us? It wouldn't have happened.
Cowardice is not simply about the unwillingness to risk life and limb. Cowardice has something to do with the way you wage your war, the personal honor with which you face your enemy. These men waged war on tired, harmless people by (apparently) carrying a box that they claimed was a bomb. They "fought" against buildings full of innocent people, who had no means of defending themselves. Many, many cowards have held hostages and committed suicide-- it takes no bravery. They stabbed flight attendents quickly, to acheive maximum affect. When the passengers rebelled on one plane (this is the current story), they were unable to even hit a worthwhile target.
The only evidence of "bravery" that you could argue is these men's willingness to die. Does this mean that every suicide is courageous? In any case, I'm not even sure that this constitutes bravery. Many islamic terrorists are conditioned to believe that death is only a door to Paradise. This belief can be so strongly imprinted in somebody that they simply overlook rational emotions such as fear. Is that bravery? Or a form of psychosis? These men were human bombs, and nothing more. They demonstrated no honor, no real bravery, and no strength.
Give me the filename of the particular pic you're talking about, and I'll take a look.
I might add that any sympathy for the Palestinian cause has been severely undermined, even though they may have nothing to do with this (?). They're going to be the ones who truly pay for this attack, even if we never launch a single missile.
Any sort of remote control should have strict limitations. It should be essentially a way to force-activate the autopilot, get the plane to a safe altitude, and put it on a particular course. But you're right, it could be hacked and it would be a disaster. I like the sealed cockpit idea better.
Which means, of course, that every plane will now be wide open to every nutjob with permit and a score to settle. Watch them come flying out of the sky.
The solutions?
1) Armed agents on every plane, international or domestic.
2) Better security procedures. No knives whatsoever on planes. Pat downs if necessary. Too many airports have made a joke out of these procedures.
3) Sealed cockpits. This is unfortunate, but it's either this or a ring of fighter planes around every major city.
4) Constant GPS/radar computerized tracking of ever flight. Flights should never be lost or confused the way they were today. The second a flight veers off course, alarm bells should ring at the NTSB headquarters, and all over the country.
This may help with larger planes, but it still leaves a huge question mark over smaller, private planes. A Cessna with a load of explosives couldn't do this much damage, but it could be equivalent to a van full of explosives. And just this sort of van was allegedly forced over by police on the GWB.
Amen. Any state that is giving a single dollar to terrorist organizations should be given a strong warning. Give money to terrorists and you'd better find another planet to live on.
PS CNN tells me that we just started bombing Afghanistan. Isn't this a bit soon?
According to the same news everyone else is watching (there's technology!), the design did not give much thought to the secondary effects of the heat on the structure, or to mass-evacuation requirements.
What your plan will do is convince a lot of Americans that the American gov't can't be trusted. That's certainly going to make us stronger... And don't forget that these restrictions on our freedom will be around long after the immediate danger is gone. Take the first step and we'll always have to live with it.
Most hospitals in NYC are taking blood, but there may be a huge wait time (5 hours in some midtown hospitals.) You may be best served by waiting a little while before you join the line. Also make sure you've eaten something today-- bring something, just in case you have a long wait.
There's a lot of money behind this legislation. You can be sure that it's a threat.
First of all, I'd like to agree with you on this one; I own a few shares of T and think that selling the cable unit would be a disaster. I lack your confidence in the matter, however. AT&T is strapped for cash, and they've been known to do some surprisingly stupid things. I think that the major barrier preventing a sale is going to be a failure to agree on price, not some philisophical opposition to selling the cable unit. Remember, even if AT&T doesn't sell the cable assets to Cablevision/AOL/etc, the current plan still involves spinning them off for cash.
But it sure does make a good /. knee-jerk fest to make it sound like the borg is forming around AT&T and AOL/TW, doesn't it?
Not at all. It is a big deal for a couple of reasons. First of all, the fact that AOLTW is considering this sale means that they have some confidence in their ability to circumvent existing cable ownership limits. That's no good, and is worthy of some attention, I would think.
Secondly, even if AOLTW doesn't wind up with AT&T's cable assets at this point, it's entirely possible (read likely) that they may end purchasing some interest eventually. That's a bad thing for consumers, as it places a huge number of TV sets under AOLTWs expanding influence.
Finally, I think it's important that people pay attention to every merger or talk of merger that could potentially affect their lives. The fact of the matter is, AOLTW is already a sort of borg, controlling a lot of assets. And it seems interested in assimilating more. So the "slashdot's making a big deal outa nothing" response seems a little bit careless.
I'm also not thrilled about the idea of a single company controlling such a vast percentage of content and news production, TV distribution and Internet service. If AOLTW weren't a media company, and therefore so able to influence the popular mindset, I wouldn't sweat it so much. But the truth is, AOLTW and its components have shown their willingness to sacrifice just about anything to profits-- including objective news reporting, open access, etc. Such behavior is probably natural for a [very aggressive] corporation, but it's not in our best interest as citizens.
On the other hand, maybe the pet food companies could go into the software biz...
Amen. Many of the modern development environments are just wrappers. Although there are IDEs out there-- Metrowerks, for instance-- that don't rely on this crutch, even those environments rarely have significant added functionality vs. CLI tools (though the fully integrated tools at least seem more carefully put together than the wrappers like MSVC++). One of the worst things about these wrapper tools is that the GUI generally lacks a complete interface for controlling the really esoteric options; MSVC++ just punts the problem and forces you to enter them into a text box. Big improvement over CLI there.
While it's possible that GUI tools are potentially capable of doing more than CLI tools, none of the tools in common usage today really make this case. I admit that it may be easier to learn to manage a project using a visual tool, but that's not what this debate is about. I'll wager that somebody with good CLI experience can do everything an equally experienced GUI-tool user can do, in the same amount of time. They might even find that they have more flexibility at their fingertips.
Now, when it comes to interface design, GUI tools can be very helpful. But in most "IDE"s, even the UI design features tend to be poorly integrated. Often they're implemented in clumsy, inflexible ways that make them little more useful than their standalone counterparts. And the fact that so many people use the IDE seriously handicaps the development of better tools by third parties.
The appeals court rejected the breakup because of the way the first judge handled the penalty section. They felt that it was irresponsibly handled, and that a new judge should handle it more diligently. There was absolutely no reason (that I've heard) given to rule out breakup, or make it seem like a longshot.
You're saying that Bush didn't micromanage this decision. And I agree. But he did manage it, even if he wasn't making day-to-day decisions about which brief to file, or what the best legal strategy is. That's what delegation is all about. You determine what your overall goals are, you express them clearly, then find people that you can count on to carry them out in detail.
Bush's presidential campaign made it clear that ending/emasculating this case was a priority, and there was a lot of political pressure (and money) riding on the outcome. I doubt that he specifically ordered that this decision be reached at this precise moment, but he did decide that this is the direction he wanted the case to take. He then picked deputies that he was certain would make this happen, and I'm certain that this case was discussed at that time. Not surprisingly, one of the first things those deputies did was replace most of the people working on the case.
What you seem to be telling me is that a president has absolutely no control of his administration. I'd buy it if this were some minor decision about logging rights, or some fraud case we've never heard of. But the Microsoft case is not some minor issue. Bush has maybe 20 to 30 major issues on his plate, and he'd damn well better be able to guide his people on them-- otherwise, he's just incompetent.
Beyond that, I'm not sure what you're saying to me. If my boss hires "Chainsaw" Al Dunlop to head our human resources department, and makes it clear that he wants a smaller workforce, then who do we blame for all of the pinkslips?
And delegating authority to others means finding people who are likely to share your views, at least on the most important and visible issues. For the DOJ, the Microsoft case is definitely an important and visible issue.
I doubt that Ashcroft's handling of the case has been in any way different from what Bush expected it to be. Otherwise, the Bush crowd would be furious that they nominated such a person.
Bush, despite the perception that he's not very intelligent, has a knack for surrounding himself with very intelligent and competent people.
As to the "surrounding himself with intelligent people" bit... I believe that Bush has found some intelligent people. I just believe that they tend to make the wrong decisions all across the board, and I don't get it. I don't know if it's ideological stubbornness, or if they're just plain bad people. From the tax cut that's eliminating the surplus (notice how the tax cut was a great idea when the economy was good, and a similarly great idea when it was going south), to the silly military decisions (making the military less capable so we can afford a dubious missile shield), to unsupported guesses on the economy (hey, let's run deficits again), it's all been screwy.
That's utterly foolish. From the time of Bush's campaign, the Microsoft decision was one of the most visible issues facing this administration. Do you really think Bush & co would really just leave something that important to chance? I'm sure the Bush folks let the minions make plenty of decisions on their own, but if it's one of the twenty-odd issues that they know people will write about (especially if it was mentioned early), you can bet that they're giving it high-level attention. That's just plain common sense, and nobody survives in this game without keeping a close eye on the visible issues.
Do you think the core Bush crowd just delegated the details of the tax cut and forgot about it, or let some underlings deal with the spy plane incident? Please.
The problem with Microsoft has primarily been with their use of the OS monopoly to further all of their other business interests. Breaking the OS monopoly into a separate company with strict limitations on it would do a lot to ease the problems.
This kind of political suit often dies after a new administration takes over.
But rarely when two federal courts have upheld such damning findings, and many state AGs (of various political persuasion) are continuing the suit. In fact, given such blatant abuses of power as those admitted by even conservative justices, this action is quite surprising.
On the subject of political suits... I guess when you categorize any anti-trust action as political, since one party despises the idea, your argument becomes self-supporting.
By people that the Bush administration recently appointed to take over the case, after getting rid of most of the people that were running it under Clinton. That's an important distinction.