In this 1997 electronic journal entry, Senator John Aschroft (R- Missouri) does a stand-up job in chastising the Clinton-era police-state policy on Internet encryption and electronic intrusion. In the truly respectable fashion of a core-beliefs Republican, Senator Ashcroft draws attention to the fact that the Clinton administration would like the Federal government to have the capability to read any international or domestic computer communications and expresses his concern for Americans’ privacy.

Way to speak up, Senator! I hope you always get re-elected!

I didn’t post this when I first saw it because it almost falls into the “sick entertainment” bin, but when I saw you could get your own Rusty doll on eBay I knew I wasn’t alone in giggling at this poor puppy .

Another example of a cool idea that could have sprouted on the Backporch but would have nver materialized. If I lived in New York would I be able to find a group of people for performance art peices like this?

Some tasty morsels from the proposed Victory Act.

Let’s just imagine that we live in a distant future where the American government has been completely subverted by a totalitarian regime. Isn’t it likely that we’d be looking back at a piece of legislation like this as one of the points where it all began?

Apparently the wind power project in Nantucket Sound that we covered a while ago is going to go forward

The ruling to proceed followed well-established law which restricts state jurisdiction for marine construction to the zone within 3 nautical miles (about 3.5 real miles) of the mean low water mark. Opponents of the clean power project included Walter Cronkite and Senator Ted ‘Diamond Joe’ Kennedy, as well as the ex-head of Phelps-Dodge, a strip mining company that operates in the western United States.

Jank do you have some explaining to do?
I was drawn to this article by the title obviously, but after reading, am a little shocked especially by his son’s opinion that a chage of manslaughter would be outrageous. Given the fact that a man died due to his actions and his behavior has been previously documented, why not throw the book at him?

OS X is just as vulnerable as Windows.

“It’s perfectly possible to write viruses for Apple Macs,” Cluley said. “Indeed, a Mac has no more inherent security than a PC, but virus writers appear motivated by a desire to cause widespread havoc and so have concentrated on the market leader.”

See, if Microsoft would just stop trying to control the market and cede marketshare to OS X, Linux, et al, people wouldn’t have the incentive to try and write viruses for it…

Another good bit in the WSJ today (On the subscriber side) on a lawsuit filed against the Harvey Milk High School, which is a segregated school for LGBT kids in Manhattan.

… (T)he real scandal here: a city public school system willing to deliver choice to a politically influential group while subjecting hundreds of thousands of others to education triage.

The co-plaintiffs in the suit, …“Jane Doe” — a mother of four whose children attend public schools in Mr. Diaz’s district in the South Bronx… How, the suit asks, can the city justify spending millions on a gay school with a total enrollment projected at only 170 while leaving many of the one million other New York schoolchildren in the lurch?

… The Harvey Milk School for gays claims a graduation rate of 95%, with more than 60% of its students going off to college. Whatever you think of the idea of a gay school, by any measure we’re talking about an education elite. In sharp contrast, a good chunk of New York City’s other high school students — say, the black and Latino students who make up Mr. Diaz’s district — will never see a high school diploma. At the middle school attended by Jane Doe’s eldest child, only 13% of eighth-graders test at level for English and only 8.5% for math.

The Advocate has coverage, too:

_ The city has spent $750,000 to expand the school. “The issue is whether taxpayers’ money should go toward segregated schools and promoting the gay lifestyle,” Long said._

uk.gay.com hits the issue, too, saying

t has faced criticism for being a modern form of segregation, with many people, including gay rights activists, calling for schools to attack bullying directly instead.

Some guy named Carne Lord (mmm, meat) has re-written Machievelli’s The Prince for modern times. The WSJ reviews the book today, and there are a couple of decent points to be made in the review, at least enough to make me interested in reading the book.

Borrowing from Plato and Aristotle, Mr. Lord warns that “the people” can be a fickle lot and that often their will and the rule of law are at odds with each other. It is precisely to temper the passions of the people that we resort to representative rather than direct democracy. Such a form of government, in turn, imposes an obligation on our elected leaders—not merely to follow public opinion but to shape it.

I’m kind of interested in how public discussion on this is going to play out. The recall in California immediately springs to mind, raising the question of the wisdom of letting the people be able to run the government in a version of mob rule. Eventually, the mob will realize that it can vote to give itself money.

Waypath was showing zero data for the last couple week’s data points, but it’s back up and it looks like Fox should be a little concerned.

Of all the southern states that get trashed for being backwards, I have to suggest Alabama as being at the top of the list. Forty years (2 months and 9 days) ago the governor of Alabama, George C. Wallace, made a big public stand insisting that African Americans could not go to college with Caucasians. Even then most of the country knew he was an idiot and forty years later it is a badge of shame for most Alabamans.

Now, they want to keep their Ten Commandments statue in the State Judicial Building and can’t seem to understand why it might be wrong. Thank God the Supreme Court has the sense to not even listen to these bozos who give Christians a bad name.