[Quote:]

Vice President Dick Cheney was back at work Tuesday after doctors administered an electrical shock to his heart and restored it to a normal rhythm after he experienced an irregular heartbeat.

“He feels fine. He is not in any pain,” said press secretary Megan Mitchell. Cheney was in his office by 7:15 a.m. and met with President Bush. He planned other meetings during the day and was to meet Tuesday evening with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

Telling people what they want to hear to win elections is nothing new.

But advances in technology have taken it to new levels. Because computers and polling have made it so much easier to gauge public opinion, candidates race to tell us what we “want” to hear.

They load us down with spin, tip toe around issues, and give us tortured explanations of how a change in their position really wasn’t a change at all – that somehow what we thought they believed back then is just the opposite of what they believe now.

My bet is not many people believe any of it because frankly, we’re not that dumb.

What annoys me is these candidates must think we are.

What should annoy you, Mr Schieffer, is that mainstream journalists, like yourself are letting them get away with it.

[Quote:]

Out of the sunny southern hemisphere comes an illustration of the radical message of Jesus. Baptist churches in inner-city Sydney have put up signs saying “Jesus Loves Osama” and quoting Matthew 5:44:

The reaction from other clergy and even the Australian Prime Minister has been overwhelmingly negative, as other groups have tried to distance themselves from a church that would go so far as to say Christ the living son of God could actually find it within himself to love Osama Bin Laden, Terrorist #1:

“I’m hesitant about it frankly, it’s a bit misleading,” Dr Jensen [head of the Anglican church in Australia] has said on Southern Cross radio.

“If I were a relative of one of the victims of Osama’s activities, I might take affront at this.”

Dr Jensen has said Jesus Christ did preach universal love, but there is a difference between love and approval.

“There is a truth in it (the message of the billboard),” he said.

“(But) what we’ve got to say is, Jesus doesn’t approve of Osama. It makes it sounds like, ‘Oh, Osama’s doing the right thing’,” he said.

Prime Minister John Howard has said churches displaying such a message might have their priorities askew.

“I understand the Christian motivation of the Baptist church,” Mr Howard has said.

“But I hope they will understand that a lot of Australians, including many Australian Christians, will think that the prayer priority of the church on this occasion could have been elsewhere.” link

Dan at Signposts says:

What a fabulous illustration of how confronting the message of Jesus is. Nobody denies Jesus said it, but everyone wants to qualify the sentiment and distance themselves from the presentation of the sign.

[Quote:]

At long last, prize-winning Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein may get his day in court. The trouble is, justice won’t be blind in this case — his lawyer will be.

Bilal has been imprisoned by the U.S. military in Iraq since he was picked up April 12, 2006, in Ramadi, a violent town in a turbulent province where few Western journalists dared go. The military claimed then that he had suspicious links to insurgents. This week, Editor & Publisher magazine reported the military has amended that to say he is, in fact, a “terrorist” who had “infiltrated the AP.”

We believe Bilal’s crime was taking photographs the U.S. government did not want its citizens to see. That he was part of a team of AP photographers who had just won a Pulitzer Prize for work in Iraq may have made Bilal even more of a marked man.

In the 19 months since he was picked up, Bilal has not been charged with any crime, although the military has sent out a flurry of ever-changing claims. Every claim we’ve checked out has proved to be false, overblown or microscopic in significance. Now, suddenly, the military plans to seek a criminal case against Bilal in the Iraqi court system in just days. But the military won’t tell us what the charges are, what evidence it will be submitting or even when the hearing will be held.

Greenpeace adopted a whale, and now wants to find a name for it:

[Quote:]

More than 11,000 possible whale names were submitted but we are now down to the last 30 possible whale names…which ones will be given to the wonderful humpback whales currently travelling on the Great Whale Trail?

Choose your favourite name from among the 30 below and hit the submit button at the bottom of the page. You can only vote once but you can ask as many friends to vote as you like.

The voting ends on the 30th of November 2007 at 17:00 Amsterdam time. So vote now and get all your friends to vote too.

Just about all the names are ancient gods and such. And then there’s “Mister Splashy Pants”

So: go and vote for “Mister Splashy Pants”!!

[Quote:]

When [Universal Music Group CEO] Morris is asked why the music business didn’t work harder, in the early days of file-sharing, to build its own (legal) online presence, there’s this exchange:

“There’s no one in the record industry that’s a technologist,” Morris explains. “That’s a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn’t. They just didn’t know what to do. It’s like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?”

Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn’t an option. “We didn’t know who to hire,” he says, becoming more agitated. “I wouldn’t be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me.”

Newsflash for you, Morris: people with a good bullshit story did get past you. That’s where all the non-working DRM crap comes from, and that’s why your own online store is failing.

[Quote:]

Privacy, data protection, freedom of expression, universal accessibility, network neutrability, interoperability, use of format and open standards, free access to information and knowledge, right to innovation and a fair and competitive market and consumers safeguard.

On these principles the Internet Bill of Rights will have to be set up, an idea produced by our country and supported by the Italian delegation, led by the Communications’ Undersecretary, Luigi Vimercati, during the UN internet Governance Forum concluded today in Rio de Janeiro.

Convened at the Forum liked the idea which roused also the Brazilian government members. So formally, Italy and Brazil endorsed a joint declaration committing themselves to reach as soon as possible a shared and planned resolution of network rights, a theme that, in the next 2008 Internet Governance Forum of New Delhi, will have to be prioritized.

[Quote:]

Today the administration released a fact sheet declaring “Principles for Friendship and Cooperation” between the US and Iraqi governments. Included among these principles is that the US will “provide security assurances to the Iraqi Government to deter any external aggression and to ensure the integrity of Iraq’s territory.” Essentially, the document lays the groundwork for a long-term US military presence in Iraq without actually signing a treaty, which would require the ratification of Congress. Looks like all those crazy people who thought the administration was lying when it said we would have no permanent bases in Iraq were right after all.

[Quote:]

Apple may have knowingly shipped its latest Tiger operating system update with a bug that could cause complete data loss on Macs with Apple’s Boot Camp installed. Echoing a growing support thread in Apple’s forums, a report by Macworld UK suggests that older Macs with Boot Camp partitions may suffer a system error on restart when users install the Mac OS X 10.4.11 update: although the problem affects unknown number of users, it is reportedly acknowledged by Apple support as a known issue and requires affected users to completely reformat their drives. The consequences not only include complete data loss in some cases, but also the inability to re-install Boot Camp, as the software — bundled with the newest Leopard operating system — is no longer available to Mac OS X Tiger users.

What a way to get people to upgrade. This is the second time Apple ships an upgrade that they know bricks computers – first the iPhone, now your Mac. Stop buying their crap, people!

[Quote:]

In UMG v. Lindor, Magistrate Judge Robert M. Levy has partially granted the defendant’s motion to compel discovery into the RIAA’s expenses-per-download, which the RIAA had opposed, giving the record companies two weeks to submit a further response to Ms. Lindor’s interrogatory, and authorizing a telephone deposition of the plaintiffs thereafter.

Damages of “$750 dollars for downloading a song” will likely be “$0.05 dollars for downloading a song” after this… or, since it’s deliberate, let’s multiply it by 10, and get to $0.50 per song. And that 10 times is probably unconstitutional:

[Punitive damages - Wikipedia:]

In response to judges and juries which award high punitive damages verdicts, the Supreme Court of the United States has made several decisions which limit awards of punitive damages through the due process of law clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. In a number of cases, the Court has indicated that a 4:1 ratio between punitive and compensatory damages is broad enough to lead to a finding of constitutional impropriety, and that any ratio of 10:1 or higher is almost certainly unconstitutional.

[Quote:]

The Net’s most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the “ASCAP cartel” to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code. Then, in an homage to cutting-edge artistry, he throws in some of the most hilarious remixes you’ve ever seen.

(I hate his slide-show technique where every word he speaks has its own slide, though)

[Quote:]

One of my favorite bits of movie dialog is from The Great Mouse Detective, in which one animated character named Basil says to another, “no one can have a higher opinion of you than I have, and I think you’re a slimy, contemptible sewer rat!”

That’s pretty much my opinion of the Republican Party of Orange County. Imagine my surprise today when I learned of a Republican Party entity that is apparently more contemptible.

For your consideration: the 2006 platform of the Oregon Republican Party. Click on the link and then do a ctrl-F and search for “7.5″, or just scroll down until you find it. Or just take my word that item 7.5 says

“Inter-jurisdictional agency cooperation shall be improved for more effective joint action against organized crime, drug cartels, terrorist networks and the Oregon Democratic Party.”

That’s right. The Oregon Republican Party equates their Democratic counterparts with organized crime, drug cartels, and terrorist networks.

Nice.