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Recall how football players shave their heads in solidarity with a teammate who’s going through chemo? What the Democrats need to do, should Obama become the nominee, is to use Hussein as their adopted middle names. Ted Hussein Kennedy. Nancy Hussein Pelosi. Hillary Hussein Clinton. (Well, maybe not.) And his supporters, too. This is something that can easily go viral and backfire on the far right big-time.

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Remember when Denver’s voters decided back in November to make pot “the city’s lowest law-enforcement priority?” The ballot measure joined another, passed in 2005, saying that residents had the right to carry less than an ounce of marijuana, leading to hopes that marijuana arrests were about to become a thing of the past in the Mile High City.

But precisely the opposite has happened. More people are being arrested these days than before the measures passed, according to one disappointed backer who spoke to The Denver Post:

Mason Tvert, a proponent of the marijuana initiatives, said that 1,600 adults faced charges of misdemeanor marijuana possession in 2007, an increase of 18 percent from 2006, an increase of 36 percent from 2005 and an increase of approximately 50 percent from 2004.

I wonder how Denver authorities would respond to a flood of jury nullifications….

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From the Agreement:

Applications may only use Published APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any unpublished or private APIs.


You are only allowed to do what is specified in the SDK manual. Anything else is completely off limits. Imagine if they had this rule on the Mac, just how stable things would be

Following the problems in the sub-prime lending market in America uncertainty has now hit Japan, in the last 7 days: Origami Bank has folded, Sumo Bank has gone belly up, Bonsai Bank announced plans to cut some of its branches, Karaoke Bank is up for sale and will likely go for a song, Shares in Kamikaze Bank were suspended after they nose-dived, 500 staff at Karate Bank got the chop, and analysts report that there is something fishy going on at Sushi Bank where it is feared that clients and staff may get a raw deal.

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The New South Wales Cabinet has approved new powers for police designed to help them track terrorist threats, fraudsters and paedophiles through computer networks.

The proposed laws would allow police to search computers networked to those listed on a search warrant.

Police could also seize computer hard drives and memory sticks for up to seven days.

Police Minister David Campbell says police are currently only able to search computer hardware found on a premises named in a search warrant.

He says with the changes, they will be able to go a step further and search other networked computers, regardless of where they are located.

Perhaps the NSW police could research this new-fangled technology called “Internet”. It apparently connects quite a number of computers together, and not all of them are subject to NSW laws..

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The reason the government is so worried about telecom immunity is the ongoing lawsuit of Hepting v. AT&T. This lawsuit, filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, alleges that AT&T assisted the government in performing illegal electronic surveillance. The administration has an incentive to block the EFF’s lawsuit (and others like it) by asserting “state secrets,” as it’s likely that a trial would reveal evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of government officials. Another twist that sets the EFF’s case apart came from former AT&T employee Mark Klein, who provided the EFF attorneys with documents that revealed the installation of a secret room at AT&T’s San Francisco hub in early 2003. These documents purportedly show that the NSA has the ability to copy all of the internet traffic that passes through AT&T’s network. If Klein’s statements are true, and assuming similar installations were conducted at other hubs, the NSA may have examined nearly every communication that has traveled over U.S. networks since 2003. On the other hand, if the complaint is dismissed because a court decides that it poses too great a risk to national security, the incriminating evidence may never see the light of day.

Here’s where it gets expensive. If the EFF’s suit is allowed to proceed, and it reveals more widespread violations of the FISA laws, what can Americans do about it? FISA provides financial remedies for people who have been illegally wiretapped. Code provision 50 U.S.C. § 1810 imposes civil liability on any person (or entity) for each violation of FISA. Victims of illegal surveillance are entitled to recover $100 for each day they were wiretapped, or actual damages over $1000, whichever is greater. Additionally, FISA provides compensation for attorney’s fees and other costs of litigation. This is good news for private citizens and their lawyers who contemplate facing off against well-funded corporations with truly staggering financial liability at stake.

As you may imagine, one hundred dollars per day, per person adds up over four years. If the Hepting lawsuit is successful, AT&T could face damages of over $36,500 per claimant per year. Nearly every person with a computer or phone in the United States could be impacted. If AT&T is liable to just their own customers, with over 70 million wireless subscribers, one year of warrantless wiretaps could amount to more than two and a half trillion dollars in statutory damages.

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But America is in the lead when it comes to energy independence; we’re in the lead when it comes to new technologies; we’re in the lead when it comes to global climate change — and we’ll stay that way.

Excuse me while I go bang my head against the wall for a while…

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Cannotrustclinton.com? clintonisbad.com? At least 25 domain names related to Hillary Rodham Clinton have links to the Republican National Committee: the names were either registered by the R.N.C. last year or showed up on servers the committee uses. Half a dozen seemed to guess at Mrs. Clinton’s eventual running mate, like clintonomalley.com, referring to Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland.

The day after Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses, the R.N.C. snapped up at least 20 domains related to his candidacy. Some of them may signal the party’s future strategy: baracknotready.com and norealexperience.com. The party has also begun preemptively registering domains that could be used to attack John McCain, like mccainamigos.com, voteagainstmccain.com, flipflopmccain.com and hatemccain.com (ihatemccain.com was taken.)

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You’ll never guess who was the most excited about yesterday’s endorsement.

As of this writing, there’s no mention of it on the home page of McCain’s Web site. There’s no mention of it all on the Republican National Committee‘s home page. In fact, I can’t find any mention whatsoever of the event on either Web site at all. (It’s like: Bush Who?)

But on the Democratic National Committee Web site, the lead headline blares: “Bush Endorses John McCain as His Successor.”

“Since the event was held in the middle of the afternoon we fear that some Americans may miss George Bush’s assurances that John McCain would continue the Bush Administrations failed economic and foreign policies,” the DNC explains. “As a public service we’ve posted a video of the press conference for voters to see.”

So how’s that Bush legacy coming along?

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Apple iPhone SDK Agreement: “No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and builtin interpreter(s)… An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise.”

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The Canadian government is no longer using evidence gained from CIA interrogations of a top Al Qaeda detainee who was waterboarded.

According to documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the country’s national-security agency, last month quietly withdrew statements by alleged Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah from public papers outlining the case against two alleged terror “sleeper” operatives in Ottawa and Montreal.

The move, which so far has received no public attention, is the latest sign of potential international fallout from the CIA’s recent confirmation that it waterboarded a handful of high-profile Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003.

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Asked why the statements from Zubaydah had been dropped from the dossiers against Harkat and Charkaoui, Bernard Beckhoff, a spokesman for Canada’s public safety ministry, which oversees CSIS, said he could not comment on developments in either case because they are both still before the courts. But he then added, pointedly: “The CSIS director has stated publicly that torture is morally repugnant and not particularly reliable. CSIS does not knowingly use information which has been obtained through torture.”

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But the development was immediately seized on by human-rights advocates as proof that the Bush administration’s use of interrogation techniques rejected by the rest of the world will undermine counterterrorism cases in foreign courts. “This shows how the United States is shooting itself in the foot in terrorism cases,” said John Sifton, the director of One World Research, a public-interest group that investigates human-rights abuses internationally.

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In a Cabinet-style setting, surrounded by retired military leaders, Sen. Hillary Clinton said the public should ask whether Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama has met the criteria needed to become the nation’s commander in chief.

“I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant’s bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

“I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,” she said.