Saturday Stuff

Happy March, everyone! Here's the chatter from the internet in the past day or so...

Barack Obama: he reached out to the LGBT community this week, and then later took a step further, calling homophobia "unchristian."

John McCain: his campaign bus is filled with lobbyists and he's having all kinds of problems with those pesky campaign finance laws. And now he's making smoochie face with a scary, bigoted, catholic-hating wingnut and end-times kook (yeah he really is that charming), James Hagee, and he refuses to take it back (and he was warned about this!).

Tim Russert: has one set of rules for Democrats and another set for Republicans? But is anyone really surprised? There's a reason he's Cheney's favorite press patsy.

George W. Bush: incoherent as ever, garbled, out of touch, and not at all self-aware (did Bush really think it sent the wrong message when Reagan had summits with Gorbachev?!?).

Jack Kingston: refuses to wear a flag on his lapel! Why does he hate America?

Rush Holt: calls Bush a "miserable lying twit" -- and calls him on his disingenuous FISA theatrics.

Three Families of Privilege: the Windsors, the Romneys and the Bushes. (btw, how much do you think Harry hates Drudge?)

Prisons: More than 1% of Americans are incarcerated. I'm thinking we need to keep the violent offenders locked up, but a lot of those people could be supporting themselves, instead of being burdens to the taxpayer. I'm sure we could do better than we're doing now.

Autism and immunizations: another perspective.

Final thoughts: what people don't say on their deathbeds.

FISA

The President has repeatedly said that Americans lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not make major changes to FISA.

But he has once again vowed to veto any FISA bill that does not grant retroactive immunity. So if we take him at his word, the President is willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies.

Oh, if only it weren't true.

Net Neutrality

Here is a great update on where we are with regards to net neutrality, and includes this observation regarding (the lack of reasonable) competition when it comes to broadband:

[...] Comcast competitors AT&T and Verizon "are two of the same companies that have been accused of participating in the warrantless wiretapping program. So my choice is a company that throttles my bandwidth without telling me or a couple of companies that hand my data off to the government without telling me. I guess that still qualifies as competition, but it's not much."

Exactly. What kind of a playing field is it for consumers when they're forced to choose between giving their business to a company that actively discriminates against legal usage of the service, and companies that have participated in widespread violation of their rights? Why should we be forced to compromise our ethics for companies that clearly have none?

The answer is that we shouldn't have to. More robust competition that serves the entire country, and not just rich urban and exurban areas, will go a long way towards giving consumers more options for their communications services.

This is why EPB's Fiber to the Home is going to be good for the Chattanooga market, but only if they make a strong committment to net neutrality and privacy. Are you listening, EPB?

Bush, Lies, Telecoms and Immunity

Bush's recent attempt to get retroactive immunity for America's phone companies so that they might continue to cooperate when his administration spies on unsuspecting, law-abiding Americans begs an obvious question.

And now, here comes the other shoe: it looks like one reason Bush has been going out on a limb for these companies is because he needs their cooperation if he's going to avoid being caught in yet another lie, specifically his claim that his illegal spying program was justified in response to 9/11 (his long-abused excuse for many extra-constitutional activities). But, as it turns out, Bush's illegal wiretapping began long before 9/11. So, there goes that pretext.

This administration is seeming more Nixonian by the moment.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs to consider that a class-A douchebag like Nacchio could conceivably be wearing the white hat in this case, and given that he's looking at a long stretch in the Big House, I imagine he feels like he'll say anything to stave that off. But what's even sadder is that Nacchio may be telling the truth.

Big Brother is watching

In ways you'd never expect (more here).

Telcos...

I do hope you were able to dump your phone company stock already.

Orin Kerr, a former federal prosecutor and assistant professor at George Washington University, said his reading of the relevant statutes put the phone companies at risk for at least $1,000 per person whose records they disclosed without a court order.

"This is not a happy day for the general counsels" of the phone companies, he said. "If you have a class action involving 10 million Americans, that's 10 million times $1,000 — that's 10 billion."

Tax returns and privacy

You didn't think your tax return information stayed between you and your preparer, did you? Be careful what you sign along with that return...