mccain argues that flip-flops are an example of a political leader who can’t be trusted — so he might as well drop out of the race.

read the rest of this story (alternet.org)

“if you’re going to pick some kind of sudden sickness to fake your way out of a court appearance don’t choose a heart attack because once they check your vitals it’s a tough one to stick with”:

…like the nsa headquarters.

thanks to the billboard liberation front!

just wanted to wish a belated happy birthday to president abraham lincoln, who was quoted as saying:

“i see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of our country. corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed.”

thanks to bob plankers, “the lone sysadmin” for this:

here’s senator russ feingold talking very frankly about fisa and the issue of privacy (it’s short):

this guy gets it.

just a heads up, don’t link to businessweek.

according to the terms of use on businessweek’s web site, you may not:

use or attempt to use any “deep-link”, “scraper”, “robot”, “bot”, “spider”, “data mining”, “computer code” or any other automated device, program, tool, algorithm, process or methodology or manual process having similar processes or functionality, to access, acquire, copy, or monitor any portion of bw.com, any data or content found on or accessed through bw.com, or any other bw.com information without prior express written consent of bw;

i guess that means it’s also against their terms of use to subscribe to their rss feed as well.

i suppose that launching firefox and entering the url to businessweek would constitute a “manual process” which, therefore, means that even reading their web site is now a violation!

“the oregon attorney general’s office is investigating the recording industry association of america’s practices regarding 17 university of oregon students accused of copyright infringement. while the ag isn’t minimizing the seriousness of copyright violations, his office has submitted a brief questioning the data mining tactics and subpoena practices employed by the riaa.”

read the rest of this article on information week.

“and if you got the tamper proof ID card, then you’d be allowed to work, pay taxes, get online, become a citizen, follow the rules….”

i’ve mentioned before that i don’t like him because of his fearmongering tactics and this just gives me another reason. privacy isn’t important, right?