The Navy wants to increase its fleet to 313 ships by 2020, reversing years of decline in naval shipbuilding and adding dozens of warships designed to defeat emerging adversaries, senior Defense Department officials say.

Navy to Expand Fleet With New Enemies in Mind

Decius wrote:

A new front in the political wars over sex and violence in video games opened Tuesday when Senators Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman called for a new crackdown on the industry by the federal government.

Remember that a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for more of this kind of stuff. You know, children who are never exposed to reality and never have to make their own choices about right and wrong do a real good job of taking care of themselves when they go to college.

I guess it isn't really surprising that the whole Parents Music Resource Center flap with Tipper Gore and Jello Biafra from 20 years ago is playing itsself out again in the context of video games...

RE: Senators target 'graphic' video games | CNET News.com

The Supreme Court accepted an appeal by eBay Inc. in a closely watched patent case on Monday and agreed to revisit the rules under which courts grant injunctions against a company found to be infringing another's patent.

A federal court jury in Norfolk, Va., found in 2003 that eBay, the online auction house, was violating three patents owned by MercExchange, a small company in Great Falls, Va. The jury assessed more than $25 million in damages.

But Judge Jerome B. Friedman of Federal Disrict Court, noting that MercExchange "exists solely to license its patents or sue to enforce its patents, and not to develop or commercialize them," refused to issue an injunction that would have barred eBay from continuing to use the patented methods in its Web operations.

Justices Agree to Consider EBay Appeal in Patent Case

New standards for calculating fuel economy ratings on cars and trucks will be proposed by the end of the year, the Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday, but the agency is still not saying exactly how the standards may change.

Agency Plans Updated Fuel Economy Standards

A tentative deal to extend the government's antiterrorism powers under the law known as the USA Patriot Act appeared in some jeopardy Thursday, as Senate Democrats threatened to mount a filibuster in an effort to block the legislation.

Extension of Patriot Act Faces Threat of Filibuster

For the third time in recent months, a federal judge has balked at allowing government investigators to track a citizen via cell phone in real time without agents showing probable cause.

Wired News: Judges Reject Cell-Phone Tracking

That kind of power to hinder or foster freedom of the Internet, centralized in a single government, is the crucial issue for many of the 12,000 people expected in Tunis this week for a United Nations summit meeting on the information age.

Four years of high-level talks on Internet governance will conclude with the meeting. On its eve, a figurative ocean separates the American position - that the Internet works fine as it is - from most of the rest of the world. That includes the European Union, which says the Internet is an international resource whose center of gravity must move away from Washington.

This even made Morning Edition on NPR this morning. Is all this fuss just about the root zone or is there more to it? We really need to find a way to throw the Europeans a bone in such a way that will placate them and at the same time not result in much substantive change while we try to figure out a non-disruptive way to get away from a centrally managed root.zone (which, btw, can be gotten from here)

Other Nations Hope to Loosen U.S. Grip on Internet

Google, Microsoft, eBay, Amazon.com and InterActiveCorp representatives said in letters and statements to a U.S. House of Representatives panel that the new legislation it is preparing is too heavy-handed and favors certain technologies to the detriment of others.

Tech firms assail proposed broadband rules

All eight members up for re-election to the Pennsylvania school board that had been sued for introducing the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in biology class were swept out of office yesterday by a slate of challengers who campaigned against the intelligent design policy.

Evolution Slate Outpolls Rivals

At the conclusion of last Thursday's proceedings, Judge Thompson stated that he would take Blank Rome's motion to revoke Thompson's license under advisement and is also considering a motion to have the entire suit dismissed via summary judgment because it violates the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Judge Moore scheduled no further court dates for the case at the conclusion of last Thursday's proceedings.

For those of you following the Jack Thompson flap on Penny Arcade and elsewhere...

Jack Thompson Withdraws from GTA Case