That Padilla’’s claims raise fundamental issues respecting the separation of powers, including consideration of the role and function of the courts, also counsels against addressing those claims when the course of legal proceedings has made them, at least for now, hypothetical...

In the course of its supervision over Padilla’’s custody and trial the District Court will be obliged to afford him the protection, including the right to a speedy trial, guaranteed to all federal criminal defendants. See, e.g., U. S. Const., Amdt. 6; 18 U. S. C. §3161. Were the Government to seek to change the status or conditions of Padilla’’s custody, that court would be in a position to rule quickly on any responsive filings submitted by Padilla.

!?#@$ Are these people fucking high? It wasn't hypothetical when they tossed it back the first time and they sure as hell didn't act quickly then. Apparently the government CAN hold YOU without charges for several YEARS as long as they can convince these guys to drag their feet on it! Thats an incorrect result, and this decision is a cop-out. This incident will come back to haunt us.

OrinKerr.com » Cert Denial in Padilla

The News Corp.'s purchase of MySpace is looking like that rarest of rarities in the media world -- a much-ballyhooed acquisition where it turns out that the buyer underpaid.

Interesting perspective.

News Corp. (hearts) MySpace | FORTUNE

"I don't think there should be a St Patrick's Day," anti-immigrant
television celebrity Lou Dobbs announced yesterday. Speaking to National
Council of La Raza president Janet Murguia on the topic of immigration
reform, the CNN personality continued, "I don't care who you are. I think we
should be celebrating what's common in this country."

To call this a Maoist sentiment would be a compliment.

Both commenter and commentee are, technically, conservatives.

This country is full of partisan commentators who play the straw man game. "I found one person on the other side of the fence who said something that is wrong. This is what those people actually think! Ergo, everyone on that side of the fence is "crazy."" This message is pounded in over, and over, and over, and over for years, until the hapless listeners are completely unable to view the "other side" as anything but crazy, and they are also completely immunized against critical thought. As they are used to criticism only coming from the "other side" they assume that anyone who criticises anything on their side must be on the other side, and as everyone on the other side is crazy, there is no point in listening to the criticism.

This is how they control you. The first step is to stop calling yourself a liberal and or conservative. Just stop.

Partisanship is stupid.

Reason: Bush Presidency Dies at Border: How the administration lost control of the immigration debate

Cofer Black, vice chairman of Blackwater USA, said that his company could supply private soldiers to any country. Blackwater has been marketing the concept of private armies for low-intensity conflicts.

"About a year ago, we realized we could do it."

He said the company was capable of providing a brigade-sized force on alert.

Can I place an order over the Web? Can I designate targets with a web-enabled camera phone?

Cofer Black offers 'private armies' for low-intensity conflicts

A DEVICE that can pick up on people's emotions is being developed to help people with autism relate to those around them. It will alert its autistic user if the person they are talking to starts showing signs of getting bored or annoyed.

I know several people who should be required by law to wear this!

New Scientist Technology - Device warns you if you're boring or irritating

Mike the Usurper wrote:

Critics point to Colorado, one of the first states to pass term limits in 1990. Diane Rees, a lobbyist for the past 30 years in Denver, said term limits there have resulted in a near total loss of institutional memory and an increase in power of staff and bureaucrats.

(channelling W for this one) "I don't think anyone predicted this." Actually, I think everyone opposed to limits expected exactly this

This is an interesting issue, althought I think there may be better coverage elsewhere. Unfortunately the tone of some of these advocacy sites clearly indicates that this has moved past the reasonable dialog about the issues phase and firmly into the irrational partisan vitriol phase.

RE: Impact of Term Limits in Nebraska Feared - Yahoo! News

The owners of the privately held company have turned down a $750 million offer and hope to fetch as much as $2 billion in a sale, senior industry executives familiar with the matter say.

That may sound like a huge amount of money, especially when you consider that the company was launched just two years ago by a group of sophomores at Harvard University, led by Mark Zuckerberg (see BW Online, "Under 30, On the Cutting Edge"). But already, www.facebook.com has become the seventh-most heavily trafficked site on the Internet, according to market researcher comScore Media Metrix. It racked up 5.5 billion page views during the month of February, the latest month for which complete data are available. That's more page views than the Web sites of Amazon.com (AMZN), Ask.com, or Walt Disney (DIS).

I know several other Memestreamers are working on some cool web apps. Seems that there is a lot of interest in the area. How misguided it may be is a different story, but it looks like there's a crazy money pile at the end of the rainbow.

$750 Million not enough for Facebook

Fine example of a WW II Enigma cipher machine in a very good condition and a great history; full functional.

Holy fuck!

eBay: Enigma 3 Walzen Chiffriermaschine Chiper Weltkrieg 1941

We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.

Delta Force founder - 'our credibility is utterly zero'

In an internal memo last October, Ray Ozzie, chief technical officer, who joined Microsoft last year, wrote, "Complexity kills. It sucks the life out of developers, it makes products difficult to plan, build and test, it introduces security challenges and it causes end-user and administrator frustration."

The trouble with Microsoft.

Windows Is So Slow, but Why? - New York Times