There is a vigorous debate about the war in Iraq today, and we should not fear the debate. It's one of the great strengths of our democracy that we can discuss our differences openly and honestly -- even in times of war. Yet we must remember there is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate -- and it's even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas.

The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.

... So I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account, and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy -- not comfort to our adversaries.

In this comment Bush essentially accusses his war critics of Treason. I expect this from partisan commentators, but coming from the President its over the top. The Republican party has an army of partisan talk show hosts, television personalities, and editorial writers who spew reams of disingenuous bullshit on a daily basis. If Bush was really serious about cleaning up the nature of political rhetoric he would start in his own backyard. Furthermore, serious, constructive, and, in retrospect, correct criticisms of his Iraq policy coming from inside his administration have resulting in firings. The American people know that if you live in a glass house you shouldn't throw rocks.

Remarks by President Bush on the Global War on Terror

In fairness to Yahoo, which handed over information -- and MSN which likely did the same -- it is important to note that it is not just spin that no privacy issues were involved with this particular data. As I explained in the story, the information is completely divorced from any personally identifiable data.

Lots of good information in here about the Google FBI thing. Apparently they don't want IP addresses...

Bush Administration Demands Search Data; Google Says No; AOL, MSN & Yahoo Said Yes

Here's where the reality meter goes into overdrive. VeriSign is also the company that sells about half of the net's SSL certificates for "secure ecommerce [4]." These SSL certificates are what presumptively protect connections between consumers and merchants. It is claimed that a certificate that is signed by a certificate authority (CA) can protect against the man-in-the-middle (MITM) attack and also domain name spoofing.

A further irony is that VeriSign also runs the domain name system for the .com and the .net domains. So, indeed, they do have a hand in the business of domain name spoofing;

The point here is that, on the one hand, VeriSign is offering protection from snooping, and on the other hand, is offering to facilitate the process of snooping.

Financial Cryptography: VeriSign's conflict of interest creates new threat

an. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Google Inc., the most-used Internet search engine, was sued by the Justice Department after it refused to turn over information that may help the government monitor sexually explicit material on the Web.

The Justice Department said it asked for all Google queries for a week and for 1 million Internet addresses in the company's database. According to the lawsuit, other search engines have complied with similar requests, ``and have not reported that they encountered any difficulty or burden in doing so.''

They did what now! How many of you want anything you have ever typed into Google to be in the government's hands? How many of you are pissed that other search engines just said "Here!"

DoJ sues Google for failing to turn over records!

"We have the ability to access virtually any packet data network and by using mediation equipment deployed in our network, VeriSign can provide a secure, reliable, cost-efficient solution that enables carriers with GPRS or CDMA 1x technologies to comply with all lawful intercept requirements without impacting network performance."

How would you feel if I told you that Verisign has the capability to listen to all of your telephone calls. How would you feel if I told you their lawyers are the ones who decide whether or not to a law enforcement request is up to snuff?

The Cover Pages: VeriSign NetDiscovery Lawful Intercept Service

The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases.

The move is part of a government effort to revive an Internet child protection law struck down two years ago by the U.S. Supreme Court. The law was meant to punish online pornography sites that make their content accessible to minors. The government contends it needs the Google data to determine how often pornography shows up in online searches.

In court papers filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Justice Department lawyers revealed that Google has refused to comply with a subpoena issued last year for the records, which include a request for 1 million random Web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period.

I rest my case.

Bush wants Google search data

A couple who planted a severed finger in a bowl of Wendy's chili in a scheme to extort money from the fast-food chain were sentenced Wednesday to prison terms of nine years and more than 12 years.

Seems excessive for fraud.

The Volokh Conspiracy - Couple Sentenced to Prison In Wendy's Severed-Finger Case:

The Vatican newspaper has published an article saying "intelligent design" is not science and that teaching it alongside evolutionary theory in school classrooms only creates confusion.

Vatican paper article says 'intelligent design' not science

It is now possible to define a ping attribute on anchor and area tags. When a user follows a link via one of these tags, the browser will send notification pings to the specified URLs after following the link.

If IE picks this up, MemeStreams could use it...

Fried Fish: Mozilla Ping Feature

Two lawsuits were filed Tuesday in federal court that seek to end President Bush's electronic eavesdropping program, saying it is illegal and exceeds his constitutional powers.

You'll recall that this is exactly how I said this should be resolved.

Wired News: Lawsuits filed over NSA surveillance