"It is the central focus of my life. America, under Bush, is a danger to the world. And I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is."

Jeremy said:
The wrinkle in Soros's plan is that none of the major Democratic candidates are a particularly good fit for his foreign policy.

I'll add:
The campaign finance issues here are also interesting. This is the first time that major donations have moved to proxy organizations. What difference does it make?

Soros's Deep Pockets vs. Bush

] Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating
] the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to
] make us safe -- because in the long run, stability cannot
] be purchased at the expense of liberty. As long as the
] Middle East remains a place where freedom does not
] flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation,
] resentment, and violence ready for export. And with the
] spread of weapons that can bring catastrophic harm to our
] country and to our friends, it would be reckless to
] accept the status quo.
]
] Therefore, the United States has adopted a new policy, a
] forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East.

Read this. This is Bush in rare form. Its probably the best I've heard out of him. It might be the best he'll ever offer. This is certainly the most positive perspective on current events that I've heard since before the market crashed. It is a hopeful and intelligent vision. Its something worth fighting for.

There is this nagging voice that keeps telling me to take a shot at him for ways that I think his policies diverge from these ideals. I'm not going to. This speech deserves to stand on its own. And Saffire was right, you ought to read it.

President Bush's speech at the National Endowment for Democracy

] For the first time in our history, American citizens have
] been seized by the executive branch of government and put
] in prison without being charged with a crime, without
] having the right to a trial, without being able to see a
] lawyer, and without even being able to contact their
] families.

Increasingly I must insist that brevity is genius, but many of you will enjoy watching Gore rip the President a new one for paragraph after paragraph, even if the material might be redundant for you. If 9-11 made everyone more radical, here you can really see how deep the chasm is between the left and the right. What I will say is most interesting is that Gore is even fair. He is careful, for example, to acknowledge that some of the sections of the Patriot act aren't unreasonable.... And yet he still has much to complain about.

Al Gore reads the administration the riot act.

... Let's get real. In the scheme of things, the amount of money involved here is kind of piddling. A lot of people that talk about this think a million dollars is a big deal.

I'm going to venture a guess that ICANN feels that the elections had too high a percentage of "hackers" participating, and this lead to the election of "hackers" to their board, whom they don't feel represent the real user community. They probably have no idea how to get the people they feel are the user community interested enough to participate, so they have concluded that elections don't work.

Its interesting that Dyson is trying to distance herself from ICANN, while still supporting it. Playing both sides? Or maybe she feels that the end may come, and doesn't want to be swept away with ICANN when it happens.

Salon.com Technology | Esther Dyson defends ICANN

"It's not punitive, it's just purely prevention to stop him from attacking us. He's going to stay in the can until we're through with al-Qaida."

Padilla to Be Held Indefinitely

GrepLaw is Harvard's answer to LawMeme. Some recent headlines:

New York sues Monster Spammer
Cybersquatter King Nailed With Multi-Million Dollar Judgment
Cross Border Disputes in Internet Law
Registrar Market Share Study Expanded to Forbes International 500
RIAA Goes After Audio Galaxy MP3 Service
Stuart Lynn leaves ICANN and More
FBI Forces ISP to Remove Daniel Pearl Video
Which Registrars Do Fortune 500 Companies Use?
Library of Congress Rejects Webcasting Licensing Plan
Eldred v. Ashcroft Update--Opening Brief Filed, Amici Weigh In

GrepLaw: More cyberlaw than you can fit on a floppy.

The second area in which libertarians have overreached themselves is in biotechnology. ... there are reasons to be skeptical of arguments that say that genetic engineering is just another choice.

Fukuyama raises the specter of September 11th and of society with a genetically engineered class structure as scare tactics to justify the restriction not of the *practice* of genetic engineering, but of the *research* of genetic engineering, something he clearly walks right into with his mention of stem cell research. This *is* the Republican party trying to find a secular argument that allows them to regulate what people are allowed to *think* about.

Do I think its wrong to abort a fetus because of it's sex? Of course I do. I wouldn't mind a law to that effect. It does not follow that research into genetic engineering should be banned. Knowing how is not the same as doing. Furthermore, Fukuyama is more then well aware that it is the distribution of knowledge that most greatly impacts people's relative position in society, and not their genetic makeup. What these people seek to do is place knowledge of biology in a safe that only they are entrusted to open. Fukuyama and Bill Joy are obviously more qualified to safely handle this knowledge then the rest of us. I'm sure they'll use this trust, once won, in the most benevolent manner possible. Yeah, right...

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