The FCC under Martin is likely to be more active on indecency than under Powell.

It was inevitable that the matter would wind up in court.

FCC's New Standards-Bearer

] The bill would make it much harder for families in
] distress to write off their debts and make a fresh start.
] Instead, many debtors would find themselves on an endless
] treadmill of payments.
]
] The credit card companies say this is needed because
] people have been abusing the bankruptcy law, borrowing
] irresponsibly and walking away from debts. The facts say
] otherwise.
]
] A vast majority of personal bankruptcies in the United
] States are the result of severe misfortune. One recent
] study found that more than half of bankruptcies are the
] result of medical emergencies. The rest are
] overwhelmingly the result either of job loss or of
] divorce.

Paul Krugman was on the daily show railing about this bankruptcy bill, which we feels has not received adequate press coverage.

The State | 03/09/2005 | Bankruptcy bill another blow to safety net

] As an attorney, practicing in the areas of international
] business and immigration law, it has come to my attention through
] discussions with other attorneys, that DHS is pulling aside "selected" aliens
] at entry checkpoints and bringing them into a separate room which contains a
] DHS computer connected to the internet. The aliens are told to bring
] up their various email accounts on the screen and enter their passwords.
] DHS then reads the emails for information pertaining to possible
] unauthorized work or other matters and questions the aliens on these findings.

Unfortunately, the way this accusation was offered makes it difficult to verify. However, if true, its legal. You have no rights outside the U.S. border. Random drug searches of U.S. Citizens reentering the country already occur. Being an alien makes matters even worse. Whether it ought to be legal is another matter. I think that whether or not this is true, its an example of why the idea that rights only exist inside the border is problematic.

[IP] DHS wants to read your email

] In common parlance, left is clearly code for "feckless,
] pseudo-intellectual wiener," while right is code for
] "winner" and "the people who are actually running
] things while you assholes are reading James Joyce."
] Left also emphatically stands for "wrong side of
] history," while right is explicitly understood to mean
] the only remaining legitimate vision for future social
] organization.

In other words, the US has gone so far to the right it has no idea where the center is.

Right Wing, Left Wing, Chicken Wing

10 years later, the CDA might be back!

] Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens said
] Tuesday he would push to apply broadcast decency
] standards to subscription television and radio services
] like cable and satellite.
]
] "There has to be some standard of decency," he said.

No, actually, there doesn't. The whole point of services like Satellite is that the customer has a wide array of choices, and as such there is no need for regulation. You don't have to listen to programming you don't like. You can "protect children" at the receiver side. You don't have to do it at the network end.

] "I think we have the same power to deal with
] cable as over-the-air" broadcasters.

No, you don't. Congress shall make NO law.... The courts cut out a specific exemption to the first amendment for over the air broadcasters that was related to the scarcity of media. That exemption does not apply to cable. Why do we elect people who don't understand or respect the Constitution?

] Stevens said he disagreed "violently" with assertions by
] the cable industry that Congress does not have the
] authority to impose limits on what they air.
]
] "If that's the issue they want to take on, we'll take it
] on and let the Supreme Court decide," he said.

Translation: We'll make you spent a whole lot of money!! We really will! So you better really care about those Constitutional rights because if you're not down for a fight to defend them you're gunna loose 'em whether its really legal or not!

Rep. Joe Barton, from Texas is apparently also on board for this.

Senator wants cable, satellite decency standards - Mar. 1, 2005

] He takes that a step further by arguing that such an
] incumbent-protection system, in which neither party risks
] losing what they already have, is the reason compromise
] has been replaced by deadlock in state politics. The
] state legislature seems forever polarized as extremists
] of left and right win safe party seats in Sacramento --
] and in Washington, too. His solution: panels of retired
] judges (and computers) to create new and presumably
] competitive elections.

This is a significant cause of polarization of politics at the federal level as well as at the state level.

CITIZEN SCHWARZENEGGER UPSETTING HIS PARTY

Try not to scream...

] Alan Greenspan is expected to retire next year. The Bush
] administration, because of its nature, will have a hard
] time finding a successor.

NYT | Krugman - The Greenspan Succession

Well, this is fucked up. I'm not sure if I'm more afraid of the lawyer speaking or the people calling in. In any event, the boundry question here is lets say I make rock music thats really angsty and for some people it incites them to violence. How do you define intent? If I know that a minority of the people who hear me are going to react in a certain way do I need to stop talking about it even though I think it has other, useful purposes? Seem so, and it seems like the speak would say thats fine because we can do without my speech.

This speaker claims there is no value in Return to Castle Wolfenstein because Germany is able to have a functional democracy even though that video game is illegal there. I think he is missing an important element of what the first amendment really means.

I hope this thing doesn't become a political football because no one is going to vote for hate speech.

Bruce Fein and Hate Speech

] Jonathan Grella, a DeLay spokesman, said DeLay still
] believed it was legitimate to allow a leader to retain
] his post while under indictment. But Grella said that by
] reinstating the rule that he step aside, DeLay was
] "denying the Democrats their lone issue. Anything that
] could undermine our agenda needs to be nipped in the
] bud."

My Way News: Republicans back down on House ethics rule

] The unspoken concern at the center of this episode: maybe
] loyalty is not enough. Maybe the president needs to vest
] his authority in someone who can actually help sail the
] ship of state on these two initiatives, someone with
] autonomous and irrefutable credibility in areas where the
] president - electoral mandates notwithstanding - could
] use a boost.
]
]
] The president, affirming Mr. Snow, has decided otherwise.
] Power, as Mr. Bush sees it, justifies itself. No boost
] required. It is undercut, in fact, by even a reasonable
] expression of need.

The Cabinet of Incuriosities