He said: "We would not charge for that. We would have no trouble [with that]."

White House Web Scrubbing

My contributions are made in what I believe to be the common interest.

George Soros defends his campaign contributions.

Why I Gave

A concerned Harvard Law professor said, "You are talking about overthrowing 800 years of democratic tradition."

There isn't much substance to this article, but it serves as a data point.

Patriot Act Author Has Concerns

The requirement, announced Friday by California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, applies to all electronic voting systems already in use as well as those currently being purchased. The machines must be retrofitted with printers to produce a receipt by 2006.

E-Votes Must Leave a Paper Trail

] The Founding Fathers would have found [the USA PATRIOT ACT]
] to be despotism in spades. And they would have hanged
] anybody who tried to get this through the Constitutional
] Convention in Philadelphia. Hanged.

Gore Vidal discusses the Bush administration, patriot act, eVoting...

This is entertaining, but my regular litmus for lefties is Afghanistan. If you oppose Afghanistan I can't take you seriously.

LA Weekly: Features: Uncensored Gore

"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.

] The Federal Communications Commission took a historic
] step this week toward limiting piracy of digital
] television signals, enacting regulations that will affect
] not only consumer-electronics manufacturers, but Silicon
] Valley companies as well.

Declan McCullagh's News.Com article on the broadcast flag.

] Three computer hardware makers contacted by CNET
] News.com on Wednesday said that the FCC's order
] would require them to redesign or stop selling their
] current products.

] "This was designed to absolutely kill the computer," said
] Cliff Watson, a senior engineer at Digital Connection, a
] small business in Huntington Beach, Calif., that sells an
] HDTV PCI card. "It will kill the computer because the
] actual implementation of the ruling is so bloody restrictive."

Are PCs next in Hollywood piracy battle? | CNET News.com

] The second way the FCC's claims are deceptive is the more
] troubling of the two, and that is the compatibility
] problem I spoke of above. Arguably right now a TiVO or a
] DVD recorder with no tuner might not be covered, but
] after 2005, that same TiVO or DVD probably won't be
] compatible with the new FCC-governed DTV television set.
] ***THIS is the REAL problem. Whiles the FCC says the
] device is not covered, after 2005, in many cases it just
] won't work. ***

[Politech] Analysis of FCC's broadcast flag rules, from Ethan Ackerman