] "This is something you have on the shelf," said
] Hoofnagle. "You wait for an opportune moment, like going
] to war, to introduce it. They call this a draft, but this
] bill is definitely close to final and gives a good road
] map of what the Justice Department wants."

I wonder how long the patriot act was on the shelf before September 11th. This is fairly reasonable evidence that these acts are a general effort at widening powers rather then a specific effort to enable the investigation of specific crimes.

Wired News: A Chilly Response to 'Patriot II'

If you agree with Thompson's perspective on America, and you're looking for a worst case scenario, you could do worse then to read this book. Its a psycho analysis of the reasons that people establish totalitarian states. This is what fear does to societies.

Amazon.com: Books: Escape from Freedom

] Perhaps Thompson's most disturbing charge is aimed at the
] American people -- only half of whom exercise their right
] to vote. "The oligarchy doesn't need an educated public.
] And maybe the nation does prefer tyranny," he says. "I
] think that's what worries me."

Actually, the "oligarchy" does, in fact, need an educated public. However, I'd agree that the nation prefers tyranny. They seem to externalize it. Like Tyranny is great because its not going to effect me. And I'd offer that the people prefer to be uneducated. Thinking is hard. Its easy just to do what you're told.

Salon.com News | Hunter S. Thompson

] As of next Monday I will be on tour. So, in an effort to
] cut myself some slack from the few precious civilian days
] remaining, I'm opting to post the following talk, which
] I gave last year at the Vancouver Art Gallery. VAG had
] mounted an ambitious if oddly titled (The Uncanny) show
] around the theme of "the cyborg". Since this seemed to be
] "the cyborg" as academics understand "the cyborg", and
] not just a cyborg, or cyborgs, as you or I might
] understand cyborg(s) I took it upon myself to lower the
] tone of the proceedings with the following.

What were things like before television?

William Gibson: In the Visegrips of Dr. Satan (w/ Vannevar Bush and Google)

] WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 After a weekend of antiwar
] protests that many participants say signaled an expansion
] of public opposition to military action against Iraq,
] some organizers are facing criticism, much of it from
] within the movement, about the role played by their
] group, International Answer.
] Attendance at rallies in Washington and San Francisco
] last Saturday was in the tens of thousands, and reflected
] a mix of views that spanned the social and political
] spectrums. Many protest organizers say the presence of
] labor unions, religious groups, business people and
] soccer moms showed a growing mainstream opposition to the
] war.

Some War Protesters Uneasy With Others

] The Internet has become a giant white elephant. Its
] technological capabilities are dazzling; its commercial
] realities are depressing.

There is much to observe about the state of things in thinking about why this essay is wrong.

I won't bother explaining why his over simplification of the intellectual property problem is misleading. Its well covered elsewhere.

What I will note is that his analogy to automobiles is silly, but also instructive. Automobiles have been a part of our society for a hundred years. All previous forms of transportation have, for the most part, been elminiated, and the layout of our cities, in fact our whole planet, has been reorganized with the existence of automobiles in mind. Therefore, at this stage we could not hope to revert to steam locomotives, and carriages, without huge disruptions.

The Internet, on the other hand, has been available commerically for around 8 years. Although already I feel like I couldn't live without it, we certainly haven't done any reorganizing of society to account for it it, and we haven't eliminated any of our older communications systems. So, yes, in general we could do away with it, much as we might have been able to do away with the automobile 8 years into its development.

So his arguement is silly, but also illuminating. If you want to know what is going to happen over the next 50 years, consider what occured over the first 50 years of the automobile...

Lack of innovation fueled Internet failure

] To some extent, journalists have felt obliged to tone
] down criticisms because of the sense of shared national
] purpose after September 11. Even that cannot explain how
] the papers cravenly ignored the Trent Lott story. Lott,
] the veteran senator from Mississippi, made his pro-
] segregation statement on a Thursday, in full earshot of
] the Washington press corps. The Times and Post both
] failed to mention it. Indeed, it was almost totally
] ignored until the following Tuesday, kept alive until
] then only by a handful of bloggers. If there is a
] Watergate scandal lurking in this administration, it is
] unlikely to be Woodward or his colleagues who will tell
] us about it. If it emerges, it will probably come out on
] the web. That is a devastating indictment of the state of
] American newspapers.

While the Guardian is certainly not to be known as a bastion of objectivity, this screed on the state of American journalism feels honest and sensible. The implications segway directly into some of the commentary I've offered here about the relationship between weblogs and the press.

MediaGuardian.co.uk | Media | Bushwhacked

This is a scan of an interview with John Ashcroft from a fringe political magazine called "Southern Partisan" (printed in the CSA).
A lot of the commentary is mostly harmless "I like the Confederacy" kind of stuff. What is interesting is the discussion of state's rights, and particularily the connection that he makes between that and affirmatire action. No fire here, but there is a hell of a lot of smoke.

John Ashcroft might be a racist too...

] "The most infamous of these efforts was Ronald Reagan's
] advocacy of "states' rights" — the Dixiecrat code word
] for segregation — at the Neshoba County Fair in
] Philadelphia, Miss., where 16 years earlier the murder
] of three civil rights workers made international headlines."

Concerning racism in the Republican Party.

The Ways Republicans Talk About Race

] "A spokesman for West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd said
] Monday morning that the top Senate Democrat has told him
] he never participated in lynchings, cross burnings or
] other hate crimes against African-Americans while he was
] a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s. "

Good lord! I liked Byrd's comments in the recent Iraq war hearings. The stuff mentioned in this article is clearly aweful. I had no idea. If this stuff catches wind in the major media Byrd will be history. Of course, a similar effort to oust John Ashcroft for similar reasons has yet to really get going. Ashcroft may have done a better job of covering it up.

Sen. Byrd: I Didn't Lynch and Wasn't Racist While in the Klan