I want to see a debate between Tom Friedman and Freeman Dyson.

Climate change is not a hoax. The hoax is that we are really doing something about it.

Tom Friedman: climate change is real!

"It's not that you get turned on by it. It's just interesting."

Debbie Newell used her 24-hour hobby to such helpful ends. For her, the chatter between dispatchers and officers is like a well-timed symphony.

But that drama turned real a few months ago when she and her husband were driving near the city's marina, where they passed a woman using a phone booth.

It struck her as strange -- no one uses phone booths anymore, she thought to herself.

"Calling all officers to the scene of a phone call in progress at the corner of 6th and Main ..."

Police crackle lures avid listeners

WSJ puts the nail ...

Maybe I should have gone to law school. But only if God promised I would grow up to be a justice on the Supreme Court.

... Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion, took about half a line to say, "I agree," and proceeded to write one of the most compelling essays I've seen on the decline and fall of American public education. I would happily hand out Justice Thomas's opinion on street corners ...

Here's a final quotation from Monday's "Bong" decision to pass out on street corners: "Students will test the limits of acceptable behavior in myriad ways better known to schoolteachers than to judges; school officials need a degree of flexible authority to respond to disciplinary challenges; and the law has always considered the relationship between teachers and students special. Under these circumstances, the more detailed the Court's supervision becomes, the more likely its law will engender further disputes among teachers and students. Consequently, larger numbers of those disputes will likely make their way from the schoolhouse to the courthouse. Yet no one wishes to substitute courts for school boards, or to turn the judge's chambers into the principal's office." More right-wing rant from Clarence Thomas? Nope, that's liberal Justice Stephen Breyer's concurrence.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus--Final Episode

Attention Virginians: The cost of bad driving is about to go up. Way up.

"My job as a delegate is to make people slow down and build some roads. This bill does both."

Hefty Fees In Store for Misbehaving Va. Drivers

Full Committee Hearing on "Assessing the Impact of the Copyright Royalty Board Decision to Increase Royalty Rates on Recording Artists and Webcasters.

Yesterday the House held a hearing in response to the Day of Silence. But BusinessWeek says:

Small Webcasters intent on keeping Internet radio stations from going out of business best not look to Congress for help. That's the message from a June 28 House of Representatives hearing aimed at resolving a dispute over efforts to increase the royalties paid by Web radio stations to musicians and record labels for spinning their songs.

House Small Business Committee Chairwoman Nydia Velazquez said she'd prefer Webcasters and the music industry come up with their own compromise. "I really don't think Congress would be the best type of vehicle to resolve this type of issue," she said after the testimony of seven witnesses, including independent record-label owners, musicians, and Webcasters. "July 15 is just around the corner, and I hope the two parties can come together and resolve this issue."

Impact of Royalty Increases on Internet Radio

Sarkozy: Listen, I'm sorry to say it, but we could go on holiday together!
Onfray: Are you joking?
Sarkozy: You don't go on holiday with someone because you agree with him about the problem of social security. Deep down, the most important thing is style.
Onfray: I couldn't agree more --

...

Sarkozy: For a long time, I got drunk on crowds, from their applause, their excesses, perhaps even their hysteria. And now I am more appreciative of their silence. It expresses much more than any applause.

Can you imagine an American president saying that?

(Translation from the French by Tobias Grey; appears in the July issue of Harpers.)

Philomag - Dialogue - Nicolas Sarkozy et Michel Onfray - CONFIDENCES ENTRE ENNEMIS

You may remember the Drew Westen thread from earlier this year.

The Political Brain is a groundbreaking investigation into the role of emotion in determining the political life of the nation. For two decades Drew Westen, professor of psychology and psychiatry at Emory University, has explored a theory of the mind that differs substantially from the more "dispassionate" notions held by most cognitive psychologists, political scientists, and economists—and Democratic campaign strategists. The idea of the mind as a cool calculator that makes decisions by weighing the evidence bears no relation to how the brain actually works. When political candidates assume voters dispassionately make decisions based on "the issues," they lose. That's why only one Democrat has been re-elected to the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt—and only one Republican has failed in that quest.

In politics, when reason and emotion collide, emotion invariably wins. Elections are decided in the marketplace of emotions, a marketplace filled with values, images, analogies, moral sentiments, and moving oratory, in which logic plays only a supporting role. Westen shows, through a whistle-stop journey through the evolution of the passionate brain and a bravura tour through fifty years of American presidential and national elections, why campaigns succeed and fail. The evidence is overwhelming that three things determine how people vote, in this order: their feelings toward the parties and their principles, their feelings toward the candidates, and, if they haven't decided by then, their feelings toward the candidates' policy positions.

Westen turns conventional political analyses on their head, suggesting that the question for Democratic politics isn't so much about moving to the right or the left but about moving the electorate. He shows how it can be done through examples of what candidates have said—or could have said—in debates, speeches, and ads. Westen's discoveries could utterly transform electoral arithmetic, showing how a different view of the mind and brain leads to a different way of talking with voters about issues that have tied the tongues of Democrats for much of forty years—such as abortion, guns, taxes, and race. You can't change the structure of the brain. But you can change the way you appeal to it. And here's how…

The Political Brain

The future of Internet radio is in immediate danger. Royalty rates for webcasters have been drastically increased by a recent ruling and are due to go into effect on July 15 (retroactive to Jan 1, 2006!). Webcasters across the country participated in a national Day of Silence this week to increase awareness about this looming threat and gather support for the SaveNetRadio collation and our campaign to preserve music diversity on-line. The Internet Radio Equality Act is currently being considered by both the House and the Senate. This bill will set royalty rates for Internet radio equal to the royalty rate paid by satellite radio, and has gained over 120 cosponsors in the House.

Internet radio needs your help to survive. We need you to pressure your representatives in Congress to take action. Please take a moment to call your Congressional representatives in the House and Senate to ask them to co-sponsor the Internet Radio Equality Act. Making your voice heard will go a long way to helping preserve the Internet radio industry. Time is running short, so please call your representatives today.

Rhapsody sent me a pointer to this today.

Savenetradio.org

"What the president did with the NSA [was] a proposal for a worse way."

You can watch a video of FISA court chief judge Royce Lamberth at the ALA convention.

Judge Discusses Details of Work On Secret Court

Shortly after 9/11, Senator Bob Graham, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called for “a symbiotic relationship between the intelligence community and the private sector.” They say you should be careful what you wish for.

... As it happened, the dot-com bubble had burst shortly before 9/11, cutting loose a generation of technology entrepreneurs who, when the government came calling, were only too happy to start developing new data-mining algorithms and biometric identification programs.

There is nothing inherently wrong with all this.

The problem is that the “symbiotic relationship” has turned decidedly dysfunctional, if not downright exploitative.

Don’t Privatize Our Spies