Ten Reasons Why

Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State, during his endorsement of Barack Obama on last weekend’s Meet the Press:

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

(Full transcript. Comments above on page 2 of the transcript.)
I can accept stupidity among the populace. There will always be angry, scared, bigoted people. I can even accept that some of those angry, scared, bigoted people are powerful enough to wind up in positions of authority in places like the National Review that allow them to spread their angry, scared, bigoted ideas on a national stage.
But what’s really demoralizing to me is that this is the first time I’ve heard a major public figure in American politics raise the appropriate response to the purely idiotic question of whether Barack Obama is a Muslim (or an Arab, since most of the angry, scared bigots don’t understand the difference). The right response is so what if he is?
Bravo, Powell. I wish more public figures had the courage to say that.

Politics

From the Washington Post, Private Bush Meeting Gets Blogged:

The White House press corps yesterday scrambled to figure out why a hastily-arranged “conversation” between President Bush and some regular Americans about the economy was suddenly closed to reporters — and what went on behind those closed doors.
Little did they know that behind those doors, one of the regular Americans whom Bush was meeting was a blogger.

Politics

The only thing my own graduate work was a threat to was my own sanity, but here’s a story, Dissertation Could Be Security Threat, from today’s Washington Post of a different kind of dissertation danger:

Sean Gorman’s professor called his dissertation “tedious and unimportant.” Gorman didn’t talk about it when he went on dates because “it was so boring they’d start staring up at the ceiling.” But since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Gorman’s work has become so compelling that companies want to seize it, government officials want to suppress it, and al Qaeda operatives — if they could get their hands on it — would find a terrorist treasure map.

Gorman’s work takes publicly available information about the nation’s infrastructure — power grids, fiber optic networks, etc. — maps it all, and uses algorithms to find the weak points.
Interesting story about how using technology to crunch together a bunch of unclassified information results in aggregated knowledge that the government has an interest in classifying. The reporter does a good job of presenting both sides of the issue, though.

Politics, Technology & Internet

If Washington, D.C., gets representation in the house, it may turn out that the D.C. vote in Congress is courtesy of the Mormons:

Does the District of Columbia’s Road to Representation lead to Salt Lake City? That’s one way to interpret Virginia Rep. Tom Davis’s tantalizing proposal to give the nation’s capital a full-fledged seat in the House of Representatives. It almost sounds to good to be true: a ranking Republican offering a congressional vote to doggedly Democratic D.C. The Democrats must be salivating at the prospect.
Ah, but this largess comes with a catch: Davis’s proposal entails expanding the size of the House not by one, but by two. Utah, which narrowly missed receiving an extra seat in the 2000 reapportionment, stands next in line. (Another 857 residents, or being able to include overseas Mormon missionaries, would have clinched it.) While there are many good reasons to grant statehood to the District, not the least of which is the “fair and just” right to a vote in Congress, as Davis puts it, I’ll bet few of the city’s advocates have ever linked its fate to that of rugged, reliably Republican Utah.

More info on D.C. rights at letsfreedc.org, including juicy facts like if the District were to become the 51st state, it would be the 50th largest (D.C. population exceeds that of Wyoming by about 80,000 . . . and Vermont’s only about 25,000 people ahead of us).

Politics

Q: How do you make spam get the heck outta Dodge?
A: Put a bounty on its head and send the posse after it.
Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA, 16th district) is introducing Federal legislation to reduce spam. Called (unsurprisingly) the REDUCE Spam Act*, it would require marketers to label unsolicited commercial email (aka spam) with “ADV:” in the subject line (or “ADV:ADLT:” if it’s “adult” email). There are other requirements like providing a valid return email address, mandating opt-out, etc. It allows the FTC to collect fines for violation.
By themselves, those regulations would make little dent. Here’s the interesting kicker: people who track down and report spammers receive 20% of the fines collected by FTC for violations based on their reports.
In effect, it establishes a spam bounty hunter industry. According to Lessig, “The key to this idea is, as Congresswoman Lofgren puts it, that the Act would enlist a bunch of 18 year olds in the battle against non-complying spammers. ‘Between the 18 year olds and the spamsters,’ as she puts it, ‘I�ll bet on the 18 year olds.’”
* REDUCE is actually an acronymn for Restrict and Elimnated the Delivery of Unsolicted Commercial Email. The politicians are getting as bad as the techies with the acronymania. Turns out the name, USA PATRIOT Act, is an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism. Sheesh.

Politics

Washington Post: Virginia Blocks Bulk E-Mailers

Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) traveled to the Dulles headquarters of America Online, the world’s largest Internet service provider, to ceremonially sign recently enacted legislation that establishes five-year prison terms and other criminal penalties against chronic, large-scale senders.

Yay! Having grown up in Virginia this makes me proud. This is significant for a few reasons:
1) Don’t confuse this measure with many of the existing anti-spam laws, which only provide recourse to recoup expenses spam caused in civil court. This new bill makes spam a crime, punishable by a state-funded vacation in the lovely Virginia Penitentiary.
2) It’s significant that it’s Virginia making this law. Both AOL and MCI are based in northern Virginia, outside of Washington, DC. You know AOL, of course, and the number of sunscribers they have. MCI (previously MCI, then Worldcom, now MCI again) is also a large ISP, but more importantly owns UUNet, a major backbone provider. A lot of Internet traffic flows through those two providers, who both may be subject to the new law and in a good position to enforce it.
3) It’s significant that it’s Gov. Mark Warner putting this into action. Warner is a high-tech governor; he was co-founder of Columbia Capital, a northern Virginia VC outfit. He “gets it.”

Politics, Technology & Internet