Entries from October 2002 ↓

I didn’t know Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, nor did I know his wife, Sheila, his daughter, Marcia, or the other 5 people who died in a plane crash today. I did know Sen. Wellstone’s record in the Senate: a voice of loyal opposition. He was liberal, populist — I don’t believe he would have been insulted if I were to call him a democratic socialist.

Whatever label you may attach to him, he continued the strong Democratic/Liberal tradition of his home state, occupying the seat which in the past belonged to Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy and Walter Mondale. And whatever toll the tragedy takes on his family and friends, his death leaves the precariously-balanced US Senate wobbling on its fulcrum.

Generally, the governor of the deceased senator’s state will appoint a successor to the Senate seat. I believe it is up to the individual state to determine whether the appointee serves out the term of the Seantor or serves until a special election can be held. Either way, this leaves the decision up to notoriously unpredictable Independence Party Governor Jesse Ventura to make the decision.

It was going to be a close race for Senator Wellstone in his re-election bid against former St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman. Now the outcome is anyone’s guess.

My condolences to his friends and family.

Design #2242089566: It’s a feather duster that’s perfectly safe to use! It hums incessantly and floats in water.

Design #2862505537: It’s a strain of bacteria that boosts self-confidence! It flies like a rocket.

It’s the Prior-Art-O-Matic. Now all we need is some PHP scripts to automatically submit these to the US Patent & Trademark Office… (via JOHO)

Over at LawMeme, a blawg out of Yale’s law school, James Grimmelman is running a series on how to read a legal brief. The articles (Part I, Part II, more to come…) are geared to tech-heads, but the dissection of a brief — in this case, Lawrence Lessig‘s argument [pdf] in Eldred vs Ashcroft, a case challenging the 1198 Sony Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, scheduled to be argued before the US Supreme Court on October 9 — is being brilliantly handled, and is accessible to almost anyone who has ever wondered about the meaning and purpose of legal arcana.

Once you’ve gotten a taste for the way the document is structured, head over to the site put together by the “good guys” in this case, and read through some of the amicus briefs (documents submitted by “friends of the court” — but if you’ve read the LawMeme article, you knew that!) I can’t stress enough the importance of this case to the future of the internet, research, education and to the future of ideas in this country. Lessig and his co-counsels are making no money on this case, and the expenses are being underwritten by a number of groups, but most importantly through the public’s donations. You can contribute via PayPal to free.mickey@foobox.com.

It’s so nice of our Congress-critters to be concerned with the effects of foreign government-ordained censorship against the citizens of those countries. A new bill in Congress seeks everything up to and including a UN resolution condemning countries that censor the web. It advocates “technological means to circumvent censorship tools.”

This is from the same band of idiots who gave us the DMCA — which criminalizes using technological means to circumvent those devices which keep us from enjoying or studying legitimately-acquired media in the manner and place in which we choose.

This is from the same band of morons who gave us the CIPA & COPA & CHIPA & CDA and whatever other acronyms they use to describe the mandate for censorware in libraries and schools and public places where a child may possibly walk into or walk near or hear about the possibility of walking near…

This is from the same bunch of cretins who are looking to put a censor and a copyright cop in every piece of equipment capable of playing a digital file… including hearing aids and toilet seats.

I’m so glad they’re concerned about the rights of citizens in foreign countries… now if they could just turn their sights closer to home.