I have joined the Blawg Ring today started by Laurelin (I think?), the owner of Sua Sponte, a blog devoted to her journey through law school that I read daily...

The Clintons and the Kennedys are fighting over where to have the 2004 Democratic convention...New York (Clinton) or Boston (Kennedy)?

Venture capital funding down

In the second quarter venture capital firms returned more money than they gave out, giving back $2.7 billion to their investment partners in the three months ending in June while raising $1.8 billion for the future, according to statistics compiled by Thomson Venture Economics for the National Venture Capital Association and released Monday. The $887 million contraction marked the first time that venture capitalists refunded more money than they had raised in a quarter, based on industry data going back to 1970.

Thank goodness for the miracles of modern medicine

In a risky procedure spanning about 20 hours, surgeons in Los Angeles separated 1-year-old Guatemalan twins who were joined at the head. Dr. Houman Hemmati, who assisted in the surgery, said the separation of twins Maria Teresa and Maria de Jesus Quiej-Alvarez appeared to be successful. "Everyone had goosebumps at the end of the procedure," Hemmati told NBC's "Today" show. "People were cheering, people were clapping, people were crying." "It was more than optimistic, it was overjoyed and we can't wait until we see these kids playing, laughing, crying like normal baby children," he said.

This is heartwarming news to start the day with...

Barry Farber has a depressing article up on NewsMax.com about a couple of Arab men he met on a short commuter flight which demonstrates how poisonous autocratic Islamic regimes are to free thought...

Ed Cone is covering the bill that Rep. Howard Coble is sponsoring which would make it legal for the RIAA to hack into your computer if you had copyrighted music on it...

The Silent Majority - Moderate Voters and the Political Parties Who Ignore Them

Yesterday's Washington Post had an article titled GOP, Democrats Locked in Race Towards Decline. In it, David Von Drehle and Dan Balz take a quick look at the gubernatorial race in Minnesota, noting the recent success of independent candidates, and then widen the scope of their article to general state politics in Minnesota. They note that Minnesota has historically been a safe state for Democrats, producing Hubert Humphrey and a member of the Democratic presidential ticket in five of the six elections from 1964 to 1984. The state, however, has changed. Al Gore, in the 2000 election, carried Minnesota by a scant 60,000 votes out of more than 2 million cast. Gore's percentage of the overall electorate was actually smaller in Minnesota than it was nationwide. Former Reform Party member and current independent Jesse Ventura won the gubernatorial seat in 1998, the election after Republican Arne Carlson won without her party's endorsement. The thesis of the article seems to be that the people are changing, but the parties are not, and that is driving large numbers of moderate voters away from the traditional political parties, subsequently costing them the elusive majority.

I can agree with much of what the article says, but I think a closer look needs to be taken at exactly why the parties are losing their popularity with moderate voters from both parties, since this trend is not confined just to the Democrats or the Republicans. It seems that the Democratic and Republican parties are becoming increasingly tied to their core group of voters. By their core group (I know there is a better term for this but I can't think of it right now) I mean the group of voters that give money to the party and vote in the primary. This core group tends to be more ideologically radical than other voters, but since they support their party in every election and give money and vote in the primaries, the party listens and often follows this group (i.e. party platforms). This includes, but is not limited to, fundamentalist Christians, big business, militant anti-abortion activists, and the NRA lobby (though the middle may have moved to support the NRA since Sept. 11th) for the Republicans, and the unions, Hollywood, militant pro-abortion activists, and minority voting blocks (i.e. Jesse Jackson) for the Democrats. What seems to happen is that the parties pander to these special interests until after the primaries. Then the candidates "dash to the middle" to try to get enough moderate votes to win the election. Former President Clinton perfected this tactic, and Al Gore's failure to stake out the middle ground helped cost him the 2000 election.

I think the voters who are ideologically located between the two political parties all over the country are growing weary of this act, and this article demonstrates that the people in Minnesota are sick and tired of it. The rise of Ross Perot is a testament to the disenchantment of the middle voters (I am not including Pat Buchanan or Ralph Nader because they both are, as Stephen Green would put it, bar nuts). The middle voters often feel like we get screwed come election time, and for good reason - we do get screwed. The people we elect more often follow their core constituencies than they do the group of voters that put them in Washington (or Raleigh, Atlanta, Denver, etc. though I do think this pattern is much more prevalent nationally than locally). President Bush supports the steel tariffs. Democrats fight over extending welfare reform. Both bitch about the other's core constituencies. Democrats and Republicans have litmus tests on any number of issues, especially abortion, for judicial nominees.

The parties have become captive of the special interest groups. This is why the McCain-Feingold bill was so popular. It was never about money and politics in and of itself - it was about the power over the parties that the money granted at the expense of the regular voter. Campaign finance reform resonated with a large part of the American people because it was viewed as reform that might make the parties listen to their moderate voters instead of turning a deaf ear to them until their votes are needed. Unfortunately, I do not think campaign finance reform will be successful in this respect. I believe that eventually a presidential candidate will run as an independent and stake out the center for him or herself for the entire election cycle (McCain is already trying this) . Until this happens, the parties will keep trying to placate their core at the expense of the middle. Still, even if the independent candidate is successful, the parties may not change, as is happening in Minnesota. Party identification is down for a reason. The parties no longer represent the moderate American. Until they value the average American more than the special interest groups, people will continue to leave the political parties. More people will come to say, as my father does, "I vote the man, not the party."

P.S. - Yes, I know the title sounds like a bad Springer episode...The real question is which Springer character would the two political parties be?

Quote of the day:

"We stand here on the only island of freedom that is left in the whole world. There is no place left to flee to ... no place to
escape to. We defend freedom here or it is gone. There is no place for us to run, only to make a stand. And if we fail, I think we face telling our children, and our children's children, what it was we found more precious than freedom. Because I am sure someday -- if we fail in this -- there will be a generation that will ask."

--Ronald Reagan

Evening Update

Wow. For those of you who may not have read this blog before, I am going into my second year of law school. My father is in insurance, but both of my grandfathers were attorneys, and both also graduated valedictorian of their respective classes and went on to very successful careers. Considering I am John E. Branch III, after my father's father, and I am going to the same law school as my mother's father, I often feel I have a lot to live up to. Both of my grandfathers were great attorneys, but they were even better people, something that is more important to me. They have been my mentors and role models for as long as I can remember.

I have not, however, been very successful in living up to their legacy. While my grades were good in undergrad, I was still one of the last people to get into UNC Law School off of the waitlist (I was asked several times last year what the lowest scores were which a white male could make and still get into law school). We had three practice exams last fall, and I made the worst possible grade on all three of them. I did better on my first semester exams, but I completely bombed an exam second semester that I had to do well in to not screw up my GPA. Still, I managed to luck into a job with a very good small firm in Goldsboro this summer. Before I left Chapel Hill I spent the obligatory week after spring semester exams writing a practice recent development (an article published in law reviews) to try out for the journals that are published by the law school.

We have four journals at the law school. The Journal of Law and Technology, the International Law Journal, the Banking Law Journal, and the North Carolina Law Review are all publications where anyone would be honored to be a member, but the most prestigious publication, as well as the most difficult one to get on, is the Law Review.

I got a phone call tonight that I did not expect to get. Dad grilled chicken for dinner, and my family was sitting at table when the phone rang. Mom told us not to get it since we were eating, but I was already up getting the bottle of wine to refill Mom's glass, so I answered the phone. The person on the other end was Kristie Ellison, a member of the North Carolina Law Review. Se offered me a position on the Law Review, and after I babbled incoherently for a minute or so I accepted.

This is one of those nights of true wonder, where I am walking around the house not really understanding where I am or how I got there. I just don't know how this happened. Law school is not the most rewarding experience one goes through. A student is not graded on whether she or he knows the material. Everyone knows the material. A student is graded on how well he or she can analyze the material, which is something I have felt can be very arbitrary, regardless of how good or bad one has done (and I have done both very well and very bad). When I decided to try out for Law Review I did not think that I would be successful. I knew, though, that regardless of the outcome I would always question myself if I did not at least try. I spent a week writing and fine-tuning an article which would determine whether I could follow in my grandfathers' footsteps in at least one way. Fate smiled on me tonight. The work I have put in, the hell I have been through, and the self-doubt that I have fought, were all been worth it. Next year will be difficult. The time commitment for law school and Law Review will be a difficult challenge that I will wrestle with until Mau. It will, though, be a challenge that I am honored and proud to accept. While I will never be as good of a person or attorney as my grandfathers were, I am striving to be the best person and best attorney that I can be. I was lucky tonight in being invited onto Law Review, and I hope I might be lucky enough to be the type of person and the type of attorney my grandfathers were.

P.S. - Since there seem to be a large number of attorneys and law school professors (thanks Professor Cooper) out there, if you have any advice or words of wisdom for me, let me know...

For some reason my comments services have been down since Friday night. I may switch services, but I am not going to work on that until tonight. I hope ya'll have had a great weekend.

Beer of the weekend



As an aside, I had Yuengling Lager for the first time last night and didn't really care for it. I expected a bite at the end of it, much like a pale ale, but found to my displeasure that it had less taste than Bud Light or Natural Light, both of which I enjoy. I had heard some good things about Yuengling but was disappointed with its taste. I have a sneaking suspicion that I have been pampered too well by living in Chapel Hill for the last five years and having access to a couple of great microbreweries.

Judge rules against Department of Justice in bid to keep detainees' names secret

U.S. District Judge Barbara Kessler ordered the Department of Justice to release the names of all people who are being detained in the investigation into the Sept. 11 terror attacks. U.S. District Judge Barbara Kessler, who made the ruling, allowed for only two exceptions. On a case-by-case basis, the judge said she will consider allowing the government to keep a detainee's name secret if the detainee is a material witness to a terror investigation. The judge also will allow the government to withhold the detainee's name if the detainee requests it.
I wonder if this was the same district court judge who ruled against the government a few weeks ago and was subsequently overturned on appeal. If it is her, and if I remember correctly, Howard Bashman predicted cold treatment by the government by this judge since the government got her overturned....

Answer (from Mr. Bashman himself): not the same judge. The judge I referred to above that was a judge in Virginia in the case involving a lawyer's access to the so-called second American Taliban.

UNBELIEVABLE

Check out this post from Indepundit. He has looked at Opensecrets.org and found someone who got a large infusion of cash from Arabian sources on September 11th...

Jonah Goldberg explains the "tanks v. talk" difference in how Americans and Europeans view the way peace was achieved in Europe, and what this ought to mean for the upcoming war with Iraq...

Did Iraq help al-Qaeda with Sept. 11th?

The L.A. Times is reporting that the White House is now beginning to back claims that Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Sept. 11th hijackers, met with an Iraqi agent five months before Sept. 11th...

Former Tennessee governor Lamar Alexander (R) will face Rep. Bob Clement (D) in the race to fill retiring Sen. Fred Thompson's seat in Tennessee...

ESPN's Gene Wojciechowski profiles Ron Zook, the former New Orleans defensive coach who replaced Steve Spurrier as head coach in Florida...

Israeli troops have returned to Nablus in response to the suicide bombing which killed seven people, including five Americans...

Football season is almost here

The USA Today/Coach's Poll has been released, with Miami returning to the No. 1 spot, followed by Texas, Oklahoma, Florida State, and Tennessee...

Are the French about to surrender to Egypt?

A French court has issued a summons for Egyptian Ibrahim Nafie, an government-appointed editor of the Egyptian daily newspaper Al-Ahram. At issue was an article the paper published nearly two years ago which repeated centuries-old anti-Semitic myths that Jews use Christian blood in their rites. 1,100 copies of the paper with the article were distributed in France, and prosecutors pursued charges under a French law which prohibits "incitement of hatred and anti-Semitic violence."

While the conduct of the newspaper editors publishing this is reprehensible, there are a couple of problems with a French court ordering an Egyptian to appear based on charges he is an anti-Semitic. First, the French court in all likelihood has no jurisdiction over Nafie. He is an Egyptian citizen, governed by Egyptian laws, and it is doubtful that the Egyptian government would enforce a French court decision against him. This is reminiscent of the Yahoo case, where a French court ordered Yahoo, an American corporation, to shut down or somehow prevent French citizens from accessing Nazi paraphernalia in its auction site. An American court refused to enforce the French court's decision because what Yahoo did was not a crime in America.

Second, it is hard to believe that the French are combating anti-Semitism in Egypt while there are synagogue burnings and enough anti-Semitism to go around in France. Their resources would be better spent if the courts first tried to root out anti-Semitism at home before they go after Egyptian newspaper editors.

Is a free market beginning to form in North Korea? The Economist reports that the North Korean government started making changes in its socialist policies on July 1st and might be gradually moving toward a market economy, or at least one which is similar to China's state directed quasi-market economy.

Found via Kyle Still...

Economic news

The GDP grew only at a pace of 1.1 percent last quarter, a much lower rate than analysts expected. While exports were up some 11 percent, imports were still up over 20 percent meaning the trade deficit is still getting larger.

The Federal Reserve yesterday released its latest survey of economic conditions, which found modest growth continuing across the country, tapering off in some areas but improving in others. Retail sales were mixed, manufacturing generally improving and residential housing sales and construction quite strong. The commercial real estate sector was described as "weak." Labor markets were "slack" but not showing new signs of weakness, with wage increases rising relatively slowly. Prices of finished goods and services were "flat."

J. Bradford DeLong contends that it might be time to cut interest rates further...

Judge says no access to U.S. courts for Gitmo prisoners

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly rejected efforts by 16 al Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to end the government's policy of holding them without charges, access to lawyers or trial dates, effectively ruling that the 600 prisoners held in Cuba have no right to access to the American court system. It was the first time a U.S. judge had ruled on the merits of that practice.

Kollar-Kotelly based her ruling on Supreme Court precedent from the World War II era. In that case, Johnson v. Eisentrager, German spies were captured by allied forces in China after the Nazis surrendered but before Japan stopped fighting.

The Germans were tried and convicted of espionage by a U.S. military tribunal in China and sent to a prison in Germany that was, in the postwar days, under the command of a U.S. officer. The Germans appealed to U.S. courts but were ultimately rejected by a divided Supreme Court. The court ruled that they could not extend the writ of habeas corpus -- a judicial determination about the legality of an individual's custody -- to foreigners held outside the United States.

That opinion, Kollar-Kotelly ruled, applies to Guantanamo Bay, a military base that the United States leases from Cuba where nearly 600 captives are being held. The Navy has announced plans to expand the prison, known as Camp Delta, by an additional 204 cells.

The judge definitely decided this case correctly. There is absloutely no reason to let these prisoners access to an institution that they were trying to destroy beore they were captured in order to give them a chance to go free.

Another way technology is changing daily lives

There is an interesting Washington Post article on Smart Mobs - where people communicate instantly by cell phone (I suppose you could put Instant Messenger or ICQ in this category as well since they are instantaneous) and "swarm" to a location to see each other. The technique has also been used by protesters to "swarm" to a protest, and is being examined for use by the military.

Found via Frank Boosman...

Is there another kind of matter that scientists have not discovered yet?

Another reason I miss Chapel Hill

I can't believe I missed this, but Silflay Hiraka says my blog smells like "Cider and a Lasagna in the cave at the Rat," though I would contend that it's a bottle of cold beer, preferably Shiner Bock, rather than Cider. Bigwig has great intuition considering I can't wait to get back to Chapel Hill and get some lasagna at the Rat, or maybe even a Double Gambler...

Howard Kurtz writes about weblogs today...

Iraq Update

Andrew Sullivan, in a post titled "Stopping the War," addresses the doves who are trying to dissuade the U.S. from going to war with Iraq, and concludes

The opposition is determined and organized, and they are passionately opposed to using American power to defeat the forces of state terror. What if the U.N. opposes it or doesn't endorse it? Many visceral doves in Washington will rally. If they can isolate the administration from the allies and the Congress, then there's a good chance appeasement will gain even more momentum.

N.Z. Bear contends that rather than titling his post "Stopping the War," Sullivan should have called it "Surrender the War."

Buy a bunker

PontifexExMachina posts his Paranoid Libertarian's To-Do List in response to N.Z. Bear's 2014 post...

Sail Away

Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle and an avid sailor who has won many races, is going to take a shot at winning the America's Cup in 2003. New Zealand currently holds the cup, and the race will take place in Auckland, New Zealand, from Feb. 15 through March 1.

Moderate Arabs Pushing Against Bush Doctrine

Steven Den Beste discusses a statement by Jordan's King Abdullah that, "Arab trust of U.S. influence remains rather low." King Abdullah is going to meet with President Bush on Thursday, and will push for a Palestinian state, international monitors for the area which could become Palestine, and will ask President Bush to speed up his timetable for turning over Israeli-held land to the Palestinians to establish a state. President Bush's timetable, outlined in his speech a couple of weeks ago, begins with improved security in the area to stop terror attacks against Israelis, democratic change within the Palestinian Authority and removal of Yasser Arafat as its head. A U.S. official said Monday that remains American policy.

StrategyPage is reporting that Israel's plans to ease its restrictions on Palestinians have been put on hold after today's suicide bombing...

Two men were beaten to death by a mob in Chicago after they lost control of their van and hit three ladies sitting on their porch...

Powell meets with minister from North Korea

Colin Powell held talks with the foreign minister of North Korea Wednesday in Brunei, which is the first contact between the two countries since President Bush labeled the communist nation part of an "axis of evil." The United States and North Korea are looking to revive high-level talks for the first time since late in the Clinton administration when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright traveled to Pyongyang for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Another suicide bombing in Israel

A suicide bomber blew himself up in a Hebrew university cafeteria, killing at least six people and wounding at least 30. A Hamas statement said that the group took credit for the attack in response to Israel’s killing of its leader Salah Shehada in an air strike in Gaza last week.

Strike News

The baseball players and owners are still $70 million apart, at best, on the negotiations about revenue-sharing, adn that is just one issue on the table. A [suicidal] strike this year is looking more and more likely...

I can't wait for football season, even if neither the Heels nor the Panthers will be any good.

How to cure a curse

The Boston Red Sox got Cliff Floyd, arguably the best hitter on the market, from Montreal in return for pitching prospects Sun Woo Kim and Seung Song, plus a player to named later.

I'm all for the Bo Sox breaking the curse of the Bambino, at least until they play the Braves...

Lisa Leslie made the WNBA's first slam dunk last night...

Well, at least she kinda sorta dunked it...

Summer in the South

It's incredibly hot here in eastern North Carolina today. The high was 99 with a heat index right now of 100. I'm hoping for an evening thunderstorm, but I don't think it's going to happen tonight. One of the things I love about my family's house is the side porch with the porch swing. Several times this summer I have sat out there with a glass of wine and watched a thunderstorm roll in while I caught up with friends over the phone. There is something clean and refreshing about a thunderstorm, something that relaxes me, and seems to wash away a lot of the daily stress of life...

Site Upgrade

As ought to be pretty obvious to anyone who has been to my site before, it underwent some major changes this afternoon. I've never been real happy with the old template, mainly because I thought the font size was too small. After I saw Denise Howell's site I realized I found a template I liked, and proceeded to get the code from Blogskins and Bag and Baggage (I really hope she doesn't mind that I have taken her template). After some tweaking (I like my links on the left, I wanted a box around the header for the page, and of course there had to be the option of making the page Carolina Blue), mostly done by trial and error because of my rudimentary html skills, I have published the new and improved version of TarheelPundit. There are probably bugs, and if you find one please let me know. I'd like to figure out how to change the font, but I reckon that update is for another day. Ya'll have a good evening...

Can he shoot better freethrows than Shaq?

Via LGF...

Boeing is trying to invent a gravity shield...

Victor Davis Hanson at the National Review Online examines the reasons for the ideological divide between Europeans and Americans...

Are we going back to the moon?

40 Hall of Fame baseball players have penned an open letter asking the players not to strike...

Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, located about 90 miles west-southwest of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, will be the base for 11 F/A - 18 Super Hornet squadrons along with Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The ten active-duty squadrons include 130 planes. One "fleet replacement squadron" involved includes 32 planes and will be based at Oceana.

Stuart Buck posts an abstract of an article written by Vanderbilt law professor Christopher Yoo titled The Rise and Demise of the Technology-Specific Approach to the First Amendment. "This article examines how analytical, technological, and doctrinal developments are forcing the courts to reconsider their media-specific approach to assessing the constitutionality of media regulation. In particular, it offers a comprehensive reevaluation of the continuing validity of the Broadcast Model of regulation, which contains features, such as licensing and direct content regulation, that normally would be considered paradigmatic violations of the First Amendment." Sounds like a very interesting article about a logical inconsistency in the way the courts have dealt with free speech and recent technological development, including blogs...

President Bush has signed a bill "cracking down" on corporate irresponsibility....

James Traficant was sentenced to 8 years in prison today, a longer sentence than the minimum 7¼ years prosecutors had requested because the judge said that he had no respect for the government and that he used lies to distract attention from the charges against him.

Today I found a new blog by a prospective law student named Rebecca Terhune who is stressing about getting into the law school at the University of Louisville. I can completely relate. I was waitlisted at UNC Law, and waiting to hear from the law school and then the time I spent on the waitlist was the one of the most nerveracking experiences I have had in my life (at least until first semester exams). I wish her all the luck in the world, and pray she gets in soon...

Steve MacLaughlin has a good post examining AOL and its attempted move to broadband and why it's not succeeding...

The Tokyo stock market is up and the dollar is trading higher against the yen...Still, the dollar fell against other European currencies and the price of gold is rising...

A Palestinian suicide bomber apparently triggered his explosives early in an attempt to attack a food stand popular with Israeli police. Four people were injured in the attack. Also, two Israeli settlers were killed when they were entering a Palestinian village...

President Bush is pushing his plan to cut power plant pollution today, saying it "will eliminate 35 million more tons of pollution than the current Clean Air Act, bringing cleaner air to millions of Americans."

His proposal uses a cap-and-trade system. It would establish a ceiling, or cap, on the amount of emissions from power plants that are major sources of two kinds of dirty air: nitrogen oxide, which causes smog, and sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain. It also would create the first controls on their releases of mercury.

Utilities that exceeded the limits could purchase credits from other energy producers whose emissions are lower and who choose to sell their ability to pollute - the unused pollution allowances - within the cap. The Clean Air Act requires EPA to set national standards and states to implement clean-up plans.

Critics say the plan ignores the ability of some of the dirtiest power plants to avoid emission reductions by buying credits.

"This would be an attempt to undermine enforcement and substitute an industry-friendly emission trading scheme, which we think would actually encourage corporate irresponsibility and be a giant step backward in air pollution control," said Frank O'Donnell, executive director of the Clean Air Trust, an environmental group.

It is unlikely that the proposal will win support in Congress this year.

The United Nations is accusing the United States of covering up evidence of exactly what happened with the airstrike that killed more than 50 Afghan civillians earlier this month...

The Senate is delaying voting on a bill which would create the Department of Homeland Defense until after Labor Day. Even though the department won't likely be in place for the one year anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks, President Bush's plan, announced June 6, to merge all or parts of 22 federal agencies into a single department remains on an accelerated schedule.Lined up ahead of the legislation to create the department are bills to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare, defense and other appropriations measures, and a House-Senate compromise on legislation to expand the president's trade negotiating authority. Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and others are trying to delay action on the bill for further study.

The Washington Post takes another hard look at Enron, Arthur Andersen and conflicts of interest...

The NBA has approved instant-replay for last second shots...

The Cleveland Cavaliers have traded point guard Andre Miller and forward Bryant Stith to the L.A. Clippers for forwards Darius Miles and Harold Jamison in a deal that will be finalized Tuesday morning. David Aldridge writes that the Clippers got the better of this deal, but I wonder how good Darius Miles will be in the future...

The last-place Philadelphia Phillies dealt unhappy third-baseman Scott Rolen along with minor league pitcher Doug Nickle and cash to the first-place St. Louis Cardinals for third baseman Placido Polanco, pitcher Bud Smith and reliever Mike Timlin.

Len Pasquarelli writes on ESPN.com that the Dallas Cowboy's huge offensive line will probably let Emmitt Smith break Walter Payton's career rushing mark this year, and if combined with a good season from Quarterback Quincy Carter will once again make the Cowboys a contender...

P.J. O'Rourke examines the upside of the current bear market and the corporate scandals for the Weekly Standard...

Jonah Goldberg explains why he does not particularly care for former Vice President Al Gore...

The Oakland Raiders signed former UNC quarterback Ronald Curry, who was their seventh round draft pick, last Friday. Curry is a class act, and someone with whom I am proud to say I went to school. He will represent the school well as an alumni, and it is a tragedy that his injuries did so much damage to his sports career. Give 'em hell Ron.

I wonder how many times something like this happened during the Cold War...

Another day, another conspiracy theory

More on the possible connection between the Sept. 11th bombers, Iraq, and the Oklahoma City bombing from the L.A. Weekly...

From Stuart Buck...

Charles Hurt of the Charlotte Observer examines who is giving money to Sen. John Edwards...

This article on StrategyPage titled Smallpox Apocalypse scares the shit out of me...I read it for the first time last night (after reading N.Z. Bear's post on 2014) and ended up discussing it and some of the worse case scenarios with respect to the war with my Dad for an hour or so, and went to bed very troubled...There really is the potential for the war to spiral out of control, and I hope President Bush is doing everything he can to prevent what N.Z. wrote about from happening... I do know one thing though...I have my annual physical on August 6th and I am definitely asking my doctor if I can get a smallpox vaccination...

An article in The New Republic takes a historical look at the red/blue divide and contends that it means the Democrats are on the edge of dominance if they can find their Teddy Roosevelt...

Jane Galt jumps on Time Magazine for its snotty, condescending portrayal or President Bush in its most recent issue...

Howard Kurtz writes that the corporate accounting scandals combined with the fall of the stockmarket may have scratched the "teflon" of President Bush. "'Both sides believe accumulating economic bad news may be reaching critical mass, creating a public disenchantment that could stick to the Bush administration and congressional Republicans in November,' The Washington Post reported." Not a good picture for the Republicans if you believe what you read, but I'm not sure it won't be a moot point in a month. I think the NASDAQ will continue its downward spiral, but I think the Dow has reached the bottom. It may touch it again, but by September it ought to be climbing. From what I have read and seen, Price to Earning ratios are much more in line and corporate profits are rising. Then again, I'm a student with no real money in the market, so clearly this is not an area of expertise. Still, when Ben Stein is buying (according to a special on Fox News last night) I feel confident about where the market will go soon. What do ya'll think? Let me know through the comments link...

Update on the Middle East

Israel is reportedly going to start handing over tax revenue that to the PLO that it has been withholding for much of the past 22 months of fighting. Israel is handing over $15 million as the first of three installments of the tax revenue, but it is a small fraction of the estimated $600 million in taxes and customs revenues that Israel has collected on behalf of the Palestinians. While Israel was demanding international supervision of the money before it handed it over, it agreed to place the cash under the responsibility of the new Palestinian finance minister, Salam Fayed.

In another move aimed at reducing hostilities, Ben-Eliezer said he would meet this week with Palestinian Interior Minister Abdel Razek Yehiyeh to discuss security issues based on proposals by President Bush.

"We are ready to move, and we see on the other side some initial signs of willingness to take part in this plan. They at least submitted some sort of plans," Ben-Eliezer told Army Radio.

Also, Israeli Prime Minister Sharon ordered the army and security services to ease some restrictions on Palestinian civilians. The moves including shortening curfews, lifting some roadblocks, and raising the number of Palestinians allowed to enter Israel for work to 12,000, a statement from Sharon's office said.

Previously, the government had said it would issue 7,000 work permits, although it said the number could reach 70,000. Before the conflict, some 125,000 Palestinians crossed into Israel daily for work.

Israel said it is up to the Palestinian Authority to combat militant groups if more restrictions are to be lifted.

"When they do that, we will be immediately ready to leave the territories and ease any restrictions," said Mark Sofer, a Foreign Ministry spokesman.

I wonder how long this pseudo-truce will last. The militant Palestinians want revenge for the Hamas leader who was killed by the Israelis roughly a week ago. If the past can be used as an indicator, Hamas et. al. will try to respond by hitting a major Israeli population center with suicide bombers. Unless the Israeli Army is able to intercept every suicide bomber (which I pray they are able to do) there will be another large loss of life on the Israeli side and most likely a renewal of the curfews and occupation and hostilities that have typically occurred in the past few months after a suicide bombing.

UPDATE: Colin Powell said he would meet with a delegation of Palestinian officials in Washington next week.

The third-place finisher in the Tour de France, Raimondas Rumsas from Lithuania, was suspended from his cycling team because his wife was detained with drugs...

This shows how unbelieveable Lance Armstrong's feat of four straight Tour de Frances is, especially considering he has never been caught using the drugs that have tainted the cycling community in recent years...

More Creative Accounting

Qwest Communications has admitted to incorrectly booking $1.16 billion in sales from 1999 until 2001. It has withdrawn its 2002 forecast of $18 to $18.4 billion in sales, and will restate some of its earnings from past years...

Quote of the Evening: UNC offensive guard Jeb Terry on the Carolina - N.C. State football rivalry: "They [N.C. State fans] think it’s a rivalry, but they beat us one out of the last nine years. That’s not a rivalry to me.”

I think this is it for the next day or so...I have to get some work done this afternoon, and I'm moving back up to Chapel Hill this weekend, so the next few days will be spent transporting furniture and hoping my cable internet connection works (going the summer without broadband has been HELL)...Ya'll have a good weekend...

Duke could set the all-time record for consecutive losses this year...If they lose every game until their finale against Carolina, they would tie Northwestern at 34 consecutive losseswhich would mean that the Heels would get the honor of making Duke set the record (basketball hasn't been too good to Heels fans recently so I have to celebrate something)...

This is a really cool animation showing where we are in the universe (zooming in from waaaay out in the universe by powers of 10)...

Some moron is arguing that Lance Armstrong isn't an athlete...

UNC Chancellor James Moeser is not backing down on requiring incoming freshmen to read Approaching the Qur'n: The Early Revelations over the summer, even though a lawsuit has been filed fighting the requirement...

Sen. Robert Torricelli, a New Jersey Democrat, is being investigated by a Senate ethics panel for allegedly accepting gifts from David Chang, and, in return, helped Chang with business dealings overseas. A conclusion from the panel, made up of three Democrats and three Republicans, could come next week, before the Senate breaks for its August recess. The committee's options include disciplining Torricelli or closing the case with no action.

NewsChannel 4's Jonathan Dienst reported Thursday evening that WNBC-TV had found an invoice indicating a $1,695 big screen television that was purchased by Chang at a store in Englewood, N.J., was delivered to Torricelli's home in 1998.

Those records, which are now in the hands of the Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee, show that Chang paid for the television on Nov. 4, 1998 - and that the expensive TV was delivered to the then-home of Sen. Robert Torricelli, the records show.

However, Torricelli insists he never took any gifts from Chang. In a statement, Torricelli said: "We have said from the beginning that when this concludes it will answer these questions and we remain confident that this is the case... We will not respond to unfounded and irresponsible leaks and rumors."

The ethics committee also has financial records and witness testimony suggesting Chang gave Torricelli cash to pay for a $3,816 Scottish grandfather clock, NewsChannel 4 also reported.

Torricelli denies taking anything from Chang and says the assistance he gave Chang was within the normal boundaries of what a lawmaker does for a constituent.

Found via Drudge...

The Washington Post has an article pointing out that the fact that corporate profits are rising again has been lost in the panic over the fall in the stock market...

Al Gore is blasting President Bush's economic policy, and says that his whole economic team ought to be fired...

Moussaoui has withdrawn his guilty plea...

North Carolina Politics and BBQ

I just went to a fundraising lunch for Erskine Bowles (the Democratic frontrunner for Senator in NC) with a partner in the firm where I am working, and I was very impressed with him. Of course, like all political fundraisers in North Carolina, this was held at a BBQ restaurant, Wilbur's BBQ, where the BBQ was fantastic. Mr. Bowles is a very good candidate. He comes off as kind of a geek in his TV ads since he is skinny and has thick glasses but he is clearly very intelligent and has the ability to connect with people one-on-one as well as the ability to speak to a small crowd. The geek image is good because he does not have the slickness that North Carolinians associate with former President Clinton, and this state wants nothing to do with Clinton. For those of you that don't remember, Bowles was President Clinton's Chief of Staff for four years. When Bowles talked today, he pointed to a lot of the successes that occured under the Clinton administration - low unemployment, high stock market, welfare reform, etc. Still, the only time he mentioned President Clinton by name was when he criticized the administration for the treatment of the military. All other references to his time spent in Washington were made by talking about "my time in the other administration," or "the old Democratic administration," or "when I worked up there before this administration." He avoided association with President Clinton like the plague. He pointed out several times that he had lived in North Carolina for practically his whole life, unlike Ms. Dole. His main talking points seemed to be (in order of priority)

1.) Health Care and Prescription Drug Benefits

2.) The Economy - basically, he was responsible for it doing well under Clinton and the Republicans have screwed the economy up as well as blaming the corporate scandals on the Republicans

3.) Social Security - the Republicans are raiding the Social Security trust fund and if you elect him he will protect it

One thing with which I was surprised was that Bowles only addressed the upcoming primary election in one sentence, remarking that he liked his two opponents and would not say anything negative about them. The primaries are to be held on September 10th, and from the discussion at my table before Mr. Bowles spoke, it seems he has a real risk of losing the primary. I have not seen any of his TV ads in recent weeks, and if I had to guess I would say he is hoping to win the primary with what he has already done, and then spend his money on the general election. However, a win by Bowles in the primary is not a foregone conclusion. North Carolina's electorate has been know to vote for candidates who are not supposed to win in primaries, as evidenced by the 1996 Republican gubernatorial primary where the electorate picked a very conservative Robin Hayes instead of moderately conservative former Charlotte Mayor Richard Vinroot to run against Governor Jim Hunt. If Bowles wins the primary, he will give Elizabeth Dole a run for her money, but I am not positive that he will win the primary.

All in all, I think he is a much better campaigner than Elizabeth Dole. He comes across as very honest and earnest, and I get the feeling that he really does want to serve his state (and his party) in Washington. Unlike some of the local candidates that were there, he didn't come off as just another slick politican. While I may not agree with some of his views on the issues, he seemed like a man I could respect and a man who would care about serving the citizens of North Carolina, which means a lot to me. While his political persuasions are opposite, the things he said about serving the state of North Carolina sounded very similar to what Sen. Jesse Helms, the current holder of this seat, has said.

Tony Blair refused to say he would promise to consult Parliament before a military strike on Iraq...

Mike Tremoulet contends that blogchalking is not working...

I just did a google search of "blogchalk chapel hill" and "blogchalk raleigh" and neither returned any results...

Howard Bashman has successfully managed to quote Ice-T in his discussion of a decision from the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania...I definitely didn't see that one coming, but I do support any and all references to Ice-T...

A group of American venture capitalists have bought Burger King for $2.26 billion from British-based Diageo Plc...

The Washington Post is reporting that President Bush is visiting High Point, NC today to show his support and raise money for Republican Senatorial candidate Elizabeth Dole. In his speech, he will argue for a cap on malpractice awards to injured patients in hopes of tackling the soaring insurance costs that are forcing many doctors out of certain communities and high-risk practices. According to President Bush, reigning in medical malpractice litigation would make health care safer, as well as more affordable and available for all. Legislation in Congress would limit the pain and suffering portion of malpractice awards to $250,000 and punitive damages to either the same amount or twice the patient's actual financial loss. The bill, intended to override state laws, also would curtail lawyers' fees and patients' ability to file suit over old cases. Trial lawyers are opposed to caps, citing surveys showing juries rule in favor of doctors in two-thirds of all malpractice lawsuits. They say doctors and hospitals should focus on reducing mistakes, not jury awards.

House and Senate leaders agreed yesterday on broad outlines for a bill which would furthur regulate corporate finances and provide stiffer penalties for accounting abuses. The legislation is intended to make it harder for investors to be decieved by company executives, and came from six days of talks between House and Senate conferees. "Traditionally our markets have been the fairest, most efficient and the most transparent in the world," said Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.), chief architect of the legislation. "We intend to see that they once again merit that reputation." The vast majority of Senators and Representatives are expected to vote for the legislation, and it seems to be viewed that the Republicans gave in to the Democrats and adopted most of the Senate's version of the bill.

A Senate committee has taken away some of the powers of the new Department of Homeland Security. The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee removed provisions by a voice vote that senators and aides feared would give the department unprecedented power over key intelligence functions now handled by the CIA, FBI and others. The committee was expected to approval the overall legislation Wednesday or Thursday. The House was to begin debate on its version Thursday as lawmakers rush to create by fall a 170,000-employee Cabinet agency dedicated to safeguarding Americans at home.

Ivan Maisel says that Florida State is once again the team to beat in the ACC. This should not come as a surprise to anyone that follows ACC football since the vast majority of FSU's players last year (when they were defeated by Carolina and NC State) were freshmen and sophomores. This year they have 17 returning starters, tying with Wake Forest to lead the league...

Go figure...the only Congressman to vote against James Traficant's expulsion was Gary Condit...

Via Drudge

The SEC has opened an investigation into the accounting practices of AOL's online division...

Lance Armstrong may have been heckled by Frenchmen on his route yesterday, but Mark Kreidler writes that the jeers are a sign that Armstrong is completely dominating his sport...

Rev. Al Sharpton has filed a $1 billion lawsuit (yes, billion with a "b") against HBO Inc., HBO Real Sports, AOL-Time Warner, Inc., reporter Bernard Goldberg and ex-mob captain Michael Franzese. He is seeking $500 million in compensatory damages and $500 in punitive damages for "defamation, libel and slander" because of a video HBO aired which allegedly showed Rev. Sharpton involving himself in a drug deal...

When in doubt, ask the Magic Liberal Eightball...

Via Fark...

Ralph Wiley runs down his list of the toughest positions to play in major league baseball...

I want to make one comment on this article. Since I am an Atlanta Braves fan, I get to watch Andruw Jones play on a fairly consistent basis. He regularly leaves me shaking my head at the balls he can get to. He is by far the best center fielder I have ever seen (including Griffey Jr. in his prime), but I agree with Mr. Wiley that he isn't as good as Willie Mays.

Lance Armstrong has extended his lead over second-place Joseba Beloki from Spain to five minutes and six seconds in the Tour de France and ought to win, barring illness, injury, or a unprecedented loss of form in Thursday's last mountain stage.

Steven Den Beste takes on the new anti-CO2 bill signed by Gov. Gray Davis in California...

Fiscal Reality and Political Reality

David S. Broder writes in the Washington Post about the massive spending spree the government has been on since Sept. 11th, and says "It's Time to Face Fiscal Reality." He starts his column (after a couple of completely irrelevant paragraphs about how people don't think President Bush or Vice-President Cheney are telling the truth about their business deals) by quoting former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin's editorial Sunday on how the government should address the spending by increasing taxes on the upper income bracket. He frames his argument by saying,

"But the overriding question -- the one that dwarfs everything else -- is what to do about the huge tax cut that Bush pushed through Congress back when those mythical budget surpluses were still clouding most people's vision."

WRONG. If the column is about "Fiscal Reality," then the overriding concern must be either 1.) cutting spending enough to get spending reasonably in line with tax revenues, or 2.) finding the money to cover Congress's spending bills. Mr. Broder considers the second option as the only solution because that is the action he wants the government to take, but he should have at least discussed cutting the spending binge by Congress and the President.

Unfortunately, neither option may be politically feasible. Government is not a business, especially when it is run from Washington. Political realities dictate actions as often as fiscal realities. This means that President Bush will not roll back his tax cuts. His father made that mistake, and it was a contributing factor in losing in 1992. One thing 43 has made clear is that he will not repeat the mistakes of his father, and therefore he will not water down the tax cuts which were so important to his election. While fiscal reality may indicate a massive budget shortfall this year, political reality dictates that President Bush cannot roll back his tax cuts, and in this case political reality trumps fiscal reality.

Political reality also makes the option of slowing the spending spree for "homeland defense" unrealistic. People expected the federal government to "do something" after Sept. 11th. The government decided to try to solve that problem the same way it has (unsuccessfully) tried to solve many other problems - by throwing money at it and hoping it will go away. Instead of cleaning out the incompetent bureaucratic morons at the FBI, CIA, NSA et. al. who failed to detect even a hint of the terrorist attack, Congress and President Bush decided to give them more money and expand their power. While logically this does not make sense (for example, the FBI and CIA had some bits of intelligence that could have given them hints of the attack, but they did not have enough analysts to sift through the information - naturally, the response by the government is to give them more intelligence so they will be even further behind in analyzing it), politically the decision to give them more money and power makes perfect sense because those actions give the appearance that the President and Congress are "doing something" to combat terrorism. The idea behind the Department of Homeland Defense, better communication between agencies charged with defending the country, is important, but it seems like the implementation of that idea was dictated by politics - i.e. create another bureaucracy so the people will know we are serious about homeland defense. While a better and much less costly solution is probably out there, politics demanded that the federal government take action, and it took action by spending money. Therefore, because of a political reality that is dictating how the government acts, a cut in spending on homeland defense is not likely. Mr. Broder ought not to fight the implementation of the tax cut, and instead fight the politics that prevent a solution to the budgetary problems from being implemented.

UPDATE: Once again, when in doubt, spend more money. The House is ready to pass a 4.1% pay raise for federal civilian employees over objections from the White House.

Stock markets worldwide have fallen in response to the Dow's tanking in recent weeks...

Middle East Update

Hamas has "vowed revenge" after their leader was killed in an Israeli air strike yesterday. While I think the number of suicide bombings will go up in the short term, I agree with Prime Minister Sharon that this was an important victory for the Israelis. I do not think Shehada's death will cripple Hamas, but I do think it will have an adverse effect on their operations. The strike also sends a message that no leader of a terrorist group is safe, and that individuals will be held responsible for their organizations actions (a message that had been diluted in the past two years by the continuing dialogue with Arafat).

Another bump in the difficult road to democracy in Afghanistan

Turmoil caused by warring factions in Afghanistan is on the rise, and President Hamid Karzai has pledged to put an end to it. One of the problems in the past has been the Afghan secret service, who have recently been accused of torturing and killing a 22-year old construction worker who had just returned to Afghanistan after living for years as a refugee in Pakistan. Karzai has pledged to take on the agency, naming a high-level commission this month to recommend broad reforms to the secret service. President Karzai contends that the secret service operates outside the president's authority and control. According to a source close to Karzai, the agency has 30,000 employees and its departments are run by ethnic Tajiks from the Northern Alliance who answer only to Mohammed Fahim, Karzai's defense minister.

Karzai's challenge to the intelligence service is seen here as a contest over who will rule post-Taliban Afghanistan. To the ethnic Pashtun president and his supporters, the unchecked power of the Tajik-run secret service is a key obstacle to Afghan democracy that lies closer to home than either regional warlords who refuse to disarm their men or lurking remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda.

"For a democratic country, a country that wants to move toward democracy, an institution like this is obviously in contradiction," said Vice President Hedayat Amin Arsala, who is leading the commission.

The task which President Karzai is undertaking is more difficult than it seems. The secret service is a relic from the Cold War Soviet occupation, and has survived by recruiting members loyal to the department. Still, President Karzai's public campaign against the department is enormously popular with the people of Afghanistan and is viewed as a necessary step to establishing real democracy in the country.

This should be on Pay-Per-View

The House of Representatives will vote today (6:00 p.m. EDT) on whether to expel Rep. James Traficant (D-Ohio) since he has been convicted of racketeering, bribery and tax evasion. He will be given the floor for 30 minutes before the vote comes up, and the Congressman is determined to go out with a bang. "I'll probably make my speech on the House floor in some outfit, and being a fashion leader, you can expect anything," said Traficant. He has said he would wear a denim suit and do a "Michael Jackson moonwalk" when his time came to come to the floor. If expelled, Traficant will become only the second member of Congress expelled in the last 150 years.

A 7-year old girl from Philadelphia who was kidnapped chewed through her duct tape bindings and smashed through a window to escape her kidnappers. After breaking a window she called to neighborhood kids who came and rescued her and rode a bicycle to get police, and she was reunited with her mother. Police are searching for James Burns, 29, and Edward Johnson, 23, who are considered suspects in the abduction. The men are known to the girl's family and that their names were provided by two witnesses.

Jayson Stark has a good article on the baseball strike and the concept of a minimum payroll on ESPN.com...

Charlotte is beginning negotiations with the NBA to bring another team to the Queen City...This time, the city is asking for a team with competent owners who don't insult their fans...

President Bush has finally signed the bill which makes Yucca Mountain in Utah the nation's nuclear waste depository...

73 out of 100 counties in North Carolina have been designated agricultural disaster areas due to the region's 5-year long drought...

Eugene Volokh takes on "Hostile Work Environment" harassment law, discussing a situation where employees were fired from a community college for looking at "pornographic" materials at work...

I am going to make a few changes to the site over the next few days. I have always thought the font size of the text was too small, and I have finally found a template that I really like (considering my very rudimentary knowledge of HTML I did not try to develop my own site). Ya'll please have patience with me, and everything will be back to normal soon.

CNN examines the deflationary cycle of Japan and the similarities it has with the current business situation in the U.S...

AT&T is reporting a $12.7 billion second-quarter loss...

Iran Update

The Bush Administration has shifted its foreign policy on Iran, abandoning its support of President Mohammad Khatami and other reformist allies in the Iranian government, and instead focusing on appealing directly to the democratic ideals of the Iranian people.

A senior administration official said Bush has concluded with his senior foreign policy advisers that Khatami and his supporters in the government "are too weak, ineffective and not serious about delivering on their promises" to transform Iranian society. Instead, the official said, "we have made a conscious decision to associate with the aspirations of Iranian people. We will not play, if you like, the factional politics of reform versus hard-line."

Bush signaled the change publicly in a strongly worded presidential statement in which he praised large pro-democracy street demonstrations in Iran. The shift cheered foreign policy experts who had urged a tougher approach toward Tehran and was a setback for the State Department, which had spearheaded efforts to engage the Khatami leadership.

In the statement, Bush said that "uncompromising, destructive policies have persisted" in Iran despite recent presidential and parliamentary elections that have brought reform advocates to power. He accused Iranian leaders and their families of continuing "to obstruct reform while reaping unfair benefits" and demanded that the government listen to the Iranian people, who he said have "no better friend than the United States."

While the speech was largely unnoticed in the U.S., it has been broadcasted over the Voice of America radio and heard by many in Iran. Hasan Rowhani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council called President Bush's statement "insulting and impudent, as well as devious. . . . It was also extremely ridiculous and simplistic." Still, the fact that President Bush issued the statement in his own name made a deep impression in Iran.

Is Rev. Sharpton friends with Marion Berry

HBO's "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel" on Tuesday night is airing a 19-year-old FBI surveillance tape of Rev. Al Sharpton discussing a drug deal.

Sharpton said the taped conversation dated to 1983, when self-described mobster Michael Franzese and an undercover FBI agent posing as a Latin American businessman approached him to discuss promoting boxing matches and musical events.

Sharpton, 47, said that during the course of the conversation, the undercover agent began discussing a cocaine deal. The tape shows Sharpton being offered thousands of dollars to arrange the sale of cocaine.

"The guy had come to me. In the middle of conversation he started talking about how he could cut me in on a cocaine deal," Sharpton said. "I didn't know what this guy was on about. I didn't know if he was armed. I was scared so I just nodded my head to everything he said and then he left."

Rev. Sharpton has scheduled a press conference for this morning (Tuesday) to address the tape. I may not agree with his politics, but it is kind of coincidental that this tape came out now, when Rev. Sharpton's run for the presidency is in its infancy...

I'm glad he didn't get the death penalty

A man who was wrongfully convicted of a 1985 murder has been released after prosecutors investigated a confession by another prisoner and determined he was the real killer. Angelo Martinez spent 17 years behind bars, serving time for a drug conviction and for the murder. He has filed a $50 million suit against the state of New York, alleging he was unjustly convicted of the murder.

Israel kills Hamas leader; at least 14 others reported dead in Gaza

An Israeli warplane fired an air-to-surface missile in Gaza City today, destroying a Hamas leader's apartment building. Hamas said that Salah Shehadeh, the 48-year-old senior commander of Izzadine el-Qassam, the Islamic fundamentalist group's military wing, was killed along with his wife Leileh, their 14-year-old daughter Iman, a bodyguard and at least 11 other people, including eight children. Palestinians say that more than 100 people were injured in the attack.

Hamas is the most active terrorist group in the region, carrying out more terrorist attacks on Israelis and Jewish settlers than other groups. Shehadeh was jailed by either the Palestinians or the Israelis from 1988 to 1999. When he was released, he stayed in Gaza and was responsible for setting Hamas policy for attacks and giving orders to militants to carry out the attacks. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Cabinet ministers, "[T]his operation was in my view one of our biggest successes...[w]e hit perhaps the most senior Hamas figure on the operational side."

UPDATE: Deputy Defense Minister Dalia Rabin-Pelossof, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's daughter, resigned this morning. Her colleagues said that the reason for her resignation was that she was upset that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would not rejoin the peace process.

More on UNC and the Quran

The Family Policy Network, a conservative Christian group, and three unnamed UNC incoming freshman, have filed suit in Greensboro to fight the university's requirement for freshmen that they read parts of the Quran. The lawsuit alleges that the university's reading and discussion group requirement would have the effect of endorsing and indoctrinating students in Islam.

UPI is reporting that the $34 million earmarked for the United Nations's Population Fund, an organization accused of supporting coercive abortions and involuntary sterilizations in China, has been redirected by President Bush. The money will instead be spent on programs administered by the United States Agency for International Development's Child Survival and Health Program Fund. "While Americans have different views on the issues of abortion, I think all agree that no woman should be forced to have an abortion," said State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. Thoraya Obaid, executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, said that, "[w]omen and children will die because of this decision."

"Experts" are saying that the internet is safe from outages caused by the bankruptcy of WorldCom...

The New York Times is reporting that senior officials at Citigroup helped Enron officers figure out how to mold deals to get around accounting rules...

"The records and interviews with investigators demonstrate for the first time that bankers intentionally manipulated the written record of their dealings with Enron to allow the company to improperly avoid the requirements of accounting rules and the law, thus keeping $125 million in debt off its books.

In the 1999 deal, the records show, the bankers knew that a secret oral agreement they had reached with Enron required that the accounting for the transaction be changed. Instead, investigators said, Citigroup left that side deal out of the written record and allowed Enron to account for the transaction in a way that the bankers knew was improper. In other words, the full terms of the deal were left out of the paperwork, with the result being that anyone reviewing it would have no idea that the accounting treatment being used by Enron was not proper."

Steve Wulf tells everyone to cut Tiger Woods some slack...

The Seattle Supersonics traded Vin Baker and Shammond Williams to the Boston Celtics in return for Kenny Anderson, Vitaly Potapenko and Joe Forte...
I still think one of the funniest things I have seen in the NBA was when the Seattle Supersonics listed Shammond Williams at 6 feet 7 inches, where 6 inches of that was his hair...

Prosecutors are considering seeking the death penalty for Alejandro Avila, the man arrested for the sexual assault and murder of 5-year-old Samantha Runnion in California...

Steven Den Beste discusses government, the principle of the "consent of the governed," and then explains the inherent tyranny of the International Criminal Court...

Another potential ripple effect of the fall of WorldCom is the outage of internet services hosted by them...

Glenn Reynolds has some good thoughts on the proposals for giving the military law-enforcement powers...

Since I have not been following the Tour de France closely, this guy has and tells you all about it more than once...

The New York Times reports on the upcoming Judiciary Committee hearing for the nomination of Justice Priscilla Owen of the Texas Supreme Court to United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit...

Applications to Triangle area law schools are up 15 to 25 percent this year, largely due to the recession and the tight job market...

The Washington Post has an interesting article on Tim Penny, the third party candidate who is running to replace Gov. Jesse Ventura of Minnesota...

People are moving out of the Northeast and into other parts of the country, meaning the Northeast has to rely on a substantial number of immigrants for labor...According to a Northeastern University study, more than 2.7 million residents left the six New England states plus New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the 1990s. Many of those residents were young, educated workers heading to the South and West. Meanwhile, 3.1 million foreign-born immigrants moved into the Northeast, the largest surge of immigrants since the first decade of the 20th century. More than three-quarters of the residents who left the Northeast were between ages 18 and 34, and nearly half of these young people had a bachelor's degree or higher.

Recent incidents, including President Bush's making North Korea a member of the Axis of Evil and a false alarm of a Chinese missle launch, as well as what is viewed as an increasingly unilateral U.S. foreign policy, have contributed to make South Korea and Japan question their alliance with the United States...

There are more tensions between the White House and the House of Representatives over budgetary matters concerning the Office of Homeland Security...

Environmentalists win one in California

Gov. Gray Davis of California is going to sign a law today which will for the first time will require automakers to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases coming from the tailpipes of all passenger vehicles sold in the state. The law addresses not the gases that cause smog but rather the invisible, odorless emissions that some scientists say appear to be contributing to the slow heating of the planet. California is the only state that is allowed, under a 1967 law, to set its own, tougher regulations for emissions. The main way to react to this new law would be to create more fuel efficent cars, and since California represents about 10 percent of the U.S. market, the effects of this law would trickle down to other states. "The downside of all the advanced technology (for fuel efficency) we're talking about is that it costs more," said Robert Sawyer, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley who studies vehicle emissions and regulatory policy. "There's not a market for fuel efficiency. Gasoline is cheap, so it's no big deal. The auto industry has been putting all its advanced technology into increased power." The auto industry is considering fighting the law in court.

WorldCom has officially filed for bankruptcy, making it the largest business ever to file...WorldCom's stock ended trading Friday at 9 cents...

The Houston Texans are sending signals that they think that David Carr, the No. 1 draft pick this year, can and will start at QB for them in the first game of the season...Then again, with Mike Quinn and Kent Graham as my other options, I'd probably start Carr too...

David Halberstam writes about the "perfect day" he spent covering his hero, Ted Williams...

John Clayton of ESPN.com also thinks the Dallas Cowboys could be the surprise team in 2002...

I think that is going to be it for the day...Some old friends are in town and we are going out for a drink tonight, and probably going wakeboarding tomorrow...I ought to be back some time Sunday...

I'll agree with whatever Mike Hendrix says about this couple, who beat their infant son to death and then burned his corpse in their fireplace...
He can vocalize the mixture of anger, disgust, and despair that I feel when I read about things like the cat story and this.

Hillary Clinton and Russ Feingold got in a shouting match while discussing campaign finance reform...

18 million pounds of contaminated hamburger have been recalled due to an outbreak of E. coli...

This is almost unbelieveable...

The New York Times (registration required) has an editorial calling New York anti-drug laws "ruinous" and unfair to many of the peope that have been convicted through them...

Steven Den Beste posts his thoughts on the Saudi Foreign Minister's calling for the removal of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon...
Hint: He uses the words "blithering idiot"...

Technology Executives tell Hollywood to stick it

Technology executives, including Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Dell Computer's Michael Dell and Intel's Craig Barrett, said in an open letter to entertainment industry executives that they would not create technology that limits computer users ability to copy and play digital media. This issue was started in February when the technology executives sent a letter to entertainment executives in an effort to cooperate in creating standards for the safe distribution of digital works.

"In April, the entertainment executives replied, saying they would cooperate if the technology industry reign in what's called "peer-to-peer" - or P-to-P - practices.

P-to-P allows consumer computers to easily share digital content over the Internet. It was the central technology that fueled Napster, the free music file swapping web site the courts shut down for allowing users to engage in wholesale copyright infringement."

P-to-P technology boosted sales for the computer industry, and while it makes it easier for consumers to copy protected material, the technology executives wrote back to Hollywood to say "[p]eer-to-peer technologies constitute a basic functionality of the computing environment today and one that is critical to further advances in productivity in our economy." The debate over P-to-P and copying of protected material will be ongoing.

I have a question for those readers who know a lot more about technology than I do. What effect will Microsoft's Palladium's security system have on this debate? I thought it was designed with this controversy in mind, but I could be wrong...

Link found via Fark...

The Fair Housing Act and Disparate Impact racial discrimination

Roger Clegg published an interesting essay in the National Review Online yesterday on whether the federal Fair Housing Act can be violated by someone who does not engage in racial discrimination. He writes that most of the lower federal courts have allowed "disparate impact" claims to be brought under the statute as well as normal racial discrimination claims. The disparate impact claims do not allege, and need not prove, that individuals were treated differently because of their race. Instead, it is enough for the plaintiff to show that a neutral practice has a disproportionate effect — that is, a disparate impact — on some racial group.

"For instance, if a landlord refuses to rent to people who are unemployed, and it turns out that this excludes a higher percentage of whites than Asians, then a white would-be renter could sue. It would not matter that the reason for the landlord's policy was race neutral and had nothing to do with hostility to whites. He would be liable, unless he could show some "necessity" for the policy. This, in turn, would hinge on whether he could convince a judge or jury that the economic reasons for preferring to rent to the gainfully employed were in some way essential. And this, unfortunately, is a roll of the dice."

Mr. Clegg clearly comes out against supporting disparate impact claims because of the way they find that people's actions that are not undertaken for racially discriminatory reasons are nonetheless found to be racially discriminatory because of the "disparate impact" they have on members of another race. He frames the case by stating, "[t]he issue, rather, is whether a policy that is racially neutral by its terms, in its application, and in its intent can nonetheless be treated as illegal discrimination because of racially disproportionate results," and ends the article by asking the Bush Administration to file an amicus brief asking the Court the rule against disparate impact claims under the Fair Housing Act. Clegg's essay is a good piece demonstrating how legislation with good intentions can sometimes spiral out of control.

Found via AppellateBlog...

The trade deficit and the dollar

The trade deficit rose to a record $37.6 billion in May. In related news, the value of the dollar has fallen again. A positive side effect of the value of the dollar falling (as many of you know) is that it makes things made in the U.S. cheaper overseas. Cheaper cost equals more sales. More overseas sales equals a smaller trade deficit, especially considering the fact that another effect of the value of the dollar declining is that it makes foreign goods selling in the U.S. more expensive...

Professor De Long's posted (1), (2) on the new parity between the dollar and the euro...

It's not just Republicans that like money

Terry Neal of the Washington Post has a story claiming that soft money donated to political parties by big business follows no significant party lines.

As you might expect, the Republicans won the race for cash – but not for a valiant lack of effort from the Democrats.

The fact is, big money has poured into the coffers of both parties, with Republicans taking in $636 million to the Democrats' $449 million, according to figures compiled for Democracy 21 by the Center for Responsive Politics, both non-partisan, Washington-based watchdog groups. The six scandal-tainted companies contributed $7.8 million to Republicans compared to $5.2 million for Democrats.

The dollar figures raise serious questions about whether the Democrats can gain a real advantage over Republicans on the corporate corruption issue in the November midterm election. What will the party's campaign slogan be? Vote for us: We were less successful than the GOP at sucking up to corporate America!

While this could potentially put a damper on the Democrats' attack of the Republicans on this issue in the fall, I don't think it will take much away from it. "But he does it too" is not a good way to defend yourself, and while Vice President Cheney has a good reason for his business transactions (he sold out in the summer of 2000 at the calling of Congressional Democrats), I have not yet heard an understandable, coherent explanation of President Bush's allegedly shady business transactions. This issue has the potential to haunt the Republicans in the fall, especially if more companies go the way of Enron and WorldCom.

A man with a knife attempted to hijack a Columbian passenger airliner as it neared the airport in Madrid to land. The hijacker was subdued by security forces, and the plane landed safely at a military base.

Score one for the EU

The EU will not send Cuba monetary aid from its multi-billion dollar fund because of its poor record on human rights and its lack of democracy. Cuba is a new member of the African Caribbean Pacific group, or ACP, a group of 63 countries trying to form a single negotiating position ahead of trade talks with Brussels in September.

Central to the talks is a 25-year pact signed by the EU and ACP in 2000, known as the Cotonou agreement, which promises $12.7 billion in aid to ACP states over the next five years if they show efforts to improve human rights and root out corruption.

As a latecomer to the ACP, Cuba has not signed Cotonou.

EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, who is attending the summit, on Friday rejected overtures from ACP leaders to give Cuba quick access to the agreement, said ACP spokesman Hegel Goutier.

The EU believes Cuba cannot satisfy basic principles of the agreement, especially with respect to democracy and human rights, said Billie Miller, deputy prime minister of Barbados, who heads the Caribbean grouping at the summit.

I'd like to give an a strong "Hell Yeah" to the Europeans on this one. This proves that they can tell the difference between right and wrong if they want. Now, if they only applied this vision to Iraq...

The Washington Post has a poll out saying that Al Gore is the clear frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 (yeah yeah, like no one knew that). If Gore runs and Lieberman decides not to run (which he said in the past he would do but he has been backpedaling recently) Gore gets 50 precent of the votes in the poll. I'm not sure how valuable polls like these are more than two years before the election. I suppose they are made for slow news days, which would definitely not be today.

More shady accounting news

AOL gave out awards for creative accounting...

UPDATE: Robert Pittman, the Chief Operating Officer and No. 2 man at AOL, resigned yesterday. The top three officers of AOL-Time Warner now have Time Warner roots, with the only AOL influence being Chairman Steve Case.

David Fleming says that the Dallas Cowboys will challenge for the NFC East and might make it to the Super Bowl this year...

The Washington Times is reporting that the United States has ordered economic sanctions against eight Chinese businesses for selling destabilizing arms and germ-weapons materials to Iran.

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays were apparently late in making nearly $1 million in deferred payments to Steve Trachsel and Gerald Williams.

Trachsel, now pitching for the New York Mets, was due $428,571.43 on June 30 under a contract he signed with Tampa Bay two years ago. But the Devil Rays did not direct deposit that amount until Wednesday, according to four management and player sources, who all spoke on the condition they not be identified.

"I don't think it's anybody's business," Trachsel said after the Mets' 2-1 loss Thursday at Montreal. "I'm not going to ask you what deposits are made into your account."

Williams was owed $526,875 by the Devil Rays on June 30. The outfielder's overdue payment was received Tuesday by his agents, two of the sources said.

It really seems like the financial situation in baseball is spiraling out of control...

Zacarias Moussaoui is now trying to plead guilty. He was stopped mid-sentence by the judge when he was announcing his allegiance to Al Qaida and Osama Bin Laden and the judge asked him to reconsider his decision for a week. Moussaoui did, hovvever, indicate that he wanted to fight the death penalty that the U.S. is likely to seek...

I sometimes get confused by the layout of Amazon.com, so I think this website is pretty damn cool...

Al Sharpton has been evicted from the Empire State Building...

Scientists have discovered that Mayans used chocolate 2,600 years ago, pushing back the date of the earliest chocolate back 1,000 years...

The AP is reporting that a new survey conducted at schools says that teen drug and alcohol use is down to its lowest level since the 1993-1994 school year...The authors of the survey attempt to draw a connection between Sept. 11 and the decline in drug use, but cite no evidence of causation, simply stating that since Sept. 11th and a drop in drug use are correlated, they must be tied together...Also, while the declining drug use shown by this survey seems to be good news, I am not sure if polling kids at school is the best way of testing drug use...Whenever I took surveys like this in high school I would try to write the most outrageous answers possible, and I was not alone...This is another reason why I think the surveys that say something like "95 percent of U.S. high school kids don't know who the president is" are crap because the people being surveyed are not answering the questions honestly...Not that its a bad thing either...I'm sure some of those surveys were very amusing to read...

Speaking of dominating a sport

Lance Armstrong has won the yellow jersey in the first mountain stage of the Tour de France...Does anyone think he will relinquish it again in this year's race?

A TownHall column by Paul Craig Roberts points out that there are going to be some negative unintended consequences from the government's attempts at regulating big business accounting fraud...
Via WylieBlog...

Today's Opinion Journal has three good editorials (or at least two good and one entertaining) arguing:

1.) We don't need the new Department of Homeland Security

2.) We should get our priorities in order and quit worrying about John Lindh the traitor and focus on the very real problem of Iraq

3.) Phil Donahue will not catch Bill O'Reiley as a prime-time talk show host but will probably "kill off" Connie Chung

Tiger Woods shot a 1-under 70 today in the first round of the British Open...He apparently was bothered by a "shaky" putter, and was not able to read the speed of the greens well...
This is a typical bad Tiger round, and why he is in a class all by himself right now...When he has a bad round, he does not make mistakes that cost him bogeys. Because of the strength of his mental and physical game, his mistakes almost inevitably end up as pars rather than bogeys, which means he is normally close enough to the leaders to be in contention, even after a bad round...

Officer Jeremy Morse, the police officer on the videotape caught hitting a black teenager while he was held down on the hood of a car, has been indicted on assault charges. Morse will plead innocent, and his attorney said that he believed an "impartial jury will find that the use of force was necessary and he will be acquitted." A grand jury also returned an indictment Wednesday afternoon against Morse's partner, Officer Bijan Darvish. He will face a charge of filing a false police report.

British scientists have discovered the gene that initiates human life...The gene they found in sperm triggers the crucial process by which an egg starts dividing to form an embryo, later resulting in a person being born...

Alec Klein is reporting in a long article in the Washington Post that unconventional transactions boosted sales for AOL...

Symantec, the company that owns Norton Anti Virus, will pay $145 million in cash for Riptech Inc., a Virginia based internet security firm. Riptech provides full-time network security monitoring and analysis, services that Norton is planning on integrating into its security business, which was earning virtually no revenue. Just two weeks ago, Symantec spent $20 million acquiring Mountain Wave Inc., a company that sells security management software and services to businesses.

Steve Jobs announced at Macworld that Windows users are going to get their own iPod...
This is pretty cool...A friend of mine has an iPod and that thing is incredible...

Howard Bashman reports on a case where the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a trial court's holding that a confession in an Alcoholics Anonmous meeting was made under New York's cleric-congregant privilege protection...
You can access the ruling here...
Via (as most of my appellate law news is) How Appealing...

Another suicide attack today in Israel killed at least seven people in Tel Aviv....

Time magizine is reporting that Bin Laden was last seen November 17th leaving Jalalabad...

If you think baseball is screwed up now, check out what happened in 1902...

Benjamin Zycher at Tech Central Station writes an interesting defense for capital punishment...

Why not to cheer for Tiger Woods, and other thoughts on the British Open

Ned Barnett of the News and Observer (my old high school political science called it the "News and Disturber") explains why it's hard for him to cheer for Tiger Woods this week at the British Open...

As someone who hacks at the ball with a golf club every so often, I am awed by Tiger's skill and ability. Still, as in other sports, the goal of the athlete is to entertain the audience. It is not entertaining any more for me to watch Tiger run away with a tournament victory. I've already seen it. I am cheering for Phil Mickelson or Sergio Garcia or Neal Lancaster (I wish) to go toe to toe with Tiger, even if they don't come out on top. As much as I like Phil Mickelson, it infuriates me that he can lose to Tiger and seem like he doesn't care. I understand that Phil is successful at pretty much everything he does, but for goodness sake golf is a sport. Sports are competitive. Don't be happy with losing. Be fucking pissed off, and show it. As they say, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. I'll be cheering for Sergio, Phil and Neal this weekend. While I am not going to be hoping Tiger falters, what I am praying for is someone that has the balls to step up and play their game better than Tiger...
Geez, you can tell I've been reading Mike Hendrix's blog on a consistent basis...I just wish my writing were as good as his...

Douglas Turnbull has a very interesting post on The myth of utopia...
He seems to be suffering from the Blogger archive problem so I have linked to the top of his page...

Mike Hendrix revisits some priceless Al Bundy quotes...

Howard Bashman reported yesterday that Senator Frank Murkowski (R-Alaska) is strongly advocating a split of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and will be offering his 9th Circuit split amendment "on every bill until we obtain a vote on this issue." It appears that he would put only California and perhaps Nevada in a new 9th Circuit. This of course would leave Arizona unconnected to the rest of the proposed 12th Circuit. The 9th Circuit is the court where the Pledge decision came from, and this is important news because the 9th Circuit is operating under an astronomical backlog of cases...

Why the U.S. is right in its approach to the Middle East

The headline in this Washington Post article is not correct. It says "U.S., Allies Differ On Mideast Goals ." I don't think we do. The Mideast goals for both the U.S. and Europe is peace and prosperity for that region, eventually culminating in a Palestinian state peacefully coexisting side-by-side with Israel. The differences arise in how to reach those goals.

Europe thinks that social and economic changes should be attempted even if Israel and the Palestinians are fighting a war with each other. It does not matter to them that the Palestinians are sending suicide bombers to attack Israeli citizens. It does not make a difference that cafes and shops in Israel have to have an armed guard outside in order to prevent a suicide bomber from entering. It further does not matter that Israel did not create this wave of violence. The U.S. understands that no progress can be made until the violence that has marred the peace process ends.

While there is an enormous humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian people, Arafat and the rest of their leadership chose a long time ago to sacrifice economic prosperity in order to continue the Intifada. They should not be rewarded for that choice with aid from anyone. Rather, they should have to suffer the consequences of that decision so they learn to never make the same decision again. The Palestinian people have to understand that the war that is being waged against Israel is not in their best interests. If they realize that, they ought to stop fighting that war. Then, after the violence stops (and it will stop then, since all of Israel’s steps in the way have been in reaction to suicide bombings) the social and economic development that the Europeans contend is needed can begin. Rewarding the Palestinians for choosing violence and war against Israel runs completely counter to the goal of promoting peace. Pressuring Israel to cave to Palestinian demands would be rewarding the Palestinians for their violence. This is why the U.S. opposes anyone making any more concessions to the Palestinians until the violence stops for good. After the violence stops, real steps can be taken toward peace, but the first step has to be an end to the bombings and gunfights. That can only be accomplished when the Palestinians choose to stop fighting against Israel and instead choose to work with it and the rest of the world to fashion a lasting peace.


UPDATE: Steven Den Beste has two good posts on the Middle East today…

Turkish Premier Bulent Ecevit agreed Tuesday to hold elections Nov. 3 in an attempt to avoid a possible ouster and end months of political uncertainty that has shaken market confidence and imperiled Turkey's economic recovery. While this article is talking about the effect of the decision on the Turkish stock markets, I wonder what effect this decision will have on the way we go after Iraq...

Ford reported a $570 million profit in the second quarter, beating expectations and making a profit this year in stark contrast to last year when they lost $752 million...

Saddam has "vowed to defeat any U.S. attack on Iraq." In a TV address to the nation, he said, "Iraq will be victorious, victorious, victorious. ... All the foreign roaring you are hearing will be withered away by the wind, because the enemy is a greedy oppressor and enemy of God." Saddam is a good warrior, but he also is a poor soldier. He can stand there and jump up and down and scream and yell and get people whipped up in a frenzy, but his skills as an actual soldier were proved in the First Gulf War. When the bombs start dropping I'd put my money on soldiers before warriors...

The Washington Post has an article that points out that in the recent wave of accounting scandals, shareholder lawsuits alleging financial improprieties normally predated revelations by the company of accounting problems and fraud.

"In WorldCom's case, shareholders filed suit last summer alleging a variety of fraudulent accounting practices, including failure to write off accounts that were unlikely to ever be paid and deliberately understating expenses overall. The suit was dismissed in March. Last month, the company announced that it had improperly reclassified $3.9 billion in operating expenses as capital expenditures, enabling the firm to bolster its bottom line by spreading costs over several years. One person familiar with the matter said that when the suit was raised at a WorldCom board meeting, it was not clearly presented as being focused on accounting issues.

Shareholder's lawsuits are often viewed by management as a frivilous lawsuit filed by predatory plaintiffs' attorneys, and while that view probably should not change, the filing of a shareholder's lawsuit might serve as a good "red flag" for companies investigating accounting fraud. Still, I think this determines on how many lawsuits of this kind are filed against a company. If they have to deal with them every year, they serve no purpose other than to harass the business. If they are filed only when it appears there has been fraud, then they could serve as teh "red flag" the article is talking about.

Senators John Edwards and John Kerry have both surged ahead in the fundraising race for the Democratic nomination for president in 2004, but are going about the fundraising in different ways. While Sen. Kerry is travelling the country seeking hard money donations, Sen. Edwards is raising as much soft money (banned Nov. 6) as he can (almost $2 million so far) and then giving it to the New Hampshire and Iowa state Democratic parties...

I'm for Neal Lancaster in the British Open...He is the only player ever to shoot 29 on 9 holes in a U.S. Open, but hasn't won in a long time...Still, you have to support the people from your hometown...
My money, like everyone else's, would be on Tiger, though I think that the British Open is the major he has the best chance to lose since the course is shorter and more players are in contention, as well as the style of play being links golf rather than U.S. Open-type golf...

I really would like to thank the people that have linked to TarheelPundit over the last couple of days. I got my first mention via Stephen Green a couple of weeks ago, but recently Jeff Cooper, Doc Searls, Tony Hooker, Denise Howell, and Ed Cone have all posted links to this site and have also said nice things about it...I appreciate it ya'll...As I have said before, it is nice to know people want to read what I have to say here, especially when one of the reasons I'm blogging is to try and improve my writing...Thanks again...

Sporting News has a good story on Phillip Rivers and the NC State football team...
I may be a Heels fan, but you still have to know your enemies...

This is a satellite image of Typhoon Halong, with winds of 132 mph (Category 4) located east of Taiwan...As recently as July 12th the winds were measured at 155 mph...
Having lived through four hurricanes (Bob, Bob Jr., Fran, and Floyd), pictures like this both facinate and scare me...

I agree with Howard Bashman that Newt Gingrich's calling for the impeachment of the two Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges who held that the Pledge was unconstitutional is "the most idiotic reaction to that ruling that I have yet heard seriously proposed." I wonder, though, if Gingrich wrote this article in order to get this kind of reaction and thereby gain an appearance on Donahue or O'Reiley...

I just found out I'm still having the archive problems that everyone else is having...I'm going to republish my archives when I post so if anyone wants to link to a post the links ought to work now, and if they don't would you please let me know? Thanks...

UPI points to growing doubts about Hamid Karzai being the President of Afghanistan...

Another day, another indictment

A federal grand jury indicted Zacarias Moussaoui a third time for his actions in connection with the September 11th attacks. Prosecutors returned to the grand jury because the Supreme Court ruled last month that juries, not judges, must make the crucial decisions on life or death, and the Bush Administration is said to be seeking the death penalty for Moussaoui if he is convicted.

Greenspan Speaks

Alan Greenspan spoke to Congress this morning, and indicated that barring any "significant further adverse shocks" the economy is on the road to recovery. He indicated that the Fed will leave interest rates where they are now in order to encourage consumer spending. Greenspan also addressed the recent wave of corporate accounting scandals, saying that the checks and balances on corporate governance that worked well in the past might have been hurt by the go-go mentality of the 1990s that "arguably engendered an outsized increase in opportunities for avarice." Greenspan also reemphasized his support for companies to treat lucrative stock options for top executives as a business expense, but he indicated that should be left to the private sector and should not be forced upon companies by Congress.

New WTC plans are going to be released Tuesday...
UPDATE: The plans have been released...

Joe Katzman at Winds of Change has decided to move to an Instapundit-like linker blog for now because of the Blogger problems with linking to posts...

Jane Galt at Live from the WTC has a good post on why Congress won't change the rules regarding stock options in reforming business accounting (hint: it's because of campaign finance reform)...

Allen Iverson turned himself in today on assault and other charges stemming from an incident a week ago whree he forced himself into his cousin's apartment, threatened two men and demanded that they tell him where he could find his wife...

Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz met with Turkish leaders Tuesday to gather support for possible military action against Iraq...

More information on Palladium and the Trusted Computer Platform Alliance, by Ross Anderson of the University of Cambridge...
Link via Cold Fury...

John Feinstein writes that while Tiger Woods is good for golf, his complete dominance of the sport may cause problems if the other players on tour don't step up and challenge him...

Yahoo! has agreed to censor its Chinese web portal at the direction of the Communist Chinese government.

The "Public Pledge on Self-discipline for China Internet Industry" has attracted more than 300 signatories since its launch March 16, said a spokeswoman for the Internet Society of China, who identified herself only as Miss Sun...
Those who sign the pledge must refrain from "producing, posting or disseminating pernicious information that may jeopardize state security and disrupt social stability." The prohibition also covers information that breaks laws and spreads "superstition and obscenity." Members must remove material deemed offensive or face expulsion from the group. Signers also pledge to monitor content of foreign-based Web sites and block those containing unspecified harmful information.

A special police force monitors Web sites and sifts e-mail searching for messages promoting causes such as greater political openness, the banned Falun Gong ( news - web sites) spiritual movement and independence for minority regions. Web sites of human rights groups and Western and Taiwanese media are frequently blocked.

Bush to Propose Broad New Powers in Domestic Security

The New York Times (registration required) is reporting that the Bush Administration is to reveal its plan for homeland security today, out of which grew the idea to develop the new cabinet level Department of Homeland Security. Tom Ridge has been working on this plan for eight months, and it calls for, among other things, a relaxing of the laws which keep the military from operating within the United States, a thorough inventory of the nation's critical infrastructure and the creation of a secret plan to defend it, and the creation of an "intelligence threat division" in the new cabinet department...

North Carolina Politics Update

Elizabeth Dole, the Republican candidate to replace retiring Jesse Helms in the Senate, has raised $8 million, twice the amount of her opponent Erskine Bowles...

In related news, the North Carolina House of Representatives voted unanimously to hold primary elections on September 10th...

In a blow to environmentalists, the Navy is going ahead and testing a controversial new low-frequency sonar which is able to detect quiet submarines at a much greater distance, but also injures whales and other marine mammals that are near the submarine...

Dog Maul Case Sentence

San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren gave Marjorie Knoller, the California woman who let her dog maul her neighbor to death, a sentence of four years in prision for involuntary manslaughter, a sentence which is much less than the 15 years to life that second degree murder, the verdict returned by the jury, carries...

Palestinian gunmen injured 25 people in an attack on a bus in the West Bank town of Emmanuel...
Still, Israel's occupation military strategy seems to be working considering this is the most serious attack since the "back-to-back Palestinian suicide bombings in Jerusalem" rather than it being the most serious attack since yesterday...

Doc Searls had some nice things to say about my blog, and North Carolina in general, and if you can't tell I'm not the political cartoonist. Reading his thoughts on NC reminded me of something I have observed living here. Thanks a lot Doc.
One thing I have noticed from living in North Carolina (I was born in Atlanta but moved North Carolina when I was 12 and consider the state home) is how much people here are tied to our state. It seems that a lot of people from other parts of the country identify where they live by their city, like Los Angles or Chicago. Instead, people from North Carolina tend to say they are from North Carolina, rather than from Raleigh or from Charlotte. This might be a southern thing rather than just an NC thing, but it is something I have often noticed. People are proud of being from North Carolina, and for good reason. We have mountains and beaches within a few hours of each other. The people here are kind, generous, and courteous, always willing to relax and talk over a glass of tea (and you'd better not ask what kind of tea). The state is growing, with a lot of people from other places moving here. And I saved the best two things about North Carolina for last: the best college basketball in the country (whether you are a Heels fan, a Duke fan, or a State fan you always have a good basketball team to cheer for, even if their season last year wasn't as good as you hoped it would be) and the best BBQ anywhere. Ya'll come visit North Carolina and you'll see what I mean, and if you are ever in my neck of the woods, stop by for a drink. If you do, you'll probably come back...
And by the way, Eastern North Carolina BBQ with a little of South Carolina mustard added to it is the best you can get...
Thanks to Steve MacLaughlin for the heads up...
UPDATE: As pointed out to me, I did forget to put the Deacs on my list of good basketball teams (they even beat UNC in football last year), but I disagree with Tony Hooker and still think Eastern Style BBQ is the best. Still, he is dead on when he says "anything from the Carolinas beats that third rate BBQ from elsewhere, right? " You're damn skippy it does...

Plaintiffs win temporary injunction preventing Gator pop-up ads

Software company Gator was ordered by Judge Claude Hilton to temporarily stop displaying pop-up advertising over Web publishers' pages without their permission.

"The order was issued in a lawsuit filed against Gator in June by The Washington Post, The New York Times, Dow Jones and seven other publishers, which allege the company's ads violate their copyrights and steal revenue...The companies had sought a temporary injunction against Gator preventing it from delivering ads keyed to their sites pending the resolution of the suit, in which they are seeking a permanent injunction against the company and monetary damages for any advertising dollars made from their Web pages."

Heaven...
Found via Harrumph!

Mr. Harris over at Ipse Dixit (which, he explains, means "he himself said it", or "because I say so") has some interesting thoughts on the International Criminal Court and the US's 1-year renewable immunity from its jurisdiction...

A post on Cold Fury last week said that there was a massive shortage of shipping containers right now, and drew the conclusion that the US military might be using them to prepare for Iraq...In a post on Winds of Change, one of Joe Katzman's readers, a former commodity trader, addresses this conclusion, saying

"This is the time of year when NO crops are shipped from the Midwest to anywhere. There are usually very few freight cars and trucks other than for shipping hogs and cattle.

This year's floods have made it impossible for trucks and trains to move from the southwest, and northern floods have frozen traffic in the upper Mississippi Valley. The withering heat in the rest of the Mid-West also causes streess in trucks.

There may indeed be a buildup, but this year's weather has plenty to do with the unavailability of trucks and rail cars. Also the drought in wheat fields means that there will be less grain shipped than normal so less vehicles needed."

EU to Consider Banning Happy Hour

Another reason not to support the unelected EU bureaucrats in Brussels...European Parliament members will vote next month on outlawing the practice of cutting booze prices for an hour or two to attract drinkers, allegedly for the reason that big pub firms lose money on happy hours simply to crush rival bars that can’t afford discounts...Another reason given for the ban is that happy hours "encourage the wrong type of drinking"...
These guys wouldn't know "happy" if it hit them over the head with a baseball bat...If they keep this type of thing up the EU will be relegated to history quicker than Michael Jordan's baseball career...

The Washington Times has an article contending that Young Muslims still favor America...

Lindh to Plead Guilty

A lawyer for John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban," told the court that he will plead guilty to charges against him...

“There is a change in plea,” defense attorney James Brosnahan told U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III.

Brosnahan told the court a deal was completed late Sunday night, on the eve of a hearing that was going to determine whether statements Lindh made to interrogators after his capture would be admissible in court.

Brosnahan did not immediately detail the specific pleas to each count or the terms of the deal, and the judge was explaining the consequences of a guilty plea to Lindh before any pleas were accepted.

Under the terms of the deal, Lindh is to serve two 10-year sentences and cooperate fully with US officials investigating the al-Qaida and terrorism...
UPDATE: Mike Hendrix at Cold Fury comments on the plea bargain...

Jeff Cooper posts another edition of his Wine of the Week, this time reviewing Jasper Hill Georgia's Paddock Shiraz 1990...he has even created a wine index, where you can access past wine reviews...Since I inherited my father's taste for wine, as well as his soft spot for Australian vintages, the Wine of the Week feature is something I eagerly wait for every week...

Blogger seems to be working now...I am not getting any error messages when I post and my posts are appearing on my blog without the added effort of re-publishing the archives...
It was aggravating while it was down, but I ought not to complain since I have not shelled out the cash for Blogger Pro yet...
UPDATE: Of course, since Blogger is working, Enetation, my comments hosting service, is down...
UPDATE #2: Enetation is working again...

Asking the Magic 8-Ball About Amazon.com

BusinessWeek.com has a good article examining the effect of Amazon.com's expectation of hitting full-year profitability in 2003...

Anyone who has followed the path of Amazon.com's (AMZN ) stock since it reached a record high of $113 in December, 2000, knows that investing in this company requires a gut check. The price fell to a record low of $6 after September 11, but investors who got in at that level were rewarded, as the shares crept up to $20 in May. Now, after a recent swoon to around $13.50, shares are back near $15.

You can read the trajectory several ways. For one thing, Amazon looks like a dot-com survivor -- part of an elite group that's getting smaller by the day. And its future appears solid: It's widely expected that the giant e-tailer will show its first full-year profit in 2003. At that point, investors will have a true picture for assessing Amazon's valuation relative to its retailing peers.

Time to jump on the Jeff Bezos Express? Not so fast. This is where the Amazon picture gets a little muddled. Most of the Street sees Amazon earnings as a big positive next year, but the estimates for return on share value are all over the map -- and valuations for the stock are already quite high no matter which analyst you listen to. Hence, the recent volatility.

Good luck to Amazon.com...I agree with the article that they seem to be one of the survivors of the burst of the dot com bubble, and I hope they are successful (considering I buy things on a halfway consistent basis from their site and have never had a problem makes me tend to support them)...
Article found via Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal...

Wobbly watch reaches the Washingto Post

David S. Broder has published an editorial attacking President Bush for being "wobbly"...

Moussaoui's days may be numbered

Tom Jackman writes in the Washington Post that Zacarias Moussaoui may have "Doomed His Defense" when he fired his lawyers and began to represent himself...The two lawyers that he fired have been kept on standby by U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema, but Moussaoui is losing important time necessary to develop a defense to a very complex case that the government has against him...

The Washington Post has an article describing the South's 5-year long drought, and says that it could reach drastic proportions this year...

Howard Bashman has a post on what is likely to happen next with the Pledge of Allegiance case...

The Department of Defense has unveiled the X-45, the next generation drone for the Air Force...

Pfizer pharmacutical company is expected to announce the acquisition of Pharmacia for $60 Billion, which would be the largest ever for a Drug company...
Via Drudge...

A Pakistani judge sentenced one of the four Islamic militants responsible for Daniel Pearl's murder to death and sent the other three to prison...

The Dollar has dropped in value so far to where it is now on parity with the Euro....

Peter Gammons says that it may be time for Bud Selig to go as the Commissioner of Baseball...
CNN SI also has a good breakdown of the issues in the labor dispute between the players and the owners...

The Justice Department approved the legislative districts for North Carolina drawn by Superior Court Judge Knox Jenkins of Johnston County (my home county)...for those of you who don't live in North Carolina, both houses of our legislature are controlled by Democrats, and after they redrew the districts using the information from the 2000 census the Republicans sued, cliaiming the districts drawn by the Democrats violated a provision in the North Carolina constitution which directed the legislature to draw legislative districts along county lines as much as possible...Judge Jenkins found the districts drawn by the legislature were unconstitutional, and ended up having to draw the districts himself when he found that the districts later submitted by the Democrats and Republicans were both unconstitutional...Judge Jenkins's districts were upheld by the Supreme Court of North Carolina after the Democrats appealed his decision, and the districts have now been validated by the Justice Department and it appears we may actually have primary elections in North Carolina...

The first test of a scale model of a supersonic jet the Japanese are developing to replace the Concorde failed in spectacular fashion as it crashed and exploded after getting about 100 meters above the ground...

Eugene Volokh takes a look at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld...This is the case where Yaser Esam Hamdi, a U.S. citizen detained in Afghanistan as an enemy combatant was allowed an unsupervised meeting with a public defender by the lower court...the Court of Appeals held that allowing that meeting was premature, and that the lower court should hold further hearings to determine -- with considerable deference to the government's judgment -- whether Hamdi was indeed an enemy combatant...

Thanks to Howard Bashman for the code which lets readers choose whether they want the links they click on to open in a new window...

The Chinese have increased the number of ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missles) aimed at the United States...China has also transferred all of its short ranged missles to a province near Taiwan...

Astronomers may have found a way to look inside the event horizon of a black hole...
Via Silflay Hraka

The head of Germany's BND foreign intelligence network says Osama Bin Laden is still alive...

I'm not going to be posting as much today...I'm in Charlotte this weekend, and I am going to play golf today (well..if you call what I do playing golf)...I'll post more later on today...

U.S. troops have been given a 1-year exemption from the International Criminal Court, and the U.S. has decided not to veto any more peacekeeping initiatives...

ok...blogger appears to be working...kinda...sorta...maybe?

There are more hints that Arafat is on his way out...
Via Tal G...

N.Z. Bear has penned an open letter to the people of Iran from webloggers who would support a democratic revolution there...
Count me in...

Blogger is acting up again...it is only showing posts from 12:00 and earlier...
UPDATE: Now Blogger is acting really strange...if you go to the normal http://tarheelpundit.blogspot.com page the first post it shows is from Erskine Bowles...But if you click on a link to a specific post it will show all of the posts...

How to fix Baseball (and no, this is not about Shoeless Joe Jackson)

Jim Baker lists his solutions to baseball's problems...

Crackpot Administrators at it again at UNC

UNC (where I am a student in law school) is requiring its incoming freshman to read parts of the Koran...(scroll down to read it...it's the 2nd item on the page)

The Koran is required reading for incoming frosh at the University of North Carolina, and some Christians aren't too happy about it. Students are supposed to read Approaching the Qur'an. The book translates and discusses the earliest 35 suras, the first words Muslims believe God revealed to the prophet Mohammed. The students will read the book during orientation week in mid-August and discuss it for "a couple of hours" in groups of 20 to 25 led by faculty members, according to UNC Chancellor James Moeser.

This whole diversity aka mulitcultural aka political correctness bullshit has gone way too far this time. Why do the students have to read the Koran? What goal is this accomplishing, other than to piss people off (and with the budget crisis the university is currently in, the last thing they need is a controversy like this in a conservative state like North Carolina)? I think this is another case of someone being blinded by ideology, and then shoving their world view down other people's throats. Just because someone thinks they get a better perspective on the world by reading something shouldn't mean they ought to make other people read it. Couldn't the university find something better for the students to read? It blows my mind that the adminstration made the decision that this book was the best one possible for the students to read over the summer...Joanne Jacobs says

Our country was attacked less than a year ago by Islamic fanatics who killed thousands of Americans in the name of Islam; their stated goal is to destroy our civilization and convert us to a nutso brand of Islam. Or kill us. Yet our universities are rushing to add courses on Islam to meet student demand. We want to understand their beliefs, even though they don't want to understand ours. Maybe it's a goofy response, but it's also a sign of how secure we are, how open to ideas. How strong.

Yes, we are open to new ideas. That is why Islam has not been censored over here, even the radical kind that spawned the terrorists. It's called freedom. Still, I think that forcing students to read the Koran is a bad idea as well as another attempt by those whose main rallying cry is "diversity" to force people adopt their worldview...
And by the way, if any future UNC students are reading this blog, you do not have to read it...just skip the session when you go to orientation...that's what I did when I got fed up with the book I was required to read about the life of some indigenous people somewhere and how much the United States had oppressed them...

First Monday Night Football, now HBO

The last episode of Dennis Miller Live will air on August 30th, which is too bad...I never watched the show regularly since I don't have HBO, but I really liked the shows that I saw...

I need a drink

This is just depressing...Some 400-gallons of 100-proof whiskey went into the sewer system after a major whiskey spill at Brown-Forman in Louisville today.

Erskine Bowles, the Democratic candidate frontrunner for Senator in North Carolina, is getting criticized for his ties to Merck & Co. pharmaceutical company, which has come under fire for its accounting recently...

More on Internet Jurisdiction
The State Supreme Court in Minnesota has held that a woman who wrote a message on the Internet critical of an Alabama scholar cannot be sued for libel in the scholar's home state...this is a jurisdictional issue, basically saying that just writing something on the Internet about someone in another state is not enough to allow the writer to be sued in the home state of the person the writer was writing about...

Arafat is saying that he is unsure whether he will run in the upcoming Palestinian elections...

The deficit estimate for this year's budget has gone up again, according to White House estimates...

The Washington Post is reporting that the Republican Party has the fundraising edge so far in the race to November 7th...

Today's Required Reading
Dan Savage has a great column in The Stranger called ...and Pass the Ammunition, which is a takedown of the pacifist response to Sept. 11 (I'm not calling it the "pacifist left" response to Sept. 11 because while most of the pacifists are liberals, most liberals have not responded like the pacifists so I don't want to insult them by lumping them in with the pacifists...)

Link found via Cold Fury, to whom I'd like to thank for adding a permalink to TarheelPundit...it's nice to know people actually read what I have to write...

The Pledge of Allegiance Case is a fraud, reports Howard Bashman (link and headline via Instapundit)...In commenting on this new revelation Bashman says:

I simply don't see how a non-custodial father has the right to object to his daughter's having to say the pledge if neither the daughter nor the mother, who has full custody, has any objection. If Newdow lacked standing to press the issue that the Ninth Circuit addressed in his appeal, then the Ninth Circuit's decision would need to be set aside.

Those of you coming over from Professor Cooper's blog (via Professor Reynolds?) can view the post he is referring to by scrolling down about a quarter of the page and finding the long post...the Blogger archive bug has hit me so this link directly to the post isn't working (if anyone knows how to fix it please let me know)...
UPDATE: WOOHOO!! The links have been fixed...thanks to Professors Cooper and Reynolds for letting me know how to fix it..

The Violence Policy Center is denouncing the passage of the "Arming Pilots Against Terrorism Act." This is completely and utterly ridiculous. The facts quoted by the VPC to support its stance are:

One study found that 21 percent of police officers killed with a handgun were shot with their own service weapon.
Trained law enforcement officers have only an 18 to 22 percent hit ratio in armed confrontations. The cramped quarters of an airliner do not lend themselves to success.

I don't usually resort to name calling, but what morons. It is still difficult for me to understand how people can become so blinded by their opposition of something (i.e. guns) that they could not see a reasonable argument for its use if it hit them in the fact with a friggin baseball bat. I mean, come on. First of all, I would like to see this "study" that found that 21 percent of all police officers killed with a handgun were shot with their own weapon. If it's true, I think the most likely scenario where this happens is one where the person the policeman is trying to arrest and handcuff gets the policeman's gun out of its holster and shoots the policeman. As I explained in an earlier post, terrorists will not be able to have access to the pilots' guns since they will be kept in the cockpit, and presumably only brought out when a terrorist tries to hijack the plane. The second "fact" quoted by the VPC tries another faulty analogy between police use of guns and pilots use of guns. I guess it never occurred to them that the situation confronting police and pilots are completely different. Police have to worry about innocent bystanders when they fire their weapon. Pilots will not. Every person on that plane will die if a terrorist succeeds in hijacking the plane. It will suck if a pilot has to shoot a terrorist and accidently hits a passenger in addition to killing the terrorist. It will really suck if the terrorists hijack another plane and kill thousands more American citizens. People now know that flying on airliners contains an inherent risk - the passengers on the Richard Reid flight knew this and stepped up to the situation that they were confronted with. If I fly, and the guy next to me turns out to be a terrorist, I say shoot the motherfucker, and if I get shot in the process, I'll die knowing (1) better me than 2,400 other people along with me, and (2) if the pilot didn't shoot the terrorist (and accidently me along with him) I would have died anyway because of the hijacking. Not firing is worse than firing with bad aim because not firing would end up killing the person the act intended to protect plus the rest of the people in the plane and others on the ground...
The VPC also did not counteract any argument for arming the pilots. They said

"There are many necessary and constructive steps that can be taken to protect pilots and passengers short of arming pilots. If firearms are absolutely necessary, they should be carried by trained air marshals whose only responsibility is protecting the safety of crew members and passengers," Rand concluded.

What are these other "steps that can be taken?" Why did the VPC not list them in their statement? Because there are none. With only enough marshalls to sit on 2 percent of flights (I had the link to this but I don't know where it is) the only defense we have to more terrorism on planes is the airport security screeners and the passengers themselves. While I believe the passengers will step up to the task (see Richard Reid), arming the pilots tilts the scale on our side. What would have happened to Flight 93 if the pilots had guns instead of just the passengers rushing the cockpit with no weapons?
The arguments the VPC make for not arming the pilots are made with little basis in fact and no clear critical thinking behind them...If this is the best argument that opponents of guns in the hands of pilots have, give guns to qualified pilots today.

Harrumph! has posted a graphic which shows the organizational structure of the proposed Department of Homeland Defense...

More proof that soccer is for wusses...


Via Silflay Hraka...

This is scary...A fish that eats everything in sight and can crawl across land for 3 days...not so good...

Senator Hillary Clinton's fund raiser has been jailed for fraud...

An interesting article on Cosmiverse which reports on how a satellite discovered the Intertropical Convergence Zones for wind where basically two areas near the equator where the winds converge year after year and drive ocean circulation south of the equator.

The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) is the region that circles the Earth near the equator, where the trade winds of both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres come together. North of the equator, strong sun and warm water of the equator heats the air in the ITCZ, drawing air in from north and south and causing the air to rise. As the air rises it cools, releasing the accumulated moisture in an almost perpetual series of thunderstorms. Satellite data, however, has confirmed that there is an ITCZ north of the equator and a parallel ITCZ south of the equator.

I wonder what the implications are going to be for this discovery...Having lived through two major hurricanes in the last six years (Fran and Floyd), this is a facinating article to me...

It's official...All four Space Shuttles have fuel line cracks...I am really glad this was found now rather than when they were taking off or were in space...

More evidence that the mullah's rule in Iran is destabilizing quickly...After one of their top clerics, Ayatollah Jalaluddin Taheri resigned, he issued a bitter condemnation of the way the country is being run...What did the mullahs do? Look at his reforms and see if they could help their country? Of course not...Instead, they barred all newspapers from reporting on Taheri's resignation...Iran is now further down the slippery slope toward revolution...

More reasons not to support Microsoft's newest effort to take over the web, and a suggestion for a way to get around the reason for Pallidium in the first place...I hope the security and privacy problem is not as bad as all of the articles I am reading about Pallidium say it is, but considering I have not heard anyone taking up Microsoft's side yet I am beginning to think that the anti-Bill Gates crowd may be right on this one...

More anti-Chavez demonstrations in Venezuela...I think that Chavez will be gone soon, but one never knows how long a tyrant can successfully hold on to power...

Top Israeli officials are telling political leaders that if they don't withdraw from the West Bank, there could be a "volcanic eruption" as anti-Isreali sentiment peaks because of the occupation...

The stock market is down again...consumer confidence is dropping and it seems like all business news coming out now is gloomy at best and scary at worst...Reuters quoted Rick Meckler, president of investment firm LibertyView, which oversees $1 billion in the market, as saying, "A lot of people are worried. They don't want to be the last one out of the door...With each passing month, you are seeing that there is no upward trend. It makes individuals think 'let's get out now.' There's a depression-type mentality."...A couple of months ago I thought we were coming out of the recent brief recession..now I'm not so sure, and I don't seem to be alone...

Amnesty Internation has finally come out with a vengance against Palestinian homicide bombers...Of course, the Palestinian Authority rejected the report, but at least Amnesty came out against the bombers...

The House has passed a bill which would let pilots carry guns in the cockpits of passenger airliners...I definitely think this is a step in the right direction...The pilots deserve to be armed, and the government should let them carry guns to prevent hijackings...This is a good way to deter terrorists from trying to hijack airliners, and it will also help increase sentiment that flying is safe again, something that has not been accomplished by federalizing airport security workers...Fusilier Pundit asks why we shouldn't be arming the flight attendants (link found via Asparagirl)...I think it is a good question, and it is something that should be examined more closely...It probably has not been brought up because of the male/female stereotypes that go along with being a pilot/flight attendant. As Asparagirl puts it,

having an automatic mental block on the idea, being unable to accept even the possibility that the woman who brings you your flat soda might also be able to shoot to kill and save your life, is willful blindness.

Asparagirl and Fusilier Pundit seem to come out in favor of arming the attendants, but I'm not so sure...I think we have to start with the reason why we are arming people on planes at all, and then look at who should be armed in order to best accomplish that goal.
Why are we giving people on planes guns? I think the answer to this is to prevent hijackings. While shooting a suicide bomber is also a good reason to have guns on the plane, I don't think it is the primary reason. It would be very difficult to prevent competent suicide bombers (i.e. one who has a bomb that works, and not one who can't successfully light a fuse in his shoe - those morons can be taken out by a flight attendant and unarmed passengers) from blowing up planes with guns in the hands of anyone on the plane because those people are not going to do anything suspicious while on the plane until they push the button, which means there will be no opportunity to use the guns until after the bomb explodes. Therefore, I think that the primary reason for arming people on planes is to prevent hijackings. Hijackers have to have control of the plane in order to accomplish their goals. So, in order to hijack a plane, the hijackers have to take control of the cockpit to fly the plane. The best way to keep them from doing that is to make the cockpit effectively a fortress that they have to take over. This is best done by (1) reinforcing the cockpit doors and keeping them locked, and (2) arming the pilots so that if someone does force their way into the cockpit that person will be taken out.
The logical next question is, why not arm the flight attendants in addition to the pilots? Fusilier Pundit lists many of the reasons why flight attendants should be armed:

[F]light attendants are in the right place at the right time to apply that kind of force; they are arguably better-placed to do so than the pilots. Their employers train them in other lifesaving skills, so they can be trusted with lethal-force decisions. They are already held responsible by their employers and by statute for the safety and order of the cabin. They are more fit than the general population for the demands of managing the defensive handgun. Their schedules and mobility allow them to choose from a number of schools that would welcome them.

Still, I think that there are some valid reasons they should not be armed though. There is a problem with having a gun in the passenger cabin and people knowing where that gun located. This means that there is a potential weapon onboard for the terrorists to use. A terrorist might therefore not have to bring a weapon on board; instead, a couple of them could just quickly overpower a flight attendant and take his or her weapon. I remember hearing about how the Sept. 11th hijackers had been training in martial arts, presumably to be able to overpower unruly passengers. If the flight attendants have guns, the terrorists could overpower one who was armed and then be able to take over the plane. This is not an issue with the pilots, who would keep their guns in the cockpit, or air marshals, whose identity (and therefore gun location) is not known, meaning that the access to their guns by passengers is almost impossible. I do not think putting a gun with its location known in the passenger cabin where terrorists could have access to its location (the flight attendants would still have to perform their job in the cabin and therefore be near the passengers) is a good solution to the problem of preventing hijackings...The problem that arming people on planes is trying to solve is the threat of hijackings...While arming flight attendants might have some positive results, many of those results are also solved by just having armed pilots and air marshals, and adding the risk of a known gun in a location where the terrorists could gain access to it creates a larger problem than it solves...
UPDATE: Harrumph! has a quote from a pilot that puts things nicely...

"We will be shot down by our own airforce if the plane is taken over. I'd like to have something to say about that before it happens."

UPDATE #2: FP asks, "re: "adding the risk of a known gun in a location where the terrorists could gain access to it creates a larger problem" who said anything about a "known" gun?" - By saying known gun, I was referring to the fact that if the flight attendants were armed there would be a gun in the passenger cabin...by having a gun in the passenger cabin with its potential location narrowed down to a small number of people (i.e. the flight attendants) I think it would be easier for a terrorist to get access to that gun than one in the cockpit with the pilots...However, I am sitting somewhat on the fence on this issue now...I still think the answer to this question lies in figuring out whether the balance of the issue comes down on the benefits of arming both the pilots and the flight attendants and the risk involved in having guns in the passenger cabin versus the risk of just having pilots armed and having no guns in the passenger cabin (other than an air marshal whose identity would be anonomous)...
UPDATE #3: Jeff Cooper responds...
Check out his link to the left if this one does not work...

The New York Times has an article reporting about warchalking...(registration required)

A 7-million year old skull of a human ancestor has been discovered in Chad, making it hte oldest fossil of human ancestors yet discovered...the skull may date from the era where humans and apes split on the evolutionary tree...

The same scientist who discovered the Titanic has found PT-109, the patrol boat President Kennedy commanded in the South Pacific in World War II...

If you get a chance, check out MLB Fan Strike, a website devoted to combatting the labor problems that may end up being fatal to Major League Baseball...

The universe could be older than previously thought...

These guys ought to get a medal...

Congress, while going after corporate accounting scandals, forgets that they have some of their own problems...

Frontpagemag.com has an article asking if Islam is a defective civilization...

The EU is looking at a complete overhaul of its Farm Subsidy system...apparently the subsidies are now linked to the amout of food a farm can produce and the EU wants to shift the

"The proposed reform also calls for cuts - of up to 50 percent in some cases - in price supports for soybeans and such grains as wheat, corn, rice. Also, the EU executive wants to replace its milk quota system with quotas based on world market prices...This year, guaranteeing minimum incomes to the EU's eight million farmers will cost nearly half of the EU's $98.1 billion budget. This rises to some 80 percent if regional aid funding is added. Expansion has put the current 15 members in a dilemma: how to extend generous farm subsidies to new members without breaking the budget. The EU has about 8 million farmers. Poland alone has 10 million."

Farmers are fighting the changes because the amount of money they get under the current plan would be cut if the new plan were implemented...

Japanese researchers are testing a model of a new supersonic passenger jet in the Australian outback...

Sgt. Stryker has a good idea for a bumper sticker...

Personally, I like the parody of a liberal bumper sticker I saw originally on Instapundit...
"It will be a great day when our public school system teaches our children as well as the Pentagon trains our soldiers."

Mike Hendrix at Cold Fury takes on a couple of typical liberal sterotypes of conservatives and gives the liberals a pretty good thwacking...

Check out blogchalking...It's a way to let other bloggers know where you are blogging from...

A good friend of mine from law school, Richard Reinsch, has written an editorial in a New Hampshire newspaper advocating a ban on all cloning...The foundation of his argument seems to be that

"[t]he facts show that once embryonic development starts, a separate and new individual life exists. At the earliest stages, the cloned embryo possesses all the qualities needed to develop into a human baby. If properly nurtured, the cloned embryo will enter the fetal stage and eventually be born."

I'm really not too sure about this...if a new life is defined by the ability to possess "all the qualities needed to develop into a human baby", then almost all of the cells in our body carry the potential to become an individual life..following that logic, research therefore should not be performed on those cells as well...Ronald Bailey from Reason Online address the question:

So, are the embryos from which stem cells are derived people? The answer: Only if every cell in your body is also a person.

Why? Because it is logically (if not quite logistically) possible for each of your body's cells to become your twin. Each skin cell, each neuron, each liver cell is potentially a person. All that's lacking is the will and the application of the appropriate technology. Cloning technology at this point in time is clunky. In the future, though, researchers will likely be able to skip cloning, and simply flip a few genetic switches to regress any of your cells to earlier stages of development, says Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health. Ultimately, researchers could take your cells all the way back to the embryonic stage, then implant them into a womb where they could eventually develop into complete human beings.

"What happens when a skin cell turns into a totipotent stem cell [a cell capable of developing into a complete organism] is that a few of its genetic switches are turned on and others turned off," writes bioethicist Julian Savulescu in the April 1999 issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics. "To say it doesn't have the potential to be a human being until its nucleus is placed in the egg cytoplasm [i.e., cloning] is like saying my car does not have the potential to get me from Melbourne to Sydney unless the key is turned in the ignition."

The crucial question seems to be, at what point does human life begin? If an individual human life is defined by the ability to develop into a person "[i]f properly nurtured," pretty soon most cells will come under that umbrella definition...The problem with trying to figure out when human life begins is that it is more of a philosophical and religious question than a scientific question...I am not aware of any scientific study or experiment that has figured out exactly when human life begins, and this is the problem...the answer to this question is a matter of personal interpretation and answering it most likely carries along a little bit of soul searching...
Richard's view of human life beginning when cells have the potential to develop into a person treats microscopic cells with no past or present consciousness and no organs or tissues as people, and I do not think this is the correct way to address this issue...as pointed out by Virginia Postrel, "[h]uman identity must rest on something more compelling than the right string of proteins in a petri dish, detectable only with high-tech equipment," and I therefore agree with her that the health, well-being, and lives of actual people should not be sacrificed for the sake of a few cells...

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds and David Kopel have made the point that a ban on cloning would be unconstitutional...

LGF also has a post on Iran, talking about Iranian women and a wave of husband killings...

"Iranian women are becoming increasingly sick of the male-dominated Islamic nightmareland in which they live. Divorce is not an option."

Hopefully Joe Katzman is right and the mullahs' rule in Iran is about to fall, which I hope would lead to gradual erosion of the sevient status of women...I know it won't happen overnight, but some sort of equality has to be established for everyone...everyone deserves to be treated like a human being...

Joe Katzman has a good post on what is happening in Iran and asks why our government is not doing anything about it...

NASA has found a crack in the liquid hydrogen line on the space shuttle Columbia...This is the third shuttle where cracks similar to this have been found...Thank goodness they found it now rather than have another Challenger disaster...

A crop circle has been found near Stonehenge...

I bet this is some sort of promotion for the Mel Gibson movie Signs...

Protesters protest protesters protesting...
Via Fark...

Newsweek reports that as many as 70 million Americans have sleeping problems, and examines issues from why our body needs sleep (we don't really know) to ways you can sleep better...

The Washington Post has an article on the increasing use of PACs by corporationsas a result of campaign finance reform...basically, corporations are now not able to write the "limitless checks" to the parties like they used to, so they are turning to their employees and asking them for a $5000 contribution to the company PAC so the corporation can still give money to political candidates...

The ACC football TV schedule was released yesterday...

Find out your Canadian, French-Canadian, and Russian hockey name with Maxim's hockey-name generator...
My Russian name is Czar Branchov...

MLB's player union is gradually moving towards accepting random steroid testing, though no specific proposal has been made yet...this is a good move for the players, and hopefully it will somewhat put to rest a lot of the accusations that people like Ken Caminiti and Jose Canseco have been throwing around...

Ignore this...it's for blogchalking... Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill!

Armed Liberal says that we are in the middle of a cagematch between Rousseau and Hobbes, and the prize for the winner is the heart of America...

Steven Den Beste posts about why one should strive for excellence rather than perfection, and applies this principle to the debate over school vouchers...

Louis Farrakhan is in Iraq for a "solidarity visit"...The Iraqi News Agency quoted Farrakhan as saying, "the Muslim American people are praying to the almighty God to grant victory to Iraq..."

Salon has an animated cartoon about the Ninth Circuit's decision on the Pledge of Allegiance...
From AppellateBlog

Please read this post by Howard Bashman about an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion that "is likely to enrage further opponents of the death penalty"...very thought provoking...

The Arab News is convinced Bin Laden is dead...

A Cold Fury scoop that points to war with Iraq sooner rather than later...

John Scalzi has a good post thanking Canada for being patient with their southern neighbors...

Pat Tillman, a starting safety for the Arizona Cardinals, turned down a three-year, $3.6 million contract in order to enlist with the Army to become a Ranger...While some people might think that his decision is crazy, I disagree...One of my best friends was a Morehead scholar at Carolina who was also offered (and turned down) a football scholarship as well...He graduated last may and enlisted in the Marines to try to go Force Recon...Cheers to men like ya'll, who put your life on the line to protect everyone at home...

When in doubt, blame Arthur Andersen...

The Bush/Gore Soda/Pop conspiracy...
Scroll down for some information about the soda/pop study and links to more about it...
I wonder who they called in North Carolina because most of the people I know that are from around here call carbonated beverages "soft drinks"...We don't call it "Coke" because Pepsi was born in New Bern, North Carolina...

Ten American vehicles are dying off at the end of this year, including the Camero, Firebird, and Continental...

George Lucas has refused Steven Spielberg's help in making the Star Wars movies...too bad...

The New York Times Magazine has an article published on the rethinking of low-carbohydrate diets...I think the low carb guys are right on this debate, but as far as I'm concerned in order for you to stay healthy cut back on both unneeded carbs (i.e. candy, soft drinks, etc.), which tend to be high in calories, and on really fatty foods, which can clog your arteries...

There is an interesting article in the Washington Post's Tech News section about how a scientist is trying to use chicken feathers to replace silicon in computer chips...

Lance Armstrong has dropped to fourth after the first two Tour de France stages...
UPDATE: Well, sort of an update, at least for me...Jan Ullrich tested positive for amphetamines while training after a knee operation and is not riding in the Tour de France, though his not being there also has something to do with the knee injury...

WorldCom executives are now refusing to testify in front of Congress...

eBay has agreed to buy PayPal in a $1.5 Billion stock deal...

Mike Fish has an article about the impending labor problems in Major Leauge Baseball on CNNSI.com, and he says that a strike this year might not happen...

The person that this article in the Crimson is talking about posing as a Harvard undergraduate was a roomate of a couple of good friends of mine...strange...

If you can't tell by my posting pattern, I tend to be out of town and away from internet access for the weekends...this will change come August, but right now I am not normally going to post on the weekends...however, having returned relaxed and refreshed from the long weekend I'll be at it again tonight or tomorrow...