More patriotic posters...

PATRIOTIC POSTERS - WHITEHOUSE.ORG

] Now we're faced with a "Godzilla vs. Mothra" battle,
] where the Internet -- and its users -- will likely take
] the brunt of the collateral damage.

Best Quote on Verisign v. ICANN

] The Pentagon will scrap the Secure Electronic
] Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) until the
] current system can guarantee the security of the voting
] process or a new system is designed, a Defense Department
] spokesperson said.

This was covered earlier. Good outcome.

Pentagon scraps flawed Net voting plan | CNET News.com

] I wanted to wait 'til today's polls opened to post
] this, because I wanted it to be a post-mortem and not a
] vivisection. What follows is a long musing on the Dean
] campaign's use of internet tools, but it has a short
] thesis: the hard thing to explain is not how the Dean
] campaign blew such a huge lead, but rather why we ever
] thought that lead actually existed. Dean's campaign
] didn't just fail, it dissolved on contact with reality.

Clay Shirky on the failures of the Dean campaign.

Many-to-Many: Exiting Deanspace

* Item 1. Installation of 4-way stop sign - Chestnut and Powell Streets
* Item 9 Amending Fire Code to require self-contained breathing replenishment systems in high rise building
* Item 4. Traffic Regulations
* Item 5. Parking Regulations
* Items 4 & 5. Traffic Regulations & Parking Regulations
* Item 7. Parking Regulations
* Item 8. Traffic Regulations
* Item 10, Use of ramped taxi medallion in a spare taxicab sedan when ramped taxi is out of service

They posted the video from the hearing I mentioned earlier. I've been able to pull out all the images I need, with the exception of one traffic map that covers the Height/Octavia area that remains missing. Hey, that's not shabby for working completely from open source. I should get a chance to do a write up in the next few days. In the meantime, you can watch this and play "Rattle Spotting"..

SFGTV: January 26, 2004 - Land Use Committee Hearing

] Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Thursday
] that people concerned about losing freedom to government
] anti-terrorism efforts should speak out.

The court system is influenced by public outcry.

The Patriot Act provisions everyone is unhappy with are just as much an attack on the court system as they are civil liberties.

[Politech] Justice Ginsburg warns against apathy

] "Internet voting presents far too many opportunities for
] hackers or even terrorists to interfere with fair and
] accurate voting, potentially in ways impossible to detect,"
] the computer experts said in a statement. "Such tampering
] could alter election results, particularly in close contests."

] "Not only could a political party attempt to manipulate
] an election by attacking SERVE, but so could individual
] hackers, criminals, terrorists, organizations such as the
] Mafia and even other countries," the report said.

... but it seems they are continuing with plans anyway.

I don't get the logic in play here.. If you had asked me several years ago what I thought would happen if these situations came up, I would have said that I'd expect the government to be very conservative when it came to the voting system. I would have though that they would have resisted all this Internet/electronic based voting system stuff way beyond the point where security professionals had given it a clean bill of health.

Why is it so important to have Internet voting systems? If there is reason to believe they are flawed, why still push? There is either a complete disconnect of logic, or other motives in play. I don't see how Florida changed the logic you'd apply to the problem..

Integrity of the voting system should take precedence over connivence, in all cases. No one seems to think any of these systems are secure, except for the people who make them.

Yahoo! News - Pentagon Stands by Internet Voting System

Josh Marshall interviews George Soros for his blog, Talking Points Memo.

I've meme'd several interviews following Soros and his take on the Bush Doctrine before. This one is a good read to stick in somewhere with all the articles about the SOTU you will read today..

Talking Points Memo | George Soros Interview

] State attorneys opposing a challenge to the Pennsylvania
] law that requires ISPs to block access to websites
] containing child pornography argued to a Philadelphia
] federal court this week that "a URL is neither a person,
] nor a real forum, nor a limited commodity."
]
] "It is a little string of letters and numbers that acts
] as a superficial label," they argued in a brief.
] "Disablement of an ISP's customers' access to a
] particular URL for even an indefinite time does not
] implicate First Amendment rights."

Child porn clearly poses a dangerous threat to our society. Not only is it a product of despicable crime against children, but our outrage towards it causes some really bone head laws to get made.

Wired News: Child Porn Law Debated in Court

] President Bush "was like a blind man in a roomful of deaf
] people" during Cabinet meetings, his former Treasury
] secretary, Paul O'Neill, told CBS News' "60 Minutes" in
] what the network said was his first interview about his
] work for the administration.

Lets start confirming some of Nick's worst fears!

] Describing his first such meeting with Bush, O'Neill said,
] "I went in with a long list of things to talk about and, I
] thought, to engage [him] on. ... I was surprised it turned
] out me talking and the president just listening. ... It was
] mostly a monologue."

He was thinking. I wonder what's for dinner? The economy.. Yummy. The economy is good for my teeth. Chomp Chomp..

] White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan dismissed
] the characterization of Bush's style. "It's well known the
] way the president approaches governing and setting
] priorities," he told reporters. "The president is someone
] that leads and acts decisively on our biggest priorities,
] and that is exactly what he'll continue to do."

Its well known? We don't know shit about this administration that they have not wanted us to know, aside from when someone comes out and says "he is really an idiot." That remains very scary and occurs regularly.

CNN.com - O'Neill: Bush 'like a blind man' - Jan. 9, 2004