Saturday, December 30, 2000

AP: Half the world lives in cities -- "By 2050, an estimated two-thirds of the world's population will live in urban areas, imposing even more pressure on the space infrastructure and resources of cities, leading to social disintegration and horrific urban poverty...."

A new report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies concludes that the recent hack of Microsoft Corp.'s network poses a risk to national security. Microsoft denies that their source code was compromised.

OK, it's nearly 2001. How close did Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick come in predicting the future?

Stratfor: The Next U.S. President and the Law of Unintended Consequences -- "The incoming administration of U.S. President-elect George W. Bush is sending conflicting signals: seemingly committed to expanding global trade while claiming to put national security first. A harder stance toward superpowers such as Russia and China will cause a domino effect among the foreign policies of smaller countries across the globe."

Monday, December 25, 2000

We missed today's solar eclipse, since it's been gray and cloudy all day. (It's blowing like heck and snowing right now.)

Washington Post: Ashcroft will face a grilling in Senate -- President-elect Bush's ultra-conservative nominee for Attorney General of the United States opposed the appointment of a black judge to the Missouri Supreme Court and is vehemently opposed to abortion. Democratic media consultant Bill Knapp noted, "This is when compassion runs head-on into conservatism.... The Bush campaign...made real public policy differences mind-numbingly dense to people."

The instant-messaging wars continue. -- "...Instant messaging rivals like Microsoft, AT&T and ExciteAtHome said their users ought to be able to send messages to anyone else, regardless of what service they happen to have. That's not currently possible." [Salon]

Saturday, December 23, 2000

So long,Victor Borge -- The "clown prince" of Denmark has passed on at age 91.

Wednesday, December 20, 2000

News from this neck of the woods will be bit sketchy this week and next as we roll into the Christmas holiday. Y2K turned out to be a funny year, but not as weird as we had expected. With the recent election behind us, perhaps things will return to a semblance of normal. ;-) Happy Holidays and a prosperous New Year to all.

Saturday, December 16, 2000

Reuters: Newspapers near count OK for Florida ballot review -- "Leon County Circuit Judge Terry Lewis was expected next week to rule in favor of a motion by The Miami Herald and The Palm Beach Post for votes from Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties to be returned to local officials so that independent counts can be conducted...."

The aftermath of Tuesday night's Supreme Court decision has been interesting.

Alan Wolfe: Hobbled From the Start -- "In the campaign's aftermath, Gore, relentless in his quest to challenge the Florida secretary of state's certification of the election, necessarily upheld the proposition that the truth of who had won could be established. Bush, by contrast, revealed something deeper than the typical politician's willingness to manipulate the truth for his own purposes. In his determined effort to prevent anyone from ever knowing who actually won the state, he implicitly endorsed the notion that there was no truth even worth manipulating.... Bush will be our first truly postmodern president, the first of whom it can be said that when asked how he came to be the winner, he can respond that it all depends on the perspective one brings to the question...."

Bruce Shapiro: A Divider, Not a Uniter -- "...The public is already keeping a right-wing conspiracy scorecard, which lists Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Fox News election caller and Bush cousin John Ellis, thousands of mostly minority Florida voters wrongly disenfranchised as ex-felons by Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris and a Republican-cozy consulting firm and a Supreme Court majority made up exclusively of the new president's ideological allies. After two years of Republicans jeering Gore for his confusion about the purpose of a single Buddhist temple fundraiser, this Republican habit of treading the ethical gray zone has laid political land mines for Bush before he even takes office."

Wednesday, December 13, 2000

Reuters: Gore abandons campaign, leaves stage to Bush

In his remarks, Gore said, "I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country."

On the issue of partisan rancor, Mark Shields noted this evening that he hoped President-elect Bush might tell Trent Lott that it is totally inappropriate to hope publicly that Hillary Clinton is struck by lightning before she reaches the Senate.

Feelings run deep, the political waters have been poisoned for two decades, and we have a long way to go. It should be an interesting ride.

The Fat Lady Has Sung

Gore has no viable option -- "The nation's highest court voted 7-2 to overturn a Florida Supreme Court ruling that allowed recounts of disputed votes in the state.... The U.S. Supreme Court's margin shrunk to 5-4 in deciding there was no constitutionally acceptable procedure by which a new recount could take place before the Electoral College meets December 18 to pick the next president." [CNN]

Salon: What's the rush? -- "...We've also overlooked a fascinating story from our recent past: the Great Hawaii Election Dispute of 1960. In that saga..., a state's certified election outcome was not only contested in court, but was ultimately, and decisively, overturned.... That story makes clear that there's only one significant deadline in a contested presidential race: Jan. 6, when Congress meets to choose the next president."

"Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the law." (From Justice John Paul Stevens' dissent in Bush v. Gore)

Tuesday, December 12, 2000

Los Angeles Times: A 'Modern' Democracy That Can't Count Votes -- "What happened in Florida is the rule and not the exception. A coast-to-coast study by The Times finds a shoddy system that can only be trusted when the election isn't close." [Note: L.A. Times links are not permanent.]

The Florida Supreme Court has upheld recent lower court rulings in the Seminole County and Martin County absentee ballot contests.

Reuters: Oklahoma bomber McVeigh asks judge to halt appeal -- "In a stunning reversal, convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh has asked a federal judge to halt any appeals on his behalf and to set a date for his execution, a document made public on Tuesday said."

Friday, December 08, 2000

After having been dealt two blows by lower courts today, which refused to throw out absentee ballots in Seminole County and Martin County, the Gore camp won a surprising victory with this afternoon's decision by the Florida Supreme Court, reversing Judge Sauls' earlier decision and mandating that recounts resume.

With today's latest ruling by the Florida Supreme Court, it appears more likely that we're proceeding into uncharted waters, perhaps revisiting the Hayes-Tilden contest.

Although Americans are largely patient with this protracted process, and presidential historians and analysts wax enthusiastic about the current testament to the resiliency of our system, Bush spokes-droid James A. Baker III nevertheless felt compelled to label today "a sad day," implying that the Democrats were a sorry lot to have resorted to contesting the election in court. Baker complained, "This is what happens, when, for the first time in modern history, a candidate resorts to lawsuits to try to overturn the outcome of an election for president."

Mr. Baker has apparently conveniently forgotten that in Florida, at least, this dreaded behavior he bemoans was made much easier by passage of Republican-backed legislation allowing these very sorts of election contests.

Monday, December 04, 2000

Dismissed as "statistical voodoo" by Republicans, the Miami Herald published an analysis Saturday which indicated Gore would have carried Florida by 23,000 votes -- if there were no chad problems or machine tabulation errors.

Reuters: Bush wins a round at U.S. Supreme Court -- "The nine justices unanimously set aside a ruling by the Florida Supreme Court that gave counties an extra week to allow hand recounts of votes to proceed in some counties and sent the case back to the state high court for further proceeding."

Saturday, December 02, 2000

Salon: "Sunshine laws" may reveal who really won -- "Florida's strong open-government statutes mean we'll eventually know for sure who got the most votes in the state's presidential election -- and it might not be the person who gets sworn in."

AP: Bush says he'll 'soon' be president.

"A Zimbabwe politician was quoted as saying that children should study the US election event closely because it shows that election fraud is not only a third world phenomenon."

Friday, December 01, 2000

Salon: President Big Time! -- "Our long national nightmare is over. Indecision 2000 is behind us, and we finally appear to have a new president-elect: Dick Cheney.... Republicans seem mostly resigned to the fact that though they nominated one man as president, the No. 2 choice will do the work. One GOP source described the new presidential structure to CNN as 'Bush as chairman of the board, Dick as CEO and Andy [Card] as COO.' It's not in the Constitution, but hey, whatever works."

Reuters: Clinton seeks climate deal this year -- In the aftermath of the collapse of climate summit talks at The Hague last weekend, President Clinton is pushing for immediate resumption of talks, hoping to forge some international agreement on greenhouse-gas emissions before he leaves office in late January.