IHT: "An independent historians' commission studying Switzerland's wartime past concluded Friday after five years of research that the country's neutrality was twisted to justify policies that helped the Nazis, including turning away Jews fleeing the Holocaust."

Reuters: U.S. Commander: Bio-Warfare Lab Found in Afghanistan [See below] Will the story be different tomorrow? I can't keep up...

Maureen Dowd: The Vatican Rag -- "By couching the seaminess in celestial language, the pope simply reinforces the huge institutional conceit that led to the great Catholic cover-up: the sense that the army-like hierarchical structure will hunker down and never speak honestly about its own failings." (NY Times, free registration required)

From Friday . . . U.S. troops found Afghan biological weapons lab, according to British reports. The Pentagon says it is not aware of any such thing. [Reuters] Then, in Sunday's Guardian, we find that "Britain was accused last night of falsely claiming that al-Qaeda terrorists had built a 'biological and chemical weapons' laboratory in Afghanistan to justify the deployment of 1,700 Royal Marines to fight there." British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon apparently has some explaining to do.

Boston Globe: US affirms indefinite detentions -- "Administration officials said yesterday they have no immediate plans to bring detainees from the Afghan war to trial in special military tribunals, a stance that suggests hundreds of prisoners could be held in custody for years without being charged."

Online Journal: The war that destroyed America -- Interesting parallels with the fall of the Roman empire.

Counterpunch: Killing for the flag -- "Perpetual war serves a number of purposes for the present administration. It is under wartime conditions that the U.S. state will, at least initially, face the least resistance as it finishes the now over two century-long process of gutting the Bill of Rights and voiding the inconvenient parts of the U.S. Constitution. It is under conditions of war that the campaign to defeat the anti-globalization movement can be fought with increasingly militant and dirty tactics. It is under wartime conditions that all opponents of U.S. policies anywhere in the world, including within the U.S. itself, can be most easily labeled "terrorist," at the same time that the mass media can be most easily mobilized as a total propaganda machine. And it is under conditions of war that the arms production, oil production and military technology corporations that funded President Bush's election by the Supreme Court will be most handsomely rewarded without too many questions ever being asked."

Reuters: Dog mauling case may put pet owners on short leash -- "The shock murder conviction of a San Francisco attorney whose attack dogs killed a young woman could put U.S. pet owners on a much shorter leash as neighbors, landlords and insurance companies push for tougher regulations on 'man's best friend.'"

NY Times: In a first, British court rules woman can refuse life support -- "Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, the chief judge of the family division, ruled that the woman had both the 'necessary mental capacity to give consent or to refuse consent to life-sustaining medical treatment' and the right to be treated in accordance with her wishes, including drug treatment and care, 'to ease her suffering and permit her life to end peacefully and with dignity.'"

NY Times: Senate votes to require increase in use of wind and solar power

BBC: "Talking on a mobile phone while driving is more dangerous than being over the legal alcohol limit, according to research."

Wired: There's no place like yurt

Washington Post: Bush plan would loosen medical privacy standard

NY Times: Video surveillance planned for capital

Reuters: Key questions remain on fate of U.S. war captives -- "...Defense officials, stressing the horror of September attacks on American civilians, conceded that some hard-line guerrillas could be held indefinitely without charges -- and even some acquitted by juries might remain in cells to keep them from international mischief."

Reuters: Feds urge medical privacy changes, advocates upset -- "The Bush administration on Thursday proposed eliminating from U.S. medical privacy rules a requirement that patients give consent for disclosure of their health information prior to receiving care."

Jonathan Turley: Even if you dress it up, a kangaroo is still a kangaroo -- "These rules leave the president in a role more reminiscent of a Caesar than a civil servant. With a gesture, the president can send a defendant to a real trial or a makeshift trial. Some defendants such as Zacarias Moussaoui will be sent to federal court to receive a full trial with paid civilian counsel. Others will be sent back to their own countries. And some will be sent to Cuba and the tribunals. This is not what our framers had in mind." [LA Times, also available here]

Capital Times op-ed: No, he's not King George -- "President Bush is throwing a royal hissy fit over the Senate Judiciary Committee's rejection of Mississippi Federal Judge Charles Pickering's nomination to serve on the Deep South's 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. . . . The tantrum is typical of the president and his partisans, who celebrated Bush's selection by the Supreme Court as the dawn of an era of right-wing hegemony in which their whims would become law and their friends judges."

Washington Post: U.S. adds legal rights in tribunals -- "The new rules would require a unanimous vote of judges to impose the death penalty on convicted terrorists -- not the two-thirds vote Bush had suggested in his Nov. 13 executive order establishing the tribunals. And while the president's original order barred appeals after conviction, the new regulations allow military officers to review a tribunal's decision on appeal." Hearsay evidence is still admissable, there is no civilian review or appeal to courts, and indefinite detention is still an option.

BBC: "Perfect vision may one day be available just by tweaking a button - on the side of your head."

CNN: What's wrong with the INS?

Fox News: Denver Officials, Citing Civil Rights, Decide to Bow Out of War on Terror -- "The local government here officially threw its lot in with Portland, Ore. and a handful of other municipalities around the country, passing a resolution Monday night discouraging police from enforcing new anti-terror legislation if doing so would interfere with peoplesí civil rights."

Ted Rall: From little boy to Big Brother in 180 days -- "The Bushies have lifted their reelection strategy straight out of '1984,' and not just by creating ominous-sounding agencies like the Office of Homeland Security, the supposedly-closed Office of Strategic Information, and a "Shadow Government." As in '1984,' the Bush regime tolerates zero dissent-a two-party system in name only has been distilled to one in which only Republicans express acceptable opinions. And an absence of follow-up attacks has been met by endless alerts, advisors and empty hysterics in the name of security, most recently culminating with Tom Ridge's much-mocked color-code warning system." The other administration theme arguably plagiarized right out of Orwell is the notion of perpetual war.

Reuters: Feds to question 3,000 foreigners on terrorism -- "The United States wants to question 3,000 more foreign nationals who recently came to this country, Attorney General John Ashcroft said on Wednesday, even though a report on the first round of interviews found few had any information about the Sept. 11 attacks." Congressman John Conyers (D-Mich.) a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said "The suggestion that Arab and Muslim Americans appreciate being singled out and interrogated is a prime example of the attorney general's wartime propaganda machine in full swing."

AP: 9/11 Attacks Causing Some Arabs in US To Change Names -- "'I notice a change in people's demeanor when I tell them my name is Tariq,' said Hasan, who lives in Hoboken, directly across the Hudson River from where the World Trade Center once stood."

Washington Post: Senate passes historic overhaul of campaign finance rules -- "The bill, sponsored by McCain and Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), bans unlimited 'soft money' contributions that special interests have been pouring into national party coffers in recent elections, amounting to nearly $500 million for the 2000 elections."

Boston Globe: US sees wider scope for nuclear arms

Federation of American Scientists: Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons -- "The one clear scenario is using these warheads as a substitute for conventional weapons to attack deeply buried facilities. Based on the analysis here, however, this mission does not appear possible without causing massive radioactive contamination. No American president would elect to use nuclear weapons in this situation -- unless another country had already used nuclear weapons against us." [This report is from January 2001. Emphasis added.]

The Fighting Whities -- Colorado basketball team picks white man mascot to make a point. [Greeley Tribune]

State of Florida declares "ATHEIST" license plate obscene [Ananova]

Chicago Tribune: U.S. using new law on secret evidence -- "Employing a controversial strategy, the U.S. Justice Department says it plans to use secret evidence to justify the financial sanctions it imposed on a Chicago-area Muslim charity as part of its effort to choke off terrorist funding after Sept. 11. . . . [The use of secret evidence] has drawn fire because it changes one of the most basic rules of the American legal system: that people get a chance to confront the evidence being used against them by the government."

'Wrongful life' vs. non-existence: Can a disabled child sue its doctor for being born? Murky legal waters, heavy stuff... [The Australian]

CNN: Prototype of tourist space shuttle unveiled -- $100,000 for a one-hour flight...

CNN: Congress warns Bush: No facts, no money -- Reflecting concerns over Ridge's refusal to testify and Cheney's energy policy notes...

BBC: British physicist wins religious prize -- The 2002 Templeton Prize is awarded to John Polkinghorne.

Ashcroft tightens his grip at Justice -- "Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has moved in recent months to consolidate his control over the Justice Departmentís Civil Rights Division, turning over control of sensitive issues traditionally handled by career lawyers to more conservative political appointees." [Washington Post via MSNBC]

Scientific American: Implant enables thought to control computer cursor

Register: Law-enforcement DIRT trojan released

Nando Times: FCC rules cable companies don't have to share Internet lines

ZDNet: Japanese worm on Net rampage Geez, this sounds like a bad Godzilla movie trailer...

AP: Andersen indicted in Enron scandal -- "The Arthur Andersen accounting firm was charged with obstruction of justice stemming from its destruction of "tons of paper" on Enron Corp., the first indictment in the company's collapse."

Check out the world's fastest commercial PC, with its own refrigeration unit. Running at 3 gHz, quiter than most slower air-cooled machines. [BBC]

Cyborg unplugged -- "Since losing the use of his vision system and computer memory several weeks ago, [Dr. Mann said] he cannot concentrate and is behaving differently. He is now undergoing tests to determine whether his brain has been affected by the sudden detachment from the technology." (NY Times, free registration required)

For Bush, secrecy is a matter of loyalty -- ". . . Bush's desire to keep information close to the vest predates Sept. 11. It is ingrained in his character, has shaped his presidency, was at the core of his management style during his six years as Texas governor and made him the watchdog for leaks in his father's administration." [USA Today]

Trace amounts of chemicals in streams -- "Caffeine, prescription drugs and other chemicals are not targeted by wastewater-treatment plants, which are designed to remove bacteria and other pathogens from sewage. So residues of drugs taken upstream can end up in water downstream." [CNN]

AP: Iran Contra alumni in Bush govt. -- Poindexter, Abrams, Reich, Armitage, Negroponte, Daniels. Yow. [Via BookNotes]

Julian Borger: Realities intrude on Bush's war plans -- "Moderate Arab leaders are afraid that Cheney is coming to present them with a fait accompli and to ask them to sign up, despite their fears of Iraqi retaliation and popular unrest. They feel like nervous householders who, after complaining for months about a gas leak, have been sent a known arsonist with a blowtorch." [Guardian]

Reuters: Senate Rejects Huge Hike in Vehicle Fuel Standards -- "The Senate Wednesday rejected a proposal for a 50 percent boost in fuel efficiency for gas-guzzling cars and sport utility vehicles, giving a victory to the heavy lobbying of the auto industry and a defeat to environmentalists."

Bush dismisses bin Laden as 'marginalized' but now promises 'we are going to deal' with Saddam. [Reuters]

Washington Post: Bush criticizes Israel for role in recent Middle East violence -- "The United States' criticism of Israel came a day after the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, told Israel it must 'end the illegal occupation' of Palestinian lands."

Robert Kuttner: Fear of Them, Fear of Us -- "Now, however, nearly everything the administration does only intensifies one's fears. There is no coherent plan for the next phase of the ubiquitous war on terrorism, only scattershot policies that will make the world an even more dangerous place. Whether it is an ill-specified axis of evil, or a decision to make tactical nuclear war thinkable, or a domestic 'shadow government,' or deliberately leaked plans to attack Iraq, George W. Bush in his own way is as frightening as Al Qaeda." [Boston Globe]

Clancy Sigal: John Ashcroft's Palmer Raids -- "Attorney General Palmer was an angry man on a mission of vengeance. Using existing sedition laws, he and his chief investigating officer, a ravenously ambitious 24-year-old named J. Edgar Hoover, ordered 500 agents of the newly created Federal Bureau of Investigation to go after Communists, socialists, union activists, and pacifists and arrest them without warrants or judicial hearings. Homes were ransacked, political literature burned. Estimates vary, but between 4,000 and l0,000 people were secretly, efficiently rounded up. Like today's detainees, they were often held without bail, habeas corpus rights or access to lawyers." (NY Times, free registration required)

Washington Post: U.N. Council Backs a Palestinian State -- "Although the resolution does not oblige the council to deliver independence to Palestinians, it carries enormous symbolic importance for the Palestinian cause."

Bernard Weiner: 'A candid interview with President Bush: A fantasia of hope' [Smirking Chimp]

US sends suspects to face torture -- "The US has been secretly sending prisoners suspected of al-Qaida connections to countries where torture during interrogation is legal, according to US diplomatic and intelligence sources. Prisoners moved to such countries as Egypt and Jordan can be subjected to torture and threats to their families to extract information sought by the US in the wake of the September 11 attacks." [Guardian]

NY Times op-ed: America as Nuclear Rogue -- "If another country were planning to develop a new nuclear weapon and contemplating pre-emptive strikes against a list of non-nuclear powers, Washington would rightly label that nation a dangerous rogue state. Yet such is the course recommended to President Bush by a new Pentagon planning paper that became public last weekend. Mr. Bush needs to send that document back to its authors and ask for a new version less menacing to the security of future American generations." (Free registration required)

IHT: Has the U.S. lowered its nuclear threshold? -- ". . .The classified Pentagon review has ignited a new and vitally important nuclear debate: Unlike much of the arms-control discussions in recent years, this dispute is not over the number of weapons the United States needs; it is over the more fundamental issue of the circumstances in which they might be used."

Bush's nuclear lunacy -- "Alarmed officials from Moscow to Tehran warned that the 'power crazy' President, buoyed up by the successful campaign in Afghanistan, could plunge the world into chaos. British politicians said the strategy threatened the stability of the NATO alliance." [Daily Mirror]

Eric Margolis: War on terror masks Bush's grand strategy -- "The so-called 'war on terrorism' is being used to mask a far grander imperial design: the overthrow of Saddam Hussein that will allow the U.S. to gain control of Iraq's huge oil reserves, which are second only to Saudi Arabia's, and secure American control of the giant Caspian Oil Basin." [Toronto Sun]

Bureau of Land Management accused of personnel 'purges' -- "Several career land managers in the West have recently been ousted, they say, to satisfy local officials and ranchers, miners and off-road vehicle users who have complained the managers favor environmental interests too much in their approach to overseeing public land." [USA Today]

CNN: U.S. marks 6 months since September 11

Madeleine Bunting: -- America's long shadow: "This is not a question of reheating the leftovers from Vietnam or Chile. A new generation barely remembers either of them, let alone the cold war politics that underpinned them. Rather, this anti-Americanism debate principally concerns globalisation: first, the questions about how and whether this process can be managed and the multilateral institutions to do that; and second, how to respond to the violent and powerless political identities globalisation triggers, whether they be Hindu mobs in Gujarat or the Taliban. On both, the response of the world's only superpower is a combination of indifference and aggression, and it fails to acknowledge any responsibilities other than to its own electorate." [The Guardian]

CNN: Next target for viruses: cell phones -- "As cellular phones morph into computer-like "smartphones" able to surf the Web, send e-mail and download software, they're prone to the same tribulations that have waylaid computers over the past decade."

Reuters: Powell: U.S. Secret Nuke Targets Were Routine Planning -- "Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Sunday a classified Pentagon report reviewing U.S. nuclear options was simply 'sound, military, conceptual planning' and not a precursor to any imminent U.S. action."

Reuters: Pentagon to prepare nuclear weapons, report says -- "Citing a classified Pentagon report, the Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday that the Bush administration has told the Defense Department to prepare, on a contingency basis, plans to use nuclear weapons against at least seven countries." [The LA Times article, which will link-rot, is here.]

Anthony Lewis: Taking Our Liberties -- "War without end is likely to have -- indeed is already having -- profound consequences for the American constitutional system. It tends to produce the very thing that the framers of the Constitution most feared: concentrated, unaccountable political power." (NY Times, free registration required)

Franz Schurmann argues that global civil war is a great danger than terrorism. [Pacific News Service]

Mike Hersh: I did not drill oil with that man, Mr. Lay

Washington Post: More precise warnings will be issued

Bill Press: Run for the bunker -- "If we weren't so gullible now, we would see Bush's bunker plan for what it really is. It has nothing to do with national security. It is all about politics. Like John Ashcroft's monthly terrorist alerts, it's all part of the White House attempts to scare the public, keep the focus on the war and enable Dubya to keep his favorable ratings high by playing commander in chief." [CNN]

Reuters: Computer Spy Methods Discovered in LED Lights -- "By monitoring the flashes of LED lights on electronics equipment and the indirect glow from monitors, scientists in the United States and the United Kingdom have discovered ways to remotely eavesdrop on computer data."

Nat Hentoff: Big John wants your reading list -- As part of the ill-named USA Patriot Act, ". . .the FBI, armed with a warrant or subpoena from the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court, can demand from bookstores and libraries the names of books bought or borrowed by anyone suspected of involvement in 'international terrorism' or 'clandestine activities.' [Village Voice, via Dave]

Ted Rall: " Wolfowitz is 100 percent correct about the need for vigilance, but his administration's faux war on terror-dispatching troops to prop up corrupt regimes in the Philippines, Yemen and Georgia while stifling the slightest dissent here in America-will have little effect beyond causing yet more people to hate us. The key to avoiding another September 11th is to understand that there won't be any more September 11ths-until there are." [Common Dreams]

The Bush Doctrine: War for the appearance of purpose -- ". . .To be so often compared to so many presidents should signal alarm, not self-confidence. It speaks of a void at the center of power that must be made up." [Daytona Beach News-Journal op/ed]

Bush's little shop of horrors -- "The Bush administration likes to brand the fight against terrorism as a new kind of war, with new enemies and new rules, but using fear to push policy has been an actual play in the White House book since the Truman administration began commissioning behavioral studies on 'emotion management' during the early days of Cold War hysteria." [The Village Voice]

Reuters: Middle East fighting soars unchecked -- "Secretary of State Colin Powell told a congressional hearing in Washington he was skeptical that Sharon's plan to use military force against the Palestinians until negotiations resumed would work."

Bush alarmed at Mideast violence, but has no new plan, saying he is "willing to send U.S. Middle East envoy Anthony Zinni back to the region 'when appropriate.'" [Reuters]

Reuters clarifies O'Neill's non-recession statement. Now it's ''maybe'' not a recession. OK.

BBC: Bush steel tariff anger allies

BBC: "Claims that a team of researchers have achieved nuclear fusion in a small tabletop experiment have split nuclear physicists - with some expressing enthusiasm and others grave concern."

BBC: Pioneer 10 makes contact. One of the most distant probes ever launched into space has contacted Earth to say all is well.

The Register: Poison applet blights browsers -- Time to update . . . again.

The Register: Ballmer weeps for Windows on carefully edited clip.

Microsoft still insists Internet Explorer is inseparable from Windows [CNN]

Mary McGrory: The Senator Explodes -- Nevada Sen. Harry Reid confronts Bush over broken campaign promises regarding the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal site. "As he was leaving, Bush grabbed Reid's arm and told him, 'I appreciate a frank-spoken man.' But he did not heed Reid's counsel. Just eight days later, the president made it official: Nevada had won the booby prize, the privilege of receiving and storing the nation's radioactive nuclear waste." [Washington Post, via dangerousmeta!]

NY Times: Tip on nuclear attack risk was kept from New Yorkers -- "A month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, senior Bush administration officials received an intelligence report that terrorists had obtained a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon from the Russian arsenal and were planning to smuggle it into New York City, a government official said yesterday." The tip was subsequently deemed false.

Ruth Rosen: Preparing for perpetual war -- "The political impetus for creating a state of perpetual war can't be ignored. George W. Bush has never forgotten his father's precipitous fall after the Persian Gulf War. Despite his currently high approval ratings, Bush also knows that a majority of Americans still favor the Democrats' domestic policies." [Common Dreams]

The Guardian: Briton held as terror suspect threatens to sue FBI -- "If they thought I was a terrorist suspect, why did they allow me on to the flight in the first place? Why was I put through it?"

Why stationary satellites suck --
From http://www.dslreports.com/speed

For Geostationary satellite systems, such as the ones providing internet access to Direct-TV subscribers, and other newer internet-in-the-sky providers, poor latency (indirectly caused by the maximum speed of radio waves in a vacuum), screws up their business models for good. The distance to the satellite, is some 36,000 odd kilometers .. more actually, since they are over the equator, and you are probably not directly below them. The absolute fixed minimum round-trip-time for these systems is something more than the time it takes light to travel from the ground, to the satellite, and back down again, times two (follow the path to your intended server and back again to see why it is times two). This amounts to some 200ms (1 fifth of a second), at least. Increase this further, because you are talking radio waves, not light, because once on the ground, the regular internet latency takes over, and because of packet processing times, multiplexing, and error-checking, and you have the kind of delays that made older international phone calls so annoying, and make any highly interactive internet use impossibly slow.

There will be at least a years notice before a low earth orbit (LEO) internet in the sky satellite system gets off the ground. If you havent read about that in the front page of your newspaper, it is still just a blueprint. (dont forget .. the last LEO system, Iridium, is busy burning itself up in the upper atmosphere as this is written).

Moral of the story: If you're considering satellite Internet access, do your homework before you give them your money.

Sing along with John -- "Since John Ashcroft became US attorney general last year, workers at the department of justice have become accustomed to his daily prayer meetings, but some are now drawing the line at having to sing patriotic songs penned by their idiosyncratic boss." [The Guardian]

LA International Airport evacuated again. Passenger is detained. Suspected explosives found in luggage. [Reuters]

NY Times: Two powerful groups hold sway over buying at many hospitals -- "The problem begins with this simple fact: The buying groups are financed not by the hospitals that buy products but by the companies that sell them. In other words, the groups take money from the very companies they are supposed to evaluate objectively."

Removing IE would kill Win2k, WinXP, MS, says Redmond. Big Red Legal Switch marked 'don't press' [The Register]

House Cool to Copy Protection. "Key legislators in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives aren't keen on embedding copy protection controls in consumer electronic devices." [Wired]

William Safire: The inspection ploy -- ". . .Saddam Hussein -- faced with the certainty of a U.S.-led overthrow of his brutal regime -- has restarted the business of postponing the attack until he can finish making weapons of mass destruction." (NY Times, free registration required)

Pacific News Service: Pipeline politics -- "Deployment of U.S. Special Operations forces to the Caucasus state of Georgia would help enforce a Washington pipeline policy aimed at neutralizing Russian influence in oil-rich Central Asia. This is the unreported side of the U.S. proposal, which is also about pursuing al Qaeda fighters around the globe."

BBC: Mars probe finds evidence of water -- ". . .The Gamma Ray Spectrometer instruments on board Mars Odyssey have made the first direct measurements that confirm there are significant amounts of hydrogen and probably water - just beneath the surface."

Maureen Dowd: 60 Feet Under -- "In a banner headline on Friday, The Washington Post blared: 'Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret.' The article said President Bush had assembled a cadre of officials to operate under the radar, out of the sunlight. This is news? The president did that on Jan. 20, 2001." (NY Times, free registration required)

Doggone stupid network snafu at Level3.com has persisted since at least 7:00 this morning. Arrrrgh. Tired of having to disconnect the satellite dish and use dial-up to post.

AP: Swiss voters narrowly OK joining U.N. -- "The Swiss voted Sunday to join the rest of the world as members of the United Nations after sitting on the global sidelines for more than five decades."

Reuters: Lieberman: Action Against Iraq Might Start Secretly -- ". . .U.S. action against Baghdad might begin without notification to Congress to allow President Bush 'to employ surprise in attacking or going against the leadership of Iraq.'"

Frank Rich: Freedom from the press -- ". . .There is still scant evidence to suggest that [Bush] condones the idea of a free press. Not since the Nixon years has an administration done as much to stymie reporters who specialize in the genre of investigative inquiry Mr. Pearl was pursuing when he was ambushed. Now as then, the administration is equally determined to thwart journalists whether they're looking into a war abroad or into possible White House favors for a lavish campaign contributor who has fallen into legal peril (Ken Lay now, Robert Vesco then)." (NY Times, free registration required)

The Register: Senator brutalizes Intel rep for resisting CPRM -- "Entertainment industry lapdog Senator Fritz Hollings (Democrat, South Carolina) lashed out at Intel executive VP Leslie Vadasz who warned that the copy-protected PCs Hollings is obediantly promoting on behalf of his MPAA and RIAA handlers would stifle growth in the marketplace."

Reuters: Nine Sept. 11 hijackers screened at airports, according to the Washington Post.

ABC: Remember Florida? It will change the way you vote -- "...The clamor and attention [for ballot reform] has also, in the minds of election officials, set what they view as a near-impossible standard to meet: a flawless election now ó not in 2004 or 2006, but this November."

Disney & Hollywood seek to rule the digital Universe

Michael Eisner: "We're dealing with an industry [personal computers] where an unspoken strategy is that the killer app is piracy. Their quarter-to-quarter growth is definitely pushed forward by people wanting to get anything for free on their television or computer or hand-held device." [NY Times] Rubbish!

Apparently the Senate hearings went poorly enough that Intel VP Leslie Vadasz dashed off a letter to the Senate. [Politech]

Dave Winer: "The story that stands out from yesterday is Mike Godwin's account of what awaits us in the US Congress. A major technology overhaul to protect the assets of Disney, AOL, and a handful of smelly bean counters with lots of money."

Tom Daschle: "The Congress has a constitutional responsibility to ask questions. We are not a rubber stamp to this president or to anybody else. We must do what the Constitution and what our best judgement requires."

Reuters: Bush rejects Democratic criticism of war, budget

Register: "Microsoft makes its money if more hardware gets sold, and if Microsoft software is the standard that enables that hardware, then it will be bundled with that hardware, more hardware gets sold, and so on. Microsoft is now also pretty much specifying that new hardware itself, so it makes sense just to push the hardware, and forget about saying stupid stuff about how great Windows is on its own (although we confidently predict Bill will be unable to give up doing this).

Meditation mapped in monks -- "Scientists investigating the effect of the meditative state on Buddhist monk's brains have found that portions of the organ previously active become quiet, whilst pacified areas become stimulated." [BBC]

Boston Globe: Bush backs pension privatization -- "President Bush yesterday restated his support for partly privatizing the Social Security system, despite concerns the stock market's fall and Enron's bankruptcy have raised about protecting retirement savings."

Washington Post: Shadow Government Is at Work in Secret -- "President Bush has dispatched a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work secretly outside Washington, activating for the first time long-standing plans to ensure survival of federal rule after catastrophic attack on the nation's capital." Prudent idea; too bad the term "shadow government" has all sorts of conspiratorial connotations. ;-)

Washington Post: Fleischer rebuffed for remarks on Mideast -- "The White House issued a rare statement of regret yesterday after press secretary Ari Fleischer blamed President Bill Clinton for the current wave of violence in the Middle East."

The Guardian: India in crisis as sectarian violence spreads -- "India was in the grip of its worst communal violence for 10 years last night as Hindu mobs incensed by Wednesday's attack on a train carrying Hindu activists exacted their revenge by killing at least 58 Muslims, burning many of them to death, including 12 children."

Reuters: Vietnam Blood Dioxin Levels 'Startling' -U.S. Expert -- "A leading expert on the Vietnam War defoliant Agent Orange said on Friday new tests on people living in a heavily sprayed part of Vietnam had found 'startlingly high' levels of cancer-causing dioxin."