Wired News has more. Remember, people will use these things to vote in November. And they’re not secure. If I, as a tech-savvy person, wanted to create a way to rig an election, I’d start with tools like Diebold’s.

No, really.

Fred Clark elaborates on the notion that journalism is dead, and Bush knows it and takes advantage of it.

John Ashcroft has run roughshod over the Bill of Rights for three years now, claiming all the while he was chasing legitimate criminal convictions. Guess how many he’s gotten.

Yup. Zero. Here we were thinking the debate was liberty vs. security, and here we discover no actual convictions have happened — i.e., not one of those detained, lawfully or unlawfully, by the DoJ has been found guilty of anything. Kinda makes you wonder about that particular trade-off, doesn’t it?

Slate gives us the rundown on how they’re using an obscure law to abrogate free speech in arbitrary zones, thereby keeping protestors far, far away from the President in the name of “security.”

The Pentagon is apparently blocking access to a government web site designed to help American expats get and use absentee ballots.

I keep posting “how much lower can the GOP go?” and, well, they keep showing me. I mean, damn.

Once again, I could write this, but it’s more efficient just to send you over to Fred at Slacktivist, or this discussion with military experts over at Salon. Sigh.

Iraqi insurgents are only attacking because they want to influence the election in Kerry’s favor, or so says Dick Armitage.

Jesus.

If you clicked through, you may remember that the fired worker’s boss said something along the lines of “you can either work for me, or work for John Kerry.” In the wake of the publicity about the firing, two intersting things happened. First, the boss tried to re-hire her; second, John Kerry actually did.

Original post here.

Slacktivist has two fine posts this morning:

• No DD-214, no job. A DD-214 documents the circumstances under which an individual left the military. Fred notes “I am not interested in the typographical capabilities of the IBM Executive Model D typewriter . . . I want to see the man’s DD-214.”
• Careless committees. Here Mr. Clark notes the sad state of environmental legislation in general — and the Endangered Species Act in particular — under this administration, but also includes this gem: “The British scientist J.B.S. Haldane, the story goes, was asked by a clergyman what we might learn about God from studying the creation. Haldane replied that, ‘He has an inordinate fondness for beetles.'” Gotta love that.

“More money and less ideology could improve the reproductive health of millions.” Guess which side Bush is on?

An Alabama woman has been fired for refusing to remove a Kerry/Edwards sticker from her car. The boss in question has apparently also been stuffing employee mailboxes with pro-Bush fliers, which, while not illegal, is certainly creepy. Especially in light of his actions where this woman is concerned. (Original story here.)

Any members of the Alabama Bar want to contact this woman about a wrongful termination case?

Despite a court ruling to the contrary (on the grounds that the Reform party doesn’t qualify as a national party), the Florida Secretary of State has ordered Ralph Nader’s name placed on the November ballot.

Now, if he gets support he ought to be on the ballot, but a ruling is a ruling, isn’t it? I guess not if Jeb’s in charge.

No, not the obsolete Sony also-ran, but the Supreme Court decision that made owning a Betamax legal. The MPAA whined and whined — and sued — over the whole notion of time-shifting and home taping, insisting (famously) that the Betamax was some sort of technological equivalent of the Boston Strangler (thanks, Valenti), and that home taping in and of itself was infringment on their copyright (and never mind Fair Use), and further wanted Sony held liable for contributory infringement for making the VTR available in the first place. The Supremes saw it differently, and thereby allowed the market for home video to explode — which, of course, is now part of the bread and butter revenue stream for that very same MPAA that sought to ban the Betamax and its ilk in the first place.

Now we have something called the INDUCE Act before Congress; this law would essentially undo the Betamax ruling, conceivably making Apple liable for the infringment of iPod owners, for example. (Read it, or some analysis, yourself; it’s not pretty.)

In response, some concerned folks have created SaveBetamax.org, and online grassroots organization whose first task is a coordinated day of phone calls to targetted Congresspeople. Go sign up and make a call if you like the idea of deciding when to watch the Sopranos, or on what format you wish to listen to your newest CD. It’s that kind of fair use that the RIAA and MPAA would dearly love to eliminate, and that’s what the INDUCE Act is about. It won’t take much time — hell, some of you spend more time than this will take on this site alone, if the access logs are to be believed. (Heh.)

According to Cheney, the poor economic data is flawed because it skips all those people selling crap on eBay. Riiiiight.

“If we only included bake sales and how much money kids make at lemonade stands, this economy would really be cooking,” [John] Edwards said in a statement.

We don’t really listen to Keillor’s show much, but after reading a piece like this, we may need to reconsider:

The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil ArmstrongÕs moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, NewtÕs evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks weÕre deaf, dumb and dangerous. Rich ironies abound! Lies pop up like toadstools in the forest! Wild swine crowd round the public trough! Outrageous gerrymandering! Pocket lining on a massive scale! Paid lobbyists sit in committee rooms and write legislation to alleviate the suffering of billionaires! Hypocrisies shine like cat turds in the moonlight! O Mark Twain, where art thou at this hour? Arise and behold the Gilded Age reincarnated gaudier than ever, upholding great wealth as the sure sign of Divine Grace. Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedyÑthe single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the presidentÕs personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

As quoted by Atrios:

And finally, New Rule: You can’t run on a mistake. Franklin Roosevelt didn’t run for re-election claiming Pearl Harbor was his finest hour. Abe Lincoln was a great president, but the high point of his second term wasn’t theater security. 9/11 wasn’t a triumph of the human spirit. It was a fuck-up by a guy on vacation. Now, don’t get me wrong, Mr. President. I’m not blaming you for 9/11. We have blue-ribbon commissions to do that. And I’m not saying there was anything improper about your immediate response to the attacks. Someone had to stay in that classroom and protect those kids from Chechen rebels. But by the looks of your convention, you’d think that the worst thing that ever happened to us was the best thing that ever happened to you. You just can’t keep celebrating the deadliest attack ever as if it’s your personal rendezvous with greatness. You don’t see old men who were shot down during World War II jumping out of a plane every year. I mean, other than your dad. … So I say, if you absolutely must win an election on the backs of dead people, do it like they do in Chicago, and have them actually vote for you. Cite

This Onion story just isn’t anywhere nearly as funny was it was four years ago:

“We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two,” Bush said. “Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there’s much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation’s hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it.”

Sigh.