Jacko joins OJ and Robert Blake in the elite club of “obviously guilty celebrity criminals acquitted for nebulous reasons.”

No word yet from the Cruise camp on how vitamins will cure whatever the hell is wrong with MJ or the jury.

(Alt.snarky.headline: “Pedophilia, like spousal murder, now legal for celebs in LA.”)

Senate panel votes to expand PATRIOT Act; if it passes as written, the Feds will have the power to get at things like medical and financial records without a fucking warrant. Judicial oversight keeps cops honest. Without it, they can and do abuse their powers, and that is dangerous to our republic. Call your congresspeople and tell them what you think of this blatent fearmongering powergrab.

Ohio’s $455,000 abstinence-only sex ed curriculum has been found to be astoundingly flawed by a Case Western public health researcher, including (among other howlers) the following:

• HIV can be transmitted through tears and open-mouthed kissing;
• Contraceptives are to blame for mental health problems in teens;
• Taking the pill will reduce a girl’s future fertility; and
• Students should just “follow God’s plan for purity.”

This in a public school, and funded with public money. ThinkProgress sums it up:

Keeping kids in the dark or filling their heads with misinformation about contraception doesnÕt keep hormonally charged teens from having sex. It just makes it less likely theyÕll have safe sex.

Despite the “liberal” media’s insistance on his popularity, Bush’s approval rating (according to the ABC/Post poll) is actually only 48%, or (by way of comparison) twenty points lower than Clinton’s on the day he was impeached (cite).

From here:

WASHINGTON, DC — On June 7, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) will celebrate the 40th anniversary of constitutional protection for using birth control in the United States. In 1965, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Connecticut law that made the use of birth control by married couples illegal with its ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut. However, 40 years later, women still face unnecessary and often politically-motivated barriers to contraception.

Eisenstadt v. Baird followed in 1972, which extended that protection to the unmarried. Frankly, it’s still pretty staggering to think that anyone thought they had a right to regulate birth control in our lifetimes, but we reckon that’s (still) the province of the Jackass Right. Piss ’em off good, and have some non-procreative sex today!

Once again, it is pointed out in excruciating detail that Emperor TSA has no clothes, and therefore does zilcho to protect us from airborne acts of terrorism.

Brilliant and depressing; an excerpt:

The Rude Pundit doesn’t suffer fundamentalists gladly. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Bible-thumpin’ Christian, a Koran-riotin’ Muslim, or a ripped-to-shit flag waver, you can take your strict adherence to your religious and/or nationalistic code and, well, flush it down the toilet. Because, frankly, if you’re willing to go nutzoid over the desecration of a book, then you’re someone who’s willing to oppress real, living people – maybe that’s forcing women to always be accompanied by a man, maybe it’s not allowing gay people to marry each other or adopt kids, maybe it’s re-electin’ a lyin’ sack of shit to the presidency. However it forces you to behave, it’s gonna end up screwin’ someone else’s freedoms over. So fuck you. […] The issue is not the crazed religious beliefs of others. The issue is how a nation treats people. The issue is personal property. The issue is torture. The issue is the presumption of guilt. The issue is the inversion of everything most of us were taught about this great nation, whose fall from grace has been harrowing to watch. It’s not that a Koran or two or five were pissed on or stomped. Once we make it that, we buy into a religious doctrine that places faith over the physical. And we cannot make legal decisions in that way.

There is, of course, more.

Newsday has more on the sublime absurdity of Nixon’s convicted henchmen lecturing the public on ethics in the wake of the Felt disclosure.

From Newsday:

NEW YORK (AP) _ Comedian/magician Penn Jillette’s latest stunt didn’t involve his usual sidekick, Teller: He became the father of a baby girl. Jillette, 50, and his wife Emily, 39, welcomed 6-pound, 6-ounce Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette on Friday, according to publicist Glenn Schwartz. It was the first child for the couple, who married last year. “We chose her middle name because when she’s pulled over for speeding she can say, “But officer, we’re on the same side,”‘ Jillette explained. “My middle name is CrimeFighter.”‘ The typically mute Teller had no comment on the new arrival. Penn & Teller currently star in their own series on Showtime, and headline nightly in Las Vegas at the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino.

Our houseguest, when asked for comment, opined that the tyke was sure to have an interesting life. Upon reflection, however, it seems clear that any child of Jillette’s would have that taken care of more or less by default.

Bruce Schneier points us to Woodward’s piece on how he and Felt avoided detection. Felt had some, shall we say, professional insight into the matter.

The entire 80 year archive of the New Yorker will be available on DVD this fall, according to the New York Times today:

The New Yorker, the weekly magazine that started as “a hectic book of gossip, cartoons and facetiae,” as Louis Menand once wrote, and has evolved into a citadel of narrative nonfiction and investigative reporting, will publish its entire 80-year archives on searchable computer discs this fall. The collection, titled “The Complete New Yorker,” will consist of eight DVD’s containing high-resolution digital images of every page of the 4,109 issues of the magazine from February 1925 through the 80th anniversary issue, published last February. Included on the discs will be “every cover, every piece of writing, every drawing, listing, newsbreak, poem and advertisement,” David Remnick, editor of the magazine, has written in an introduction to the collection. […] The project is an amalgam of technology, stealth, insurance considerations and economics that was first discussed more than seven years ago. It was overseen, and long kept secret, by Edward Klaris, general counsel for the magazine, and Pamela Maffei McCarthy, its deputy editor. In early 2004, two staff members drove two copies of each issue of the magazine to Kansas City in a rented truck to have them digitally scanned. The magazine’s card catalog, which over time has come to include more than 1.5 million index cards containing citations and cross-references to articles and which forms the backbone of the search function on the discs, was scanned at the magazine’s office in Manhattan after discussions with the publication’s insurance company found the catalog to be “irreplaceable and beyond value,” Mr. Remnick said. The collection also has one other important feature, which allows a reader to page through each magazine by flipping directly to the cartoons. As Mr. Remnick admits, “Ninety percent of our subscribers say they read the cartoons first, and the rest would be lying.”

Now, if they’ll just commit to digital updates every year…

Intel is embedding support for Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management in its upcoming Pentium D line. Even more reason to eschew Windows!

This is astoundingly rich. At a recent forum in re: the proposed resurrected broadcast flag, Mike Godwin of Public Knowledge pointed out the main objections to the scheme (quote from Prof. Ed Felton’s Freedom to Tinker, which in turn is quoting a story from National Journal Tech Daily by Sara Lai Stirland):

Godwin said any regulations concerning digital television copy-protection schemes would necessarily have to affect any devices that hook up to digital television receivers. That technical fact could have far-reaching implications, such as making gadgets incompatible with each other and crimping technology companies’ ability to innovate, he said. “I don’t want to be the legislator or the legislative staff person in charge of shutting off connectivity and compatibility for consumers, and I don’t think you want to do that either,” he told a roomful of technology policy lobbyists and congressional staffers. “It’s going to make consumers’ lives hell.” Godwin’s talk drew a sharp protest from audience member Rick Lane, vice president of government affairs at News Corp. “Compatibility is not a goal [emph. added],” he said, pointing out that there are currently a plethora of consumer electronics and entertainment products that are not interoperable. Lane was seconded by NBC Universal’s Senior Counsel for Government Relations Alec French, who also was in the audience.

Felton continues:

To consumers, compatibility is a goal. When devices don’t work together, that is a problem to be solved, not [a] mandate [for] even more incompatibility. [Slightly edited to fix what appear to be typos in Felton’s text.] The FCC and Congress had better be careful in handling the digital TV issue, or they’ll be blamed for breaking the U.S. television system. Mandating incompatibility, via the Broadcast Flag, will not be a popular policy, especially at a time when Congress is talking about shutting off analog TV broadcasts. The most dangerous place in Washington is between Americans and their televisions.

More coverage at TechDirt and Engadget.

Update: Mr. Godwin has posted his own entry as well.

An appeals court in Minnesota has ruled that simply having encryption software installed on one’s computer can be viewed as evidence of criminal intent.

In making his decision, Judge R. A. Randall:

[…]favorably cited testimony given by retired police officer Brooke Schaub, who prepared a computer forensics report–called an EnCase Report–for the prosecution. Schaub testified that PGP “can basically encrypt any file” and “other than the National Security Agency,” nobody could break it.

Actually, that’s a bit of an understatement. Properly implemented public-key cryptography (with sufficiently large keys) is essentially unbreakable, even by the NSA. But it’s also a cornerstone of Internet commerce, and — since it’s so effective — is now commonly used to secure sensitive documents and emails in everyday life, even for users who are unaware of its role.

Extending this logic, we may presume that sealed envelopes suggest conspiracy, since people with nothing to hide would just use postcards, right? Leaving aside the utterly boneheaded implications along those lines, this also makes just about every computer out there evidence of criminal intent — Windows, if we’re not mistaken, can make encrypted ZIP files, and OS X includes a FileVault drive-encrypting feature. Both, presumably, include methods for initiating public-key secured network connections — otherwise, every credit card you type on the net would be sent in plaintext. Go Minnesota!