In this particular case, the government would like to look at people’s e-mail on Yahoo without a search warrant.

Now, as this Slashdot post points out, it’s the internet, so it’s totally different, but how isn’t this covered in the fourth amendment?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Rather, even if there’s some legal loophole or some friendly judge who deems it okay, why would any reasonable person think that e-mails deserve less protection than “papers” left in, oh, a safe-deposit box?

I understand that the Obama administration wants to protect us from the terrorists, but there should be a legally bright line or two that says, “No, the government should not have this power in pursuit of terrorists.”, if only because the definition of terrorist might get overly broad. And one of the most obvious bright lines to set is to say that the executive branch has to get the go ahead from the judicial branch before spying on people. Is it really that onerous of a condition?

I’m not going to argue either of those things, since a reasoned individual should already understand where Huckabee is coming from, and why gay people and atheists would have reason to take offense.

What I’d like to point out is Huckabee’s reasoning with this quote:

“You don’t go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal,” he said of same-sex marriage. “That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want to use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them.”

Okay, so pretty much everyone would agree that some “behavioral patterns that (are) against the ideal” should never be accommodated. He points out same-sex marriage, drugs, incest, and polygamy. I’d add murder, violence of most types, most theft, and most things that put others in danger.

Okay, great; we all agree on at least most of those. Now, why? Why should the force of the government be put behind stopping such things? Well, for the ones I brought up, we have the fact that one person’s whims are likely to cause someone else’s injury.

The harm principle applies to incest, and even to polygamy, as as surplus of males often leads to violence.

Drugs? Well, drug addicts have done their share of damage to society. I’m not certain it’s any worse than the damage alcoholics have done, but I see the point.

Gay marriage? No one is directly harmed.

So, opposition to gay marriage must come from something else. Therefore it is not a directly comparable issue.

So, Huckabee’s “partial logic” is that his statement is perfectly reasonable, but only if there were some common, underlying reason. As far as I can tell, the underlying reason is Huckabee’s moral code.

I doubt that an argument coming from a moral code would ever be convincing to someone who doesn’t share that particular moral code.

Lacking expanded-basic cable, I was mostly unaware of Glenn Beck until recently. Perhaps you don’t know of him, either.

Well, evidently he’s a political talk show host who will make or repeat allegations, then expect a person to prove their innocence.

Someone evidently objected to his methods, and launched glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com discussing the allegations against Glenn Beck.

Now, this is an obvious parody site ripping into Beck because of the alleged damage Beck does to political speech.

Notice the key words “parody” and “political speech”? Either of those things would make it very difficult to overcome first-amendment concerns.

So, what was the seemingly obvious answer for Glenn Beck? Ask the World Intellectual Property Organization to give him the domain because people might think that Glenn Beck put up such a website.

The legal response to that claim is amusing on its own, and I’ll admit I don’t really have much to add — I’m just hoping to help Glen Beck out a bit with his personal Streisand Effect.

Sen. Kit Bond, the senior Republican from Missouri who sits on powerful Senate committees, announced Thursday that he will not run for reelection in 2010, giving Democrats a shot to pick up a seat in a state that has emerged as a major battleground.

While Missouri had the closest vote of any state in the 2008 US Presidential election, it managed to send its electoral votes to McCain.  Missouri last voted for the losing candidate in 1956, and before that, in 1900.  Since the United States hasn’t had terribly long strings of single-party presidential rule, I’m inclined to think that Missouri emerged as a major battleground in 1904.

Disclaimer: an officeholder deciding not to run again almost always makes an election more of a battleground.  I have to assume that Missouri’s senate election in 2010 will be significantly more competitive than the election of 2004.

Edit:  It brought more spammers in, and the feature has been turned off.  I may turn it on for short periods of time after posting, though.

Well, time for me to add to the noise of the internet again.

Here is a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, September 10th. Considering how short it is, I’ll quote the entire thing:

Katty Kay and Claire Shipman’s discussion of Gov. Sarah Palin “actually pushing the combination of professional and personal ambitions beyond the sensibilities of this generation of working moms,” raises a question I had wonder about as well (“Let’s Talk About Palin’s Family Challenges,” op-ed, Sept. 6).

Why in the world would she subject herself to such horrible treatment by the press particularly when she had a fantastic life in Alaska?

While recently reading “John Adams,” “founding Brothers,” “1776,” “Team of Rivals,” etc., I asked myself the same question about those people who chose to push themselves beyond comfortable and meaningful lives to endure excruciating discomfort for the purest of political endeavors.

The only conceivable answer is that there are special people who are compelled to make a difference for their country — they cannot refuse.
Jacquie Woodward
Harrodsburg, Ky

Evidently it’s inconceivable that there are some people who are so power hungry that they’ll put their families through anything in the quest for power and a form of immortality.

This, quite reasonably, drew some complaints as being a rather poor choice of phrasing. The State Journal asked an expert:

Bob Baldwin, a diversity specialist for the Janesville School District, who is black, said most black people would have a problem with the wording.

“That’s kind of a natural thing — when you’re white, you don’t think about these things,” Baldwin said. “And people need to start thinking about these things beyond their own comfort level — you know, what about the other folks?”

There’s nothing quite like a generalization about white people to help illustrate his point.

By which, of course, I mean that he took ten percent.

…

Hopefully enough people have heard the controversy about the usage of “decimate” to not think I’ve completely lost it.

Cases such as this remind us strong enforcement is a significant part of the effort to eliminate piracy, and that we have an effective legal system in the U.S. that enables rights holders to protect their intellectual property

And, indeed, this case does lead to a very obvious conclusion: Jammie Thomas should’ve gone to the store and stolen the CDs off the shelf instead, since, if memory serves, she would’ve been on the hook for up to $1,000 per CD, rather than ending up being stuck with over $9,000 per song.

Oh, and my title is a bit over-the-top, but when there’s research claiming that fair use is worth more to the economy than copyright, and the Bush Administration prefers an expansive view of copyright, I have to conclude that Bush is less interested in having a thriving, expanding, vibrant economy than he is in protecting his friends in the content industries, and thus must be an “enemy of freedom”, to borrow a Bush-ism.

Since the failure of the Walkman to beat the iPod, Sony has been struggling to come up with a new product that defines the industry standard in innovation.

This general idea of Sony failing since losing to the iPod is repeated throughout the article, along with some conjecture about what Sony is likely to do to turn its fortunes around.

However, I find it odd that the article doesn’t mention the reason why most everyone I know(and Slashdot) has developed a distaste for Sony hardware; the fact that Sony releases moderate quality products that are crippled into products that worry most about stopping you from doing stuff.

This hit home recently when I was playing with a PSP, and went to download a trailer for a PSP game, and had to agree to a EULA before I was allowed to watch it.

Again, I had to agree to abide by certain rules so that I could watch an ad.

Sony has a history of having propietary devices that lock you out about as much as American cell phones do. When you can choose an iPod, which plays MP3s and Apple’s format, or the first few generations of Sony MP3 players, which played only Sony’s format, the choice is obvious. Why would you want to force yourself to convert all of your files in order to play them? It takes a lot longer, the files are lower quality, and you can’t just copy them to another player or computer.

Sony’s methods can work, as long as all the other hardware providers provide equally restrictive hardware, but as long as Sony is competiting against hardware makers who worry more about marketability than pleasing content companies, I fail to see why anyone would want to buy Sony products.