Category Archives: Media
Prop Refuses to Serve as Prop
Update:
Politicians are keeping their distance from the president these days. When the presidential seal fell from his podium he made a self-deprecating joke that even it didn’t want to appear on stage with him.
No he didn’t. President Obama doesn’t do self-deprecating. He said, “all of you know who I am…but there’s somebody back there who is really nervous right now“. Yes, Mr. President, we all fear you.
Yesterday even Walter Mondale piled on, telling him to lose the “idiot boards”.
Woodward
Don’t Let the Back Door Hit You
The FBI wants a “backdoor” to the web.
Since 9/11 the government has relied on phone wiretaps for national national security purposes. That practice, under the Bush administration, created an uproar (here’s a 2007 James Risen NYT story). With more sensitive information being encrypted on the web, the current administration wants to require that all internet communication be wire-tap friendly.
Apparently this would be a step backward, requiring an internet retrofit. Here’s Jack X. Dempsey, V.P. of an outfit called the Center for Democracy and Technology, in Monday’s New York Times:
“They are really asking for the authority to redesign services that take advantage of the unique, and now pervasive, architecture of the Internet,” he said. “They basically want to turn back the clock and make Internet services function the way that the telephone system used to function.”
Valerie Caproni of the FBI claims the government is just trying to preserve authority it already has.
“We’re not talking expanding authority. We’re talking about preserving our ability to execute our existing authority in order to protect the public safety and national security.”
Wouldn’t be the first enterprise seeking special favors to avoid being bypassed by technology.
Down in Pagan Polls
Who among us, in our carefree youth, has not had a date on a satanic alter? Here’s Bill Maher apologizing to Christine O’Donnell for making her life a “living hell”. This has not played well in the Witch community. They are offended that Americans think all Wiccans are Satanists. Click here for the “Witch’s Voice” in the Huffington Post.
UPDATE: A spokesperson for the neopagan network “The Witches’ Voice” who goes by the name “Diotima Mantineia” reached out to the Huffington Post to offer further condemnation of O’Donnell’s initial witchcraft remarks. Making the point that there is a “very large pagan community in Delaware,” Mantineia called the Delaware Republican’s conflation of witchcraft and Satanism “disappointing.”
I really have to question what she is talking about because witchcraft and Satanism are two different things… witches or Wiccans do not believe in Satan. We don’t even believe that Satan exists. Satan is a Christian deity of some kind. He is part of the Christian religion not ours. We worship nature; we work very closely with nature. We do not have blood on our altar and we have little to do with Satan. So I don’t know what Ms. O’Donnell is talking about. I wonder if she knows what she was talking about.
Nicholas Kristof apology to follow.
Crapped Out
The guy can’t get a break. The Boston Herald reports that water at some Martha’s Vineyard beaches has fecal contamination.
