More from Clay Bennett.

Penn of Penn & Teller has a great story on his site recounting his interaction with an overzealous airport security officer. It’s good reading, especially if you’ve read the rant carried on some right-wing site that’s making the blog rounds.

In fact, when I read Penn’s “freedom is kind of a hobby with me, and I have disposable income that I’ll spend to find out how to get people more of it,” I officially forgave him for his unfortunate tenure as a Pizza Hut shill.

Update: Hmmm. It seems Penn gets a little nuts in his next entry. The word “pig” is used frequently. I think I’m just going to have to undergo this screening process myself and make my own judgment. In the very near future.

Just went to see the flag co. boys for whom I do some work on occasion. The brothers who run the firm are very laid back, but today I locked horns with one (intellectually speaking, of course.)

When I dropped the phrase “white bread Republican,” it was off to the races. He did all the Reaganite greatest hits: Entitlements Are Out of Control, Taxes Will Suffocate Us, Let Me Invest My Retirement Money, Let’s Drill in Alaska, and of course that old classic, Bill & Hillary Clinton Are Satan Incarnate.

It would be in poor taste to brag, but I have to say I gave as good — better than — I got. I pulled out all the stops, from mentioning essential agencies established through liberal initiatives (FDA, SEC, FDIC), to bashing the war on Iraq and dependency on the petrochemical cartel, through to a question of what exactly the Clinton Administration cost nearly $80 million”>$40 million we spent on Starr brought us other than the revelation that yes, the president didn’t want to admit an ugly intern sucked his dick. (Seems like a poor value, especially when compared to the widespread, systematic criminal activity uncovered from the $50m Iran-Contra probe.)

Anyway, I won’t rehash any more but suffice to say we had an enjoyable go-round and the secretaries just loved it. One actually asked me if I would be her brother’s divorce lawyer. The other said she’s been trying to make the same point for years, and now she didn’t think her boss would ever be the same.

Just before I left, the guy predicted that within 10 years I would be a Republican. It would happen soon after I entered the work force, he said. I flashed back to a claim Brandon once made that if it “weren’t for that one issue” I would be a Republican now. My dear employer will learn what B-don has long since divined: there’s no way in hell I’ll ever join Club Conservative Christian.

Did W. muzzle the messenger? David Lazarus of the San Francisco Chronicle had a very interesting article Friday in which he reported the Bush administration has killed a layoff tracking program. The $6.6m initiative provided statistics about the number of “mass layoffs” (when greater than 50 employees were let go at once.)

Sharon Brown, the program’s overseer, said the move ended “a high-quality program, producing timely information on important developments in the labor market.” Not so, says deputy assistant secretary Mason Bishop: “We didn’t see how this program was helping workers re-enter the workforce.” Not a bad argument, but Lazarus convincingly destroys it by noting the Dept. of Labor is doing plenty of volunteerism studies, and nobody gets a job from that, either.

To no-one’s surprise, Bush Sr. made exactly the same moves during his administration. Let’s all hope his son meets with the same fate.

Update: Not related to layoffs, but Helen Thomas has an interesting take on what W. and his cronies appear to be spending their time on instead of jobs creation.

Wired has an interesting article concerning the use of remote-control and GPS technology to catch car thieves. Unlike the consumer-oriented LoJack, these systems are used by the police for “bait” cars. When someone drives off with the car, police can track it and choke off the gas when the suspect moves to a good intercept point.

Though I sometimes think it appropriate to take police actions with a healthy slice of skepticism, this approach seems innovative. Sneaky, yes, but in a oooh-I-like-it sort of way. That’s why I find it so surprising that some are calling it entrapment. Doesn’t entrapment involve some variety of coercion? An artifical manipulation of the situation? Here, you’re parking a car. It looks like the other cars. Nobody encourages you to steal it.

I don’t get it.

(One caveat: the article left a hint that they’re leaving the keys in the car. If that’s the case, I’m more inclined to doubt the tactic.)

My father said that a man he knows predicted Lott‘s demise very precisely. His method? The “two Sundays rule.”

Here’s how it works: if a hot-button topic is discussed on one of the Sunday morning news shows (e.g. “Meet the Press,” “Sunday Morning,” or Cheney favorite “Fox News Sunday”) but fades by the next weekend, that means the corrective action was effective.

For Trent, that didn’t happen. Five apologies and one week later, he was still on the news. His spinning wasn’t working, so he had no hope of making the story go away. Bye-bye, majority leadership.

Aside I: Weasel apologies are to be crushed. Trent on Dec. 11 (Fox News, of course): “I am sorry for my words; they were poorly chosen and insensitive and I regret the way it has been interpreted.” Sorry for the interpretation? Somebody needs a refresher course. (Great link.)

Aside II: Those who suffer under the ridiculous delusion that Fox News is anything but a propaganda arm of the GOP need only look at their latest poll on Lott’s decision to step down. First choice: “Yes, it is better for the Republican party.” Even if you don’t add anything about the fact that it was an evil comment, a simple yes/no would do. Fox’s true concern is how it affects the Party.

Nothing but love for Britain‘s Prime Minister. (Seriously.) But wow, this picture (lifted from the Guardian, which has since replaced it with something more palatable) makes me think he’s coming to munch on little children. The oddly empty eyes, half-shadowed face, arched eyebrow, craggly teeth… it all reminds me of a movie I once purchased for a British friend who loved really bad movies. (Holy shit! A sequel!)

Now I promise no more weird side-by-sides for awhile.

It’s about damn time. Too bad his replacement will be Bush‘s bitch.

This morning Pech brought a Ben Stein essay to my attention. The economist and lawyer most famous for saying “Bueller…Bueller…” has several interesting things to say about the country’s direction, despite his position as a conservative and Bush supporter (and yes, we will be holding the latter against him.)

One especially relevant item decries the lax standards and weak penalties for corporate managers. I couldn’t agree more; have you heard anything about Enron indictments lately? (Or ever?)

The timing of the Stein piece is especially interesting given what Andrew Tobias has to say today. The investment guru quotes a forthcoming book when he says that since the 1939 establishment of the SEC [by liberals, natch] the volume of trading has increased to some 200,000% of its original level. Over the same time period, the staff increased by 72%.

Now that’s certainly not to say that we need x investigators for every y stock trades — computers and analysis tools are doing a lot of work. But this is an agency that nets money for the government, to the tune of five times its budget. It’s great to throw money into the general fund, but better still to use that money to do a better job for those who pay it in.

As Tobias rightly notes, the SEC’s budget must be increased, its staff enlarged, and its pay rates hiked. We must take these steps quickly to show that everyone’s investment is treated with equal respect in America’s capital markets lest we, as Stein puts it, “ruin American enterprise.”

Al Gore‘s recent self-disqualification from the 2004 race has opened up the field, allowing other Democrats to express their unique ideas and vision for the future. I hope those ideas sound half as good as those from George McGovern, from whose Harper‘s essay the following is taken:

Webster’s dictionary defines [liberalism] as “a political philosophy based on belief in progress, the essential goodness of man, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties.” From the beginning, Americans have believed that the conditions of their lives could and would be improved; that is, they have believed in progress. One cannot conceive of a nation dedicated to democracy that does not rest on faith in “the essential goodness of man.” It would seem even more likely that in a democratic society most of the citizenry would accept the importance of personal freedom – “the autonomy of the individual” – as well as the need to protect that freedom.”

As my friend and sometimes debating partner William F. Buckley puts it in his book Up From Liberalism: “Conservatism is the tacit acknowledgement that all that is finally important in human experience is behind us; that the crucial explorations have been undertaken, and that it is given to man to know what are the great truths that emerged from them. Whatever is to come cannot outweigh the importance to man of what has gone before.” The business of conservatives is, in other words, to cling tightly to the past, and although such a stance can be admirable, a stale and musty doctrine is of little use at a time when the nation needs not to fear the future but to seek out ways to improve it.

Virtually every step forward in our history has been a liberal initiative taken over conservative opposition: civil rights, Social Security, Medicare, rural electrification, the establishment of a minimum wage, collective bargaining, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and federal aid to education, including the land-grant colleges, to name just a few. Many of these innovations were eventually embraced by conservatives only after it became clear that they had overwhelming public approval for the simple reason that almost every American benefited from them. Every one of these liberal efforts strengthened our democracy and our quality of life. I challenge my conservative friends to name a single federal initiative now generally approved by both of our major parties that was not first put forward by liberals over the opposition of conservatives.

With all the sturm und drang surrounding Lott‘s birthday wishes to Strom, some have tried to use the Republican Party‘s origins to blunt charges of racism. We’re the party, the story goes, founded by anti-slavery activists with Lincoln as our first elected president.

Indeed, “we are the party of Lincoln” is a favorite refrain of many Republicans seeking honor and legitimacy in one of our greatest presidents. Still, one wonders what Mr. Lincoln would have to say about the Grand Old Party today.

I believe he would find the modern Republican party to be intellectually bankrupt, exclusionary, and greedy beyond comprehension. This is not just conjecture:

“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” — U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864. (Letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
See p. 40, The Lincoln Encyclopedia, Archer H. Shaw (Macmillan, 1950, NY)

Lifted from KMFDM site, which credits Spiegel.de. Tipped by MJG.

In other shocking news, he‘s totally plastic, his suit is nonremovable, and he’s bought and sold.

Update [16:06]: NPR gives us a taste of Strom [0:26 RealAudio stream] from the year Lott boasted his state was one of four to vote Thurmond. Ahh, Republicans…

Copyright law gives authors the sole right to benefit from their creative works for a limited time. Most players agree this function is valuable. The sticky part is: how long is limited? That was the central question of the fascinating Eldred v. Ashcroft case before the Supreme Court.

Now comes an analysis that finds (using IMDb Pro) just 6.3% of the movies released between 1927-1946 are available for purchase today. (See the e-mail linked at the bottom of Lessig‘s entry for the figures.)

Even through the use of the most generous figures (which makes the entirely unlikely assumption that those films available on DVD don’t overlap with those titles on VHS), just 9.6% are on the market.

It’s tough to make the argument that an additional 20 years of protection (bringing works-for-hire copyright to 95 years) is a necessary trade-off to motivate studios to continue this sorry record. But of course the MPAA will try.

(Note the writer’s analysis omits data on licensing agreements, but that’s likely because there’s no comprehensive public site to cull that information from.)

Well, the polls have now closed in Iowa. (I hope you voted!)

I always find Election Day very exciting (with last year especially so) and it’s very pleasing to hear that turnout could be up this year. (It’s also good to hear that exit polls are being more or less ignored.)

I’m getting my news from public radio, which has included commentary from a BBC reporter and our own Steffen “Dr. Politics” Schmidt. A bit earlier I caught an ABC News report, which noted that turnout was especially high in Minnesota. The report said that though electronic voting was in place, it was necessary to use paper ballots for the Mondale/Coleman race. What the hell? You can’t update an electronic ballot in time?

And oh yeah: as of this writing, it’s looking good for high-level Democrat candidates in the state, and that’s a good thing.