by TChris

BlackBerry users, beware. You may soon find it less convenient to check your email.

The Supreme Court today rejected a petition from BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. for a rehearing of its patent-infringement case. ...

RIM may face a court-ordered shut down of most of its 4 million BlackBerrys in the United States if it cannot settle its case with NTP.

RIM owes NTP more than $250 million after a jury found that it infringed NTP's patents. RIM says it's working on a software "work-around that skirts the patent infringement."

I didn't see Meet the Press yesterday but it seems everyone else did and Tim Russert's in the dog house.

• Arianna:

RUSSERT: Let's talk a little bit about the language people are using in the politics now of 2006, and I refer you to some comments that Harry Belafonte made yesterday. He said that Homeland Security had become the new Gestapo. What do you think of that?

And if you're a really really tough journalist, you naturally ask Obama... another question about Harry Belafonte:

RUSSERT: Mr. Belafonte went to Venezuela, as you well know, some time ago and met with Hugo Chavez, leader of that country, and said some things that obviously were noted in this country and around the world. Let's listen, and come back and talk about it.

It's unclear why Tim didn't also ask Obama to defend Lil' Kim, Kanye West and Antonio Davis. I mean, they're all black, right? And it's just one big game, right?

• Atrios:

Twice Tim Russert has asked his guests to comment on the remarks of Harry Belafonte. There was Barack Obama today, and previously it was Colin Powell....!'m not sensing any pattern here myself...

(Guest Posted by TalkLeft's Man in Hollywood)

Over a decade ago, Robert Hughes wrote "Culture of Complaint", an expansive diatribe about the "fraying of America" that directed cooly reasoned blasts at both the left and right hemispheres of the cultural landscape. Among them, Ronald Reagan ("Reagan educated the people down to his level. He left the country a little stupider in 1988 than it had been in 1980, and a lot more tolerant of lies") and the art world itself, for its subservience to special interest groups. Hughes argued that the rise of political correctness was flooding the galleries and diluting the art... culture itself was drowning in a sea of overweening "political etiquette".

Highly critical of those who shared his turf yet able to respect the mercurial nature of both flakey artists and humorless social activists, Hughes' 1993 book was a great tightrope act. It was, to use a phrase recently demonized by the right wing, nuanced.

Who would have thought that just three years later Roger Ailes would flip Hughes' polemic on its head and use it as a inspiration for Fox News?

by TChris

In the nation’s worst prisons, daily life is governed by inmates, not by correctional authorities. The strong survive and control; the weak submit or perish. And some prison guards are happy with a system that allows them to use inmates as “enforcers” who maintain order in a chaotic environment.

While California law prohibits inmates from having “control over” one another, California's corrections chief, Roderick Hickman, endorses the practice of enlisting favored inmates as “peacekeepers.” Hickman says “peacekeepers” play a useful role in a prison: they can pass messages throughout the prison, and they’re helpful informants. Of course, criminal informants can rarely be trusted to tell the truth, and it's strange to trust inmate “peacekeepers” to keep the peace in a lawful way.

Critics worry that the freedom accorded peacekeepers lets them run drugs, order inmate assaults and commit other crimes. Now the practice has come under scrutiny following two California slayings in which high-ranking gang members serving as peacemakers are alleged to have played a role. ...

I have yet to write a word about the Washington Post-Deborah Howell controversy. It got so ugly so fast and spread into such a malicious maelstrom and blogswarm, that I really didn't want to take part in it. The issue of whether Howell, the Post's Omsbudman, intentionally mis-stated last week that Jack Abramoff personally had contributed to Democrats as well as Republicans in an effort to make the corruption scandal appear bi-partisan, too quickly (for my taste) got overshadowed by obscenities and ridicule. The same happened with the secondary issue of WAPO shutting down comments on the topic at its blog.

Avedon Carol at Sideshow has now weighed in, and because I agree with her on both points, I'm chiming in to echo her sentiments. The first point : Good for Howell for apologizing, but in doing so, it appears she made another mis-statement. She admits Abramoff did not personally contribute to Democrats, but says he directed others, including his Indian tribe clients to contribute to Democrats.

NBC reported in December that the Pentagon had a program for domestic surveillance of dissidents, after reviewing a secret 400 page Defense Department document.

....the Pentagon now collects domestic intelligence that goes beyond legitimate concerns about terrorism or protecting U.S. military installations, say critics.....The DOD database obtained by NBC News includes nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center.

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff has more on the program today, and says the Pentagon's spying on Americans is more widespread than previously believed.

Sex offenders are about to share the stage with society's latest pariahs: meth cooks.

Newsweek reports:

Law-enforcement officials in Tennessee have a new approach to fighting meth: naming names. Now the public can search an online database for the name, alias and birth date of anyone convicted of manufacturing the drug since last March. It's the first compilation of its kind nationwide....

By using the registry, landlords or property owners could make sure they're not renting to cookers. The names will stay on the site for seven years, at which time the offenders can appeal to be removed.

Civil libertartians are rightfully up in arms:

Bump and Update: Time Magazine also has viewed the Bush-Abramoff photos.

******
Original Post (1/21)

The Washingtonian says it has seen the photos the White House can't find of Bush and Abramoff together. First the background:

The Washingtonian reports that the reason Bush didn't nominate Ted Olson for the Supreme Court was his age: at 65, he's considered too old. Olson also is engaged to be married.

Some four years after his wife, author Barbara Olson, was killed on the hijacked American Airlines flight that crashed into the Pentagon, former solicitor general Ted Olson is engaged. He will be married this fall to Lady Evelyn Booth, who has been his social companion since they met at the Kentucky Derby in 2002. A native of Louisville, Lady Booth was named for an aunt.

Olson left the solicitor general’s office last year and was considered a candidate to succeed William Rehnquist as chief justice before the job went to John Roberts.

Judge vetters saw Olson, 65, as too old, although many in his Norwegian family have lived into their nineties. His mother is going strong at 85. Olson still sports a thick shock of sandy Viking hair and zips around Great Falls in a silver Mercedes SL 600.

There was a big conference at Princeton Theological Seminary last week, at which religious leaders from multiple faiths gathered to assail torture.

More than 100 Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religious leaders and thinkers met this month at Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey to try to take a more public and more vigorous lead in the debate on U.S. use of torture in the war on terrorism.

...The purpose of the January 13-15 Princeton conference was to galvanize religious opposition to U.S. torture policy and launch a national religious campaign against torture. "Nobody is standing up and saying they're for torture, but not many religious people are speaking the truth with love saying this is outrageous," said Father William Byron, research professor at Loyola College in Baltimore, who attended the conference. "We of faith communities all have a fundamental baseline commitment to the preservation and protection of human dignity, and [torture] is an assault on human dignity."

Sen. Bill Frist shows us again how to talk out of both sides of your mouth (via Firedoglake):

Frist, while giving a Senate tour to Republican activists last night:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told Republican Party activists on Friday night that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito was the "worst nightmare of liberal Democrats."

Frist's spokesman afterwards:

Frist spokesman Bob Stevenson said that Alito "is a thoughtful mainstream conservative jurist who is well respected by his peers, by Democrats and Republicans alike."

Karl Rove has been busy the past few months re-vamping the Republican's message so they can keep their hold on Congress. In a word, the message is fear. Fear, Rove thinks, will make the country believe:

• Bush's warrantless NSA electronic surveillance on Americans is legal
• Bush's judicial picks will keep those terrorist detainees in their place and ensure our safety by curtailling our civil liberties
• The renewal of the Patriot Act will protect us against another terrorist attack

We're no closer to getting Osama. There hasn't been a terrorist attack in more than four years, and there's no evidence the Patriot Act or subway searches are the reason.