Ad and technology expert Michael Dissan at Personal Democracy has some good ideas for Blogads and for advertisers wanting to benefit from ad placements on blogs. With the politics no longer driving the ad trade, there's plenty of room. Idea number one:

1. Branch out.

If you visited a blog in October, you couldn’t have missed TBS’s ads promoting reruns of “Sex and the City.” And rumor has it that TBS is planning another large Blogad campaign around their new reality show “Gilligan.” In addition to TBS, Blogads were also purchased by Sharp Electronics and a handful of other non-political advertisers. Blogads should proactively market themselves to online ad agencies as a way to reach influential and engaged consumers. Just don’t let the non-political advertisers buy up all the ad space!

We were pleased to see we made the article under idea number 4:

4. Label blogs based on their ideological slant and physical geographic location

Here’s how you go after incremental dollars. Help those purchasing ads on one blog know about other blogs that also match its particular ideological or geographical slant. When someone checks out, take a cue from Amazon.com’s playbook: “People who purchased ads on DailyKos also purchased ads on TalkLeft. Click here to add TalkLeft to your basket.” While local campaigns are prone to buy placements on well-known blogs, they might consider others if they can easily discern their ideological or geographical slants.

Henry and the Blogads team were the revolutionaries this year in creating a mutually beneficial relationship between the political community and activists. That same vision, with helpful ideas like these from the media and ad gurus, can apply with equal force to other industries, particularly media (television, radio, music) and publishing. How about the travel and arts industry? Banking, stock market, food industries? We'd love to host them all.

[link via Jerome at My DD.]

The ACLU explains its opposition to the Intelligence Reform Bill:

Although pleased that most of Mr. Sensenbrenner's toughest provisions were stripped out of the bill, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement Monday that it opposed the overall measure because it "would centralize the intelligence community's surveillance powers, increasing the likelihood for government abuses."

The civil liberties union said it was alarmed by several provisions in the bill, including those that would expand the government's wiretap authority, and by the limited powers given to the independent privacy and civil liberties board created under the legislation. The board, it said, "risks becoming the proverbial fox guarding the hen house - the board would be appointed by the president, serve at his pleasure and have no subpoena power."

Bump and Update: The House says it's ready for a vote and passage is indicated. No bill would be better than a bad bill, and as we've expressed repeatedly, this is a bad bill. Maybe the deal calls for some of the law enforcement and immigration provisions to be stripped from the final version. If not, the American people have been taken for a ride.

**************
Original Post 12/5/04

Bush and Democrats are pushing Congress to pass the 9/11 intelligence reform bill. It's a turkey. It's filled with huge expanded law enforcement powers that the 9/11 Commission did not recommend. The 9/11 Commission report asked for changes in intelligence and national security. It did not want a new anti-crime bill. It warned against combining the two. The latest version of the bill as agreed to by House and Senate, is available on Thomas. Type in "S. 2845" and click on the version that says 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act (Engrossed Amendment as Agreed to by House)[S.2845.EAH].

The bill includes hundreds of added crime measures and provisions that intrude on our civil liberties. The full text of each provision is available.

It calls for a counter-narcotics office. More wiretaps. Greater deportation. Expedited removal. Increased alien detention bed space. No bail for suspected terrorists. Drivers' license controls. Greater passenger screening. Implementing of biometric screening. Provisions for combating biased foreign media coverage of the U.S. It's disgusting.

Court TV is live blogging the penalty phase of the Scott Peterson trial. It sounds like the jurors are bored, inattentive and have tuned out. If that's the case, they should be ashamed of themselves. The law and the oath they took as jurors do not allow them to make up their minds--or close their minds--before all of the evidence is in and they have received legal instructions. Some of the comments:

Dick Ebersol and his son Charlie were released from a Grand Junction, Colorado hospital today. They are believed to be still recuperating from the plane crash in Montrose, Colorado a week ago Sunday that tragically took the life of 14 year old Teddy Ebersol, pilot Luis Alberto Polanco and flight attendant Warren Richardson. Co-pilot Erick Wicksell remains in a Denver hospital.

Dozens of people have left good wishes for the Ebersols on TalkLeft, here, here and here. I have forwarded the threads onto the Ebersol family at their NBC email address of ebersolfamily@nbcuni.com. Susan St. James has said she intends to read every one sent to NBC because they bring the family comfort.

by TChris

The Supreme Court today rejected a police officer's claim that his employer violated his right to free speech by terminating his employment after learning that he used the internet to sell "videotapes of himself stripping off his uniform and pretending to write tickets."

The court traditionally has been very protective of speech rights. But justices had no sympathy Monday for a former San Diego officer who uses the Internet name "codestud3," a play on words incorporating the term for an emergency police call.

The Supreme Court ruled against him without even hearing arguments. The justices issued an unsigned opinion that found his speech "was detrimental to the mission and functions of the employer."

The Court has generally applied a balancing test to free speech retaliation claims, weighing an employee's interest in speaking about a public concern against a public employer's interest in operating a government agency without disruption. The balance weighed against the cop who (at least in the Court's view) made a mockery of his employment by making and hawking the video. The threshold issue, however, is whether the speech addresses a matter of public concern. The Court viewed the officer's desire to sell his naughty videotapes as a purely private matter.

A bombing today at the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia left 12 dead and several are still inside. No Americans were killed:

In Riyadh, U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Carol Kalin said four of the five employees killed held administrative jobs and one was a private contract guard on the consulate's payroll. Four other embassy workers - all hired locally - were hospitalized, Kalin said. She said all American employees were safe and none had been taken hostage.

Three of the attackers were killed and two have been captured.

They've served their time in the armed forces but they can't get out. The military keeps extending their terms, under what it refers to as a "Stop-Loss Policy." The soldiers say it's a back-door draft and will file suit today with the help of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

these soldiers are already overseas - transporting supplies, working radio communications and handling military contracts, somewhere in the desert.

"You should know I'm not against the war," said David W. Qualls, one of the plaintiffs and a former full-time soldier who signed up in July 2003 for a one-year stint in the Arkansas National Guard but now expects to be in Iraq until next year.

"This just isn't about that. This is a matter of fairness. My job was to go over and perform my duties under the contract I signed. But my year is up and it's been up. Now I believe that they should honor their end of the contract." Some military experts described the soldiers' challenge as both surprising and telling, given the tenor of military life, where soldiers are trained throughout their careers to follow their commanders' orders.

Up to 7,000 troops have been affected by the policy. According to one of the suing soldier's lawyers:

If you missed Bob Dylan's interview on "60 Minutes," you can watch it over at Crooks and Liars.

Attorney General John Ashcroft will go down in history not only as the chief salesman of the Patriot Act, but for his attempt to revitalize the federal death penalty, even to the extent of overruling his own prosecutors who recommended against it in specific cases.

The National Law Journal examines Ashcroft's legacy vis as vis the death penalty--and whether his likely successor, Alberto Gonzales, will continue down the same path.

Currently, 71 federal death penalty trials are pending nationwide, according to Kevin McNally, a lawyer at the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project, which assists capital defenders and functions as a clearinghouse. In at least 15 of the pending cases Ashcroft overruled local prosecutors, McNally said. All told he has overruled prosecutors on at least 42 of 128 capital defendants (33 percent). He overruled prosecutors the other way -- declining to request the death penalty -- on eight defendants. Though disagreements between the Justice Department and U.S. attorneys are not always disclosed, McNally said that his information comes from defense lawyers and public records.

Which way will Alberto Gonzales go? Hard to say. Gonzales wrote a lot of pro-execution clemency memos to Bush while Bush was Governor of Texas. But the Department does seem to be overruling its prosecutors less the past few months, so maybe Gonzales abandon Ashcroft's hard line stance. Stay tuned. It's bound to be an issue Gonzales is questioned about during his confirmation hearing.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has decided to back the formation of Innocence clinics.

After years of criticism for favoring prosecutors, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is supporting a proposal for a project to investigate prisoners' claims that they were wrongfully convicted. The project could involve a network of clinics, like those at the University of Houston and the University of Texas at Austin, that investigate inmate claims.

The appeals court will ask lawmakers to increase its 20 (M) million-dollar fund to teach defense lawyers, prosecutors and judges about handling innocence claims, according to Judge Barbara Hervey.

One Innocence Clinic would not be enough. In a state like Texas with its huge number of death sentences and reversals, a network is definitely needed.

Since the Center for Actual Innocence opened at the University of Texas Law School in 2003, about 10 students have screened more than 1 thousand claims of innocence from inmates. About a dozen cases selected are in the early stages of investigation.

Making the rounds at Craig's List:

Very Easy Job: Watch Me to Make Sure That I Study For Law School

Reply to: ****@nyu.edu
Date: 2004-11-04, 5:48PM EST

I'm a first year law student but I've been having terrible concentration problems. I need someone to sit with me while I study and make sure that I'm studying. Otherwise I'll waste hours surfing the internet or just thinking about random things. You can be reading the newspaper or doing your own work while you do this, you just need to be sitting at a starbucks table or other location with me. You DO NOT NEED TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT LAW SCHOOL to do this job.

I'll pay more for people that can tutor me in Civil Procedure, Contracts, or Torts.

[Link via PG at De Novo]