We received this by email today....

"From the brief time that we did spend occupying Iraqi territory after the war, I am certain that had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like the dinosaur in the tar pit -- we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of the occupation. This is a burden I am sure the beleaguered American taxpayer would not have been happy to take on."-- Norman Schwarzkopf, from his 1993 autobiography, It Doesn't Take a Hero

"We should not march into Baghdad. To occupy Iraq would instantly shatter our coalition, turning the whole Arab world against us and make a broken tyrant into a latter-day Arab hero. Assigning young soldiers to a fruitless hunt for a securely entrenched dictator and condemning them to fight in what would be an unwinnable urban guerilla war, it could only plunge that part of the world into ever greater instability." - George H.W. Bush, A World Transformed, 1998

Our hosting company is upgrading our server, should be any minute now, and we will be down for up to one half hour. We haven't written anything today since we are having cable internet access installed and it's more complicated than they thought. We still have dsl, but we're anxious to try cable. We'll try to catch up on the news in the meantime.

Mark Glaser of OnLine Journalism Review writes a long article about the recent 9th Circuit decision exempting online publishers from liability for material posted by third parties on their websites. We are among those interviewed, as is Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin, who writes the estimable blog Balkanization. You can read Jack's insightful analysis of the case here. Our analysis of the case is here.

We've got to run out for a few hours--so here's some links (rather than our comments) on the Diebold voting machine scandal --

A reader emails us:

A New Zealand reporter has discovered that the Diebold "black box" voting machines being pushed in so many jurisdictions are easy to hack and change vote totals, and that this may explain to anomolies in our last election. If the reporter has the goods, this is potentially huge. Here's the earlier story from February

Bob Morris of Politics in the Zeros says,

Among their findings:

1) They could open the password file, copy an encrypted password elsewhere, then use that password to access data.

2) The machines keep three sets of books. Set 2 can be changed by anyone who knows how to use Microsoft Access. This will effect the vote totals.

As a programmer, I find it appalling that voting data is kept in Access, is
not encrypted, and the system is so badly designed that data can easily be changed.

Here's some background on Diebold Systems connections to the Republican Party.

Bev Harris is the author of the soon to be published book " Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century "

We've been to Alcatraz and done the tour - now here's a new one: The Crime and Punishment Museum in Auburn, Georgia.

Visitors to the Crime and Punishment Museum in Turner County will see the old trap door used for hangings, the steel cages that housed prisoners and the inmates' rough black-and-white striped uniforms.

It's not the cozy Southern slammer depicted in reruns of "The Andy Griffith Show." For 90 years, Turner County's prisoners lived in bleak steel cages and slept on bolted-down steel cots.

The museum highlights harsh Southern jail conditions from about 1900 through the 1990s, when many counties, under pressure from the U.S. Justice Department to provide more humane treatment, either refurbished their old jails or built new ones.

Opening day is August 27 and 20,000 to 30,000 visitors are expected yearly. Isn't it too morbid? Will anyone besides wierdos want to tour the inside--or make a special trip to see it? The local historian and spokeswoman for the local Chamber of Commerce think so--they say it will be a learning experience.

Oakland, CA pot guru Ed Rosenthal is back in the news. Last time we reported, he had received a one day sentence from a federal judge for growing marijuana for cancer patients - with the permission of the Oakland City Government.

Today comes news that the Government is appealing the sentence.

Rosenthal was convicted last spring of growing pot in an Oakland warehouse. The marijuana growing operation, which supplied a dispensary on Sixth Street in San Francisco, was legal under California law and had been inspected and signed off on by Oakland city officials.

But because federal law does not recognize medical pot, Judge Charles Breyer excluded any testimony dealing with California law, which allows for the medical use of weed with doctors' approval. After the trial, a majority of the jurors who convicted Rosenthal said they would have reached a different verdict had they been allowed to consider the purposes of the growth and that Rosenthal was acting in accordance with local and state laws.

The San Francisco Examiner says it best:

OH, FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, why don't the feds just give it a rest?

After that, we like Ed's comment:

Rosenthal also said he thinks the appeal is a waste of taxpayers' money. "If they have all that money, why don't they build some schools?" he asked. [from Bay City News]

An appeals court today rejected Bush and Chenecy's attempt to block a lawsuit delving into Cheney's energy task force.

Business Week reports that Bush is Not a Shoo-In for '04 . He's facing three obstacles, any one of which could blow up and cost him the election: The growing mess in Iraq, slow economic growth and his inability to speak well. [Via Political Wire]

The July 14 issue of Newsweek has an interview with Ret. General Wesley Clark. We loved this excerpt:

What do you think of President Bush’s using war imagery as a political tool, like when he recently flew onto an aircraft carrier?

The world expects something more of an American president than to prance around on a flight deck dressed up like [a] pilot. He’s expected to be a leader. That’s my fundamental issue with it. It doesn’t reflect the gravitas of the office. Furthermore, it’s a little phony.

Clark also says he suspected things were going wrong with the Bush Administration just before the 2000 elections, following a conversation he had with soon-to-be National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

Who could believe this could happen again?

A 19 year-old man in Florida hit a pedestrian and drove for a mile to his house, with the 57 year-old pedestrian's legless body stuck in his windshield. The accident cut off the man's legs, which later were found near the parking lot of a bar. Bar patrons called in the discovery.

Meanwhile, the traumatized young driver, who did not have a cell phone, figured his house was the closest stopping point. He called 9/11 when he got home. The pedestrian was dead. No charges will be filed against the driver as he was not at fault, according to Kim Miller, spokesperson for the highway patrol:

``It's the pedestrian's fault. He was wearing dark clothing,'' Miller said. ``The poor kid (Dradeen) was in the wrong place at the wrong time.''

Drudge reports that Gephardt's Meetup was canceled for lack of interest--less than five people signed up.

Free at last--of Michael Savage. We can't even begin to image why MSNBC hired him in the first place. Ratings at the expense of the network's credibility don't make sense. Here's what Savage said that got him canned:

So you're one of those sodomists. Are you a sodomite?" Savage asked.

The caller replied: "Yes, I am."

"Oh, you're one of the sodomites," Savage said. "You should only get AIDS and die, you pig. How's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage. You have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it."

He asked for another phone caller who "didn't have a nice night in the bathhouse who's angry at me today."

These bums "mean nothing to me," he said.

[link via Tristero]