Letters to the Editor
Published Letters: 361 Editor's Choice: 12
-
Time Time Time
[Read the article: Signs of life from House Democratic leaders]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]is on our side. Glenn notes that delay is good. I want to emphasize that, as strongly as I can. If nothing happens before the March 30 recess, that's great. The more time that passes without any Terra Attacks, the clearer it becomes that this has nothing at all to do with Terra.
They knew they had weak positions when they jammed these bills up against long recesses. They knew that these bills would not stand public scrutiny or lengthy debate. They knew their ability to get the Joe Kleins of the pathetic media world to run their propaganda depended on it all happening quickly, because the lies were so transparently false.
This is not just good for FISA. It's good for defusing the whole fear-mongering program. They know their fear-mongering nonsense is losing its grip; about the only thing keeping it going is that it's good for ratings to have Wolf say "We following this very important story VERY closely" when he is talking about Terra.
And we need to defuse it, because we are going to see a show trial starting sometime in late summer of the three accused 9/11 conspirators. We have to do all we can to close the Daou triangle BEFORE the trial starts.
What I like to point out is that in the last five years, more people have died in American infrastructure failure than have been killed by terrorists. Hell, the I35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis killed more Americans that Islamic Terrorism. We need to get this into perspective before the summer starts.
-
IL-14 and Donna Edwards
[Read the article: Signs of life from House Democratic leaders]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's worth noting that this sudden bit of shrewdness and clearer legislative commitment came after a telecom supporting Democrat and Steny Hoyer ally, Al Wynn, was thrashed in a primary campaign.
And it's worth noting that it came shortly after a surprising, at a surprisingly wide margin, for Denny Hastert's formerly safe seat. In addition, Foster won that latter race by confronting, directly, the fear-mongering and protection for telecom companies.
I don't know who thinks that Americans have any affection for telecom companies. As one Google lobbyist put it "I don't know anybody deeply satisfied with their cell phone service." There's no constituency for this legislation beyond lobbyists and the administration's lawbreakers.
It could be that these election results are raising awareness among US Reps that their protection of these corporations is becoming more widely known, and that they need not be concerned about Republican attack ads based on groundless fear mongering. As Foster showed, this now may be an opportunity rather than a risk.
Myself, I'd love to see a telephone campaign directed at the Bush Dogs where a large number of people call their offices and say: "Four words. Telecom Amnesty. Donna Edwards."
-
@Anonymust
[Read the article: Signs of life from House Democratic leaders]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I wouldn't waste your time distinguishing. If you are using non-cash payments, you should assume that eventually a profile will be constructed of your buying activities across all your electronic payments. It's in the interests of all the people who sell you stuff to know what other stuff you buy. So Borders will be happy to swap data with Duane-Reade. And they'll both want to buy the data from your bank or your credit card issuers.
It doesn't matter if they've said they won't share this data (although I doubt they have, FTMP), it will eventually be shared. It's like money in politics. It's too valuable not to be.
Larry Ellison said it around the turn of the millenium. Privacy is dead. Get over it.
-
@general disdain
[Read the article: Signs of life from House Democratic leaders]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yes, it's good to share. It's also good to tell different demographic lies on any forms you fill out. It used to be that the quality of data was so poor that it was hard to put stuff together across data sources, but that is no longer quite so true.
Do keep in mind that one data element many of these places ask for is an email address, which is a unique identifier.
-
arne
[Read the article: Signs of life from House Democratic leaders]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Really? Domain names are unique. Are you saying that a domain could have some other form of SMTP mail resolution other than the text string preceding the @ sign?
-
NYT makes the point better than the National Review
[Read the article: Misadventures in logical reasoning -- and lessons learned from the Spitzer scandal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/opinion/12farley.html
Whether the woman is in a hotel room or on a side street in someone’s car, whether she’s trafficked from New York to Washington or from Mexico to Florida or from the city to the suburbs, the experience of being prostituted causes her immense psychological and physical harm. And it all starts with the buyer.
-
Sorry
[Read the article: Misadventures in logical reasoning -- and lessons learned from the Spitzer scandal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That point being that there are people who argue that all prostitution is inherently abusive and should therefore be banned. Hit Submit too soon.
Don't see how that can be done, myself. Oldest profession and all. Making vice illegal exacerbates rather that ameliorates the harm it does to people.
-
Did anyone answer Mona's question?
[Read the article: Misadventures in logical reasoning -- and lessons learned from the Spitzer scandal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I can't really bring myself to read 600 repetitive posts to answer a question I'm pretty sure I know the answer to already.
But I'd like to be surer.
Did anyone answer Mona's question about male prostitutes?
Because I find ironic, just a week or so after the WaPo got blogswarmed (and rightly so) for publishing an opinion piece that women are just plain stupider than men, and need to just accept that, to discover that men are considered capable of making a decision to enter the sex industry, but women are not.
-
Moreover, AlecsMom
[Read the article: Misadventures in logical reasoning -- and lessons learned from the Spitzer scandal]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To amplify LWM's comment, not only is nobody arguing for that, the fact that prostitution is illegal creates these situations. The pimp couldn't be turning girls if there were legal agencies. She'd just say "Look, if I wanted to do that, I'd call up that number right there on the sign across from us."