what's the procedure for getting a waiver for being gay?

For some reason I truly do not understand, the Courts have held that who you call (and how long the call takes) counts as a "pen register." This was an extension of the log a hotel kept -- initially of who checked in, then who the hotel called on behalf of the guests, and then of the PBX records. (My problem with it is: if it's so public as to not require a warrant, that means that ANYONE can get at it, right? The answer is: nope, because they're not allowed to give out that data to anyone without a court order. Unless it's law enforcement, in which case they blithely hand it over.)

This is a "simple" extension to that: hand over ALL call record data, period. No need to specify an originating number or time period... just electronically transfer the entire database periodically, and let the NSA sort it all out.

Every single time I think I can't be surprised by the depths this country has sunk, this administration manages to go further.

Regardless of any delegation, if the government promised the telcos they would kill any lawsuit related to it, there is absolutely no reason for them to tell the truth -- they will be protected from any civil or criminal complaint (including shareholder lawsuits). Worse, there's actually a reason for them to deny it, no matter what the truth: not denying it would cause their customers to lose faith in them, and thus hurt their bottom line. It can be argued, then, that if they're protected from any damages from lying, they must lie about it.

Good thing this administration brought integrity back into the White House, eh?

I don't know which spelling is accurate; I don't know if we've seen it on-screen.

Also... he's not a priest. He's pretending to be one, but he took on the identity falsely. It's never been presented that he's taken any vows, been ordained, etc -- only that he took on the identify of a priest so he could smuggle heroin. And then lived the role.

I was very impressed with the finale: it's one of the subtlest cliffhangers I've ever seen.

I hope this bodes better for the series and than the Alias finale did.

but it's actions like this that make me wonder if he really intended to win back in '04: he didn't give up his Senate seat, he didn't respond to attacks made against him, he took a really stupid stance about his vote for the war...

Am I the only one?

Welcome to the monarchy!

You can take the approach that "the old way is the only way," or you can try to find the current way to do things.

For the Mac, for example (towards which I am biased), there's shell scripting, awk, perl, python, and AppleScript.  All of these come with the system; several of them have the ability to set down and start doing something.  There are also free BASIC interpreters available, although they're very limited.

For Windows, there's still the DOS interpreter, and you can get VisualBasic.

The ability to get down and poke at the system is still there... but the systems these days have so much more on them that it can be harder to find.  And, in many cases, harder to do anything immediately-gratifying with.

And then there are the other things, that weren't available Way Back When:  the Lego Mindstorms kits, for example, which allow you to do LOGO-like programming with an actual robot that you yourself have constructed, complete with sensory input.  Yes, higher-level than BASIC is, but it's still a way to get kids hooked on the concepts.

But, just because I am obliged to agree with you SOMETIMES :)... where's the equivalent of the Sinclair?  A super-cheap computer, that you can virtuallly immediately start doing things with?  That does appear to be a lost niche.

The character in question was a rapist. There was a short (but very clear to me) shot of another young girl with an extremely troubled expression on her face as the two went off into the dark; I commented to my fiancée that she was obviously an earlier victim of -- at best -- "date rape." But what happened between Claire and the "horn dog" was very, very clearly attempted rape. That, normally, would have ended with the victim dead.

And this rates a label of "just another pushy high school horn dog"?

I don't expect Lieberman to be a Democrat. However, that's only one issue, and it's not the biggest one -- there will be people defecting on both sides, in most cases.

The big issue is who will get to decide the chairmanships and majorities of the committees. If Lieberman sticks to his word, that means it will be the Democratic Caucus. Which means the Democrats will be able to control the agenda -- and also begin hearings, subpoaena documents, etc.

It will be very interesting to see how Lieberman acts for the next six years.

As this story is also in the news today, abotu Florida: http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/05/bridge.sex.offenders/index.html talks about how released sex offenders are being told to live under a bridge.

Now it seems that the WH is admnitting that millions of email messages on the White House's own servers have gone missing.

I don't know why I'm shocked, but I am.

Do the Iraqis give as much -- let alone five times as much -- of their media attention to their dead as the US has given to the Va.Tech incident?

Already happened. It starred Ving Rhames.

with the two comments above: simply presenting a focus for people, and letting others do their job, is one aspect of leadership (there are many others, of course).

I don't have a lot of respect for Rudy's politics, and I think he'd make a horrible president.

But he did get up there, and he did lead. That's better than many others ever did.