For anyone who hasn’t heard already, the background for this story is that someone allegedly created a mod called “Hot Coffee” that adds a sexual mini-game to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. As a result, Rockstar Games, which was suspected at one point of hiding the mini-game in GTA, has been embroiled in controversy over whether the ratings system for games works. The latest to weigh in is Sen. Hillary Clinton. ...
Kerst ter Weele is running for Culpeper County, Va., treasurer. Shared an office with him for two years at Virginia Tech. He’s good people. :)
Wow, didn’t see that one coming. It makes sense, since there are likely to be several retirements over the next few years, but with Chief Justice William Rehnquist ailing, I think everyone thought he would be the next to retire. O’Connor’s confirmation is one of those moments that sticks in my head from when I first started paying real attention to politics. I remember the Iran Hostage Crisis, the invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. holding out of the Moscow Olympics, Carter losing to Reagan, and O’Connor’s appointment as one big lump of events that ushered me into paying more attention to the wider world. It’s kind of sad she’s retiring. ...
Another modest proposal from U.S. Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters. This time she proposes eliminating the current section of law that allows musicians to record covers, as long as they pay a fee. She proposes that a private organization set the rules and rates. Ms. Peters seems to be making this sort of grand gesture a habit. Link courtesy of the Lessig Blog
Looks like Coingate is turning out to be as much about simple corruption as weird financial schemes using Ohio money. (I really wish it could be more weird financial schemes. I was looking forward to the exposé on the chinchilla farms.) Governor Bob Taft has admitted he didn’t disclose some golf outings with the central figure in the Coingate scandal, Thomas Noe. While the possibility of free golf doesn’t sound like a big deal — even though it is a violation of the law — the bigger issue is that four top Ohio officials have already resigned because of accepting gifts such as free golf outings. ...
Let’s say you’re CIA Director Porter Goss, and you give an interview claiming that you have an “excellent idea” where Osama bin Laden is hiding. However, you then claim that America’s sense of “fair play” concerning state sovereignty is an issue when it comes to actually capturing him. So, how does that work, exactly? Saddam Hussein was such a great threat to the U.S. from 2001 on that we invaded Iraq and are still occupying the country with a sizable portion of our military, but the person who actually ordered the last major attack on our country is safe because of our respect for the nation-state system? ...
Frank Furedi writes an article on intellectual/political anti-populism: The belief that the public is too simplistic or too gullible has led some Democratic Party activists to blame the defeat of their presidential candidate in two successive elections on the stupidity of the people. One liberal activist, Michael Gronewalter, states that “civility and intelligent dialogue are useful tools among intelligent people” but are inappropriate for engaging with the public. While his point is oversimplified — there is indeed something wrong if a voter can’t be bothered to find out current information about their own core interests — it would be a sad thing if the lesson the Democratic Party took from the last two elections was that voters were too stupid to understand them. ...
Senator Obama gave another one of those speeches that makes you realize what’s missing in politics in our sound-bite world, this time at the commencement at Knox College: “What will be your place in history?” In other eras, across distant lands, this question could be answered with relative ease and certainty. As a servant in Rome, you knew youd spend your life forced to build somebody elses Empire. As a peasant in 11th Century China, you knew that no matter how hard you worked, the local warlord might come and take everything you had—and you also knew that famine might come knocking at the door. As a subject of King George, you knew that your freedom of worship and your freedom to speak and to build your own life would be ultimately limited by the throne. ...
A House Appropriations subcommittee has voted to cut funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by 25% next year, totally eliminating the budget in two years. They also voted to get rid of another program that supports children’s educational television. While I think it would be a good thing for public broadcasting to be able to shift from federal funds to other sources, simply so they could get out from under government criticism, this amounts to a direct assault on public television. The excuse made by the subcommittee chair, Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), was that they needed to cut funding somewhere, and they would rather keep college grants and special education funds than the CPB. ...
Yep, Coingate… Read more about it here. Update: Hey, it made the home page of Yahoo!