Techie Manager

Senator Ted Stevens (R - Alaska) (watch the Daily Show’s primer), the belligerent blowhard and sponsor of the infamous “bridge to nowhere”, has chimed in on net neutrality - and provided demonstrable proof that he has no idea how the Internet actually works.
Here is Steven’s quote, via Wired’s 27B Stroke 6 blog:
There’s one company now [...]

If I were a xenophobic isolationist crackpot, I would be more scared of the Department of Homeland Security than the UN and the “New World Order”.
From the Washington Post:
bq.. Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda one day last week and demanded the attention of [...]

Security guru (and personal hero) Bruce Schneier has written an excellent article on the current Presidential regime’s abuse of power. Excerpt:
bq.. The result is that the president’s wartime powers, with its armies, battles, victories, and congressional declarations, now extend to the rhetorical “War on Terror”: a war with no fronts, no boundaries, no opposing [...]

Woohoo! Finally, some sense has found its way to DC.
From Yahoo!:
bq.. The Senate on Friday refused to reauthorize major portions of the USA Patriot Act after critics complained they infringed too much on Americans’ privacy and liberty, dealing a huge defeat to the Bush administration and Republican leaders.
In a crucial vote early [...]

My neighbor, Marty Bahamonde, had the dubious honor of being the first FEMA official in New Orleans immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit. Last week he was hauled in front of the Congress-critters to give his side of the story about what went wrong.
From the New Orleans Times Picayune:
bq.. Although Bahamonde said [...]

The Memory Hole has an interesting article showing that the Justice Department has censored a Supreme Court decision by redacting a quote that discusses the abuse of power by the Government. Talk about self-referential…
bq.. The Justice Department tipped its hand in its ongoing legal war with the ACLU over the Patriot Act. Because the [...]

Excellent Forbes article by Cato analyst Radley Balko:
bq.. This country’s laws are being rewritten by puritans, prigs and busybodies.
Earlier this year, when Major League Baseball questioned Congress’ right to hold public hearings on steroid use in the big leagues, Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis (R-Va.) and ranking minority member Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) [...]

Via Bruce Schneier’s blog:

According to the AP:
bq.. The Transportation Security Administration misled the public about its role in obtaining personal information about 12 million airline passengers to test a new computerized system that screens for terrorists, according to a government investigation.
The report, released Friday by Homeland Security Department Acting Inspector General [...]

From BoingBoing:
Deirdre McNamer (how appropriate) wrote a story in The New Yorker magazine in October 2002 about a 28-year-old pinko-gray-skinned, blue-eyed, red-blond-haired criminal called Christian Michael Longo who used the alias ‘John Thomas Christopher.’ His alias was placed on the DNFL used by the Transportation Security Administration. He was arrested in January 2002 but his [...]

From AP:
A Brazilian legislator wants to make it illegal to give pets names that are common among people. Federal congressman Reinaldo Santos e Silva proposed the law after psychologists suggested that some children may get depressed when they learn they share their first name with someone’s pet, said Damarias Alves, a spokeswoman for Silva.
“Names have [...]