In yet another attempt to win the “We can do values, too” fight, Democratic senators Max Baucus and Mark Pryor are introducing legislation that would encourage the establishment of a new top-level domain for all websites deemed “harmful to minors.” Yes, won’t someone please think of the children.

Under the Cyber Safety for Kids Act of 2006 (no, I’m not making this up), teenage boys across the nation would no longer have to conduct annoying and time-wasting Google searches to find their porno. They could simply point their browsers to the new “.xxx” domain, where, according to the bill, they would find “any communication, picture, image, graphic image file, article, recording, writing, or other matter of any kind that is obscene.” Baucus and Pryor happily provide examples of in their bill of such matter”

(i) an actual or simulated sexual act or contact,
(ii) an actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual act; or
(iii) a lewd exhibition of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast

I can only assume that the fine Senators have spent a good deal of time conducting online research, and cannot help but notice that they seem to have no problem with the online display of pubescent or pre-pubescent female breasts.

If the bill were simply about relegating hard-core porn to a separate TLD (or if anyone could agree on what constitutes “hard-core porn”), it might be more difficult to disagree with. However, given that the legislation is aimed at “material that is harmful to minors” and”matter of any kind that is obscene,” it has the potential of being a powerful weapon for social conservatives. Information about birth-control and sexually-transmitted diseases? That’s offensive and the children shouldn’t see it—it belongs in the .xxx domain. Gay and lesbian sites? Ditto. Off to the ghetto with you.

And dollars to donuts the entire domain would be immediately blocked on corporate firewalls, as well as by libraries, schools, and other providers of public Internet access, rendering all the sites relegated to it off-limits to large segments of the public. I don’t doubt that Senators Baucus and Pryor have the best intentions, but this sort of legislation is bad news. I’d also wager it is unconstitutional, but with the newly-altered balance of the Supreme Court, I think I’d rather head this one off at the pass.

Proving that I am probably not cut out for this “blogging” business, I have held off jumping into the fray with an immediate declaration of opinion regarding Russ Feingold’s motion to censure the President.

There is part of me that understands why Feingold’s fellow Democrats are in a quandry about how to react. Aside from right-wing flacks and the White House spin machine, anyone with more than a passing knowledge of the NSA wiretapping story can see that the President clearly broke the law. In a perfect world, support for censure ought to be a no-brainer for that reason alone. Of course, in a perfect world, we wouldn’t have a President claiming that laws only apply to him when he says they do.

In this world, there are political considerations a-plenty to consider. With Congressional elections eight months away, the last thing any Democrats want to deal with are screaming Republican attack ads about how “Senator So-and-so voted to censure President Bush for trying to stop Al Qaeda terrorists from attacking America. Call Senator So-and-so and tell him you think the Senate should be trying to stop America’s enemies, not helping them. Senator So-and-so: Wrong on terrorism, wrong for America.”

You can see the dilemma: support censure and risk giving your opponents yet another partisan with which to beat you over the head, or oppose censure and let the President’s blatant disregard for the Constitution and his oath of office go unpunished.

Personally, I come down on the side of supporting Feingold’s motion. Given that he is considering running for the Democratic nomination in 2008, I am somewhat suspicious of the gentleman from Iowa’s motivations, but censure seems to be a reasonable alternative to the hysterical calls for impeachment. Even if it does not pass (and in a Republican-controlled Senate, it’s guaranteed not to), a motion to censure the President with solid minority support establishes a solid position and keeps the debate on the table. More importantly, it could help to change the terms of the debate—right now, Republicans have managed to keep most public coverage of the scandal focused on the fact that terrorists are supposedly being surveilled; a noisy discussion of censure would highlight the President’s claims that the laws do not apply to him.

However, regardless of whether Feingold’s fellow Democrats end up supporting his motion or not, what they need to do is lock themselves in a room together and make the decision. This business of publicly debating the party’s position and scenes of Senators running from microphones while saying things like “No comment” or “I haven’t really had time to look over the motion yet” only serves to reinforce the Democrats-in-disarray meme with which the news media have become so fascinated.

[This post is highly nerdy, so consider yourself warned.]

Finding myself a bit annoyed with the system I have been using to download TV, I have spent the last few days trying to figure out a better way to do it. Up until now, I have used BitTorrent on my old Linux desktop machine to download episodes—once they have finished downloading, I transfer them over to my server, and I can play them over the network via my laptop plugged into the TV.

This setup is annoying for a couple of reasons. First, I have to remember to check TVGuide.com (or, more recently, EvokeTV.com) each week to find out which series have new episodes. Then, the morning after each show airs, I have to search assorted BitTorrent tracker sites to find that episode’s torrent. Since I’m usually doing that work, I have to upload the torrent to my machine at home, log in remotely, and start up the BitTorrent client. When it’s done, I then cut and paste it over to the /video folder on the server.

I’m a fairly smart guy, and it’s 2006 after all, so I figured there has to be a better way to do it. Thus, I consulted the Internets.

As it turns out, there is a plugin for Azureus (the BitTorrent client I use) called RSS Feed Scanner which will use the RSS feeds from tracker sites to check for newly uploaded files and download them automatically. For instance, a big tracker site like torrentspy.com provides an RSS feed that is constantly updated as new torrents are added. If I put this feed into the plugin, I can then apply filters to it to only look for the stuff I want (e.g., “Download anything with the words “West Wing” and “HDTV” in the title to the /WestWing folder). Better yet, it keeps a history of all the stuff it has already downloaded so that I don’t keep getting more copies of the same episodes.

I got it mostly set up last night, and woke this morning to find last night’s Invasion episode happily downloading without any active involvement from me. There are still a few hitches to work out. The other neat thing is that I found a plugin that provides a web UI so that I can connect via my browser rather than remoting in via ssh.

There are obviously still a few bugs to work out, the main one being that I still have to keep an eye on when torrents are done so that they don’t end up seeding forever and sucking up all my bandwidth, but all things considered, I’m pretty pleased with myself.

Word on the street is that we will have to wait until October for the new season of Battlestar Galactica. I think I speak for everyone when I say that is just plain crazy.

For those of you who don’t watch this show, I have two things to say:

1. Shame on you, and
2. Go get caught up so we can talk.

Rent it, buy it, download it off BitTorrent, I don’t care—you’ll be doing yourself a big favor. The rest of you that do watch the show, I assume you have seen this past Friday night’s Season 2 finale. If not, please read no further, as I’m probably about to spoil a whole bunch of crazy surprises.

For my money, this episode constituted the single biggest story reboot since the destruction of SD-6 midway through the second season of Alias. The big difference, I think, is that BSG is a much better show. As a general rule, any time one sees the caption “One year later” during a TV show or movie, a jarring transition is pretty much guaranteed, and BSG didn’t disappoint. All of the sudden, we’re settled on New Caprica—Starbuck is married, Chief is a strike-leading union boss, and Adama has grown a mustache. A few minutes later, and the Cylons have returned, President Baltar has surrendered, and Galactica and Pegasus have jumped out of the system.

I will admit, I am still somewhat confused as to why the Cylons have shown back up, if they decided that the destruction of the colonies was a mistake. Is it (as someone suggested to me) that the Number Six that was killed in the initial attack on Caprica is just trying to get back to Dr. Baltar? Are they after Sharon and Helo’s baby? Starbuck?

I suppose all these questions (and more) will be answered on the next episode…

In another example of mindless pursuit of the mythical “center,” several prominent Democrats have lined up with such luminaries of free thought and progressive politics as Sam Brownback and Rick Santorum to sponsor the Children and Media Research Advancement Act. According to this ZDNET article, the legislation would earmark some millions of dollars (90 million in one version) for the Centers for Disease Control to research the impact of the use of electronic media on children.

Yes, that’s right—Won’t someone please think of the children.

Leading the Democratic charge to protect our children from the evils of video games and television is everyone’s favorite family-values stooge, Joe Lieberman. Never one to shy away from alarmism, Lieberman cites the epidemic of school shootings in his statement introducing the legislatsion,

Take the Columbine incident. After two adolescent boys shot and killed some of their teachers, classmates, and then turned their guns on themselves at Columbine High School, we asked ourselves if media played some role in this tragedy. Did these boys learn to kill in part from playing first-person shooter video games like Doom where they acted as a killer? Were they rehearsing criminal activities when playing this game?

Yes, you read correctly—the Columbine incident, which took place, let’s see… seven years ago.

Lieberman has made a lot of noise over the years about protecting children and families from the insidious evils of television, devil music, and violent video games. Few of his efforts have gone anywhere, as there is little convincing evidence that media are to blame for violence.

Just in case the Joementum isn’t enough, the bill’s Democratic co-sponsors are Dick Durbin and Hillary Clinton. I don’t know enough about Durbin to comment on his involvement, but I can’t say I’m surprised that Clinton has jumped on board. This foray into values-mongering has the same reek about it as did her support a few months back of flag-protection legislation.

Granted, it is not a seat on the Supreme Court, but the White House is quietly withdrawing its nomination of Judge James Payne to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals. As it turns out, Judge Payne appears to have a bad habit of not recusing himself from cases in which he has a financial interest.

According to the Salon article that originally broke the story, Payne “issued more than 100 orders in at least 18 cases that involved corporations in which he owned stock, a review of court and financial records shows.”

Oops.

To quote an AP article on the subject, “Officials say Payne requested his nomination be withdrawn. He could not be reached for comment.”

Oddly, there have been no screeching pronouncements from Republicans about how all of the Bush administration’s judicial nominees must receive an up or down vote by the full Senate.

“We are reasserting Congressional responsibility and oversight,” Ms. Snowe said.

The proposed legislation would create a seven-member “terrorist surveillance subcommittee” and require the administration to give it full access to the details of the program’s operations.

That would be from this article in today’s New York Times, describing a deal worked out between the White House and the Republicans who control the Senate Intelligence Committee. It would ostensibly bring the administration’s warrantless wiretapping plan under the purview of both Congress and the FISA court. Under this plan, the White House would be required to turn provide details about the surveillance program to a new “terrorist surveillance committee,” and would have 45 days to conduct its wiretapping before it had to go get a warrant.

Wait. It gets better.

If the White House doesn’t get a warrant after 45 days, the Attorney General just needs to rattle off the usual line that the surveillance is a matter of national security.

I have to wonder how many times during the negotiations and discussions about this agreement the participants found themselves using air-quotes, as in “full access” and “require” and “responsibility and oversight.” This agreement is an insult and a joke, because every single aspect of its terms was already in place when the Bush administration came up with its illegal surveillance scheme. That’s why it was illegal, see? Under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the government is explicitly required to get a warrant from the FISA court to conduct these kinds of wiretaps, but the White House decided it doesn’t need to comply with the law. In any reasonable interpretation, that decision would be called “breaking the law” (there are those pesky air-quotes again).

So to the raft of spineless Senators lined up on their knees in front of the Bush administration, I ask this: How does this ridiculous and embarassing agreement in any way deter the White House from doing exactly the same thing all over again?

In another follow-up to a previous post, I see from an article in The Washington Poste that the South Dakota bill banning nearly all abortions has been signed into law by that state’s governor.

According to a statement by the governor that accompanied the signing,

In the history of the world, the true test of a civilization is how well people treat the most vulnerable and most helpless in their society. The sponsors and supporters of this bill believe that abortion is wrong because unborn children are the most vulnerable and most helpless persons in our society. I agree with them.

The only abortions allowed under this bill are those that are necessary to save the life of the mother, so again, my question for abortion opponents is how they can justify granting any exceptions at all. This is the problem with absolutist moral declarations like “Abortion is wrong,” because except for crazy people, even the most ardent believers will admit that some exceptions need to be made.

So, what supporters of this bill are actually saying is “Abortion is wrong except when we say it isn’t,” which immediately undermines their claims to unshakeable ethical grounding.

I posted last week about the videos released by the Associated Press of pre-Katrina teleconferences between the White House and FEMA, pointing out, among other things, the President’s utter lack of any apparent interest in the details of the situation.

Not too long after, Slate published a column by their chief White House correspondent John Dickerson, who was surprised that Bush was not more inquisitive.

Just to be clear, allow me to repeat two parts of that last sentence in capital letters: “CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT” and “SURPRISED THAT BUSH WAS NOT MORE INQUISITIVE.”

“Based on what I’d been told by White House aides over the years,” Dickerson writes, “I expected to see the president asking piercing questions that punctured the fog of the moment and inspired bold action. Bush’s question-asking talents are a central tenet of the president’s hagiography.”

To Dickerson’s credit, he goes on to point out the that the President really ought to be asking more questions, and that it is difficult to trust our safety and security to someone so incurious. However, while I do not subscribe to the “Bush is a bumbling idiot” school of thought, it is pretty clear even from my distant seat that he is a non-interested, “Great, you’ll take care of that?” kind of manager. The truly depressing part of this particular story is that we have a White House correspondent for a major media outlet who is shocked to discover that story that has been fed to him by White House aids has turned out to be false.

I see from this morning’s headlines that Crash got the award for best picture at last night’s Academy Awards. Ang Lee took home the Best Director award for Brokeback Mountain, but the general consensus seems to be that it was a disappointing night for gay cowboys everywhere.

Personally, I though Brokeback Mountain was the better film, as it has a real story and interesting characters. While Crash had its moments and was, at times, somewhat thought-provoking, I found it to be much more of a pedantic “issue” film. I do not mean to downplay the problems between people of different colors in this country, making people feel bad about race relations seems more or less like shooting fish in a barrel at this point. Coming out of the theater, I did not feel as thought Crash had really added anything to that conversation, and to some extent, felt like the film had simply exploited those tensions to stir up the audience’s emotions.

On the bright side, Curse of the Were-Rabbit beat both the abysmal Corpse Bride and yet another look-alike Miyazaki animated fantasy (Howl’s Moving Castle) for best animated feature.

And I was obviously disappointed to see that both King Kong and March of the Penguins left the building with some awards.