Legal Document of the Year Award. It may be only July, but The Smoking Gun has already awarded the Legal Document of the Year Award...to Eric... [TalkLeft: The Politics of Crime]

If you can stand the F-word, you have to read this document. It was written by a defense lawyer who was discussing the charges against his teenage client, who used the F-word on his vice-principal. Well researched, the document tracks the history of the word, discusses how often it is heard in movies, etc. Just about perfect.  10:56:35 PM    

Imperialism: A User's Manual

Arithmetic on the Frontier
Rudyard Kipling
A GREAT and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe?
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: 'All flesh is grass.'
Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in 'villanous saltpetre!'
And after - ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station-
A canter down some dark defile-
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail-
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares-shoot straight who can-
The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The 'captives of our bow and spear'
Are cheap - alas! as we are dear.

10:31:51 PM    

Secret Networks Protect Music Swappers. There have been plenty of articles about more anonymous file sharing networks, and now CNN has written their article about it. They focus on private networks, such as those using Waste, the released and then denied product from Justin Frankel at AOL. What's odd is that the article seems to focus on the encryption part of the networks to keep them safe from the RIAA subpoena squads, when the more interesting thing is that these networks are private. That is, only a limited number of people are on them, and you can't get on them unless you know about them - which should help to keep RIAA scanners out. Yet another example of ways that consumers will route around the entertainment industry anytime they try to crack down. [Techdirt]

The only way for the music companies to win is to make their enemies their friends. But this would take some actual creativity. Much easier just to sue everyone. We went to see Seabiscuit today and had to sit through an ad from the RIAA showing a scene painter mentioning the movies he has worked on, how he hopes in a good year to work 12 months, how the producers and owners get hardly any money from the movie's release and that if we pirate we will only hurt good old boys like himself. Both my wife and I got really ticked. They are showing this tripe to the people WHO HAVE ACTUALLY PAID!! We are the good guys but we get a lecture before our movie. This ad had exactly the opposite effect than it intended. Excuse me, but the actors do not get paid $20 million dollars because they care about the little guy. The producers and motion picture companies do not fund $200 million movies for the good of the workers. They do it to make a SH_TLOAD of money. The ad almost ruined the mood that a really great movie generated. Idiots.  10:19:46 PM    

I can see that next time, the Republicans will have to make sure no one gets out before a new session is called. Looking the doors and keeping all the members inside is a possibility. Isn't democracy wonderful?  12:15:14 AM    

Intelligence Gathering in Iraq. INTELLIGENCE GATHERING IN IRAQ....OK, I just put two and two together. As usual, it was only after about the third time that I saw this article blogged that something finally clicked. Thanks, Mark. Here's what clicked. A few days ago... [CalPundit]

I don't know. Kidnapping the wife and daughter of an officer, then leaving a note saying 'If you want your family released, turn yourself in' sounds like the doings of some terrorist organization, not of our own military. I guess it is just me.  12:07:43 AM