I’m a bigot, all right. I’ve used Apple computers since I bought my first computer way back in 1983. I had to use Windows computers at work, and I tried, not very successfully, to overcome my prejudices against the criminal monopolist Microsoft. But a few years ago, when Apple Computer seemed to be near collapse, I declared that if Microsoft was the only software choice available, I’d just do without a computer. It’s not entirely a rational response; some of Microsoft’s products are very good. Some aren’t. Now, via John Moltz’s weblog, I’ve got a specific reason to be glad I’m a Macintosh user:

Microsoft is currently paying a $20,000 a month retainer to former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed’s consulting firm Century Strategies. Which now begs the question of whether Reed was in any way involved with Microsoft’s recent decision to abandon its decades long support for gay civil rights in order to curry favor with anti-gay bigots of the radical right.

First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams on The Daily Show:

If you take away an independent judiciary, you take away the first amendment, as well.

Are we winning or losing the War on Terror? The Bush Administration deep-sixed a long-standing annual report on terrorism which showed terror attacks increasing, not declining. Now they want partial credit for almost catching bad guys. We nearly caught Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora in Afghanistan. Now, according to CNN, officials are bragging that they nearly caught Abu Musab al-Zarqawi:

U.S. troops chased down a suspicious vehicle and later determined that al-Zarqawi had been in it but had escaped.

Gosh, if we actually started winning the War on Terror, there might be less reason for the extraordinary powers the Bush Administration has claimed for itself. Hmmm…

It’s a whole new era for American Liberty—telecommunications industry representatives have been kicked off an international commission for supporting John Kerry:

The Inter-American Telecommunication Commission meets three times a year in various cities across the Americas to discuss such dry but important issues as telecommunications standards and spectrum regulations. But for this week’s meeting in Guatemala City, politics has barged onto the agenda. At least four of the two dozen or so U.S. delegates selected for the meeting, sources tell TIME, have been bumped by the White House because they supported John Kerry’s 2004 campaign.

The State Department has traditionally put together a list of industry representatives for these meetings, and anyone in the U.S. telecom industry who had the requisite expertise and wanted to go was generally given a slot, say past participants. Only after the start of Bush’s second term did a political litmus test emerge, industry sources say.