June 5, 2002

Lawyers Wednesday began grilling Cardinal Bernard Law, head of the Roman Catholic archdiocese at the center of a child sex scandal, over his handling of a priest accused of repeatedly raping a boy, sometimes in a church confessional. 3:01:35 PM

UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism offers web-blogging class In this class students will create a Weblog to explore the subject of "intellectual property" - copyright issues, the battle over free music downloads and peer-to-peer networks, deep linking to Web sites, etc. News sources will be scanned each day for items of interest to the IP community, the top stories will be selected, and precise summaries of each story will be written, with a unique perspective and voice. [ Geek News dot com ] (thanks to redking for the link) 10:21:43 AM

Bishops push to oust priests for sex abuse Panel's guidelines leave exception for past offense; U.S. bishops to review policies; Move away from secrecy at recommendations' core. [  Sunspot ] 9:22:55 AM

Enlightening interview  on Salon with Jim Cramer, co-founder of The Street, who makes good points about the dotcom bubble, and comes across as a real human being, much sadder and somewhat wiser after a really crappy couple of years following the dotcom debubblization. (Thanks to Owen for the pointer.) [ weblogsky ] What I didn't count on was a lot of people don't even know what debt is. They don't even know that you have to look at the balance sheet. They kind of melded this bizarre belief in stocks with a philosophy called "buy and hold," so they could buy and hold really bad stocks, and ride them to zero. I mistakenly thought that you could teach anybody, or that people knew. I just did not know how little people understood about a balance sheet. I used to say if you can do your checkbook, you can understand a balance sheet. But maybe you can't. 8:24:30 AM

The secret ingredient is no longer beef. The secret ingredient is now a mixture of love and fear of the courts. McDonald's will pay out #6.85MM to vegetarian and Hindu groups by failing to report on the beef tallow used to flavor their french-fries. More suits are pending. [ BoingBoing ] 8:18:35 AM

Andrew Sullivan: Was there any follow-up to the story that the Israeli Embassy in Paris just happened to burn down by accident? Larry Miller shares my disbelief. "Beautiful France. With its romantic countrysides, fine wines, and burning embassies. " 7:49:40 AM

THE GAMES THE WHITE HOUSE PLAYS. The Daily Enron asks the big questions about the White House's decision to sort of give Joe Lieberman's committee access to the Enron documents they subpoenaed: How do you comply with a subpoena without complying with a subpoena? It's a metaphysical conundrum, but the White House managed it. In response to Sen. Joe Lieberman's two subpoenas for administration Enron-related documents, the White House collected them and moved them to a secure office in the Old Executive Office Bldg. Then they told Lieberman that he and his staff could drop by and take a gander at them -- but that they could not make copies or actually have them. Is that compliance or contempt? Good question. [ TAPPED ] 7:33:52 AM

18 killed in bus explosion. (UPI: International) At least 18 people were killed and more than 30 others were wounded Wednesday by a car bomb that went off after pulling alongside an Israeli bus and exploded in northern Israel. A Channel 2 TV reporter at the scene said authorities counted 16 bodies and two other people died of their wounds in a hospital. [Palestine & Israel News] 6:50:29 AM

Did MS Pay for Open-Source Scare?. A new white paper claiming open-source software is inherently not secure is causing skeptics to wonder whether Microsoft helped pay for the study. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News] Microsoft probably influenced this study at the least, but that does not mean it is wrong.  The biggest security is making sure the company that makes and supports the software is still around.  Open Source doesn't make money and cannot be supported in the long term. 6:38:24 AM