NTodd wants 419,067 hits on or before his June 14^th, third blogiversary™ ^{[Talk Left]}.

Help out Sam and Mexico. Celebrate Flag Day in a new and different fashion. Keep Vermont green.

I don’t swear much any more. After the military and law enforcement it isn’t because I don’t know how, I can verbally blister paint anywhere in the world in multiple languages.

You may have heard the phrase: “it’s not worth a tinker’s damn,” and wondered why a “tinker’s damn” is considered such a trifle.

It was accepted that those who practiced certain trades, tinkers in England and shoemakers in much of the world, cursed almost constantly. Because it was expected that tinkers cursed, the curse had very little meaning.

I choose to reserve my curses on-line and off, so that when they do flow, people understand that a line has been crossed and I am well beyond annoyed.

Billmon called it Payback, but by any name, the Washington Post article on Maryscott O’Connor was designed to portray all of the liberal side of blogtopia™ ^{[skippy the bush kangaroo]} as the American version of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party.

Along with many others Shakespeare’s Sister in Angry for a Reason and Echidne in The Angry Moonbats , point out reasons for anger, but not the reason for the piece. Both notice that the article seems to point to the anger as a reaction to the anger from the right.

The Washington Post started this leitmotif of the angry foul-mouthed liberal blogger when Deborah Howell got caught spinning a Republican talking point in the Jack Abramoff story. They had to shut down the comments because liberals were so angry and vomited filth. [Read more →]

I’m sick of it. Every time the politicians want to intrude on peoples’ lives they haul out the excuse: “It’s to protect children.” If politicians actually cared about children they would help them move out of poverty.

Now, according to CNET, ISP snooping gaining support:

At a hearing last week, Rep. Ed Whitfield, a Kentucky Republican who heads a House oversight and investigations subcommittee, suggested that data retention laws would be useful to police investigating crimes against children.

“I absolutely think that that is an idea that is worth pursuing,” an aide to Whitfield said in an interview on Thursday. “If those files were retained for a longer period of time, it would help in the uncovering and prosecution of these crimes.” Another hearing is planned for April 27.

Internet providers generally offer three reasons why they are skeptical of mandatory data retention: first, it is not clear who will be able to access records of someone’s online behavior; second, it’s not clear who will pay for the data warehouses to be constructed; and third, it’s not clear that police are hindered by current law as long as they move swiftly in investigations.

“What we haven’t seen is any evidence where the data would have been helpful, where the problem was not caused by law enforcement taking too long when they knew a problem existed,” said Dave McClure, president of the U.S. Internet Industry Association, which represents small to midsize companies.

McClure said that while data retention aficionados cite child pornography, the stored data would be open to any type of investigation–including, for instance, those focused on drug crimes, tax fraud, or terrorism prosecutions. “The agenda behind this doesn’t appear to be legitimate,” he said.

Of course it’s not legitimate, it’s another power grab from the KGB DoJ. They aren’t using the PATRIOT Act for terrorism investigations, they are using it for their standard workload with a seeming preference for drug and pornography cases. The only “terrorists” that seem to interest this Department of Justice are “eco-terrorists”.

Protecting children is the job of parents, not the Congress. Collecting more terabytes of data on people is not going to make children safer; it’s just building another pond for the DoJ to fish in.