Quiddity has an important Mother’s Day reminder at Uggabugga.

Apparently concerned that they might be sued by the family of the deceased alligator, CNN reports: Hunters think they killed deadly gator.

Even if this particular alligator didn’t kill the individual currently in the morgue with two missing arms, I think the fact that two human arms were found inside the alligator indicates he killed someone.

Why are they showing more concern for the reputation of a ‘gator than they did for Wen Ho Lee or Richard Jewell?

The Culture Ghost makes clear what a lot of people are feeling: candidates are not going to receive votes just because of a party label.

I’m not voting for anyone in the Florida Senate race this year, because there is no one running that I want to win. When Bill Nelson voted for the new Bankruptcy Bill he lost my vote. If these people go to Washington and vote against me, they shouldn’t come home and expect me to vote for them.

I’m sick and tired of voting against things; I want something to vote for.

I don’t want “electable” candidates; I want people who stand for something. If you can’t convince people that your positions are the right ones, you don’t deserve the office.

Billmon has a great piece comparing the view of people ignoring the data mining with the Leviathan.

The text of Thomas Hobbes’s magnum opus is tough sledding because English has changed a lot since 1660, but the essential point is that people must reasonably accept that the ruler is allowed to do whatever he wants because society would sink into anarchy without his protection. The short version is: father knows best.

While Qwest didn’t get involved in the illegal data transfer [if it wasn’t illegal Qwest would have been forced to comply], at the time they were cash poor and made a deal with the Carlyle Group, selling them their directory publishing arm, QwestDex.

After you suck up all of those phone numbers, you want to find out who they belong to, which is trivial when you buy the directory information from the telephone book publishers. Of course, these will be classified intelligence contracts, so the public will never know about them.

This information isn’t available for the pre-paid cell phones that criminals and terrorists use, so they only have information on tax paying, law abiding citizens. [This will be changed in PATRIOT ACT III – the Empire gets Peevish when Darth Cheney orders pre-paid phones banned from the realm.]