BLOG WATCH
Don’t fight the tax man
A lesson from the Wesley Snipes case at riehlworldview.com
“While I personally believe too much is made of alleged civil liberty encroachments under Bush and in the so-called war on terror – there is no greater threat to freedom in a capitalist society than that of the government to tax and regulate activity. I’m not suggesting Wesley Snipes isn’t guilty, or shouldn’t go to jail, but you never hear a peep from the supposed freedom-loving liberals when it comes to how government taxes and spends, thereby controlling our lives, as well as our livelihoods. [This is] why I genuinely question the motivations of liberals today. They claim to be championing liberty. Yet nearly everything they champion calls for more taxation and regulation. One can’t do both and be intellectually consistent, or honest.”
Chinese checkers
The Lone Gunmen at abovetopsecret.com say bootleg Chinese hardware could compromise security.
“Some months ago, my contacts in the defense industry had alerted me to a startling development that has escalated to the point of near-panic in nearly all corners of Government security and IT infrastructure. The very-real concern, being investigated by the FBI, is that either the Chinese government or Chinese hackers (or both) have had the benefit of undetectable back-doors into highly secure government and military computer networks for months, perhaps years. The cause: a high-number of counterfeit Cisco routers and switches installed in nearly all government networks that experienced upgrades and/or new units within the past 18 months. The US government has been attempting to avoid these issues by only using higher-end Cisco partners/suppliers for the gear. However, the highly-competitive lowest-bid environment of government procurement has inspired several vendors to look for cheap alternatives for hardware. Many online IT circles have been speculating that the counterfeit hardware will provide backdoor access into compromised networks for the originators of the equipment.”
The Hillary backlash
Pennsylvania may have been a win for Hillary Clinton, but the venom online – particularly among liberal commentators – was intense. A sampling:
Melinda Henneberger at Slate.com:
“Obama’s fatal flaw, according to her, is that he is not as skilled as she in answering Republican attacks (with more of the same). Watch her gleefully practice on her fellow Democrat, with Republican-style ads evoking such GOP golden oldies as the red phone, Pearl Harbor, and, OMG, Khrushchev? [D]oesn’t it bother any of these old-school feminists to see her painting her rival as the girl in this race – yes, as if that were a bad thing – just as every Republican since Richard Nixon has done to every Democrat since Adlai Stevenson? If I wanted Karl Rove for president, I would have voted for him the first time.”
Tom Hayden at TheNation.com:
“Last year, I was somewhat reconciled to the prospect of supporting and pressuring Hillary as the nominee amidst the rising tide of my friends who already hated her, irrationally I thought.But as the Obama campaign gained momentum, Hillary began morphing into the persona that has my pacifist wife screaming at the television set. Going negative doesn’t begin to describe what has happened. Hillary is going over the edge. . . . If Clinton doesn’t immediately cease her path of destruction, millions of young voters and black voters may not even vote for her if she becomes the nominee. That’s not a threat, that’s the reality she is creating.”
Andrew Sullivan at andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com:
“What’s striking to me about this race is that it is the young insurgent who is still acting as the responsible party elder; and the former president who is behaving like a man who will destroy his own party in order to soothe his own sense of entitlement and ego. After this presidency, after eight years of war and debt and torture and deceit and cynicism, to see the Democratic party self-destruct is really something. They were given a chance to remake the country and regain their soul; and the Clintons could not bear it if they were not the vehicles for such a shift. I don’t believe anyone in the Democratic party can or will stop them. This is a kamikaze mission.”
SITES
Web pages to add to your bookmarks this week:
Find the best beer or bar or New York. How did we ever live without this?
A roundup of what female bloggers are saying.
Make zombies invade any Web site.
One of the best magazines for discoveries in science and medicine.
