Nov
25
2005

URLs du Jour -- 11/25/2005

  • Ryan Sager writes compellingly on the recent FEC decision to give a journalistic exemption to a wide range of websites (maybe even including (heh) this one) from McCain-Feingold regulation. He, like me, isn't particularly impressed.

    … the more the proponents of such laws can show them being applied "reasonably" and with "appropriate" exceptions, the longer the concept will stand that the government has the authority to adopt and enforce such laws in the first place. When a federal agency is handing out certificates saying who or what does or does not count as a part of the "press," America has nothing better than a system for licensing the press.

    Exactly. First Amendment fans have little to cheer about unless and until McCain-Feingold is gone, gone, gone.

  • Sometimes I think that short memories are the bane of our age. Since my own memory is getting shorter than Zell Miller's temper, that's not good, is it? … What was I going to talk about here? … Oh, yes. The Man Without Qualities has a long enough memory to compare the handling of two different video subliminalities.

  • Via Prof Bainbridge comes an illuminating news story out of Canada, Paul Hellyer, Canada's Defence Minister from 1963-67 recently revealed that "UFOs are as real as the airplanes that fly over your head." OK, that's a little unusual for a former important person to believe. But the important thing is that the USA is getting all up in the aliens' grilles, as it were:

    Hellyer warned, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, "The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

    Hellyer's speech, it is reported, ended with a standing ovation. Apparently Canadians did not get the news about the Internet relegating UFOlogy to obscurity.


Last Modified 2012-10-26 5:29 AM EDT