Remember that Supreme Court decision a few days ago?

http://lonestartimes.com/index.php?p=1095

Could a hotel be built on the land owned by Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter? A new ruling by the Supreme Court which was supported by Justice Souter himself itself might allow it. A private developer is seeking to use this very law to build a hotel on Souter's land.

Justice Souter's vote in the "Kelo vs. City of New London" decision allows city governments to take land from one private owner and give it to another if the government will generate greater tax revenue or other economic benefits when the land is developed by the new owner.

On Monday June 27, Logan Darrow Clements, faxed a request to Chip Meany the code enforcement officer of the Towne of Weare, New Hampshire seeking to start the application process to build a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road. This is the present location of Mr. Souter's home.

Clements, CEO of Freestar Media, LLC, points out that the City of Weare will certainly gain greater tax revenue and economic benefits with a hotel on 34 Cilley Hill Road than allowing Mr. Souter to own the land.

The proposed development, called "The Lost Liberty Hotel" will feature the "Just Desserts Café" and include a museum, open to the public, featuring a permanent exhibit on the loss of freedom in America. Instead of a Gideon's Bible each guest will receive a free copy of Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."

I was just on Yahoo Finance, and I noticed that a lot of the E's had been turned into 3's. For example Weekend was written as W33k3nd. Furthermore the 3's were links.

So I followed one of the links and it led to an ad for BMWs. Is this something Yahoo is doing, or did I pick up some spyware? This is my work computer, so it's not like I'm sitting here downloading a bunch of games or other spyware vectors.

Currently a bargain at $105,100...

See the auction here

UPDATE: Bidding is up to $1,016,623... bid now!

Suppose you're appointing people to sit on the Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee for the Department of Homeland Security. What kind of people would you appoint?

From the War Room at salon.com...

There's a gator guarding your privacy at the Department of Homeland Security.

Among the appointees to the department's 20 member "Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee" is D. Reed Freeman, the "chief privacy officer" of Claria Corporation.

That's the company formerly known as Gator, infamous for its software, a.k.a. GAIN, which stands for Gator Advertising Information Network. It's sadly familiar to many frustrated Web surfers, who have been surprised to discover it mysteriously installed on their desktops serving them extra helpings of ads.

The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Dow Jones Company sued Gator back in 2002 for the way its ads appeared as parasites on their sites. But even though the original Gator software can be considered one of the original plague carriers of the spyware blight -- be careful about calling it that. The company has repeatedly threatened its critics with libel lawsuits for dubbing it "spyware."

The fact that a "privacy officer" for a company that made its name sneaking onto computers all over the word is now helping to determine what should be done with data collected by the Department of Homeland Security might be alarming to some people. But is it really all that shocking? The D.H.S.'s own chief privacy officer is no stranger to the ins and outs of interactive marketing either. She used to work for the online marketing firm, DoubleClick.

The Privacy Advisory Committee will hold its first meeting April 6, 2005 in Washington D.C. Can pop-up ads promoting every fluctuation in the terror alert level be far behind?

Looks like members of Congress are starting to ask Alan Greenspan whether or not there's a housing bubble. Could be interesting times ahead. Maybe renting isn't so bad right about now.

http://www.forbes.com/business/services/2005/02/18/cx_da_0218topnews.html

Think Clinton's presidency was scandal-ridden? Salon has put together a list of 34 scandals from the Bush administration (day pass or subscription required).

And that's just his first term.

I just saw this at the bottom of the page. With Bush's second inauguration coming up later this month, it seems rather appropriate:

The poetry of heroism appeals irresitably to those who don't go to a war, and even more so to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy." -- Celine

(note -- Celine lived from 1894-1961)

I thought the Republicans said they had "moral values." Then I read about which states have the highest, second highest, and lowest divorce rates (Oklahoma, Texas, and Massachusetts, respectively).

Then I saw this in Salon.com's War Room:

Rules for thee but not for me

When you're in power, apparently, you can just change the rules whenever you don't want to follow them anymore. That's what House Republicans appear to be doing to protect their leader Tom DeLay in the event the indictments that seem to be contagious in his circle of Texas friends and colleagues spread to him. Last night, House GOP members proposed changing congressional rules to allow leaders to stay in their posts even if they're indicted by state grand juries. Today, the rule change is expected to gain approval at a closed door meeting.

The best part: This rule was adopted more than 10 years ago when House Republicans wanted to show how corrupt Democrats were and that Republicans "held themselves to higher standards than prominent Democrats," as the Washington Post put it. With trouble brewing in DeLay's circle of political associates now, though, Republicans are quick to move to change the rule so they don't actually have to hold themselves to the same standard they applied to Democrats.

Democrats and congressional watchdog groups are criticizing the proposal, but it probably won't do any good. Nancy Pelosi said last night, according to the Post: "If they make this rules change, Republicans will confirm yet again that they simply do not care if their leaders are ethical. If Republicans believe that an indicted member should be allowed to hold a top leadership position in the House of Representatives, their arrogance is astonishing."

http://www.moderateindependent.com/v1i7pravda.htm

So I was watching the second Presidential debate last week, and Bush starts rambling on about how the Supreme Court made a bad decision in the Dred Scott case. Why bring up a case from 150 years ago? I couldn't figure it out, until I found the explanation later on...

George W. Bush was speaking in code. Seriously. According to this MSNBC article (and many others; search Google News for "Dred Scott"), what he said was code for "I will only appoint justices that support overturning Roe vs. Wade". Of course he couldn't come out and say it because most Americans are pro-choice. So, he hid behind his code words so only the religious right would understand what he was talking about. Of course, if everyone spreads the word about this, we can break Bush's code and reveal his views to everyone he was trying to hide them from.

I saw this while shopping at Amazon.com today:

daveo0331*, since you've been using A9.com recently, virtually everything at Amazon.com is automatically an additional pi/2% (1.57%) off for you. Collecting this discount is zero effort on your part. It will be applied automatically at checkout (it will happen whether you use the shopping cart or our 1-Click Shopping®). You don't need to do anything to get this discount except keep using A9.com as your regular search engine.

We don't advertise this additional discount that we give in exchange for using A9.com, so if you want your friends to know about it, please tell them. It is probably the only way they'll find out. All they have to do is use A9.com as their regular search engine. They should make sure they are signed in to A9.com (it should be recognizing them by name) so that we can be certain they get credit for their visit.

While the pi/2% discount is a good additional reason to use A9.com it isn't the best reason. A9.com licenses its web search results from the industry leader Google, and then supplements those results with Amazon's Search Inside the Book(TM) results. The coolest feature is that A9.com keeps track of your search history for you on the server side. To see how this works, do some A9 searches from your computer at work and then sign in to A9.com from your computer at home.

How can we afford this additional pi/2% discount?

Sponsored links revenue -from the small text-based ads on A9.com and Amazon.com search results pages -will help offset costs we incur through the Rewards promotion. With our automatic pi/2% discount, we are effectively sharing with you some of the money we collect from sponsored links, i.e. sharing the pi.

Please use A9.com and tell your friends.

Thank you

A9.com Instant Rewards will not be applied to the purchase of gift certificates or gift cards, such as Amazon.com Gift Certificates, Target GiftCards, or Borders Gift Cards.

A9.com Instant Rewards will not be applied to purchases from Amazon.com zShops or Amazon.com Auctions; payments and contributions made using the Amazon.com Honor System; Marketplace Pre-Orders; or In-Store Pickup purchases.

A9.com Instant Rewards may be inactivated for any Amazon.com account at any time depending on the number of A9.com Web searches performed.
Product searches performed on Amazon.com will not help to qualify an account for A9.com Instant Rewards.

You do not have to click on sponsored links to qualify an account for A9.com Instant Rewards.

The A9.com Instant Reward rate is pi/2% (1.57%) off the total purchase price, including tax and shipping.

The exact amount of the A9.com Instant Reward stated on the order summary is only an estimate. After taxes are finalized, the exact amount of the Instant Reward will be finalized.
A9.com Instant Rewards are not for use on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.jp, Amazon.ca, Amazon.fr, or any Web site other than www.amazon.com.

Amazon.com reserves the right to change or discontinue the A9.com Instant Reward program at any time.

* They used my real name, not my Slashdot userid, of course.

From the War Room at Salon.com:

Bush twins swill vodka, stiff the help

Mayor Michael Bloomberg hailed the Republican National Convention as an economic boon to the city, but it turned out to be a bust for the poor saps stuck serving the tight-fisted Bush girls. According to the New York Post's Page Six, the debaucherous twins spent all night Wednesday getting trashed at the Manhattan club Avalon, and then stiffed the help. As the Post reports, "They [and their entourage of about 25] drank $4,500 dollars worth of drinks -- bottles and bottles of vodka,' says a club insider. 'Then, having been comped all the alcohol, they left a $48 tip. We thought 1 per cent was kind of outrageous, considering they are the president's daughters.'"

Leave aside what this says about the girls' respect for working people. These kids and their friends swilled $180 worth of booze per person. A galloping sense of entitlement, apparently, isn't the only thing that runs in the Bush family.

Remember the pictures of the Iraqis supposedly pulling down that statue of Saddam that were broadcast all over TV last year? It's been known for a long time that the Iraqis didn't really do it by themselves, and they kind of had some "help" from the Americans.

Now the results of an internal study by the U.S. Army make it official -- the event was staged. It was actually a Marine colonel who decided to topple the statue, not the Iraqis. Furthermore, the Marines at one point had draped a U.S. flag over the statue, and got booed by the Iraqis! So, they quickly replaced the U.S. flag with an Iraqi flag.

As if that weren't enough, the vehicle full of Iraqis that pulled down the statue was actually a U.S. military vehicle, and the Iraqis were children that the U.S. had put there to make it look like the Iraqis were spontaneously pulling down the statue.

Don't believe everything you see on TV.

Here's an article about the report.

Update: Found a better article at http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/040621/france_vivendi_7.html

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000536449

Jean-Marie Messier, former CEO of Vivendi (RIAA member), has been taken into police custody in France. Apparently he did some illegal share repurchases, causing the company's shareholders to lose money. He's also under investigation for insider trading and share price manipulation.

Am I surprised that Enron-style shenanigans have spread to Big Music? Of course not.

Messier left the company in July 2002.

Remember, when you buy RIAA music, this is the kind of people you're giving your money to. Find other places to shop instead.