I just heard some sad news on talk radio - American liberty was found dead at the Supreme Court this morning. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss it - even if you believe you don't need civil liberties because you're not a criminal, there's no denying its importance to the Founding Fathers. Truly an American icon.

In order to gauge who Slashdotters' opinions in the upcoming United States Presidential election, I've added a series of five user journal entries, immediate "below" this one.

Please indicate which candidate you support for President of The United States by adding a comment to the journal recording tallies for the single candidate you support.

In order, the journals are for supporters of

Please comment here if you support the election of Republican Party candidate George W. Bush to the Presidency of the United States.

Please note: For purposes of the straw poll, George W. Bush is considered the presumptive candidate of the Republican Party.

Please comment here if you support the election of Democratic Party candidate John Kerry to the Presidency of the United States.

Please note: For purposes of the straw poll, John Kerry is considered the presumptive candidate of the Democratic Party.

Please comment here if you support the election of candidate Ralph Nader to the Presidency of the United States.

Please comment here if you support the election of Libertarian Party candidate Michael Badnarik to the Presidency of the United States.

Please comment here if you support a candidate or party for President of the United States other than the ones listed in the journal entries above.

If you're listing your "vote" here, please prefix your comment's subject with the name of the Party and Candidate you support. Anonymous entries, or entries not indicating a Candidate or Party will not be included in the final tally.

I need election results for US House of Representative in the early 1800s (1800-1840, let's say). Please let me know where I can find this on the web.

(No, it's not for a homework project -- I wish I was that young. But it probably will turn up as a journal entry here.)

Thanks.

Nevermind, found what I needed

A Moscow court has banned Jehovah's Witnesses from operating within that city.

As an atheist, I'm appalled and fearful for Russian democracy. But I'm also not wholly unconcerned about my own country, the United States of America. The Russian ruling is more obviously religious persecution, but less obvious persecution goes on here too.

I am angry and depressed today.

I've always been a patriotic American, I've always loved my country. Some of my earliest memories are of reading the Declaration of Independence and children's histories of the War for Independence.

(That's a tautology, designed to sound controversial and get your attention. But now that I have your attention, check out this site for an idea of just how easily the RIAA expects to manipulate its customers.)

In this journal, I'm collecting what I consider the "best of" Slashdot comments.

I've long wished that there was a way to browse all the really good comments, across all articles. So here's my poor attempt at collecting the comments that, to steal a joke from This is Spinal Tap, you'd see if you could browse at +6.

Feel free to nominate comments you think should be "+6" by replying to this journal.

(After four days of waiting, this was rejected as an article submision. Go figure. Guess it's not as interesting as How to Handle an Internet Outage)

Here's a dummy entry for anyone wanting to comment on

• My post on teaching via Slashdot or
• on Multi-Level-/Distributed/Bacterial Learning or
• my very incomplete post on free texts and tutotials

I posted this in Belkin Routers Route Users to Censorware Ad, here, but I wanted to keep a copy here as well.

I also sent a copy to Belkin.

In response to my letter of indignation to Belkin, I received the same form letter many of you have received, signed by