Does anyone know why Tacitus’s website is loading for April?
*** Update ***
He was hacked. He is fixed. All is good.
Curious
This post is in: Open Threads
Archives for 2003
Curious
Happy Blogiversary
Go wish TalkLeft a belated Happy Blogiversary.
WaPo on Class Action Suits
The WaPo appears to come out in favor of the House Bill to modify Class-Action litigation:
THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES passed a bill last week that would take a modest but important step toward fixing America’s broken system of class action litigation. The bill’s passage is no surprise; the House has passed it in previous Congresses as well. The big question now is whether it can pass the Senate, where it has previously stalled. A class action bill has been reported by the Judiciary Committee and is awaiting action by the full body. But its prospects remain cloudy. Yet no area of U.S. civil justice cries out more urgently for reform than the high-stakes extortion racket of class actions, in which truly crazy rules permit trial lawyers to cash in at the expense of businesses. Passing this bill would be an important start to rationalizing a system that’s out of control.
Last week, Yglesias and others called this bill horrible:
Any thoughts?
Bill Keller Gets IT
Bill Keller, in a few paragraphs, ends the ‘Bush lied” debate once and for all (if it were only that simple- there will be months of partisan bickering ahead of us):
The threat was a dictator with a proven, insatiable desire for dreadful weapons that would eventually have made him, or perhaps one of his sadistic sons, a god in the region. The fact that he gave aid and at least occasional sanctuary to practitioners of terror added to his menace. And at the end his brazen defiance made us seem weak and vulnerable, an impression we can ill afford. The opportunity was a moment of awareness and political will created by Sept. 11, combined with the legal sanction reaffirmed by U.N. Resolution 1441. The important thing to me was never that Saddam Hussein’s threat was “imminent”
Call Your Representative
This is an important piece of legislation:
If a coalition of congressmen has its way, the government’s temporary moratorium on Internet-access taxes could soon become permanent.
This week, a House of Representatives committee is expected to consider a proposal that would bar states from imposing levies on Internet service, but would not affect their ability to collect sales taxes.
The Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act, introduced by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.), would make permanent a moratorium the congressman initially introduced in 1998. The current ban is set to expire in November.
Cox urged support for the measure, backed by more than 30 other representatives, partly on the grounds that taxes would make it harder for lower-income Americans to afford Internet service.
“The average American does not need new taxes, especially on their Internet access,” he said, citing a recent Commerce Department report that found families making less than $25,000 per year represent the fastest-growing segment of the Internet population.
Email your rep. Write your rep. Call your rep. Then do the same thing for your Senators.
You Knew This Was Coming
It was only a matter of time before someone did this.
Disturbing
The Watcher forwards some disturbing news about the Congo:
The Dead Zone
French-led forces will be limited to “protecting” Bunia for 3 months, while all kinds of hell get unleashed everywhere else in the Congo. In fact, Hema militiamen defiantly operate a death camp right there in a suburb of Bunia… where people get slaughtered every night, virtually on the doorsteps of the French. The Daily Telegraph has a terrifying account of someone who barely managed to escape this death camp. This man, his father, and several others were all made to lie down in a mass grave… on top of the semi-buried corpses of previous victims. Then the militiamen stabbed each person in turn with bayonets, while taunting their victims with things like this: “Call the French, tell them to set you free.” After seeing his father, neighbor, and a close friend all murdered before him… the last person to be stabbed somehow managed to survive and escape: “…they stabbed him through his chin, throat, hands, chest and torso and he lost consciousness. But while the soldiers were away finding clothes to cover the bodies, he came to and managed to crawl into nearby bushes and then fled.”
Update: Merde in France has a link to a Miami Herald article describing what led up to the brutal murders of two UN “peacekeepers” in the Congo. Apparently, these two unarmed men had begged their UN superiors for almost a week to come rescue them. These terrified men had been receiving death threats, but the UN felt it was to risky to send a helicopter to pick them up… not wanting to concede the failure of the UN mission was probably also a factor. The UN shouldn’t have been surprised when the mutilated corpses of these two men were found: “Their decomposed corpses had been tossed into a canal and covered with dirt, according to those who saw the bodies. They were shot in the eyes. Their stomachs were split open and their hearts and livers were missing. One man’s brain was gone.” Unfortunately, the mutilation didn’t end there.
If you have anything regarding the Congo I have missed, please e-mail me and I will link it up ASAP.
BTW- Gary Farber was right. The current UN force in the Congo is a cruel joke.