Your Government Is Your Friend

Well, this is a nice way to start your weekend...with a feel-good article about the good ole' government going after The Archive.

I've linked and mentioned them before here both for their amazing Grateful Dead live music collection as well as the fascinating Way Back Machine.

Archive's mission, as you can gather, is to archive pretty much everything it can electronically, including the way web pages looked Way Back when.

Well, the FBI was curious about someone who'd registered there and sent them some kind of subpoena which forbade them to discuss it with anyone.

That's pretty nifty, eh?

Well, they got the ACLU and the EFF involved and fought back...and won. The pigs backed off...at least for now.

I heard about this story first on Buzz Out Loud, CNET's Podcast of Indeterminate Length.

Ohio Tax Dollars At Work...The Old Glory of Bipartisanship

Just a random, silly news item from the Buckeye State...

This week, a mixed bag of Ohio state legislators started the ball rolling on making it a 3d degree misdemeanor for a retailer to sell a flag that's not made in the United States.

It's almost not worth the effort for me to bitch about this one.

It's easy to go after retailers. If you find it that offensive for one to engage in the practice of flying foreign flags, then why not make it illegal to buy or fly one of these?

Further, we really need to be careful about defining exactly what a flag is. Does a picture of a flag on a newspaper constitute a "flag?" What about a piece of cloth with the colors that look like a flag, but it might be one stripe short or one star too many? Is that a flag?

It really is silly season.