The Murdoch Strawman

As the negotiations about whether to sell the Wall Street Journal's parent company appear to be moving along between Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and the Bancroft family, owners of a special class of stock which gives them control over Dow Jones.

Whenever Murdoch is going hard for a media asset, it inevitably sets off concerns among those on the left (such as the employee unions at Dow Jones) that the purchase of an outlet by News Corp. will somehow comprimise its editorial integrity since Murdoch is a very active manager in his properties. Those concerns seem to be less about editorial process and more about political considerations since Murdoch is far from the only active media mogul.

In an editorial today, the Journal pointed out that Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger is heavily involved in managing the New York Times:

[T]he Bancrofts are unique in their hands-off ownership. They are often compared as family newspaper proprietors to the Grahams at the Washington Post or the Sulzbergers at the New York Times. But members of those families run those newspapers, exerting influence over the news and opinion operations. In that sense, those newspapers are hardly "independent" of those families.

Everyone knows that the influence of Times Publisher and CEO Arthur Sulzberger Jr. extends to selecting not merely the editorial page editor but columnists, political endorsements and, as far as we can tell, even news coverage priorities. We don't see how this differs from most of what Mr. Murdoch is accused of doing with his newspapers. The same lack of independence also applies to most non-family media companies such as Gannett, a newspaper owner whose make-no-waves corporate ethic turns nearly all of its editorial pages into mush.

Of course, the fact that Pinch deliberately steers his paper in a leftward direction is what makes his corporate control a non-issue in the eyes of the left. The fact is the Bancrofts have been unique in the newspaper business in keeping a hands-off policy for media empire. It's also why I have refrained from criticizing their similarly cushy stock arrangement which gives them control of Dow Jones.

Israeli Editors Gloat Over Media's Power to Push Anti-war Message

Publicly, American media elites often deny that they attempt to influence the national agenda. They're professionals, so the story goes, and completely capable of not letting their personal viewpoints intrude accidentally into their stories. It's laughable given the mountain of evidence to the contrary and the fact that journalists support affirmative action on the grounds that white reporters can't cover minority issues as fairly.

Every so often, however, you hear journalists privately say the complete opposite--that not only do they have the ability to influence news, they also choose to influence it. Such statements are usually more common among the non-American press where the sham of "objectivity" is not perpetrated on the public.

With that in mind, I was still quite surprised to see the following statements said at a panel discussion in Israel on the influence that country's media has had on its foreign policy:

A former Israel Broadcasting Authority news editor admits: "We slanted the news towards a withdrawal from Lebanon - because we had sons there."

Speaking at the Haifa Radio Conference on Monday, several former and current news broadcasters on Voice of Israel and Army Radio discussed the tremendous influence they nearly all agreed they had on Israel's national agenda.

Dr. Chanan Naveh, who edited the Israel Broadcasting Authority radio's news desk in late 1990's and early 2000's, was particularly bombastic about his pervasive reach: "The morning audience, stuck in traffic jams or at work, is simply captive - they're ours." He also mentioned, with no regrets, two examples in which he and his colleagues made a concerted effort to change public opinion:

"Three broadcasters - Carmela Menashe, Shelly Yechimovich [now a Labor party Knesset Member - ed.], and I - pushed in every way possible the withdrawal from Lebanon towards 2000. In our newsroom, three of the editors had sons in Lebanon, and we took it upon ourselves as a mission - possibly not stated - to get the IDF out of Lebanon... I have no doubt that we promoted an agenda of withdrawal that was a matter of public dispute."

At this point, Army Radio broadcaster Golan Yochpaz interrupted, "In my opinion, that is just super-problematic - super-problematic." Naveh did not miss a beat and said, "Correct, I'm admitting it, I'm not apologizing, I'm just saying this is what happened. It came from our guts because of the boys in Lebanon, this is what we did and I'm not sorry... I am very proud that we had a part in getting of our sons out of Lebanon."

It is widely accepted that the withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000 under then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the lack of attention paid to the northern border since then led to the Second Lebanon War of last summer and its accompanying 160 military and civilian casualties.

Naveh's boast came towards the end of the panel discussion and was not widely addressed. However, just seconds later, retired Supreme Court Justice Dalia Dorner, the president of the Israel Press Council, summed up and said that the journalists must show courage and not allow outside influences to affect their ability to influence public opinion:

"You determine the daily agenda and you have the power; the problem is that in your profession, it can't be dealt with properly and ethically without civil courage... You have the power, so use it also to ensure that there is freedom of speech - of course, with the limitation that you must act ethically and not create hostile public opinion, because there is nothing that affects freedom of speech more than hostile public opinion."

'Temporary Marriage'

Iran, home of one of the most restrictive Islamic governments in the world, has an interesting viewpoint on how to solve the natural "problem" that young people want to have sex--temporary marriages lasting for only a short time.

Iran's interior minister has faced criticism from women activists after advocating the practice of temporary marriage as a way to meet the needs of young people in the Islamic state, which bans extramarital sex.

"Is it possible that Islam is indifferent to a 15-year-old youth into whom God has put lust?" newspapers quoted Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi, who is also a cleric, as telling a religious seminar this week.

Temporary marriage, or sigha, is an agreement between a man and a women to get married for a specified time, even for just a few days. It has long been practised by Shi'ite Muslims, who are dominant in Iran, even though it is unclear how common it is.

Sunni Muslims say it is illegal and akin to prostitution, but some Shi'ites scholars say it reflects the reality of human nature and provides for the rights and responsibilities of both the man and the woman.

"Although temporary marriage has always existed in our law, it is considered improper by Iranian culture," Shadi Sadr, an Iranian activist for women rights, told the ISNA news agency.

That concept may seem strange to many Americans, however, that's only because here in the U.S. because most of us have sufficiently come to more realistic viewpoints about sexuality and relationships. Not everyone is similarly enlightened, however. Friends who have gone to the Mormon-dominated Brigham Young University have told me that it's not uncommon for a young couple to go to Las Vegas and get married and then get divorced quickly, solely for the purpose of having sex.

eHarmony Sued for Excluding Gays, Bisexuals

This lawsuit should be interesting. I'm sympathetic but I doubt the plaintiffs will be able to win at the federal level as eHarmony isn't exactly a "public accommodation."

The popular online dating service eHarmony was sued on Thursday for refusing to offer its services to gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

A lawsuit alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of Linda Carlson, who was denied access to eHarmony because she is gay.

Lawyers bringing the action said they believed it was the first lawsuit of its kind against eHarmony, which has long rankled the gay community with its failure to offer a "men seeking men" or "women seeking women" option.

They were seeking to make it a class action lawsuit on behalf of gays and lesbians denied access to the dating service.

eHarmony was founded in 2000 by evangelical Christian Dr. Neil Clark Warren and had strong early ties with the influential religious conservative group Focus on the Family.

It has more than 12 million registered users, and heavy television advertising has made it one of the nation's biggest Internet dating sites.

Back in U.S.

I'm sitting in New York waiting for my return flight to D.C. I like hearing English again although I could do without all the northeastern accents.

Google Wants Your Info

Google's technological ambitions continue to grow. I have to admire their foresight even as its increasing scope makes me uneasy.

Google's ambition to maximise the personal information it holds on users is so great that the search engine envisages a day when it can tell people what jobs to take and how they might spend their days off.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said gathering more personal data was a key way for Google to expand and the company believes that is the logical extension of its stated mission to organise the world’s information.

Asked how Google might look in five years’ time, Mr Schmidt said: “We are very early in the total information we have within Google. The algorithms will get better and we will get better at personalisation.

“The goal is to enable Google users to be able to ask the question such as ‘What shall I do tomorrow?’ and ‘What job shall I take?’ ”

The race to accumulate the most comprehensive database of individual information has become the new battleground for search engines as it will allow the industry to offer far more personalised advertisements. These are the holy grail for the search industry, as such advertising would command higher rates.

Mr Schmidt told journalists in London: “We cannot even answer the most basic questions because we don’t know enough about you. That is the most important aspect of Google’s expansion.”

He said Google’s newly relaunched iGoogle service, which allows users to personalise their own Google search page and publish their own content, would be a key feature.

Bumming in the 21st Century

Bumming has really gotten a lot more sophisticated these days.

A few days before I left for Switzerland, my fiancee Yolanda and I were stopped on the corner by a couple who told us that they were in town and getting ready to open up a local P.F. Chang's franchise restaurant but were stranded since their car was towed and impounded. They had been all around downtown DC, including to local churches, asking for help but hadn't really gotten any. The churches had been uncooperative because, according to the guy (who was quite well-dressed incidentally), they have a central coordinating committee which decides who is going to receive help but unfortunately they were all closed.

Long story short (and he did make it into quite a yarn), both of them were stranded in DC with $2000 in cash in their impounded car inside his wallet which his wife wouldn't let him bring. They told us they had about $80 but that wasn't enough for a hotel and they needed just a little bit more.

That was quite a strange story, especially the part about leaving the wallet in the car, and it seemed just a little too far-fetched for us. We didn't have any money anyway but could have gotten some if we had wanted to.

I hadn't given the incident a second thought until early this morning when Yolanda emailed me to say that she had seen the couple on the street Saturday night, wearing different clothes but apparently up to the same thing.

Off to Switzerland

Conferences, like telephone calls and work requests, seem to come in bunches. The same day I'm headed off to Switzerland for a conference designed to bring together up-and-coming American and Swiss leaders, the Personal Democracy Forum is holding its annual conference. Sigh.

I think I'll take the free trip to Europe, though :-)

Is the Web All a Twitter?

Not hardly.

However, the free microblog site Twitter is worth monitoring. Microblogs, the buzzword for short messages that basically amount to a soundbite about your current activity, are something that has been around for a while. Many sites, including NewsBusters, use it as a means of putting out information that isn't worth it's own blog post. Facebook, though, probably brought microblogging mainstream.

In any event, if you're interested in social media, you should read this interview that Mark Glaser conducted with the founders of Twitter, a site devoted exclusively to microblogging. He explores many different topics including the company's different management style, whether they even have a business model, and text messaging in the U.S. Must read.

Top Five

1. After some rumors that Nicolas Sarkozy might be appointing the same type of people that got France into its current mess, some encouraging news: the new president has appointed a "socialist mugged by reality" to be his foreign minister.
   
   
2. Democrats in the Senate failed to pass another Iraq war cutoff bill with many of their own party voting against it, further signaling what I said earlier that withdrawing from Iraq. If Republicans stick to their principles, they have the upper hand on this issue.
   
   
3. Roommates.com was found guilty of violating the Fair Housing Act by providing means for users to manually choose to exclude potential roommates depending upon categories such as race, sex, and sexual orientation. This was a Ninth Circuit ruling, however. Nathan Goldman thinks the ruling has big implications. Eugene Volokh does not. Expect appeal in any case.
   
   
4. Google is in the news today, successfully defending itself against a lawsuit filed by porn publisher Perfect 10 over the use of small thumbnails used on Google's Image Search function. The case is a victory for fair use and should be hailed. Here's hoping that SCOTUS upholds it.
   
   
5. The Senate has worked out an amnesty bill for illegal immigrants. I wonder to what degree the conservative movement will accept it?
   

Top Five

1. Richard Perle attacks Bush admin for losing its way on Iraq:
   
   "'The president's failure to get his own way stems from his general inexperience in foreign affairs and his ignorance of the way Washington works, Mr. Perle suggested. 'He came ill-equipped for the job and has failed to master it,' he said. 'I do not meet the president, but from the people I meet who are close to him and from his speeches, I believe the gap between the president and his administration is without precedent.'"
   
   
2. Writing in the WSJ, Bernard Lewis argues the West has failed to realize the Islamists view of us is quite sophisticated:
   
   "We in the Western world see the defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union as a Western, more specifically an American, victory in the Cold War. For Osama bin Laden and his followers, it was a Muslim victory in a jihad, and, given the circumstances, this perception does not lack plausibility. From the writings and the speeches of Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, it is clear that they expected this second task, dealing with America, would be comparatively simple and easy. This perception was certainly encouraged and so it seemed, confirmed by the American response to a whole series of attacks."
   
   
3. With Justice John Roberts on the supreme court, the dynamic has changed:
   
   "This is a Supreme Court engaged in a fierce battle of ideas, a big-picture struggle over the role of the Court and the direction it’s going to take. When you talk about long-range influence over the law, it’s the ideas that define the Court. It’s a Court in struggle—not for the vote of one justice, but for an intellectual mooring. It's the Roberts Court v. the Stevens Court." (Via Patterico)
   
   
4. After signing a patent indemnification pact with Linux vendor Novell, many in the open source world expressed concern that Microsoft might be mounting an intellectual property claim against various Linux vendors. Those fears have begun to pan out after Fortune magazine printed claims from Microsoft that various high-profile open-source projects violate 235 of its software patents. Things have developed further as Microsoft said publicly it would not litigate on these alleged violations. That wasn't enough of an assurance for Linux creator Linus Torvalds who accused MS to put up or shut up as to which of the company's patents his software is violating. The whole situation is a further example of why software patents are a bad idea.
   
   
5. Democrats tried briefly to alter House rules and seriously limit minority Republicans' ability to debate and to submit amendments to bills. This attempt was thwarted, however. (Via Rob Bluey)
   

   
   

Global Warming Comes to Neptune

Watching the global warming alarmists it's amazing to see how much they completely discount the sun's role in determining the earth's temperature. It's something that can be readily observed simply by stepping outside during the day and at night. Yet, we almost never hear the sun mentioned by Al Gore and friends.

This is despite the fact that astronomy continues to prove that the sun has an influence on its planets temperatures and is likely to be responsible for observable warming of the earth. First came the news that Mars is getting warmer, now comes the news that Neptune is also experiencing global warming:

Neptune is the planet farthest from the Sun (Pluto is now considered only a dwarf planet), Neptune is the planet farthest from the Earth, and to our knowledge, there has been absolutely no industrialization out at Neptune in recent centuries. There has been no recent build-up of greenhouse gases there, no deforestation, no rapid urbanization, no increase in contrails from jet airplanes, and no increase in ozone in the low atmosphere; recent changes at Neptune could never be blamed on any human influence. Incredibly, an article has appeared in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters showing a stunning relationship between the solar output, Neptune’s brightness, and heaven forbid, the temperature of the Earth. [...]

In the recent article, Hammel and Lockwood, from the Space Science Institute in Colorado and the Lowell Observatory, note that measurements of visible light from Neptune have been taken at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona since 1950. Obviously, light from Neptune can be related to seasons on the planet, small variations in Neptune’s orbit, the apparent tilt of the axis as viewed from the Earth, the varying distance from Neptune to Earth, and of course, changes in the atmosphere near the Lowell Observatory. Astronomers are clever, they are fully aware of these complications, and they adjust the measurements accordingly. [...]

Neptune has been getting brighter since around 1980; furthermore, infrared measurements of the planet since 1980 show that the planet has been warming steadily from 1980 to 2004. As they say on Neptune, global warming has become an inconvenient truth. But with no one to blame, Hammel and Lockwood explored how variations in the output of the Sun might control variations in the brightness of Neptune. [...]

Hammel and Lockwood conclude that “In summary, if Neptune’s atmosphere is indeed responding to some variation in solar activity in a manner similar to that of the Earth albeit with a temporal lag” then “Neptune may provide an independent (and extraterrestrial) locale for studies of solar effects on planetary atmospheres.”

MSNBC Anchor Cites Anti-Jerry Falwell Parody Web Page as News Source

Ah, live television--where chipper interns can embarrass even the most self-important anchor types.

Earlier today, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer cited the anti-Bush parody web site Whitehouse.org as if it were the official web site of the president. Later in the show, she corrected her mistake, but tried to make it seem she mentioned the phony site on purpose.

It was a really bad error, too, since, as Allahpundit points out, Whitehouse.org is quite over-the-top in its "tribute" to Falwell, having the fictional reverend speak warmly of his "foot-high stack of mostly gay hardcore pornography" on the same page that Brewer quoted from.

Hat tip: TVNewser

Looney Anti-Gay Preacher to Protest Falwell's Funeral

Fred Phelps, the psychopathic cult leader who heads up a church in Topeka, Kansas has announced that he will be continuing his morbid tradition of protesting funerals by turning up at the service for the late Jerry Falwell. Phelps posted the announcement on his site GodHatesAmerica.com along with an exclamation "Falwell is in Hell, Praise God!!"

WBC [Westboro Baptist Church] will preach at the memorial service of the corpulent false prophet Jerry Falwell, who spent his entire life prophesying lies and false doctrines like "God loves everyone".

There is little doubt that Falwell split Hell wide open the instant he died. The evidence is compelling, overwhelming, and irrefragable. To wit:

1. Falwell was a true Calvinistic Baptist when he was a young preacher in Springfield, Missouri, and sold his soul to Free-Willism (Arminianism) for lucre.

2. Falwell bitterly and viciously attacked WBC because of WBC's faithful Bible preaching -- thereby committing the unpardonable sin -- otherwise known as the sin against the Holy Ghost.

3. Falwell warmly praised Christ-rejecting Jews, pedophile-condoning Catholics, money-grubbing compromisers, practicing fags like Mel White, and backsliders like Billy Graham and Robert Schuler, etc. All for lucre -- making him guilty of their sins.

Direct TV May Try Internet Through Power Lines

Satellite television provider DirecTV Group Inc. may test delivering high-speed Internet service through power lines in a major U.S. city in the next year, its chief executive said on Monday.

DirecTV and others are talking to companies that specialize in providing broadband through the electrical grid, Chief Executive Chase Carey said at the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in New York.

"We're not the only ones talking to them," Carey said, in response to a question on whether DirecTV would consider a test in a major city. "I think you'll see some meaningful tests in this arena."

DirecTV would like to test delivering Internet access on power lines in a "top 50 city where you're covering at least half the city."

While DirecTV and fellow satellite TV operator EchoStar Communications Corp. have managed to keep increasing their subscriber base in the face of stiff competition from cable operators, Wall Street analysts have long questioned what broadband strategy the satellite operators will employ to counter competitive pressures.

Certainly they should be doing something since fast satellite internet requires an FCC permit. This fact has crippled satellite's growth as a technology platform. Up until now, satellite firms have tried to steer customers to local telcos which is a losing proposition.

Nudist Clubs Face Greying, Sagging Demographics

Here's the naked truth about nude recreation: The people who practice it aren't getting any younger.

To draw 20- and 30-somethings, nudist groups and camps are trying everything from deep discounts on membership fees to a young ambassador program that encourages college and graduate students to talk to their peers about having fun in the buff.

"We don't want the place to turn into a gated assisted living facility," said Gordon Adams, membership director at Solair Recreation League, a nudist camp in northeastern Connecticut that recently invited students from dozens of New England schools to a college day in hopes of piquing their interest.

The median age is 55 at Solair, where a yearly membership is $500 for people older than 40, $300 for people younger than 40 and $150 for college students.

The Kissimee, Fla.-based American Association for Nude Recreation, which represents about 270 clubs and resorts in North America, estimates that more than 90 percent of its 50,000 members are older than 35.

"If a young person is enlightened enough to go to a beach or resort, they'll find that they're outnumbered by people who are not like them," said Sam Miller, 32, a medical student in Riverside, Calif., who is helping to plan a youth ambassadors workshop being held next month in Orlando, Fla. "Oftentimes they won't go back for that reason."

No one is quite sure why nudity, at least the organized version promoted by the AANR and similar groups, is such a tough sell for younger people.

"I think people think that we're all hippies," said Laura Groezinger, 22, of Billerica, Mass., who grew up visiting Solair with her family. "Other people, I don't know the right way to say this, but they think it's more sexual, kind of. They don't understand just the being free with your body and being comfortable."

Money is also an issue. As nudist resorts become increasingly upscale, catering to baby boomers and retirees with plenty of disposable income, they're less affordable for college students and young families.

Hat tip: Ken Shepherd

Paper, Scissors, Rock Tournament

Too funny:

Ever since he was crowned regional champion, Matt Corron has been stopped on sidewalks and in bars by folks who want a crack at beating him. Last week, a stranger had to pay for Corron's breakfast after challenging him -- and losing -- at the Boulevard Diner in Worcester.

Corron rarely loses at Rock, Paper, Scissors, and for his talent he's on his way to Las Vegas this weekend for a shot at $50,000 and a national title.

Wait -- there's a national title for that? And money? For that innocuous childhood game and conflict resolution method most often used to decide who gets the last Creamsicle?

Believe it. The two-day 2007 USA Rock Paper Scissors Tournament Finals will bring together more than 300 regional finalists from across the nation, including about two dozen from New England. Each won a free contest at a neighborhood bar or restaurant, then triumphed again at a competition among several bars in their area to earn a berth for the ultimate prize.

"I take it very seriously," said Corron, 23, a history-political science major at Worcester State College. "If I win, that's a nice little paycheck."

The two-year-old USARPS League was founded by co-commissioner Matti Leshem, a 44-year-old Hollywood producer who never plays a round for less than $100 a shoot.

A lifelong devotee who discovered that there was a professional Canadian league, Leshem decided to start one here. He's written a set of rules, trained referees, and has unsuccessfully petitioned the International Olympic Committee to make it one of their events. At this weekend's event at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, a paramedic will be on standby because wrist and shoulder injuries often occur, Leshem said. ESPN is expected to air footage of the competition this summer.

All this silliness has a payout, however.

Leshem's league is blossoming largely because of its main sponsor, Bud Light, which is the engine behind the national tournament. The beer's parent company, Anheuser-Busch, last year hit upon the league as it sought unusual new marketing opportunities. Beer distributors organized the tournaments that produced the regional finalists, and Anheuser-Busch puts up the prize money and picks up the tab for each finalist and a guest to fly to Las Vegas and stay for three days.

This is the second year for the national tournament. In addition to the $50,000 first prize, the runner-up gets $5,000. Plus, two finalists will be chosen at random for a 500-shoot contest for a free car. All told, the promotion is costing the company at least $400,000.

"We asked ourselves, 'What do we want to do to get the attention of young contemporary adults?' and we came up with this," said Rick Leininger, Bud Light brand director. "Some people get really serious about it but they have a lot of fun at it, too. Some people dress up in costumes as scissors and rocks. A lot of people bring strategy."

Hat tip: Ace.

Tech Use: A Nation Divided

This is hardly surprising: Most Americans don't have much use for the modern gadgetry most bloggers and blog readers consider essential:

A broad survey about the technology people have, how they use it, and what they think about it shatters assumptions and reveals where companies might be able to expand their audiences.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project found that adult Americans are broadly divided into three groups: 31 percent are elite technology users, 20 percent are moderate users and the remainder have little or no usage of the Internet or cell phones.

But Americans are divided within each group, according to a Pew analysis of 2006 data released Sunday.

The high-tech elites, for instance, are almost evenly split into:

— "Omnivores," who fully embrace technology and express themselves creatively through blogs and personal Web pages.

— "Connectors," who see the Internet and cell phones as communications tools.

— "Productivity enhancers," who consider technology as largely ways to better keep up with their jobs and daily lives.

— "Lackluster veterans," those who use technology frequently but aren't thrilled by it.

John Horrigan, Pew's associate director, said he started the survey believing that the more gadgets people have, the more they are likely to embrace technology and use so-called Web 2.0 applications for generating and sharing content with the world.

"Once we got done, we were surprised to find the tensions within groups of users with information technology," Horrigan said.

Many longtime Internet users, the lackluster veterans, remain stuck in the decade-old technologies they started with, Horrigan said. That a quarter of high-tech elites fall into this category, he said, shows untapped potential for companies that can design next-generation applications to pique this group's interest.

The moderate users were also evenly divided into "mobile centrics," those who primarily use the cell phone for voice, text messaging and even games, and "connected but hassled," those who have used technology but find it burdensome.

Mobile companies, he said, can target the mobile centrics with premium services, especially once faster wireless networks become available.

The Pew study found 15 percent of all Americans have neither a cell phone nor an Internet connection. Another 15 percent use some technology and are satisfied with what it currently does for them, while 11 percent use it intermittently and find connectivity annoying.

Eight percent — mostly women in the early 50s — occasionally use technology and might use more given more experience. They tend to still be on dial-up access and represent potential high-speed customers "with the right constellation of services offered," Horrigan said.

The telephone study of 4,001 U.S. adults, including 2,822 Internet users, was conducted Feb. 15 to April 6, 2006, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Democrats' Momentum Slows

After Republican missteps lead to their loss of Congress, Democrats seemed to think that they controlled the national agenda. But like Republicans in 1995, Pelosi et al. are finding that (contra Time) the bully pulpit is actually that:

The "Six for '06" policy agenda on which Democrats campaigned last year was supposed to consist of low-hanging fruit, plucked and put in the basket to allow Congress to move on to tougher targets. House Democrats took just 10 days to pass a minimum-wage increase, a bill to implement most of the homeland security recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, a measure allowing federal funding for stem cell research, another to cut student-loan rates, a bill allowing the federal government to negotiate drug prices under Medicare, and a rollback of tax breaks for oil and gas companies to finance alternative-energy research.

The Senate struck out on its own, with a broad overhaul of the rules on lobbying Congress.

Not one of those bills has been signed into law. President Bush signed 16 measures into law through April, six more than were signed by this time in the previous Congress. But beyond a huge domestic spending bill that wrapped up work left undone by Republicans last year, the list of achievements is modest: a beefed-up board to oversee congressional pages in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal, and the renaming of six post offices, including one for Gerald R. Ford in Vail, Colo., as well as two courthouses, including one for Rush Limbaugh Sr. in Cape Girardeau, Mo.

The minimum-wage bill got stalled in a fight with the Senate over tax breaks to go along with the wage increase. In frustration, Democratic leaders inserted a minimum-wage agreement into a bill to fund the Iraq war, only to see it vetoed. [...]

The House's relatively simple energy bill faces a similar fate. The Senate has in mind a much larger bill that would ease bringing alternative fuels to market, regulate oil and gas futures trading, raise vehicle and appliance efficiency standards, and reform federal royalty payments to finance new energy technologies.

The voters seem to have noticed the stall. An ABC News-Washington Post poll last month found that 73 percent of Americans believe Congress has done "not too much" or "nothing at all." A memo from the Democratic polling firm Democracy Corps warned last month that the stalemate between Congress and Bush over the war spending bill has knocked down the favorable ratings of Congress and the Democrats by three percentage points and has taken a greater toll on the public's hope for a productive Congress.

From a caucus standpoint, being in the minority is easier. Governing is the difficult task, something that many in the grassroots right forgot in their frustration with a "wasteful" Congress.

The Coming VoIP Battle

The article is rather old but worth noting. I imagine this technology will become perfected as a means of stopping Skype users from using their phones to make free calls. No one may complain if and when Verizon, AT&T, and the rest come out with their own VoIP services.

Mobile phone operators around the world are investing in equipment to counter what they see as a growing threat to their voice revenues from voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.

The moves add impetus to a petition that leading VoIP player Skype lodged with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last month demanding that mobile phone network operators allow their customers access to VoIP services via their mobile phones.

The gear in question is Deep Packet Investigation (DPI) equipment, which analyzes and identifies data packets as they flow across a carrier’s network.

Initial investigations using DPI have startled carriers. One major European operator recently found that Skype usage over its network was far higher than its worst fears, according to DPI equipment supplier Allot Communications of Israel.

“Revenue loss was staggering,” according to Antoine Guy, Allot’s marketing director.

Some carriers are blocking access to web sites from which Skype software can be downloaded as a result of what they have learned from DPI technologies.

For example, Volubill said its technology can analyze traffic patterns and identify the traffic as Skype with a high degree of accuracy and subsequently block it. But Skype may then be able to dynamically reroute around the technology by using other ports, for example, which then need to be identified in the same way, said David Knox, product marketing director at Volubill.

But that does not mean that carriers are not trying to do just that. South African carrier MTN and Vodafone’s German subsidiary have both informed customers that Skype usage could lead to cancellation of their services.