Day: August 28, 2006

Legislation that would open up the murky world of government contracting to public scrutiny has been derailed by a secret parliamentary maneuver.

From the story:

“An unidentified senator placed a “secret hold” on legislation introduced by Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., that would create a searchable database of government contracts, grants, insurance, loans and financial assistance, worth $2.5 trillion last year. The database would bring transparency to federal spending and be as simple to use as conducting a Google search.”

So yeah — Nobody knows who did it….and until the “Mystery Senator” releases the hold, it will never come up for a vote.

Government of the people, for the people and by the people….my ass.

Well, hell — apparently this is the real thing.

I finally got a letter today from ERB, Inc’s NYC lawyers.

Fairly weak, though — a general admonition to not distribute the public domain material in the European Union (where it is still under copyright), and a demand that we not imply or state that an authorization or trade connection exists between us and ERB, Inc. Oh, and some fuzzy logic about the fact that since our Preview was free, that means that file sharing wasn’t illegal.

I’m sending an actual physical letter response, where I re-iterate that we’re NOT distributing ANY ERB material, public domain or otherwise, and that we are willing to add a disclaimer to the effect that there is no connection or authorization between us and ERB, Inc. We’ll see what they say.

Annoying Bullshit.

It turns out that no charges will be filed against the guy who confessed to killing JonBenet Ramsey, because his DNA isn’t a match.

I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

You mean that the mainstream media filled every waking minute with speculation and play-by-play coverage of this fuck-knuckle’s extradition, conveniently bumping stories like Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program being declared illegal and unconstitutional….and it turns out that there actually was NO FUCKING STORY AT ALL???

Well, gosh. Color me surprised.

…of course, they’ll get away with it. Again.

In related news, CNN will mark the 5th anniversary of 9/11 by replaying their original coverage of the attacks.

Excuse me….that’s not NEWS. That’s self-congratulatory journalistic masturbation….and, of course, “remember why we’re fighting the War On Terra” PROPAGANDA.

The state of this country makes me fucking sick.