Can dead birds still sing a short sweet song?

Some few weeks ago a friend asked me what I thought about the February 20 suicide of gonzo journalist Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. I replied:

I tried to read Hunter Thompson's stuff but it was just so far off the wall for me I couldn't get into it. It was a fun diversion but no long lasting relationship there. Hemingway is an equine of a variegated spectrum however. He started out as a journalist. Unfortunately both were cliches and died as such. And I'm sorry for them.

I am sorry for these two writers. They were artists who painted pictures in the mind's eye with words and the world is the greater for their having lived and the lesser with them gone. Their writing should be admired and celebrated not their weaknesses.

As Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe opines:

Could anything be more ghoulish and egotistical than making your unsuspecting wife listen while you put a bullet through your skull? Absolutely: Making your unsuspecting wife listen while you put a bullet through your skull - with your son, daughter-in-law and grandson just a few yards away. Juan Thompson was in a nearby office when his father blew his brains out in the kitchen. Winkel Thompson and 6-year-old Will were playing in the living room next door. It takes a real sadist to arrange his suicide so that his loved ones hear him die. But what kind of degenerate inflicts something so traumatic on a child of 6?

In Thompson's defense, it must be said that he was a hardened alcohol and drug abuser who over the decades had ingested, inhaled and imbibed a staggering quantity and assortment of recreational poisons. The cumulative damage to his brain must have been considerable. By the time he fired his .45, who knows how clearly he could think about anything? But there is no excuse for the treatment of Thompson's suicide as some sort of ultimate gonzo coup by a rebel who never played by society's rules.

Was it because that Thompson continued to wear the lampshade on his head even though the party had been over? Was he the funny drunk who became obnoxious and abusive as morning grew nigh, and he suddenly came to that realization? I suspect it's because he kept going so close to the abyss that he became part of the abyss and didn't have the weapons needed to resist.

I keep meeting writers, artists and musicians who believe self-destructive behavior is the key to their art, somehow convinced of it by the legacies of the Hemingways and Thompsons and Joplins and Hendrix' and Parkers and the Presleys -- or at least the legacies as depicted by the hucksters, vultures, pretenders and poltroons who survive on the carrion.

People have asked me throughout my life, how is it that writers can write? They have ideas in their heads and they want to put the idea on paper, or internet ether as the case may be. My answer is invariably the same. Writers write because they have to. Artists paint because they have to. Musicians compose and play because they have to. How they write, paint or compose is by exposing their souls for the world to see, and that's something that takes courage. It's confessional in nature: "Bless me readers for I have contemplated. My last missive was several days ago. These are my thoughts."*

You have to be willing to have strangers and friends alike be critical of your weaknesses, from the spelling and grammatical errors to the actual thoughts. Some people find the courage to expose these vulnerabilities within themselves -- heart, history, humor, family, beliefs -- and others seek it elsewhere and end up as dead cliches or insane. You have to be able to take the full force of the universe on your chin and trod on.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of jazz saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker, a musician who changed music forever and who died at 34 in a body so abused by alcohol and heroin the attending physician believed Parker to be 60. Emulate his music or his art if you wish just don't emulate his tragic life. He could have accomplished so much more had he lived. And it's all just such a waste.

*[I should probably clarify my use of "Bless me readers for I have contemplated. My last missive was several days ago. These are my thoughts." for folk who weren't raised Catholic. Most people know, I assume, that Catholics have a sacrament called "Confession" where they confess their sins to a priest (who is referred to by the title "Father" instead of Rabbi or Imam), ask forgiveness and are given a penance to perform, usually in the form of prayers to say. Or at least that's the way it was when I was a youngster and a practicing Catholic. Before Catholics confess their sins to the priest, they begin the religious ritual with the words: "Bless me Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was X days/weeks/months/years ago. These are my sins."]

Apple squeezes bloggers

Who said apples don't bite back?

In another setback for free speech as the 6th estate, online journalism, struggles for recognition, a judge in the Apple v. 1st Amendment and free speech rights of all journalists suit ruled today that an internet service provider can be forced to give up documents that reveal the identities of a journalist's confidential sources if the information given to the journalist could be a trade secret.

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg has ordered defendant bloggers Monish Bhatia, Jason O'Grady and Kasper Jade to disclose the names of confidential sources but they have thus far refused. If the bloggers continue to refuse to disclose their confidential sources they could be held in contempt of court and jailed.

At the core of the suit, the bloggers, who write for ether pubs AppleInsider and O'Grady's PowerPage, received tips on unannounced Apple products and published the information before Apple could arrange its own dog and pony show on the new products. Apple was unhappy about this. It wanted to control the announcement. Instead of pouting like any normal corporation with its nose out of joint, Apple gathered its high-priced lawyers, opened its deep pockets and sued the small publications and their bloggers seeking the best justice money could buy.

Apple alleges the information was a trade secret, was furnished by persons inside the company who had signed a non-disclosure agreement, and claimed therefore the bloggers helped the sources break their NDAs and, in doing so, the law. The defendants, who are represented by non-profit digital rights group Electronic Freedom Foundation, argued that the information was freely available from a number of sources, was not a trade secret and did not harm Apple.

Moreover, the defendants argued, bloggers are journalists protected under California's shield law and the free press provisions of the First Amendment to the U. S. Constitution and any judicial move to force them to disclose their sources would have a chilling effect on journalists who seek to report news in the public interest. The bloggers also say Apple is using its monetary and legal muscle to beat them up in the courts and would not have filed a suit against larger, more well-funded publications.

According to the EFF, the court did not restrict its ruling to online journalists, instead deciding that all journalists could be required to reveal confidential sources when a claim of trade secret is raised.

The EFF said it will appeal the decision. One course of appeal might be if any of the bloggers owned shares in Apple. As such, if they receive previously unpublished information that could have an impact on the price of Apple stock, they would have a duty to disclose that information to the public before trading in the shares. This law is contained in 17 C.F.R. 204.10b-5

A separate suit has been filed by Apple against blog Think Secret seeking the same information. There has been no ruling in that case yet.

Briefs

I have posted an update to my commentary "A milestone for the 6th Estate," some late breaking news that is a bit disheartening and doesn't bode well for the future of blogging.

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Daffynition of the Day:

"BAH-KOH-DOH"

1. Bastardized, romanized Japanese for the word "barcode."
2. A really bad comb-over, as in "Look at that bald fellow, he has a bah-koh-doh!"

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Blog of the Day:

Marquette Warrior

I picked this blog as Blog of the Day just because I like the writing and the conservative viewpoint. And the fact that it's a campus publication that is managing to engage the liberal adminstration is just an added plus.

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Porn spam Easter egg of the day:

A daddy was listening to his child say his prayer "Dear Harold, ..." At this, dad interrupted and said, "Wait a minute, How come you called God, 'Harold?'" The little boy looked up and said, "That's what they call Him in church. You know the prayer we say, 'Our Father, who art in Heaven, Harold be Thy name.'"

The perks of professional journalism

Since I've started writing this blog, I'm beginning to feel like I'm back in journalism. I'm having fun with it (obviously), and it's a good outlet for my vents and thoughts. So I thought I'd see about renewing my lapsed membership in a professional organization called Society of Professional Journalists.

And I see there now are perks to being a journalist I hadn't realized, the perk, for instance, for someone shacking up with a journalist or a journalism educator.

I was perusing the information on the SPJ dues page to determine how much it would cost to renew my lapsed professional membership: $72. However, if I were to join and someone or another were to shack up with me, their dues would be half that:

Household
You share living quarters with an existing SPJ professional member. $36 for 1 year.

Alas, there is no discount if you're shacking up with a retired member. It has to be a working member. Or an educator. You get the discount if you shack up with a journalism teacher. Who's paid their dues, of course.

I let my membership lapse in 1988 as my protest when the organization executives changed the name of the organization from "Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi" or "SPJ/SDX" on second reference, to "Society of Professional Journalists" or just "SPJ" on second reference.

The organization was founded in 1909 as Sigma Delta Chi, an honorary journalism fraternity at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. "Fraternity" means brotherhood, meaning it was a male bastion until 1969 when its first female members were admitted. Its purpose is to foster ethics, professionalism and scholarship in the field of journalism, and members voluntarily agree to follow a Code of Ethics. Now it's not like there's any punishment if you break the code, e.g. you present a story on the President of the country using forged documents or your faculty adviser rewrites student entries to win a national journalism contest. It's a voluntary thing.

There was history in the name Sigma Delta Chi. When I finally received my bachelor's degree in 1981 I was so proud of my affiliation with the organization I had the greek letters inscribed on the stone of my college ring. I had rebuffed the elitism of social fraternities but embraced the academic and professional organizations, including Sigma Delta Chi and Phi Beta Kappa.

(Just to set the record straight I was a member of Sigma Delta Chi; I was not a member of Phi Beta Kappa. You may think so from the wit and wisdom contained in these posts but it's just not the case. And if my insightful commentary led you to think that, I humbly apologize.)

But 79 years later someone decided that an organization with a "fraternity" history, though honorary, was too chauvinistic and with one stroke of the pen eliminated Sigma Delta Chi from the name entirely.

It was a death of a thousand cuts. The organization that began as "Sigma Delta Chi," over the years became "Society of Professional Journalists, Sigma Delta Chi" in 1973 and then finally "Society of Professional Journalists" in 1988. I like tradition. And the name was doing no harm to anyone. It was more than a political correctness infestation over time; it was as if someone had taken Roundup to the ivy on the walls of the organization. So I let my membership lapse.

If I don't join this time, it'll be because of the $72, which is kind of a whomping big figure, not the petty political correctness. But I'll remember nonetheless what organizational executives can be capable of given a little power.

I'm just glad the leaders of that honorary academic fraternity haven't changed the name of Phi Beta Kappa to "Society of Really Smart People." But then again, it's a society of really smart people.

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Check out eWEEK.com's update on Apple's efforts to beat up blog Think Secret. Kudos to Dan Gillmor for helping out Think Secret, bloggers and the growth of the 6th Estate.

An act of "Intelligent Design"

There's an old joke that I receive in my e-mail inbox every so often that notes: "They'll never take God out of the classroom or stop the children from praying as long as there are tests."

Some folk believe that the separation of church and state means taking God out of all legal documents. But I know they will find strong argument every time they try, not only from the evangelicals but also from the insurance companies.

The parachute in every insurance document I've ever read is the "Act of God" clause. This clause, as I assume most know, shields the insurance company from liability if the damage is due to an occurrence of nature, like a tsunami, or any other "Act of God." Of course, one can always buy policy riders that cover certain "Acts of God" but that, as you might expect, is extra.

Recently, as I have posted, some scientists have been arguing that perhaps intelligent design, or some kind of unspecified superior intellect, and not evolution is responsible for the complexity of life forms. This is good to see that some in the scientific community are open to the possibility that a supreme being pushed over the first domino. I have a hard time believing the "big bang" theory -- at least a "big bang" theory that doesn't take into account that something had to light the creational firecracker that produced the resultant "big bang."

Scientists don't like to take anything on faith. They are the professional "Doubting Thomases," which I think is good for humanity. Playing the devil's advocate and taking an opposing position forces proponents to prove their case. If the proponents succeed in proving their position, the body of knowledge is enhanced and progress is made; e.g. Columbus' disagreement with the concept of the "flat earth." If it were not for those who believed the earth was flat, Columbus might never have set sail in the belief they were wrong.

I don't think God would necessarily care whether we believed in Him or not. If He wanted us all to believe in His existence, we would've been born with that pre-existing knowledge. As such, we're given a clean slate when we are born to determine our own beliefs and change them as we see fit. And, to me, that's an act of "Intelligent Design."

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UPDATE -- Charles Townes, an 89 year old physicist and Nobel laureate, has been awarded the Templeton Prize. Townes, the co-inventor of the laser and maser, received the prize for his advancement of spirtual knowledge. The physicist shocked the scientific community in the mid-1960s by suggesting that science and religion are converging, suggesting that the two disciplines should accept shared common ground.

Speaking of deja vu ...

Companies that have employees who blow the whistle on unethical, immoral and/or illegal behavior often label those employees as "disgruntled." If you're a "go along, get along" kind of person who turns a blind eye to the unethical, immoral and/or illegal behavior, you usually get rewarded with the "team player" label. "He's a team player!" is analogous to "He's a Goodfella!"

One of the Central Intelligence Agency's more infamous critics and "disgruntled employees" is Ralph McGehee, a 25-year-veteran of the spook shop's Directorate of Operations, its clandestine services branch. His book, "Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years in the CIA," didn't earn him many friends in the upper echelons at Langley.

My opinion is that one can't spend 25 years in the CIA without being a "team player" for at least 24 of those years unless, of course, your name is Aldrich Ames, at which point you're still a team player but for a different team. Twenty-five years gets one a federal retirement check and a few benefits I would imagine.

I've had online discussions with the outspoken and vociferous but patriotic Mr. McGehee in the past and disagree with him on many levels, but some folk -- particularly those in the Clinton administration -- should have listened to him in 1997 when he tried to warn of the terrorism threat from Islamist extremists and holy warriors from Afghanistan who had a bone to pick with the U.S. I don't know where Mr. McGehee is now. He's been off the usenet for awhile. I'm going to re-publish his entire usenet post from Sept. 30, 1997 in alt.politics.org.cia here as I believe it deserves more than just a link. The CIA may not like Mr. McGehee, they may not even like how he looks or even the way he says it, but -- for the sake of the country -- it should have listened to what he had to say back then:

Rubber Stamp Intelligence

The CIA's discussion of its new direction "CIA Turns to Boutique Operations, Covert Action Against Terrorism," [Washington Post 9/14/97], confirms my fears for the future of the Agency. DCI George Tenet in describing these "new" types of operations, signaled that covert action remains a primary activity, but with a different twist. Instead of paramilitary, overthrow and a variety of other covert actions, it now aims it major efforts at disrupting terrorist plans -- stopping narcotics shipments or fouling up financial transactions of missile makers with its Boutique Operations -- essentially economic warfare.

Tenet, a strong supporter of the Directorate of Operations (DO), also said the CIA will continue to use the same basic tools that it accessed throughout the Cold War: an array of spy satellites for imagery and eavesdropping intelligence, and a team of operations specialists who run actions directed against foreign governments.

Nowhere in the barrage of press releases during it 50th birthday bash, did Tenet or others discuss or plan for building an analytical capability to support its Boutique operations. The only acknowledgment that Tenet plans to address this deficiency was his statement that he will send some people for language training. All the focus, yet again, and forever, remains on covert operations.

To conduct sophisticated operations against the variety of targets presented by terrorism, narcotics, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and counterintelligence, you need the highest degree of analytical talent. You also need the best in file systems and record keeping -- another area of incalculable Agency deficiency. The current State Department publication on terrorism, notes that there are many small, loosely or non-connected terrorist groups and that these present a major problem today. How does the CIA plan to identify and act against these groups if they are unaware of them and their plans?

The multi-nation anti-terrorist organizations liaize, to greater or lesser degrees, among themselves. But many services have rudimentary file and record systems. At the rural, local levels, exist many uncollated details and identities that never reach the West. To find this information, the CIA or other services, must send trained analysts to these areas to conduct file searches and analysis.

Virtually nowhere in the 50th birthday announcements did Tenet discuss plans to improve its near complete inability at Intelligence -- supposedly its reason for existence.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence decried the inability of CIA analysts and directed it correct this problem. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said the "Intelligence Community has very limited analytical capabilities to meet the myriad challenges, especially strategic and predictive; and, lacks the analytical depth, breath, and expertise to monitor political, military, and economic developments." The IC must improve training and [personnel selection] and "is awash in unexploited open source information"!

Even a CIA study details the intelligence community's lack of analytical ability, "...it is time to stop pretending that the current structure can work....we will need to refocus on the analytic process and establish a structure that actually facilitates analysis rather than impedes it...."

Why does DCI Tenet and the CIA ignore these major challenges? Another CIA study says, "....if the intelligence service is dominated by a group of powerful decision makers, it will become a prisoner of these decision makers....the intelligence service will be no more than a rubber stamp of these preconceptions....nowhere is there a stronger `commitment to a policy or outlook' than by a service that is actively supporting a political faction, movement, or government with funds, advice, equipment, paramilitary resources and propaganda."

There it is -- the CIA is controlled by the Directorate of Operations. Its intelligence is a "rubber stamp" for its operations. Tenet is young, has no independent source of support, has no real intelligence experience, and is a firm believer in the Operations Directorate. Even if he wanted to reform the CIA, he would be powerless to do so.

We do not have an intelligence service and we will not have one for the foreseeable future. We also do not have an effective counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, counter-proliferation, and counter-intelligence organization and will not have one for the foreseeable future.

Ralph McGehee
CIABASE

Addenda:

Counter-terrorism -- A good Place to start.

Western policymakers who follow up results of the July 30 Group of Sevenanti-terrorism conference in Paris would do well to initiate a global, coordinated effort to identify and locate many thousands of veterans of the U.S.-backed, 1979-1989 Muslim holy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

At the end of 1979, shortly after the Soviet army rolled into the Muslim state of Afghanistan, President Carter and decided on a working alliance with political Islam.

Secret directives, later amplified and expanded by the Reagan and Bush administrations and a U.S. Congress, covered the recruiting, training and arming of one of the largest mercenary armies in American military history.

The bulk of the recruits, including many Arab-Americans and some Muslim Afro-Americans, were devout if not fanatical Muslims.

Anti-terrorist planners will want to check out the list of Afghan war alumni now involved in guerrilla warfare and terrorism in the Philippines, Egypt, Algeria, Israeli-occupied territory, Yemen, war-shattered Afghanistan's own tribal conflicts and elsewhere.

The Afghan war veterans and younger men trained by them are now deployed in the Arabian Peninsula, Muslim regions of China (mainly Xinjiang, which also supplied recruits for the anti-Soviet war), Kashmir and even India's Punjab region, as well as the United States.

There are an estimated 5,000 trained Saudis, 3,000 Yemenis, 2,800 Algerians, 2,000 Egyptians and perhaps 2,000 Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Iranians and others.

[International Herald Tribune, 30 June 1996]

A milestone for the 6th Estate

The 6th Estate congratulates Garrett M. Graff, the young editor of FishbowlDC, a blog covering the news media in Washington, D.C.

On March 4, Graff became the first blogger to be credentialed for the White House. He joined the daily press briefing in the West Wing on March 7, which he described in his blog as "surreal" but "anti-climatic."

Other newspapers covering the White House publish blogs but Graff is the first person to be credentialed to write about the White House specifically for a blog. In other words, there's no print version of it unless you print it up from the web site. FishbowlDC is not owned by a traditional media company but by Mediabistro, a Washington, D.C. based-company providing employment and career services to journalists, editors, writers, photographers and artists.

Graff, 23, who previously was an editor of The Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper for Harvard University, is the son of Chris Graff, a 20 plus year veteran of the Associated Press currently working as its Vermont correspondent, and grandson of a former drama critic for the old New York Herald Tribune.

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3/11/2005 --UPDATE -- From the "Say it ain't so for the future of blogging!" department by way of the conservative oriented Cybercast News Service and senior staff writer Jeff Johnson comes information that Garrett M. Graff, editor of FishbowlDC, is a former deputy national press secretary for Howard Dean's 2004 failed presidential campaign. Dean is a former governor of Vermont. Graff's father is the AP's correspondent for Vermont. Unfortunately, Graff's biography page on FishbowlDC confirms the information and adds that Garrett M. Graff was also then-Governor Dean's first webmaster. Only way I could see this as worse for the future of blogging would be if he had a relative who reported on Halliburton, got a job on Vice President Dick Cheney's campaign and then a seat in the daily West Wing press gaggle -- and the liberal press got hold of that information. There may be no impropriety but there doesn't have to be these days under the rules already set up years ago by the Clintonistas. Oh crap, does that mean I now have to change the headline of this post to "A millstone for the 6th Estate?"

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The Associated Press is a non-profit organization, a sort of "club" for media. The AP calls itself a "press co-operative" because the articles and stories distributed by it are not only produced by its own writers, editors, photographers, etc., but also are originated by its "members" and distributed to other members. They cooperate by sharing stories and cooperate by sharing the cost of operating the AP by paying fees to cover its overhead. That's one of the ways how stories get around the world. The story you read in your local newspaper, hear on your local radio news program or watch on your local tv station, may get picked up for distribution and sent regionally or around the world.

But the public or the reader doesn't really play a significant part in all this unless they are the subject of the particular story. The reader may write a letter to the newspaper about an article, but that letter and, most importanly, the viewpoint contained within it usually is not distributed unless the viewpoint somehow becomes a part of a follow-on to the story.

The internet has changed that aspect of journalism, particularly blogs. That little section below the post that says "comment" allows readers' viewpoints to become a part of the story.

A good example of this is a 2003 post on the emerging 6th estate from the blog Smart MOBS.

Of particular note is the commented reply to the post by reader Scott Alexander who recognizes this new form of mass media to be true co-operative journalism where all involved may participate if they so wish. The ability of this commenting function allows realtime feedback and story development from the writer, subject(s) and audience/reader/anyone concerned -- a true participatory potential.

Taking a lead from the Clintonistas ...

The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal's "Best of the Web Today" carried this item in its March 7, 2005 issue:

The First One Was a Warning Shot

"The chief of Ukraine's security service said Saturday that the country's former interior minister, Yuri F. Kravchenko, had shot himself twice in the head on Friday, refuting speculation that he had been killed by someone else."--New York Times, March 6

The report in The New York Times goes on to say: "The official announcement and a note found in Mr. Kravchenko's pocket, the security chief added, left little doubt that Mr. Kravchenko had committed suicide."

Surprisingly enough, Ukrainian officials declined to release the suicide note. It's deja vu all over again! This has got me wondering whether former President Clinton's or the Navy's former spindoctors have found consulting opportunities in the Ukraine.

Lawyers make big splash in Asia

Sometimes I have a cynical view of things and this was one of those times. I knew it was going to happen; I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Surprise! U. S. and Austrian lawyers have filed suit against Thai and U. S. forecasters, and the Accor hotel group of France for not warning vacationers a tsunami was headed toward southeast Asia.

I know how this is going to turn out, and it depends on the political affiliations of the lawyers.

If the lawyers are Democrats, they'll discuss the shit out of the suit with lawyers for the other side and never go to court. This will go on for 40 years and 40 nights. Eventually they will settle with a weather forecaster college intern for Channel 13-1/2 in Lyndonville, Vermont for peanuts and chump change, claiming a "moral victory." They'll blame President Bush, red-staters and fundamentalist Christians for the tsunami. They'll also try to hang blame on "intelligent design," change their minds several times and finally agree to serve a summons on a rapper named "Big Bang" who hangs at the corner of 12th Street and Vine. They'll start a tsunami survivor 527 and several blogs, ostensibly to stop "Big Bang" from doing such things again but really just to be able to say they're bloggers so they can pick-up chicks at MoveOn.org parties. (No, I'm not going to put the hyperlink in to that organization! If you want to go there, type it in your own damn self!)

If the lawyers are Republicans, they'll file suit immediately without researching culpability or even plate tectonics. They'll also settle out of court but for hundreds of millions. They'll keep all the cash but the plaintiffs will each receive a coupon good for a dollar off their next pina colada at Trader Vic's in Bangkok. The lawyers will use their fees to buy a minority interest in Trader Vic's through an offshore account. The coupon will expire in 30 days and plaintiffs will have to declare the coupon as income on their next year's tax return unless they fall under the special tsunami coupon exemption clause of the tax code, i.e. you're a lawyer with a minority interest in Trader Vic's of Bangkok. They'll also start a 527 that will call for putting a cap on future tsunami suit awards. They'll get judges appointed who will jail the Democratic lawyer bloggers for not revealing the telephone numbers of the chicks they picked up at the MoveOn.org party.

If the lawyers are neither Republicans nor Democrats but are, in fact, European, they will sit on their ass while the American lawyers do all the work and pay all the fees. They will work two weeks and then take a six month holiday. They will whine about the quality of the legal work done by the Americans and, when it's all said and done, they will have parades every year honoring themselves for propping up the American lawyers. Eventually, Hollyweird leftists will make a movie about their struggle and their addiction to pina coladas and, yep, you guessed it, once again Martin Scorsese will lose in the Best Director category.

The only answers my crystal ball can't fathom are: if Accor gets nailed in the suit, will Tom Bodett still have a job and, secondly, will they still leave the lights on at Motel 6 or shut them off to shore up the bottom line, saying the cost-cutting measure is really to save the environment.

Faith Popcorn, eat your heart out! Pg. 3

The prognosticator of the day award goes to a week old post from The Blog from Another Dimension for its insights into the continuing formation of the 6th Estate, what I call internet news gathering and reporting.

In his post from February 25 this year titled "The Sixth Estate" he recognizes that the power of the internet as a tool for mass communication and mass dialogue provides not only the ability to speak freely but also the ability to speak freely to far flung audiences.

Don't think that's power? Imagine what would have happened if Thomas Paine's pamphlet "Common Sense" could have reached every British colony and outpost in 1776. Indexed in Google, with sourced hyperlinks and with the ability to speak back through a comment section? That's freakin' power!

I am sure that bloggers in the middle east are helping topple the authoritarian regimes just as the Islamist terrorists and thugs are using the net to recruit new converts. Power can be used for good and evil, but as Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

The three fastest forms of communication used to be telephone, television and tell-a-female. I guess now you're going to have include tell-a-blogger in that grouping.

When you read TBfAD's post, make sure you follow the hyperlinks for additional insight, including information on a new bill before Congress that legally recognizes internet publishing as a member of the "establishment" press.

Considering the heavy-hands of Apple and the judiciary against blog freedom, this recognition comes none too soon.

BTW, if you haven't read it yet, check out the February 24 article from The New York Times on how some bloggers are adding video to their sites. Hmmm ... what a novel, innovative idea!