Author: Glenn Hauman

I remember Loudoun County, VA from 1998, when we had to sue them to get rid of censorware on library computers. Now we have this:

Va. Boy’s Defiant Words Draw Police Response (washingtonpost.com)

When the two plainclothes Loudoun County sheriff’s investigators showed up on her Leesburg doorstep, Pamela Albaugh got nervous. But when they told her why they were there, she got angry: A complaint had been filed alleging that her 11-year old son had made “anti-American and violent” statements in school.

She was aware of an incident at Belmont Ridge Middle School in which her son, Yishai Asido, was assigned to write a letter to U.S. Marines and responded, according to his teacher, by saying, “I wish all Americans were dead and that American soldiers should die.” Yishai and Albaugh deny that the boy wished his countrymen dead.

Albaugh, a U.S. citizen, and her husband, an Israeli citizen who manages a Leesburg moving company, say the investigators’ visit and the school’s response were a paranoid overreaction in a charged post-9/11 environment. But law enforcement officials say the terrorist attacks and the Columbine school shootings require them to consider whether children who make threats might post a danger to their classmates. The case illustrates the balancing act that schools and law enforcement must find between the free speech of minors and community safety.

Albaugh described her son as a rambunctious student who has long opposed armies of any kind. He refused the Veterans Day assignment and told his teacher that the Marines “might as well die, as much as I care.” Whatever was said, the words had been the source of anguished conferences, phone calls and, ultimately, a day of in-school suspension.

Albaugh thought the whole thing was resolved in school until Investigators Robert LeBlanc and Kelly Poland showed up last week. What followed, she said, was two hours of polite but intense and personal questioning.

They asked how she felt about 9/11 and the military. They asked whether she knows any foreigners who have trouble with American policy. They mentioned a German friend who had been staying with the family and asked whether the friend sympathized with the Taliban. They also inquired whether she might be teaching her children “anti-American values,” she said.

They really seem to have a problem with free expression there, don’t they?

Bob Saget is God – ALL HAIL LORD SAGET! – www.bobsagetisgod.com

Wired 12.10: The Long Tail

That’s an advertising slogan for a local retailer… but boy, it’s a good idea.

Posted on December 14, 2004Author Glenn HaumanCategories Uncategorized1 Comment on Now this is the way to do it…

An article at Daily Kos :: Free Trade and the Commerce Clause discusses a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati.

The case involves tax credits that the city of Toledo gave to Daimler-Chrysler, a major local employer, in order to lure the company into building a new plant there. Such sweetheart deals are, of course, extremely common. Giant manufacturers and big-box retailers routinely play cities and states off against each other in order to get their tax burdens lowered or lifted entirely tax. The governments play along because doing otherwise risks watching jobs go elsewhere. But as a general economic matter the incentives make no sense. They don’t increase the number of jobs or the amount of economic activity in the country overall. They deprive governments of needed tax revenue. And they put smaller firms at a disadvantage. Your average auto repair shop or florist or small software company doesn’t have the clout to get its taxes reduced by threatening to relocate.

These are all good arguments for disallowing such tax incentives. But the Sixth Circuit decision puts forth another one: they violate the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

The heart of the decision finds that the Commerce Clause to the U.S. Constitution prohibits preferential tax credits that are intended to interfere with interstate commerce by inducing a company to locate or stay in a State, through a program of direct subsidization. The Toledo program ran afoul of the Commerce Clause because it was deemed to be a direct subsidy. Other indirect tax benefits may not be a problem.

If you’re a local politician in, say, New York and you can’t make tons of political hay off of that, you just ain’t trying.

As I read this, this affects companies, sports franchises, and lots and lots of money. This could end up being blue-state revenge…

Philcon 2004 Schedule – By Guest

I’m listed as a guest, but not on any panels. I have no idea why, I filled out their spiffy online form and everything…

All right, you’ll see me roaming the halls and I’ll just push my way onto any panel that seems appropriate. I’ll be rude, obnoxious, and hog all the microphone time. There’s been a real lack of obnoxious SF pros from my generation, with the notable exception of J.O., and it’s time that changed.

Oh, wait– Dave’s obnoxious too at times. Aaron, but that’s just the syphillis rotting his mind. J.H. is just… well, let’s not even go there. Buy me a drink at the con and I’ll tell you stories.

(Or rather, a post so I can close a bunch of browser windows and get some work done.)

http://www.stripper-faq.org/: just what it sounds like. Not Really Safe For Work, unless you already work as a stripper.

http://apologiesnotaccepted.com/ : A reply to apologiesaccepted.com‘s answer to sorryeverybody.com

Banned Books: a bit late for banned books week, but hey.

Now to do the same over at my Photoshop blog…

You must remember this,
A bris is still a bris,
A chai is just a chai.
Pastrami still belongs on rye,
As time goes by.

With holidays in view,
A Jew is still a Jew,
On that you can rely.
No matter if we eat tofu
As time goes by.

Old shtetl customs, never out of date.
All those potatoes someone has to grate.
One flame in the window,
keep counting till there’s eight
To light the winter sky.

In the Bronx or in the Mission,
It’s still the same tradition,
That no one can deny.
We roam, but we recall our birthright,
As time goes by.

Dreidels and chocolate, never out of date.
Ancient Semitic glories to relate.
Blue-and-white giftwrap, ain’t this country great,
And festive chazerai!

It’s still the same old Torah,
It’s still the same menorah,
We’ve latkes still to fry.
December’s when I feel most Jewish,
As time goes by.

(Thanks, Hildy.)

To: Keith Olbermann, MSNBC

Keith, no one loves the job you’ve been doing more than me. Followed you back when it was The Big Show, yada yada yada.

You’ve been doing a great job of pointing out the problems with electronic voting machines in Ohio and Florida, and treating this story with the coverage that it truly deserves.

That’s why I’m so sorry to see it bite you like this.

This Bloggerman post on the MSNBC web site has a time stamp of 8:13 PM Eastern Standard Time– but there’s a problem. I, and about 600,000 other people, were watching you on Countdown at that very moment.

This leads one to believe that A) The timestamp was wrong, B) Someone else is posting your stories.

Please explain this little electronic glitch so that you can go on explaining the other ones without nagging contradictions.

Of course, you could have done all this as a test to show us how easy it is to fake electronic records…