BREVITAS

OUTLYING PRECINCTS

BRAD BLOG - As we near the one year mark since some 18,000 votes inexplicably disappeared in Sarasota County, Florida on the Direct Recording Electronic touch-screen voting machines used in the U.S. House Election for the state's 13th Congressional District, more study is still needed to determine whether or not the voting machines were at fault, according to the report released by the Government Accountability Office. Even with the additional testing, the GAO admits, it will be impossible to determine for certain whether the touch-screen machines caused the extraordinarily high undervote race in the election.

DC EXAMINER - 79: Percentage of Minnesotans who voted in the 2004 election, the highest of any state, according to the Census Bureau. . . 72: Percentage of citizens of New Hampshire, they of the first-in-the-nation primary, who voted (Iowa, the first caucus state, checked in at 71 percent).

JACK MCENANY, LOST NATION - For those who believe that Hillary Clinton's "experience" (a little over one term as a US Senator, and two terms as Bill Clinton's wife) is reason enough to vote for her for president, consider these facts: she voted for the war in Iraq; she bungled national health care so completely no one has mentioned it since; her national health care policy commission was so secretive and undemocratic that it served as Dick Cheney's model for his clandestine national energy policy commission – which was the initial phase of Iraq war planning. If experience causes Democrats to act like George Bush and Dick Cheney, maybe we should give it another name: arrogance, hubris, corruption...take your pick

FREEDOM BEAT

JOE GAROFOLI, SF CHRONICLE - Fifty years ago today, a San Francisco Municipal Court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg's Beat-era poem "Howl" was not obscene. Yet today, a New York public broadcasting station decided not to air the poem, fearing that the Federal Communications Commission will find it indecent and crush the network with crippling fines. Free-speech advocates see tremendous irony in how Ginsberg's epic poem - which lambastes the consumerism and conformism of the 1950s and heralds a budding American counterculture - is, half a century later, chilled by a federal government crackdown on the broadcasting of provocative language. In the new media landscape, the "Howl" controversy illustrates how indecency standards differ on the Internet and on the public airwaves. Instead of broadcasting the poem on the air today, New York listener-supported radio station WBAI will include a reading of the poem in a special online-only program called "Howl Against Censorship." It will be posted on www.pacifica.org, the Internet home of the Berkeley-based Pacifica Foundation, because online sites do not fall under the FCC's purview.

CORY DOCTOROW, BOING BOING - During yesterday's RIAA trial proceedings in Virgin v. Thomas, Jennifer Pariser, Sony BMG's the head of litigation, admitted that the 20,000+ anti-downloader lawsuits run by the labels had cost the companies "millions" and were enormous money-losers. I had previously heard from an industry insider that they were running the suits on a break-even basis, shaving costs by running a sloppy boiler-room operation that used cheap telephone thugs and flimsy, badly assembled evidence to extort a few thousand bucks from each of the victims, just barely breaking even. . .

SUPREME TORT ALLOWS ALABAMA SEX TOY BAN TO STAND

CITY LIFE

DAN LEVIN, NY MAGAZINE - Some West Village residents want to flog Community Board 2's executive committee for approving a fetish fair on Weehawken Street, off Christopher, for October 7 without public review. "Something is very wrong here," says Elaine Goldman, a local community activist who questioned if the board was guilty of a pro-leather bias. "Everything was under the radar with this." Brad Hoylman, the openly gay board chair, explained that the executive committee approved the application on an emergency basis after organizers had missed the deadline, because they were raising money for the LGBT center. "We want to encourage street fairs that reflect the diversity of the neighborhood," he says. "There's a feeling in the community that they've been overrun by cookie-cutter street fairs run by professional promoters." After paying a $5 donation, over-21 visitors can watch flogging and rope-bondage demonstrations. No alcohol will be served, and the NYPD told organizers that men have to wear at least a two-inch strip of leather up their backsides. (Women are allowed to go topless.) "It's going to be like a big family reunion," says Robert Valin, president of the sponsor, New York Leather Invasion. "We're a little bit dysfunctional and twisted."

ECOCLIPS

BILL GRAHAM, MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS - Orchestras, bands and parlor pickers for two centuries have enjoyed affordable instruments made from the finest tone woods cut from old-growth forests. The best tone woods are becoming unavailable or prohibitively expensive as the world's forests succumb to overharvesting, illegal logging and pollution. . . The instrument business will adapt with other woods or synthetics and survive, experts say. But as fine woods for clarinets, guitars and violin bows dwindle, price increases could make high-quality instruments unaffordable for many musicians.

FURTHERMORE. . .

RENAISSANCE FIGURE - DR Xun Zhou of the School of Oriental And African Studies at the University of London has co-written a scholarly book on smoking and co-written another scholarly book on karaoke.

OVERHEARD IN THE WEALTHY DC SUBURB OF POTOMAC, MD - Two kids, 9-10 years old, hand-in-hand. . . Little boy: "What kind of car do you want when we get married?". . . Little girl: "A BMW!" Little boy: "OK!"