BREVITAS

WORD

He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself. -- Thomas Paine

War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption and the Ice Capades. If this is the best God can do, I'm not impressed. Results like this do not belong in the resume of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of shit you'd expect from an office temp with a bad attitude - George Carlin

OUTLYING PRECINCTS

BIRMINGHAM NEWS A federal appellate court today ordered former Gov. Don Siegelman released from prison while he appeals his 2006 conviction, but denied co-defendant Richard Scrushy's request to be released. Siegelman attorney Vince Kilborn said Siegelman would be released sometime Friday morning. "His wife and his daughter, Dana, are driving out to get him," Kilborn said. . . Siegelman has been in an Oakdale, La., prison camp for nearly nine months. A federal jury in 2006 convicted Siegelman and Scrushy of federal funds bribery. Prosecutors alleged Scrushy bought a seat on a state board with a $500,000 donation to Siegelman's lottery campaign. The judges wrote that Siegelman met both requirements for an appeal bond: He is not a flight risk and his appeal raises a substantial question of law or fact likely to result in reversal or an order for a new . . . The court did not elaborate on what those questions were. Siegelman's lawyers, among other issues, have argued prosecutors didn't prove that Siegelman and Scrushy struck a "quid pro quo" deal to swap the money for the appointment.

POLITICO A new Pew poll reports that the Wright affair hasn't really hurt Obama among Democrats, but he's still having trouble with the older, white, working-class members of his party. . . In addition, nearly a quarter of Democrats (23 percent) who hold a negative view of Obama believe he is a Muslim. The survey also notes: There is little evidence that the recent news about Obama's affiliation with the United Church of Christ has dispelled the impression that he is Muslim.

WOMEN'S ENEWS - Emily's List, which has steered nearly $1 million to elect Hillary Clinton to the White House in its first foray into a presidential race, is about to make its move on Pennsylvania. The group has been a steady factor in Clinton's primary victories. Next week Emily's List will launch a major ground initiative on Clinton's behalf in and around Philadelphia ahead of the state's April 22 primary

OBAMA - If FDR can meet with Stalin and Nixon can meet with Mao and Kennedy can meet with Khrushchev and Reagan can meet with Gorbechav, then the notion that we can't meet with some half-baked dictator is ridiculous.

JOE KLEIN, TIME - Let's say the elders of the Democratic Party decide, when the primaries end, that neither Obama nor Clinton is viable. . . All they'd have to do would be to convince a significant fraction of their super delegate friends, maybe fewer than 100, to announce that they were taking a pass on the first ballot at the Denver convention, which would deny the 2,025 votes necessary to Obama or Clinton. What if they then approached Gore and asked him to be the nominee, for the good of the party-and suggested that he take Obama as his running mate? A prominent fund raiser told me, 'Gore-Obama is the ticket a lot of people wanted in the first place."

THE OBAMA I DIDN'T KNOW

CORPORADOS

PHILIP GREENSPUN'S WEBLOG The Justice Department has approved the merger of XM and Sirius satellite radio. That leaves the Federal Communications Commission as the last line of defense for consumers. The main argument that the Justice Department used to grant these folks a monopoly on satellite radio is that it isn't a monopoly on music. A person could use an MP3 player, listen to standard AM and FM stations, or hire a violinist to sit in the back seat of his or her car. What has been lost in the press coverage of this event is that XM and Sirius are the only companies equipped to offer nationwide data broadcast services. Each 64 kbps data stream could be used for a music channel or to broadcast aviation weather, traffic jam information, or any other data important enough for people to pay. These data channels are more lucrative than the music channels. Aviation weather costs $50 per month for one channel, none of which need be paid out as a royalty because the information is all provided free by the federal government. Traffic information is $10 per month for one channel. Music costs about $13 per month for 100 channels.

FREEDOM BEAT

AP A judge has denied a prosecutor's subpoena of a reporter's notes from an interview with a suspect in a drug robbery that spawned four murders. Indianapolis Star reporter Vic Ryckaert interviewed the suspect, Jasper Frazier, by phone shortly before Frazier surrendered to authorities in Toledo, Ohio, in January.

AP Under pressure from federal regulators, Comcast Corp. reversed its stance over hampering online file-sharing by its subscribers and promised yesterday to treat all types of Internet traffic equally. The Internet service provider said it would collaborate with BitTorrent Inc., the company that invented a more efficient successor to file-sharing services such as Napster and Kazaa, to improve the transmission of large files over the Internet -' and it will eventually stop delaying file transfers on the basis of the specific technology used. . .

At issue was whether a service provider like Comcast has the right to control which types of Internet traffic it will let through, block or delay. . . FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said that while he was "pleased" that Comcast had reversed course, he remained concerned that the nation's largest cable company wasn't stopping the practice now. Comcast gave itself until year's end.

ABC NEWS A student strip-searched for drugs when she was in eighth grade took her case to a federal appeals court, arguing through a lawyer that school officials had violated her constitutional rights by overzealously enforcing a strict policy against alcohol, narcotics – and, in her case, Ibuprofen. Savana Redding says she was "confused" and "ashamed" after the officials in Safford, Ariz., suspected her in 2003 of giving other students prescription Ibuprofen pills and ordered her to expose her breasts and pelvic area during a search in the school nurse's office. She denied having any pills, and none were found. Her mother later filed on her behalf a federal lawsuit claiming the search was unreasonable and therefore illegal. "A strip search, particularly of an adolescent, is a grave invasion of privacy and should be reserved for emergency situations," Andrew Petersen, one of Redding's lawyers, said in a written statement. "The misguided actions of these school officials must not become the status quo in our nation's schools.". . .

THE YOUNG

WASH TIMES The California appellate court that recently appeared to outlaw home-schooling in California has now agreed to rehear the case, raising hopes among home-schooling supporters that the court will revise its ruling. "Because this ruling impacts all Californians, we believe the case deserves a second look," said Gary McCaleb, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, which asked the 2nd District Court of Appeal for a rehearing of the case, "In re: Rachel L." Home-schooling advocates nationwide were outraged with the appellate court's unanimous Feb. 28 ruling that ordered two parents to send two of their children to school -' as the children requested, through their lawyer -' instead of home-schooling them. Unpublished court papers show that the family has been involved in the child welfare system for 20 years, amid charges of physical abuse by the father and sexual molestation of several of the daughters by a family friend. The court-appointed lawyer for the two youngest children, aged 10 and 8, recommended to a juvenile court judge that he order the children sent to school for their own education, safety and well being.

DRUG BUSTS

NORML Liberalizing marijuana laws is not associated with increased cannabis use among the general public, according to a scientific review published this month in the journal Current Opinion in Psychiatry.

"The vast majority of people who use cannabis do so for a limited period of time with few or no negative consequences," states the review. "The negative effects associated with cannabis use are small compared with the negative effects associated with other pleasure drugs, such as nicotine, alcohol, and cocaine. "Prohibition and criminalization [are] not very likely to lead to different [cannabis] consumption rates or less risky drug use patterns, whereas it may lead to increased contacts of its users with the criminal scene and the legal system, leading to negative effects on their future development."

ECO NOTES

TREE HUGGER A report from the Urban Institute calculated losses from agricultural thefts in the United States are now $5-billion -- though the real figure is perhaps 10 times higher, because uninsured farmers often don't report their losses. Those producers with thousands of bushels stored might not even notice their missing grain for months. According to Kevin Libin in the National Post, a Manitoba farmer had his truck stolen, emptied of seed, and returned. "It's somebody that knew what they were doing," the farmer said, adding that he suspects the $10,000 load of seed, the price of which has tripled in 12 months, "probably isn't too far from here." In Kansas, police began investigating nearly a dozen reports of thieves driving their trucks up to farm bins and siphoning out tens of thousands of dollars worth of wheat. A bushel of spring wheat, which has historically traded between $3 and $7, has spiked as high as $24 in recent weeks.

LABOR

WAITER RANT Every server has good days and bad days. Old pros like me should be able to roll with the punches. But business at Café Machiavelli's has been so bad lately that my patience is wearing thin. We're down five hundred covers a week since I started. That's bad. Waiters are getting cut on Saturday nights. Working a thirteen hour double last Thursday earned me a paltry sixty bucks. The staff members at the bottom of the tip totem pole, the bus people, are really hurting. One guy told me how he was having a hard time affording Pampers. Several bussers have already left, looking for greener pastures. The sad part is that there are no greener pastures. Things are bad all over. I don't know if America's economy is in a recession or not, but the restaurant industry sure as hell is.

WHAT THE JOB MARKET WILL LOOK LIKE IN 2009

EMENDATION

The story by Todd Spivak on Obama as a Chicago politician came from the Dallas Observer, not the Dallas Morning News

FURTHERMORE. . .

THE LOCAL, SWEDEN - Sweden's Board of Agriculture has issued an extensive set of new guidelines regulating how pet owners treat their dogs and cats. Among other things, the 15 pages of new guidelines set specifications for how often dogs and cats receive food and exercise, the size and design of their living quarters, as well as the quality of the air Swedish pets breathe. . . The guidelines mandate, for example, that dogs and cats should be checked on at least twice a day and "should have their need for social contact satisfied." Pets kept indoors should be within view of a window allowing sunlight, and dogs kept outdoors should have access to both sunny and shaded areas, as well as protection against wind and rain. Levels of ammonia and carbon dioxide in the air must also be kept below 10 parts per million and 3000 parts per million, respectively.

WIRED Following news of a shipping snafu that sent nuclear fuses to Taiwan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered a full inventory of nuclear weapons and related components, CNN reports: "The order comes in the wake of the discovery last week that four nuclear warhead fuses were accidentally shipped to Taiwan in 2006." Gates' memo, issued Wednesday, calls for all items to be accounted for by serial number. . . The inventory review, which will involve thousands of items, is due to Gates in 60 days. Pentagon officials said the request was ordered, in part, because this latest incident comes after the August 2007 accidental flight of six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles on a B-52 bomber across the country.