While reading a recent letter to The Economist, I noticed a citation of the 1997 Treaty with Tripoli on the issue of the US as a religious state. I did a quick Google search to find out more and found a ton of citations around the net from various groups …

In another step "forward" for national security, Canada.com reports that a number of American citizens (including people born in the US and holding a US passport) were held at the border crossing between the US and Canada until they relented and gave their fingerprints to the US border agents …

Google, Yahoo!, and Amazon.com are all getting into the act (No, I'm not trying to imply that Apple did it first, just that they are all doing it). Hats off to all of the organizations that are trying to help or encouraging people to help the relief effort for …

Government forces private company into bankruptcy over disputed taxes. Government auctions off plum assets to a bidder who swoops in from nowhere and buys them at a fraction of their value (partially thanks to US courts that prevent US corporations from bidding). Government-owned gas and old conglomerate buys the bidder …

Not surprisingly, Dr. Jeffery M. Masters, Weather Undergound's Chief Meteorologist, bashes Mr. Crichton's new book State of Fear for basically taking the side on the global warming issue that he doesn't like. I say "not surprisingly," because he has written on Weather Underground in the past about global warming and …

An article from MediaWeek brings up some interesting statistics about FCC indecency complaints. According to their report, the number of indecency complaints has soared from 14,000 in 2002 to over 1 million this year. More interesting is the claim that of the approximately 500,000 complaints that did not …

The New York Times is reporting in an article this morning that a study recently released by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) puts US students about the middle of the pack in the industrialized world on reading and math skills. Of course, math was worse (we ranked …

An interesting article (thanks to Tim for pointing it out) appears in the Washington Post about the constitutionality of government-mandated, privately-funded speech. It appears that "Got Milk?", "Beef-It's what's for dinner", "Pork: the other white meat", and "Cotton: the fabric of our lives" are all embroiled in a set of …

Finally a good article on the FDA funding problem, from the New York Times. The article (which goes into a good deal of detail and has interviews from a variety of sides), follows the path of FDA funding since the 1984 act that effectively created the generic drug market in …

eWeek has an article citing evidence from Larry Blunk (of Merit) that Microsoft is poised to assert intellectual property rights over internet protocols including TCP, IP v4 and IP v6, DNS and other essential protocols. The concerns were expressed in a note to the IETF's IAB (Internet Architecture Board) and …

According to an article from Wired, the US government is planning to insert RFID tags into our passports starting in 2005. Whereas more secure passports is a fine idea, I'm struck be the choice of RFID over a contact-based mechanism that would offer security without the ability to read over …

I don't do a lot of real book reviews, because I do a lot of my "reading" on my iPod. However, when I heard about Churchill's Folly:How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq by Christopher Catherwood and heard the author interviewed, I was intrigued. Now, up front I'll state that …

I have suspected for some time that there was an ulterior motive afoot with the sloppy no-fly list, but there are more direct signs of this today in an article from the Washington Post. The article details faults in the no fly list, but those are well known. The part …

Earlier this year, I wrote an article extolling the virtues of having a unique name so that you didn't end up confused with somebody on the US No Fly List. However, if you're from Denmark, that might be a problem. According to this article from the International Herald Tribune, the …

An article from GROKLAW details a recent win by Kodak against Sun in a lawsuit related to... ah, heck, who can figure this out these days. The lawsuit involved some patents that Kodak bought a few years ago and now they think they should have $1.06B for their troubles …

NPR had a segment this morning called "Misunderstanding the First Amendment", where it speaks directly to an issue that I think more people need to think about: what is the First Amendment. Mark Bowden, the author of Black Hawk Down, makes the point that too many people (especially celebrities) are …

An article from the Voice of America news service mentions the passage (by the US Senate) and the signature (by President Bush) of the United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement. It also mentions that the Australian Senate isn't keen on it in its current form but leaves out information reported by …

Well, the younger Powell and his crew were busy yesterday. Rulings were made about cell phone spam and digital broadcast reproduction. On cell phone spam: you can't send it via email... which isn't surprising, but the CAN-SPAM act will now have a registry of domains for wireless providers that can't …

A New York Times article discusses a move by Chicago to shut down 60 underperforming schools and replace them with 100 new schools, more than half of which would be run privately and outside of the current teacher's union contract. The move, called Renaissance 2010 is intended to replace larger …

According to an article from the Associated Press (courtesy of Yahoo!), Verizon Wireless, Cingular and Sprint have agreed with Attorneys General of 32 states to provide additional information and flexibility to customers. Among the concessions are: more detailed coverage maps, the ability to return phones within 3 days, and a …