Jimmy Carter makes furniture.

It would be good to have a president who knows how much work and love it takes to put things together. [Tags: jimmy carter george bush crafts]

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I’m at the Politics Online conference today in Washington, DC, on a panel with Dan “Citizen Journalism” Gillmor and Alex “Shorenstein Center” Jones, moderated by Chris “Spot-On” Nolan. We’re talking about what’s changed in the past year (or whatever Chris wants us to talk about).

I’d say that what’s changed is that we’ve decided we’re fed up. Fed up with the same-old of politics, as reflected in the polls. Fed up with the voiceless voice of authority that comes from the media, as reflected in the blogosphere.

Put ’em together and I think we’re seeing a rejection of the institutional use of alienation as a way of controlling us, always for our own good of course. Now we’re discovering one another, which is how we overcome alienation.

(I’d define “alienation,” but that would expose the vapidness of what I’m thinking. So, let’s just leave it as a nice-sounding term, ok?) [Tags: politics media politics+online]

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Tom Matrullo lets John Kerry’s endless dull thrum of email messages finally get to him. Well put.

My message to Sen. Kerry: The fact that the walking undead don’t know they’re undead should give you pause.

Al Gore, on the other hand, is reanimated. He’s come to his senses. He’s come to himself. He’s speaking the truth and he’s cracking jokes. I think he could win in 2008. (On the other hand, I worked for Dean.) I would vote for him happily.

[Tags: tom_matrullo john_kerry al_gore the_undead]

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From Boomka:

Amitai Sandy (29), graphic artist and publisher of Dimona Comix Publishing, from Tel-Aviv, Israel, has followed the unfolding of the “Muhammad cartoon-gate” events in amazement, until finally he came up with the right answer to all this insanity – and so he announced today the launch of a new anti-Semitic cartoons contest – this time drawn by Jews themselves!

“We’ll show the world we can do the best, sharpest, most offensive Jew hating cartoons ever published!” said Sandy “No Iranian will beat us on our home turf!”

In the incomprehensible mix of social norms, religious precepts and cultural politics, I can’t take this as anything more than Jews commenting on Jews. But I like it. (Thanks to Hanan for the link.) [Tags: cartoons jews]

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The Bush administration spent at least $1.6 billion on public relations and advertising campaigns over 30 months, said a report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
—Arizona Star

I believe when the government does it, it’s called “propaganda.”

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Rebecca MacKinnon blogs about Yahoo!’s new guidelines for dealing with totalitarian states. [Tags: rebecca_mackinnon yahoo china politics]

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As Dan Walter points out at Trippi’s site, enlarge the photo of the Clintons to get a sense of how the Bushes feel about them.

I’m sure the feeling is mutual. [Tags: george_bush clinton politics joe_trippi dan_walter]

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Britt Blaser is giving a Berkman Tuesday lunch talk. Britt’s bio is difficult to summarize — from fighter pilot to a force behind the development of interesting software by the Howard Dean campaign. (He’s blogged what he intends to say.)

Today he’s talking about The Open Resource Group‘s ORGware, i.e., “Dean Done Right.” ORGware is a “mall” of software that is useful for citizens engaging in democracy. It has blogs, wikis, a little project management, etc. The aim isn’t to come up with new tools but to make them so easy and so flexible that it’s a “mall” for citizens. It is aimed at governance, not campaigning.

Britt says that the organizational tools for open source software are perfect for software development needs. Now we need organizational tools for democracy, Britt says.

He says : “Smart = busy = distracted = stupid.” So, the tools need to be designed for smart, busy, distracted people.

“Strawberry root activisim”: You need hierarchies to get things done. E.g., a group comes to Britt’s group and they get ORGware that provides a home page, a blog, a wiki, etc. Now some members of that group want to do a project. They can use exactly the same software. Multi-group-to-group goodness happens. (The blog software lets you say that a post is an action to be tracked — “simple project management.”)

Q (me): How does this scale socially? If you have 2,000 people commenting on your blog, commenting won’t work even if the software is up to it.

A: This is where the fractal nature of the software is important. You can spin off a new discussion or group.

Q: You want to turn people into “fire breathing activists” by taking them through a set of stepping stones. What are those stones? Comenting on a blog?

A: We don’t know yet. “Deep inviting” is important: Lots of places draw the reader in.

Britt points to PodSlam.org as the first public use of ORGware. [Tags: britt blaser politics howard dean]

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Tim Grieve at Salon has a good report on Alberto Gonzales’ attempts to avoid telling the truth.

When Gonzales was confirmed, he was asked if the president has the right to wiretap Americans with warrants. Gonzales said it was a “hypothetical” question, even though he knew that that was exactly what Bush was doing. Gonzales replied by saying it was hypothetical that the wiretaps are illegal, thus avoiding the plain sense of the question.

But, says Grieve, Republican Lindsey Graham continued to press the issue:

Graham went after both prongs of the administration’s defense of the warrantless spying program. First, he dismissed out of hand the notion that Congress somehow implicitly authorized warrantless spying when it adopted its use-of-force authorization after 9/11, and he cautioned Gonzales about making such a “dangerous” argument: If the White House reads the use-of-force authorization too broadly, Graham said, future Congresses will be wary when future presidents come looking for authority to use force against enemies.

Graham then set his sights on the argument that the president has inherent authority as commander in chief to do what it takes to keep America safe. It’s a fine theory, Graham said, but it’s one that knows “no boundaries.” If the Constitution allows the president to engage in wiretap in seeming contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, doesn’t the Constitution also allow the president to ignore the new law that prohibits the United States from engaging in torture? Graham put the question to Gonzales, but the attorney general wouldn’t answer it, exactly, saying that the torture statute isn’t the subject of today’s hearings. Which is another way of saying, we suppose, that questions about it are “hypothetical.”

It turns out usurping Congress’ power is a bipartisan slap in the face.

Plus: Why is the chief law enforcement official in the US squirming, hairsplitting and dissembling? [Tags: george_bush alberto_gonzales politics]

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Tomorrow I’m going to a meeting in DC with the US delegates to WIPO to try them to go to Congress before proposing a new “Webcasting” provision that would require you to get permission before you could reproduce content from someone else’s site even if that content is in the public domain. This extends to distributors the (insane) power that content owners currently have. Not only would this further restrict the flow of ideas, it would also require strong DRM be installed on every machine. (I blogged some sources here.)

It looks like about 30 people will be at the meeting. I am among the least qualified to talk on this topic, so I am going in order to be a solid life form with an intent look on its face. Should be interesting… [Tags: wipo digital_rights internet copyright]

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