Things I Would Write More On If I had the Time
Cisco says ethics are not a business concern (from a Declan McCullagh column at C|Net):
Do you have any moral problems with helping to make surveillance technology more efficient? I have some moral and ethical issues, but I think quite frankly that the place to argue this is in Congress and in the courtroom, not a service provider's machine room when he's staring down the barrel of a subpoena.There are two sides. One is that Cisco as a company needs to let its customers abide by the law. The other is the moral and ethical issues. There are two very separate questions.
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The Arcata City Council 'Anti-Patriot Act' ordinance:
The ordinance cites the Patriot Act's provisions for searches and access to confidential records as unconstitutional. When the City law was first proposed, little controversy emerged but there were lots of questions about what would happen if the feds actually ask City of Arcata employees to assist their Patriot Act-sanctioned investigations....
And an employee who violates the ordinance and complies with unconstitutional requests would be subjected to the same penalty that's levied for any first-time infraction offense: a $57 fine.
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The Arcata Eye also has a police log:
10:51 p.m. In an incident cloaked in ambivalence, a person either suffering with or enjoying a state of "elevated behavior" was reported either screaming or yelling.6:22 a.m. A man said his son had called from a phone booth in the Plaza area saying he was depressed and may want to harm himself. Police checked the area, finding only the usual ambient aroma of free-floating malaise.
5:22 a.m. Another small red car in Valley West, and another report of someone going to "kill" a husband. It all dwindled off into yet another bout of Arcata's favorite pastime - parking lot yelling.
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If people are going to talk about Vietnam (and use it to make points about Iraq), then I wish they'd at least learn more history. The New Republic says this:
Of course United States forces in the North could have subdued the North Vietnamese army and captured Hanoi, bringing the Vietnam War to a close: if the United States only had to fight North Vietnam.
and this...
Frustrating as the imaginary line between North and South Vietnam was to U.S. military leaders, there were reasons that line was drawn.
Which completely ignores that most of South Vietnam didn't want us there either, that we had been involved in policy in Vietnam since the 1940s (even when we were pretending that we weren't), and that the 'reasons that line was drawn' had relatively little to do with what the people of Vietnam itself actually wanted.