Here are tonight’s news items that I’ll be talking about on when I join my friend, David Lawrence, for my weekly segment on his radio show, The David Lawrence Show:

Apple Loses Blogging Case

European Court Bars Airline Passenger Data Sharing

Retailers Mine Data Just Like Spy Agencies

Where’s our Personal Data Security?

Here are tonight’s news items that I’ll be talking about on when I join my friend, David Lawrence, for my weekly segment on his radio show, The David Lawrence Show:

Data on 26 Million Vets Goes Missing

Password “Phishers” Try Voicemail

Homeland Security Disses RFIDs

History often repeats itself, especially when idiots fail to learn from it. So after reading this article on CNN today, I’m counting the hours till I see a court case titled “Loving v. Black Jack.”

The AP wire story says:

The [Black Jack, Missouri] City Council has rejected a measure allowing unmarried couples with multiple children to live together, and the mayor said those who fall into that category could soon face eviction.

Olivia Shelltrack and Fondrey Loving were denied an occupancy permit after moving into a home in this St. Louis suburb because they have three children and are not married.

What caught my eye was the last name, Loving. That name is well known to civil rights attorneys… indeed to any attorney who didn’t sleep through Constitutional Law class. Loving v. Virginia is one in a long line of aptly named lawsuits, a landmark 1967 civil rights case in which Virginia’s ban on mixed race marriages was declared unconstitutional.

How could the nitwits in Black Jack, MO, be so silly… this kind of bald-faced symmetry just won’t work in Hollywood. It’s too trite. I mean, come on! Maybe their twist will be that Black Jack will sue them to evict Loving and it can be Black Jack v. Loving. Or maybe a different plaintiff… somebody named Bumpkin? Yes… the Bigoted Bumpkins of Black Jack v. Loving has a nice ring to it.

Here are tonight’s news items that I’ll be talking about on when I join my friend, David Lawrence, for my weekly segment on his radio show, The David Lawrence Show:

Qwest’s Admirable Example

BellSouth & AT&T Named in $200 Billion Lawsuit

U.S. Government Opens Assault on Wiretapping Lawsuit

Democrats have had an easy refuge for the last seven years. Whenever the Bush crime family would pull another trick out of its collective black hat, Democrats could recede into the escapist cocoon that was The West Wing.

Reveling in the glory days of the Bartlet Administration provided a comforting fiction: a world in which the President of the United States was intelligent, engaged, and wrestled with the moral and philosophical questions about what was in the best interests of liberty and justice instead of partisanship and cronyism. It was a world in which the White House staff worried about the appearance of impropriety and chided the media for not focusing on the bigger issues.

While The West Wing suffered in its final years from the departure of its creator Aaron Sorkin — a loss that manifested itself in lousy writing that lurched from one improbable uber-dramatic disaster to another, instead of on real interpersonal drama and Machiavellian political theatre — the last season returned to some of the original themes of conscientious public servants earnestly trying to do what was right, and what was right for America.

Now that The West Wing is gone and Jed and Abby are back in New Hampshire, Democrats who want to see a competent president in the White House will have to get busy and work on putting one in there as soon as practicable. Unfortunately, the criminality of the current regime suggests that we could have that opportunity sooner rather than later. Of course that would depend upon having clueful Democratic leadership to retake Congress (Note to Howard Dean: Do what Rahm Emmanuel asks and spend the money wisely instead of trying to win state legislature races in places like South Dakota or there are plenty of us Democrats who will make sure that you’ll be hardpressed to find a job delivering campaign flyers), and a Democratic Speaker of the House who didn’t promise not to bring impeachment proceedings before the full extent of the crimes were known.

I’m going to miss The West Wing, but at least I have the The West Wing - The Complete First Six Seasons on DVD.