Election Update: Do-Over on First Ballot
House Republicans are taking a mulligan on the first ballot for Majority Leader. The first count showed more votes cast than Republicans present at the Conference meeting.
One person's comment: Stupid Republicans can't even stuff a ballot box right
Taken from here:
[...]The staff of U.S. Rep Marty Meehan wiped out references to his broken term-limits pledge as well as information about his huge campaign war chest in an independent biography of the Lowell Democrat on a Web site that bills itself as the "world's largest encyclopedia," The Sun has learned.
The Meehan alterations on Wikipedia.com represent just two of more than 1,000 changes made by congressional staffers at the U.S. House of Representatives in the past six month. Wikipedia is a global reference that relies on its Internet users to add credible information to entries on millions of topics.
Matt Vogel, Meehan's chief of staff, said he authorized an intern in July to replace existing Wikipedia content with a staff-written biography of the lawmaker.
The change deleted a reference to Meehan's campaign promise to surrender his seat after serving eight years, a pledge Meehan later eschewed. It also deleted a reference to the size of Meehan's campaign account, the largest of any House member at $4.8 million, according to the latest data available from the Federal Election Commission.
"Meehan first ran for Congress in 1992 on a platform of reform," the pre-edited entry said. "As part of that platform Meehan made a pledge to not serve more than four terms, a central part of his campaign. This breaking of the pledge has been a controversial issue in the 5th Congressional District of Massachusetts."
The new entry reads in part: "Meehan was elected to Congress in 1992 on a plan to eliminate the deficit. His fiscally responsible voting record since then has earned him praise from citizen watchdog groups. He was re-elected by a large margin in 2004."
Vogel said, "It makes sense to me the biography we submit would be the biography we write."
The change doubled the length of the entry on Meehan, corrected errors and replaced "sloppy" writing, Vogel said. "Let the outside world edit it. It seemed right to start with greater depth than a paragraph with incorrect data from the '80s."
Wikipedia's online honor system has made it ripe for abuse by vandals. Recently, a user wrote in a Wikipedia bio that Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor "smells of cow dung." Another wrote that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is "ineffective." These statements were traced to the House Internet-protocol (IP) address.[...]
[...]While vandalism is a problem, deleting factual information raises ethical concerns, said Geoffrey Bowker, director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Santa Clara University.
"The vandalism is just plain childish," Bowker said. "The term-limit pledge (that was changed by Meehan's staff) is a much more serious case. That's someone trying to alter the public record.
"To knowingly remove a truthful statement is just wrong," he added. "It's not the place of any special-interest group to tamper with the facts available to the public."[...]
[...]In November and December, The Sun has learned, users of the House's IP address were temporarily blocked from changing content because of violations described by the site as a "deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia."[...]
[...]Yesterday, Wikipedia was ranked the 19th- busiest site on the Internet, according to alexa.com, a subsidiary of Amazon.com that tracks Webtraffic.
A new reference to Meehan's term-limit pledge was inserted in the Wikipedia entry in November by a person not using the House address.
On Dec. 27, someone using the House IP address reduced the reference to a single sentence: "(Meehan) also supported term limits, pledging to serve no more than four terms."
Vogel said he did not authorize the change.
No reference to Meehan's top-rated campaign account has been reintroduced.
The changes by Meehan's staff are not as "reprehensible" as inserting derogatory comments in someone else's entry, said Stephen Potts, former director of the federal Office of Government Ethics, which establishes conduct standards for the executive branch.
But the sheer breadth of changes emanating from the House reflects an abuse of public time and equipment, said Potter, now chairman of the Ethics Resource Center.
"That kind of usage, plus the fact that they're changing one person's material, is certainly wrong and ought to be at a minimum the focus of some disciplinary action," he said.[...]
The entry in question.
Swiped from here: Canadian politics for dummies
Last week, the Los Angeles Times asked National Post contributor Colby Cosh to explain our Jan. 23 election result to American readers. Mr. Cosh's column, which appeared in the Times last Friday, is reproduced [at that link].
Must be nice...
HMS Daring's 230-strong crew should be happy too. She and her sisters will be the first "gender-neutral" warships to enter Royal Navy service, and the Hotel Facilities, as the living quarters are known, are the most opulent ever fitted in a British warship. Mess decks are replaced by individual cabins, each with their own I-pod charging points, CD player, internet access, five channel recreational audio and larger berths.
Taken from here: Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online
Taken from here: BBspot - Top 11 Signs You've Got an Old Computer
11. It has blinking lights on it (that's actual lights, not LEDs).
10. The default spell check dictionary is Olde English.
9. The noise insulation is asbestos.
8. It's too slow for the latest version of Nethack.
7. The memory is hand soldered onto the motherboard.
6. Eighty-column lines of text wrap to three lines.
5. Not even your parents want it.
4. The Smithsonian keeps calling to see if you'll donate it.
3. Green or amber are your only choices in monitors.
2. The CPU speed is measured in fractions of MHz.
1. It's made by Commodore Business Machines.
GEST Escape Character Encoder For HTML Codes
Take code as normally written and enter it in the text-area on this page. The result can be directly copied and pasted to your source page or into a text area and it will display as code but will not execute.
Just a quick note to let you know that Sabrina Online has updated for the month. The author, Eric W. Schwartz, only updates once a month.
"Emails that initiated legal proceedings were ignored as spam by a shipping firm. It was a costly oversight: the firm lost the case without taking part and an English judge has rejected a late challenge, ruling that service by email is just as valid as post or fax.
The significance of the case, decided 21st December, is limited: this was a maritime arbitration, not an English court action. That would be subject to different rules, rules that generally do not permit the service of writs by email."
Read more about it here.
Today's featured wallpaper is from Jedi Haven, a combo Star Trek/ Star Wars fan site. (Well, at least I think it is.) Check out this page for all of the downloads.
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