by Michael Alderete on 4/29/2002
Watching the conduct of Microsoft throughout their antitrust trial, especially the testimony of Bill Gates last week, it’s finally become crystal clear that no conduct remedy, whether a gift from the DoJ, or a challenge advanced by the dissenting states, will affect Microsoft’s behavior. They are entirely unrepentant.
If Microsoft is forced to do anything they don’t want to do, they will break their own software, and say they were told to do it. With $40 billion in the bank, they can afford a few months of broken Windows.
The remedy must be structural, and it must be severe. Nothing else will have any effect.
by Michael Alderete on 4/29/2002
I spoke too soon. Cecil has the same thing that Meebee had before Rochelle and I got married. We caught it much earlier, so he’ll get more benefit from the chemotherapy, but he does have intestinal cancer.
by Michael Alderete on 4/29/2002
It is fundamental that the great powers of Congress to conduct war and to regulate the Nation’s foreign relations are subject to the constitutional requirements of due process. The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with fundamental constitutional guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit governmental action.
— Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 1963
by Michael Alderete on 4/28/2002
In related news, we spent $800 on tests for our 16-year old cat, Cecil, to learn that nothing is really wrong with him, except he’s old.
A recent “Rhymes with Orange“ comic strip explains that you should not think about these things by weight. He’s lost almost three pounds over the last year, making this appointment only slightly less expensive than good caviar…
Dealing With The Vet Bill
by Michael Alderete on 4/28/2002
On Friday Basta went in for her annual vet appointment. Getting her into the cat carrier was a chore, because she’s big and muscular, and really, really did not want to be in the box. It took both Rochelle and I grabbing her and pushing her in to get it done.
When we got to the vet, she got weighed. 13.8 pounds. Or, as the vet put it, “chunky.”
by Michael Alderete on 4/27/2002
In less than three weeks, we’ll start going to the theaters to watch the latest Star Wars installment. If the trailers and Lucas interviews are any indication, we’ll see the Republic give sweeping powers to “protect” them, to the very person they are most afraid of (they just don’t know it).
And then we’ll come home, and continue to do the very same thing in our real lives. In smaller steps, like the frog in a pot, where the heat is turned up so gradually it never realizes it’s being cooked, until too late.
John Ashcroft is Darth Vader.
Star Wars
Trailers
George Lucas Interview
Living In A Police State
Ashcroft is US Darth Vader
by Michael Alderete on 4/24/2002
From Slate’s Lying in Style
[T]here are no honest administrations. But each presidency does bring its own unique style to the task of deceiving the citizenry. And at least you can derive some truths about a president from the way he chooses to lie to you.
by Michael Alderete on 4/24/2002
