Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

I Suppose It’s Better When They Don’t Pretend

Posted on May 5, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Hullabaloo:

I'm not kidding. The man who wrote Joe McCarthy's strongest supporter's newspaper column is now on the payroll of the corporation of public broadcasting as an ombudsman.

People do change and grow over time, so one's first job after college as a ghostwriter for a notorious anti-semitic pro-McCarthy radio broadcaster maybe shouldn't dog you forever. Trouble is, Digby also quotes from a 1997 interview that doesn't sound at all apologetic.

That was the Red Scare. What will they call this current round of national panic, I wonder?

Posted in Politics: The Party of Sleaze | 1 Comment

Google Irony

Posted on May 4, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

As I write this, I am waiting (and waiting and waiting) for the Google Web Accelerator Download to actually happen.

It's an interesting idea. What I'd like to know is how often they refresh the cache? How will it know when my blog is updated? (And, will it affect counters? I was hoping to hit a million in a year or two…)

Update: I've saved 2.2 seconds! Whooo! (And given up substantial privacy about my browsing habits. What will Google be doing with my complete http: (but not https) clicktrail?)

Posted in Internet | 2 Comments

Two/Too Good For Parliament

Posted on May 4, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

David Howarth and James Raven, both good friends of mine from graduate school days, are standing for Parliament as Liberal Democrats in tomorrow's election.

James is not going to get elected in Essex North (Colchester), even though he's a local — the Tory he is running against (someone my wife knew in college, small world) has one of the safest seats in the UK, even if he is now a discredited demoted former front bencher who tied his future to the ultra-conservative wing of the party.

David Howarth probably isn't going to get elected from Cambridge either, even though he's the perfect town-gown candidate being both a don and a councilor. He needs a 10% swing, which is a lot but not beyond the bounds of hope this year in that constituency.

Both of them look better in real life than the pictures on their campaign web pages. David's is particuarly awful.

Hey guys, I'm thinking of you.

Posted in UK | 2 Comments

Italy Censors Web Site for Showing Pope in Nazi Uniform

Posted on May 4, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Robert's Stochastic thoughts brings first word of a very interesting incident in Italy. In his translation (slightly cleaned up here):

The magistrate Marco Patarnello has ordered the [temporary] preventive seizure of the site indymedia [http://italy.indymedia.org] for vilification of the Catholic faith and of the Pope. The prosecutor Salvatore Vitello requested this action, since an investigation by the DIGOS [police specialized in crimes against national security] revealed that there were montaged photos on the site showing Pope Benedict XVI in a Nazi military uniform.

In the leading leftist site, the Pope was called a “Nazi” and criminally insulted with insults in Spanish. Indymedia belongs to the Brazilian firm Imc, so the prosecutor has decided to make an official request that foreign judges take note of the act.

There's more at the site.

Internet lawyers will of course be waiting to hear what Joel Reidenberg has to say about this one. (Joel is the author of a very influential paper arguing that France had every right to try to stop Yahoo's US servers sending ads for Nazi memorabilia into France, and that US courts should not be shy about helping out.)

Posted in Law: Free Speech | 3 Comments

Good links

Posted on May 4, 2005 by Michael Froomkin
Posted in Blogs | 1 Comment

Torture Is a Sign of Incompetence

Posted on May 3, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

I am not primarily interested in utilitarian arguments about torture. My arguments on the subject have tended to be moral and legal. And, I do not believe that either would be altered by the discovery that torture was an effective means of interrogating prisoners.

Nevertheless, there are a lot of well-intentioned utilitarians out there, and some may be concerned that were it to stop torturing its prisoners the CIA might somehow miss out on a valuable interrogation technique. Well, rest easy: The current issue of The Atlantic has an article by Stephen Budiansky that eloquently confirms that being nice is a much more effective means of Truth Extraction. But we knew that.

Posted in Torture | 9 Comments