Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Chilling Effect (Chill Them Young Dept.)

Posted on April 27, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

One of the marks of a free country is that you can criticize the Maximum Leader without fear of investigations or reprisals.

Not in Seattle Prosser, Washington State, USA, where a boy was Investigated by the Secret Service, then disciplined by his School, for drawing Bush as the devil in an art class assignment on the Iraq war.

Art students at Prosser High School were told to keep a notebook of drawings depicting the war in Iraq.

One 15-year-old turned in a sketch showing President Bush, dressed as a devil, launching a missile.

Another of his drawings was of a Middle Eastern-looking guy holding a rifle in one hand, while in the other hand was a pole with an oversized head of President Bush stuck on it.

The art teacher found the drawings troubling.

Maybe it was the caption that said: “End the War.”

Anyway, the drawings were turned over to school administrators.

School administrators took a look and tossed this political hot potato to police, who took one look at the “Vote For Ralph Nader” slogan and called in the Secret Service.

Last week, Secret Service agents trekked out to Prosser and grilled the 15-year-old artist.

They left without charging him with anything, but that didn't stop the school district from punishing the kid anyway.

(emphasis added) AP version of the story. And this hyperactive tendency to investigate people is not a fluke but is now shared by many law enforcement bodies: Recall this previous incident? Or this one? All of which leads to self-censorship

Teach the children well, indeed.

[Corrected to remove slur on Seattle, per comment by froz]

Posted in Civil Liberties | 5 Comments

New Traction for Bush Records Story

Posted on April 27, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Finally. The Bush records story is getting new traction, probably because Kerry himself is making an issue of it. Helpfully, Salon has published a child's guide (suitable for busy reporters) to some (only some) of the major gaps in the record. And the thoughtful and much-read Joshua Micah Marshall has endorsed this as an issue, going so far as to say that, aw shucks, he doesn't quite follow all the complicated details, but, it sounds important:

I just don't know the details of all this well enough any more to make a judgment about these various claims and accusations.

But why exactly can't the president just release his records the way McCain did?

And, is that story about [Maj. Gen. Danny] James[, commander of the Air National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Va.] getting a chance to go over these files true? If it is, I'd say some scribblers in town got suckered.

Big time, as the vice president would say.

So maybe the issue is not dead yet. When will a reporter stand up the press gaggle with a release from and ask if the President will sign it? Or, how about at a press conference if there ever is another one?

Posted in Politics: US: GW Bush Scandals | Comments Off on New Traction for Bush Records Story

Small World. Good Radio.

Posted on April 27, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

How absolutely amazing to find that two of the more interesting people I know from such different parts of my life are almost related. It turns out that Ed Hasbrouk, the Practical Nomad, whom I know virtually and from conference calls, is partnered with the cousin of Eric Muller, a law school classmate and now fellow law prof. The occasion for this discovery is that both of them are participants in a great NPR segment called Making Contact.

The show is not being played on either of the NPR stations I can get on my radio, but Ed notes that it can be heard online “from the National Radio Project. You can listen to streaming Real Audio or download a high or low bandwidth MP3.”

For the very interesting details as to how Ed and Eric met, and what they have in common and what they argue about, see Eric's blog entry and Ed's.

Posted in Blogs, Law: Constitutional Law | 1 Comment

Dreamhost Says it is Being DDos’d

Posted on April 26, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

The host for this blog, Dreamhost, has just sent out an email reporting that it has been under attack but is coping better than last time,

Starting at around 2:45 PDT this afternoon, we experienced yet another Denial of Service attack launched at a completely different target from the previous attacks. Within 15 minutes, we had established the destination of the attacks and had them blocked at our network's edge. We're currently waiting for our upstream providers to provide us with more global protection from the attacks, but for now network performance is running at only a slightly degraded state. We hope to have full service restored within the hour.

Posted in Discourse.net | Comments Off on Dreamhost Says it is Being DDos’d

Miscellaneous Formatting Changes

Posted on April 26, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

I've made some stylesheet and template changes in order to make user-inputted type bigger. In addition I added some links to recent related stories to fill up what seemed like a large empty spaces in the comment pages.

If you encounter any ugliness or surprises due to either change (or anything else), please let me know via a comment here.

I've also thrown in an experimental style-switcher. Of the styles I've swiped from the public domain, so far the only alternative style I've been able to make work (in the sense of 3 columns looking ok) is quite lurid, and extends just a bit too wide for reasons that escape me. If you want to try it, you can find the switcher part way down the right hand column. Be prepared to reload the page if it all goes wrong…

Posted in Discourse.net | Comments Off on Miscellaneous Formatting Changes

What Belongs on the Faculty Desktop?

Posted on April 26, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

My colleagues at UM Law endure a hyper-centralized information technology regime. Unless they raise a great ruckus, faculty members here get issued a Windows XP computer in “lockdown” mode, which prevents the installation of new programs on the desktop. (I raised a ruckus.) What's worse, the suite of programs offered to faculty has actually shrunk in the last few years, as the IT dept discovered that if you hand out fewer programs, they are easier to support.

The faculty has finally rebelled, although the actual flashpoint was lousy network performance and downtime. As part of an effort designed to head off what might otherwise become a pitchfork-wielding mob, the administration has asked for suggestions as to what programs should be part of the default faculty suite. Of course, since most of us haven't much experience with other office environments recently, we're not that well placed to know what's out there or what we might find enhances our productivity or makes new things possible or even easy..

I've made my own little list, but I'm sure it's deficient in imagination if not necessarily length. Suggestions needed and welcome. Please assume that the desktop will be a PC with XP as the OS—I think the odds of getting anything else on the faculty desktop in this iteration are about zero. And the network itself will probably stay Novell. You'll see from my list, though, that I have assumed the existence of a *nix internet server as we currently have one, even if it's not that well maintained.

So, what should be on my list?

Continue reading →

Posted in Software, U.Miami | 9 Comments