Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Mail Down, Again

Posted on January 4, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

My UM mail host is down again. I've called it in, but fixes tend to be slower on Sunday. Please be patient if you are trying to contact me, and send again tomorrow if you expected a reply but didn't get one.

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Mail Down, Again

Hacking Is Not Politics As Usual

Posted on January 4, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

I've just started reading Talk Left, and mostly I like it, but I disagree strongly with the recent suggestion there that concern over the likely breaking and entering into the Democrats' Judiciary Committee computer files is just a “pointless distraction” from the selection of judges, or that the hack was politics as usual. I think that's too close to Republican spin ('ignore our crimes but your politics are treason', cf. Today's Political Vocabulary Lesson.) Also, there's reason to believe that this is a more general phenomenon that started with the breakin to the Democratic computer files on the Intelligence committee, see Second Data Point on Theft of Democratic Memos. If there is any sort of organized Republican hacking campaign into democratic Senate files, that deserves to found out and exposed and prosecuted. Hacking into private files is not — should not be — politics as usual.

And the Democrats ought to get gnu PGP ASAP.

Posted in Politics: US | Comments Off on Hacking Is Not Politics As Usual

Meaningless Personality Quizzes (pt. 5)

Posted on January 4, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

what kind of social software are you?

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An Odd Omission

Posted on January 3, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Am I the only one who found it odd that in a long article devoted to the rise of Asian-Americans in politics, In One Suburb, Local Politics With Asian Roots, the New York Times's Patricia Leigh Brown never uses either of the words “Republican” or “Democratic”?

Posted in Politics: US | 2 Comments

How to Lose Friends and Upset People

Posted on January 3, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

Via Lenz Blog (this is my week for Germans?), who got it from Richard Stallman's political notes — an interesting but user-unfriendly list that thus mirrors its author — I find out about the US's latest bit of Really Stupid anti-PR—putting foreign reporters in lockup, starving them, then deporting them. (Sadly, almost as stupid policies exist elsewhere.) Yes, when I went to Australia to give a lecture, I had to get an expensive visa and do paperwork and they were fussy about it and if I hadn't they might not have let me in. Yes, the young woman in question (who was going to interview Olivia Newton John for a magazine) didn't do her paperwork right, but she told the truth when asked about it. That may justify an hour's extra questioning, but not deportation. But then I always said the INS U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was one of the worst bureaucracies in DC.

Continue reading →

Posted in Politics: International | 1 Comment

Bloggers as Opinion-Leaders

Posted on January 2, 2004 by Michael Froomkin

The Blogging of the President: 2004 brings us The New AP: Atrios versus Instapundit, Part One. I think he's on to something. Certain blogs, like Atrios now serve an agenda setting function that is filtered through the traditional media to the public.

The article also has some interesting things to say about the contrast between Atrios and Instapundit, described as a leading agenda-setter on the right (which I hope is not right, as it would be sad for the right).

That said, the guys who really matter are the ones who come up with the facts, folks like Brad DeLong or Josh Marshall.

Posted in Blogs | 2 Comments