BREVITAS

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OUTLYING PRECINCTS

BRAD BLOG - As we near the one year mark since some 18,000 votes
inexplicably disappeared in Sarasota County, Florida on the Direct
Recording Electronic touch-screen voting machines used in the U.S. House
Election for the state's 13th Congressional District, more study is
still needed to determine whether or not the voting machines were at
fault, according to the report released by the Government Accountability
Office. Even with the additional testing, the GAO admits, it will be
impossible to determine for certain whether the touch-screen machines
caused the extraordinarily high undervote race in the election.

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5123

DC EXAMINER - 79: Percentage of Minnesotans who voted in the 2004
election, the highest of any state, according to the Census Bureau. . .
72: Percentage of citizens of New Hampshire, they of the
first-in-the-nation primary, who voted (Iowa, the first caucus state,
checked in at 71 percent).

http://www.examiner.com/yan

JACK MCENANY, LOST NATION - For those who believe that Hillary Clinton's
"experience" (a little over one term as a US Senator, and two terms as
Bill Clinton's wife) is reason enough to vote for her for president,
consider these facts: she voted for the war in Iraq; she bungled
national health care so completely no one has mentioned it since; her
national health care policy commission was so secretive and undemocratic
that it served as Dick Cheney's model for his clandestine national
energy policy commission ??which was the initial phase of Iraq war
planning. If experience causes Democrats to act like George Bush and
Dick Cheney, maybe we should give it another name: arrogance, hubris,
corruption...take your pick

http://www.lostnation.tv/

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FREEDOM BEAT

JOE GAROFOLI, SF CHRONICLE - Fifty years ago today, a San Francisco
Municipal Court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg's Beat-era poem "Howl"
was not obscene. Yet today, a New York public broadcasting station
decided not to air the poem, fearing that the Federal Communications
Commission will find it indecent and crush the network with crippling
fines. Free-speech advocates see tremendous irony in how Ginsberg's epic
poem - which lambastes the consumerism and conformism of the 1950s and
heralds a budding American counterculture - is, half a century later,
chilled by a federal government crackdown on the broadcasting of
provocative language. In the new media landscape, the "Howl" controversy
illustrates how indecency standards differ on the Internet and on the
public airwaves. Instead of broadcasting the poem on the air today, New
York listener-supported radio station WBAI will include a reading of the
poem in a special online-only program called "Howl Against Censorship."
It will be posted on www.pacifica.org, the Internet home of the
Berkeley-based Pacifica Foundation, because online sites do not fall
under the FCC's purview.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/10/03/MN0PSIM67.DTL


CORY DOCTOROW, BOING BOING - During yesterday's RIAA trial proceedings
in Virgin v. Thomas, Jennifer Pariser, Sony BMG's the head of
litigation, admitted that the 20,000+ anti-downloader lawsuits run by
the labels had cost the companies "millions" and were enormous
money-losers. I had previously heard from an industry insider that they
were running the suits on a break-even basis, shaving costs by running a
sloppy boiler-room operation that used cheap telephone thugs and flimsy,
badly assembled evidence to extort a few thousand bucks from each of the
victims, just barely breaking even. . .

SUPREME TORT ALLOWS ALABAMA SEX TOY BAN TO STAND
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=19128

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CITY LIFE

DAN LEVIN, NY MAGAZINE - Some West Village residents want to flog
Community Board 2's executive committee for approving a fetish fair on
Weehawken Street, off Christopher, for October 7 without public review.
"Something is very wrong here," says Elaine Goldman, a local community
activist who questioned if the board was guilty of a pro-leather bias.
"Everything was under the radar with this." Brad Hoylman, the openly gay
board chair, explained that the executive committee approved the
application on an emergency basis after organizers had missed the
deadline, because they were raising money for the LGBT center. "We want
to encourage street fairs that reflect the diversity of the
neighborhood," he says. "There's a feeling in the community that they've
been overrun by cookie-cutter street fairs run by professional
promoters." After paying a $5 donation, over-21 visitors can watch
flogging and rope-bondage demonstrations. No alcohol will be served, and
the NYPD told organizers that men have to wear at least a two-inch strip
of leather up their backsides. (Women are allowed to go topless.) "It's
going to be like a big family reunion," says Robert Valin, president of
the sponsor, New York Leather Invasion. "We're a little bit
dysfunctional and twisted."

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/38375/

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ECOCLIPS

BILL GRAHAM, MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS - Orchestras, bands and parlor pickers
for two centuries have enjoyed affordable instruments made from the
finest tone woods cut from old-growth forests. The best tone woods are
becoming unavailable or prohibitively expensive as the world's forests
succumb to overharvesting, illegal logging and pollution. . . The
instrument business will adapt with other woods or synthetics and
survive, experts say. But as fine woods for clarinets, guitars and
violin bows dwindle, price increases could make high-quality instruments
unaffordable for many musicians.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20071001_Sour_note.html

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FURTHERMORE. . .

RENAISSANCE FIGURES - DR Xun Zhou of the School of Oriental And African
Studies at the University of London has co-written a scholarly book on
smoking and co-written another scholarly book on karaoke.

http://improbable.com

OVERHEARD IN THE WEALTHY DC SUBURB OF POTOMAC, MD - Two kids, 9-10 years
old, hand-in-hand. . . Little boy: "What kind of car do you want when we
get married?". . . Little girl: "A BMW!" Little boy: "OK!"

http://eavesdropdc.blogspot.com/

HENRY SAMUEL, TELEGRAPH - French government ministers faced
embarrassment from their own children whose entries on Facebook, were
aired to the public. French prime minister, Fran癟ois Fillon will be
interested know that his son, Antoine, 22, is a member of several
"high-brow" chat groups. One, entitled "I am too proud of my poo,"
boasts 93 members who spend entire nights digressing about the "16
different types of turd." Antoine Fillon, an economics student whose
mother Penny is Welsh, is also part of the "legless friendship circle,"
which includes 650 fellow binge drinkers. . . His "friends" - people
authorised to converse with him via a secure network - include two
brothers and a sister but also Alain Jupp矇, the former prime minister
who resigned from Mr Fillon's government after losing his parliamentary
seat.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/09/28/wfra128.xml


BICYCLE LAWYER BUSINESS BOOMING
http://washcycle.typepad.com/home/2007/10/index.html

OFFICIAL BUSH COUNTDOWN CALENDAR
http://www.bluefunkproductions.com/

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