I've been watching hockey since 1985 and every year around this time, I'm just about ready to pee myself.  The new season starts on Wednesday, and I'm hoping it provides me with some distraction from the mess our world is sinking into.  I'm also hoping some of the new focus on speeding up the game this year will provide some more scoring than we've seen in recent years.  But they seem to try this every year, and it never really seems to work. 

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Thomas Jefferson. "The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper." [Quotes of the Day]

"Strategic Energy Policy Challenges For The 21st Century describes how America is facing the biggest energy crisis in its history. It targets Saddam as a threat to American interests because of his control of Iraqi oilfields and recommends the use of 'military intervention' as a means to fix the US energy crisis."

The Sunday Herald digs up another story.  This one talks about a report commissioned by James Baker (Bush I's Secretary of State) and submitted to Cheney in April of last year.  The document in question is available here.  I'm not sure its a smoking gun, but its certainly compelling and adds fuel to the fire for Oil being a central factor behind our actions in the Middle East.  The Sydney Morning Herald is also carrying the story.

I'll probably have more to say once I've read the document a bit closer.

One thing I did notice on the initial skimming is the document opens discussing the problems posed by the California energy crisis and the need for more secure sources energy.  This report was written before the complicity of the energy companies, specifically Enron, in California's situation was known.  Interestingly enough however, one of the members of the Independent Task Force which created the report, is Ken Lay. 

[via The One True B!x]

"Two bills introduced this week in the House sought to redefine consumer rights in the digital era, a departure in a congressional session during which more attention has been paid to protecting copyrighted works from computer-aided piracy. "

A short review of the two "anti" DMCA bills (here's the text of one, the other hasn't been published online yet)  introduced this week.  It also presents some comments from Jack Valenti who, surprisingly to me, admitted "[...] that 100 percent protection is not possible."

ps.  I had to edit this because thomas.loc.gov sucks.  It generates all sorts of temporary links which stop working over time.