This is the presentation Larry Lessig gave at the Brennan Center’s Campaign Finance Reform forum last week.  It is well worth your time.
Also? The next time you’re tempted to use PowerPoint in a presentation, think about this.
Month: May 2009 Page 4 of 6
Also? The next time you’re tempted to use PowerPoint in a presentation, think about this.
That’s the title of a New America Foundation forum (really, a couple of panel discussions) I’m planning to check out this morning. It’s a topic at the center of an area that I’ve been deeply interested in (and have peripherally worked in) for years. If you share my interest, you can watch the proceedings here.
This is the kind of crap that should be so simple to address:
The Senate on Tuesday night easily passed an amendment to credit card reform legislation that would allow concealed weapons in national parks. The vote was 67 to 29.
The question now is this: Will a controversial gun proposal attached to popular underlying legislation be the poison pill that sinks that larger bill? That’s been the case with legislation allowing the District of Columbia a voting representative in Congress, to which the Senate attached language scrapping many of Washington’s strict gun control laws. As a result of that gun amendment, the DC-vote bill remains stalled in the House months after it passed the upper chamber.
What, in the wide wide world of sports, do guns have to do with the credit card industry? Doesn’t an amendment have to be “germane” to the purpose of the bill? Do we stop speaking English when it comes to Senate rules? Majority Leader Harry Reid could put a stop to this bullshit, if he wanted to.  I suspect that we’d be amazed at the good it would do.
Back in January, I noted that the Bush Administration was imposing a hefty import duty on Roquefort cheese, in retaliation for the EU daring to have some food safety standards. But just last week, common sense and civility broke out:
Food lovers breathed a sigh of relief today when news broke that the U.S. was dropping threatened tariffs on luxury food imports from Europe.
“Cheese war ends, everybody wins,” Foreign Policy declared in its Passport blog, encouraging its readers to enjoy a celebratory cheeseburger.
These taxes–which would have pushed the markup on French Roquefort cheese from 100 percent to a whopping 300 percent–never actually went into effect. But the food world had been making provisions just in case.
Obama saved your cheese. Rejoice.
Just rec’d this:
Join the National Park Service and Trips for Kids [this Saturday] as they start off their annual family friendly bike tours on the Mall. The rides start at 2:30 at the Jefferson (Trips for Kids starts at 2:00 from Gravelly Point to get a little extra riding in) and last about 2 hours. The rides are family friendly, fun and incredibly informative. Trailer and tow-a-bikes welcome. I hope to see folks out there. More info below.
http://www.nps.gov/mall/planyourvisit/national-bike-frequently-asked-questions.htm
I’ve never done this ride myself, but Trips for Kids is a solid organization run by great people, so I expect this will be pretty well organized.
At the center of that spit of land above is Gwadar, Pakistan. I spend a lot of time with my head pressed against the glass while flying, and see lots of places I’d like to go. But few sights have grabbed me as as much as that view, and Robert Kaplan’s new article in the Atlantic does nothing but increase my desire to go to Gwadar:
Whether Gwadar becomes a new silk-route nexus or not is tied to Pakistan’s own struggle against becoming a failed state. Pakistan, with its “Islamic†nuclear bomb, Taliban- and al-Qaeda-infested northwestern borderlands, dysfunctional cities, and territorially based ethnic groups for whom Islam could never provide adequate glue, is commonly referred to as the most dangerous country in the world, a nuclear Yugoslavia-in-the-making. And so Gwadar is a litmus test, not just for roads and energy routes but for the stability of the entire Arabian Sea region.
One day.
Spent much of the day at the Brennan Center’s Money in Politics 2009: New Horizons for Reform conference. It was well worth the time spent, I think, and I came away with a better understanding of the state of play on campaign finance reform (really, try and manage your jealousy).  I’ll post a little more about it over the weekend.
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Tomorrow brings the Centenary Giro d’Italia! Everything you ever needed and wanted to know (and more) about the 100th running of one of this pro cycling stage race it can be found at PodiumCafe. I suggest starting with Chris’ Workingman’s Guide to the Centenary Giro to get an idea for which stages you might want to catch. This year, the race is very accessible, as Universal Sports will be carrying it both live online and broadcast. And in case you’re wondering whether this is just me overhyping some dull race, check out this map of the end of Stage 19:
Yes, it ends on Mt. Vesuvius.  Here are a couple of other shots, including the Blockhaus climb and roll along the Amalfi coastline. In my opinion, the Giro d’Italia has – hands down – the most beautiful course of the three Grand Tours. Even the dullest flat stages take you through some beautiful countryside. Give it a go.
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Whether Nancy Pelosi knew about the Bush Administration’s torturing or not, it’s entirely irrelevant to the need to investigate and prosecute. If that process results in damage to Pelosi? So be it. (And her possible exposure is all the more reason to get a real prosecutor on the case, and not some “bi-partisan panel” to tidy it all up.)
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John Cole (These Deaths Are On You, Obama) and Dan Froomkin (Any Remorse, Mr. President?) remind us that the deaths of innocents in the name of America didn’t stop with the election.
Here’s an amazing clip from an upcoming BBC documentary, produced with a super-slow motion camera. Make sure it’s in HD, and give it a minute to load. Well worth your time.
Equality under the law. Would you have believed the state of things today, a few years ago? I wouldn’t have. So very nice to be wrong, sometimes.