LibBits

SO, HOW COME WE STILL HAVE ALL THOSE 'GUN LAWS' ON THE BOOKS?

For the first time in four years, [Fortune magazine's] Power 25 has a new No. 1. The heavily Republican National Rifle Association has replaced the nonpartisan [sic - ed.] American Association of Retired Persons as the group with the most clout in the capital. ...

Although city slickers might be aghast at the ascendancy of the NRA, this is a highly focused, well-financed organization. Despite high-profile school shootings and unrelenting pressure from gun-control advocates, the NRA has held gun-control legislation at bay. How? By electing its supporters to Congress and, last year, to the White House. In particular, the NRA was pivotal in defeating Al Gore in Arkansas, Tennessee, and West Virginia--all states that usually vote Democratic. If Gore had won just one of them, he would now be President.

Nothing inspires zealotry like a threat, and few people feel more threatened than gun owners, more and more of whom are finding comfort in the NRA. ...

www.fortune.com/indexw.jhtml?channel=artcol.jhtml&doc_id=202410

... OUR IMPERIALISM, OUR TYRANNY, AND OUR DICTATORSHIP?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives, undeterred by four Senate rejections in the past decade, on Tuesday approved a proposed constitutional amendment designed to forbid the burning of the American flag.
[...]
"Most Americans look to the flag as a symbol of our unity, our sovereignty and our democracy," Rep. John Linder, a Georgia Republican, said in pushing for passage.

Source: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010718/pl/congress_flag_dc.html

HE'S BA-A-A-CK!

"He has committed nearly 25 years of his life to public service and has been grateful to do so," said Gore aide Kiki McLean. "I suspect he will continue to play a role - however undefined it may be at this point - as an advocate of the issues he's always believed to be important to America and its families." [Of course his positions have always changed with the direction of the political wind. - ed.]

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20010718/us/citizen_gore_2.html

FULL-AUTO MLS?

Gone are the days when a librarian's worst offense was hushing patrons one too many times.

In this digital age, the custodians of published works are at the center of a global copyright controversy that casts them as villains simply for doing their job: letting people borrow books for free.

Their leading opponents are the very people who supply the books that fill their shelves--the publishers. And now that the high-stakes battle over copyrights has moved beyond music and movies to books, librarians are finding themselves the subject of rhetoric usually reserved for terrorists or revolutionaries.

"They've got their radical factions, like the Ruby Ridge or Waco types," who want to share all content for free, said Judith Platt, a spokeswoman for the Association of American Publishers.

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-201-6545588-0.html?tag=bt_pr

YOU TALKIN' TO ME?

A national meeting of the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) will convene later this month, when Green delegates are expected to vote in favor of filing papers with the Federal Election Commission for national committee status to establish a new national party: the Green Party of the United States.

"The Nader campaign brought us lots of national attention," says Green organizer Dean Myerson. "Greens generally tend to focus their efforts on local and state races and on local-issue activism, building the party from the ground up. A strong grass-roots foundation will prevent the top-heavy hierarchies and resulting power struggles and schisms that have destroyed other third parties."

Source: John McCaslin http://www.townhall.com/columnists/johnmccaslin/jm20010714.shtml

DIGITIZE THIS!

TAMPA, Fla. �� Wearing masks and making obscene gestures at police cameras, about 100 people protested a new security system that scans faces in the city's crime-ridden nightlife district to search for wanted persons.

"Being watched on a public street is just plain wrong," said May Becker, wearing a bar code sticker on her forehead. Becker joined demonstrators in the Ybor City district Saturday night, wearing a sign reading: "We're under house arrest in the land of the free."

One protester walked by a camera, gestured obscenely and shouted, "Digitize this!"

Others wore gas masks, Groucho Marx glasses and other items to protest the FaceIt scanning system police are using in a neighborhood that attracts 75,000 to 150,000 people on weekend nights.

The video cameras snap pictures of faces in the crowd and compare them to a database of 30,000 people that includes runaway teens and wanted criminals. It works by analyzing 80 facial points between the nose, cheekbones and eyes. Tampa is the only American city where police use the face-recognition technology for routine surveillance, but Virginia Beach, Va., is seeking a $150,000 state grant for a similar system.

So far, police say the system has not led to any arrests although it has been used in Ybor the past two weekends.

washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010715/aponline173031_000.htm

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