http://pleadthefirst.com Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of an unnecessary blog, or prohibiting the free posting therein. Tue, 17 Jun 2008 01:26:22 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en John McCain recently weighed in on the Supreme Court Gitmo decision regarding Habeas Corpus saying: We are now going to have the courts flooded with so-called, quote, Habeas Corpus suits against the government, whether it be about the diet, whether it be about the reading material. And we are going to ... http://pleadthefirst.com/2008/06/16/habeas-clueless/ Writing an application for the Mac has been a longtime goal of mine. I'm happy to say that I can finally check that goal off of my list: Presenting DomainBrain 1.0. DomainBrain is a handy tool for Mac OS X that helps webmasters and web designers keep track of server and ... http://pleadthefirst.com/2008/05/01/presenting-domainbrain-10/ My webhost tells me that my blog has been causing some bogginess with my database as a result of some slow queries. I think the queries are ones dealing with comment spam, so I've closed the comments on a bunch of older posts to try to alleviate the problem a ... http://pleadthefirst.com/2008/03/08/mysql-slow-queries/ An article by Cliff Kincaid on the Global Poverty Act has been getting mentioned quite a bit lately. The bill was passed in the House and is currently sponsored in the Senate by Barack Obama. According to Kincaid, this legislation would plunge the U.S. into an era of unprecedented economic ... http://pleadthefirst.com/2008/03/06/the-global-poverty-act-and-our-un-overlords/ The Pulpit Forum, a group of local, predominantly black ministers, is having a press conference today. Joe Guarino is attepting to paint it as a violation of the separation of Church and State, despite the fact that there has been no religious content to anything they've presented yet. The gist of ... http://pleadthefirst.com/2008/02/26/the-pulpit-forum-and-church-and-state/ Republican lawmakers are having fits over the terrorist surveillance bill that the Democratic-led House allowed to expire. Will the evildoers run amok now, thanks to the bill's expiration? Not exactly. Ed Brayton sums it up nicely: [T]he law now reverts to the old FISA statute and the Patriot Act amendments ... http://pleadthefirst.com/2008/02/17/wiretapdancing/ It's a classic tale of longing, rejection, and fulfillment. You know: Reporter requests document. City denies the existence of the document. Local blogger posts the document. City suddenly finds the document. This cartoon didn't end up running in the paper this week. Unfortunately, the timing was off - the whole incident ... http://pleadthefirst.com/2008/02/17/cartoon-keep-searching/ Rush Limbaugh dazzles us with his fifth level thinking: "If I really wanted to torpedo McCain, I would endorse him," Limbaugh said on his radio show. "Because that would send the independents and liberals who are going to vote for him running away faster than anything." "What people don't realize is that ... http://pleadthefirst.com/2008/02/12/never-get-involved-in-a-land-war-in-asia/ Greensboro Politics has posted an interview with Greensboro City Manager Mitch Johnson. One part jumped out at me (emphasis added): Ryan: Does City Hall have a communications problem? Mitchell: "Um…. Well, Um… I think based on, based on what’s…. I would say yes. We have not been effective getting a message out ... http://pleadthefirst.com/2008/02/12/maybe-its-not-all-johnsons-fault/ Great quote from Sam Spagnola over at David Hoggard's blog: Our government and system of justice puts the burden of proof on the government, not the accused. If Johnson has a case, it is up to him to prove it. Wray doesn’t have to prove his innocence, although I believe for ... http://pleadthefirst.com/2008/02/10/if-mitch-johnson-were-president/