SPYWARE CAN CONSTITUTE trespass to chattels. This seems quite obviously correct to me.

MORE ON AMERICAN COMPANIES FACILITATING INTERNET CENSORSHIP: “Myanmar now joins several nations, including China, Iran and Singapore, in relying on Western software and hardware to accomplish their goals, Mr. Deibert said. . . . ‘It’s related to the problems that Yahoo and Microsoft and others are facing in China,’ Mr. Palfrey said, ‘but here the issue is that these technology security companies are directly profiting from the censorship regime itself.'”

SPEAKING OF STAGED NEWS:

In one of television’s inadvertently funny moments, the NBC News correspondent was paddling in a canoe during a live report about flooding in Wayne, N.J. While she talked, two men walked between her and the camera _ making it apparent that the water where she was floating was barely ankle-deep.

Heh. There’s video.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, one of the soldiers at the Bush event blogs about what happened. Seems like a lot of media folks are up the creek, while bloggers wade by in hip boots . . . .

IN THE LATEST INSTALLMENT of his “Transatlantic Voices” series, Clive Davis interviews Peter Robinson.

A CALL FOR HARRIET MIERS TO WITHDRAW, from the National Review editors.

ANN ALTHOUSE invokes Bulwer-Lytton. Readers are joining in the fun. I guess they’ve laid off all the copy editors at the NYT. . . .

THE INSTA-WIFE is asking you to support research into heart disease.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Here’s a report, with video from the Associated Nanotechnology Congress at Rice University.

LAURA LEE DONOHO writes that the press has been staging war news for years.

Then there’s stuff like this.

UPDATE: Not to mention this and this.

TOM ELIA LOOKS AT A REPORT from Baghdad and observes: “Here are the two things this story tells us. One, opponents of the Iraqi constitution are losing if their only means of persuasion is through the use of violence. Two, the Associated Press needs to learn the difference between an insurgent and a terrorist.”

RYAN SAGER writes on campaign finance “reform” and censorship:

The problem for Temple and bloggers like him who mix journalism and activism — popular sites such as the conservative RedState.org and the liberal DailyKos.com — is that they may well lose no matter what the FEC decides.

If such sites are not entitled to the press exemption, they will likely run afoul of limits under federal law on how much individuals and corporations can donate to candidates for federal office. Their journalism will, in effect, be labeled a campaign contribution.

But even if these sites do get the press exemption, what will they have won? Nothing more than the “privilege” of writing news and commentary without fear of prosecution. In other words, they’ll get to exercise the most basic right of all Americans only so long as the government continues to approve.

This is press licensing, and it’s unconstitutional and unAmerican.

STEPHEN GORDON AT THE SPECULIST, on what Bush needs to do about avian flu.

I HAVE A DRINKING PROBLEM: What with work and family stuff, I don’t drink nearly enough these days. That’s why I’ve started using one of these gadgets, addressing a problem — spoilage — that I never used to face. I used to think that these things were for wimps, but now I realize that they’re not. Or that I am . . . .

UPDATE: Reader Jason Greenman says I need to be using nitrogen. Jeez, I’ve gone from nitrous-injectors to nitrogen-injectors. . . .

HEH.

MICHAEL FUMENTO looks at the misreporting of events in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and the significant harm it did to rescue efforts.

Meanwhile, if you haven’t read it before you should read Michael Lewis’s account. Best line: “These men also had another informational disadvantage: working TV sets.”

CONDI RICE CHASES DOWN A DICTATOR and talks about democracy.

WHY, YES, I did see fireworks.

RECREATING THE SPANISH FLU: Charles Krauthammer is unhappy.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Reader Douglas Bass emails:

I attended the weekly caucus of the Minnesota Organization of Bloggers at Keegan’s Irish Pub in Minneapolis tonight. Rep. Mark Kennedy was also in attendance, moving from table to table, and his spokesperson/staffer, the lovely and talented Heidi Frederickson was part of our team for the weekly trivia competition.

We had a good discussion about Tom DeLay, and what his indictment means for the Republican House. Kennedy said “I want to know where the outrage is in the blogosphere. There is only one of the four major caucuses with a rule that says the leader has to step down if indicted.”

I said “I’m not nearly as offended by DeLay’s indictment as I am about that remark about there being no fat in the federal budget.” I then went on to describe some of the pork projects in Minnesota, the Porkbusters website. He seemed to not have been aware of the Porkbusters website at all, which I found somewhat shocking. But at least we’re making some progress, as we not only mentioned it to Rep. Kennedy, but to one of his staffers as well.

This is how to do it. All politics is local. And send ’em to the PorkBusters Wikipedia entry, which sentiment seems to favor retaining.

MICKEY KAUS on proposals for a reporters’ shield law:

If Congress said professional reporters had more votes than ordinary citizens, after all, it would be struck down instantly. What’s different about speech? … I know, I know. The press professionals are doing it for our benefit! But you could say the same about, say, giving more votes to the more educated. They’d be doing it for the rest of us. Did someone add a Condescension Clause to the Constitution when I wasn’t looking?

Some people seem to think so.

DAN GILLMOR: “We’re moving toward a system under which only the folks who are deemed to be professionals will be granted the status of journalists, and thereby more rights than the rest of us. This is pernicious in every way. . . . Plainly, what’s at issue — if protection is needed — is the act of journalism, not whether the person doing it is a journalist. We can all do acts of journalism from time to time. Most of us are not journalists except at those times. Congress is clueless, perhaps by design, on this issue.”

FROM TEXAS HOLD-EM TO California rope-a-dope?

KERRY DUPONT: Iraq will shame us again. Well, some of us.

IN BOSTON: A Walk for Democracy in Belarus.

UPDATE: Hey, it’s worldwide!

COMING SOON: Charges that Meet the Press is staged?

UPDATE: A savage critique from Jason van Steenwyk. “Most editors I wrote for as a Time Inc. wretch would have caught that, and never let me get away with it. Not so at the AP I guess.”

Bill Quick: “Nothing ruffles the White House press corps, or the liberal bigstream media, more than the truth.”