Underwear made of feathers . . .

Osama's neice considers New York her home and wants nothing to do with her notorious uncle. She wants the kind of career that wouldn't be available to her amongst her relatives in Saudi Arabia -- 'cause I don't think she would pose wearing underwear made of feathers if she went back there.

Myself, I don't know anybody who has underwear made of feathers.

Do I?

Think of it as Yuletime collectivism . . .

A transit strike in New York in the middle of the Christmas and year end rush. Of course, there's got to be a reason.

"Transit workers are tired of being underappreciated and disrespected," TWU chief Roger Toussaint said, announcing the strike by his 34,000 union members early on Tuesday.

I don't know about you, but nothing earns my respect more quickly than somebody really annoying the hell out of me by adding a whole bunch of excess inconvenience to me during a stressful time of year when I'm just trying to get to the place where I get to exhale and enjoy my family. Yeah, if I had to walk forty blocks to work in the winter, that would really make me appreciate the guys who made me do it.

Betcha the city could buy bike racks for about 3 million bikes with what the union transit workers get. And have money left over to pay good wages to a much smaller crew of non-unionized transit workers.

Hey, it's just a thought in the spirit of the season.

Time Magazine's Big Issue of 2005 . . . .

What did we have in 2005? Oh, a little War. Terror. Hurricanes. The insertion of democracy into the Islamic "street." Podcasting. A rising acceptance of dhimmicracy. Corporate bankruptcies. Paris burning. Just stuff like that. So, that's probably what good ol' Time Magazine had in mind with the selection the persons of the year award for 2005.

Poverty.

?????

I have no problem with the people Time Magazine chose - Bill Gates, wife, and Bono. Although I have made fun of them in the past, I have no reason to think that they are anything other than what they present themselves to be in public.

It's just that now, I really, really wish I had a subscription to Time Magazine.

So I could cancel it.

Some lawyers never get enough credit . . .

Portland's Cleveland High has hit the New York Times! The school, and Portland schools, are cited as examples of the dastardly and vicious practice of requiring students to overcome daily confrontations by nationally branded soft drink dispensing machines. Oh, the humanity!

Fortunately, some trial lawyers around Massachusetts are going to sue America's soft drink makers for pimping their devil brews to those of tender years and weak resolve in public schools. And these aren't just any lawyers, mind you. These are lawyers experienced in class action suits which, as we know, are always motivated by high minded dedication to public health. I refer, of course, to the anti-tobacco litigation that has resulted in windfalls to governments and attorneys, and has severely punished the tobacco sellers by requiring them to raise the price of cigarettes to be paid by those already addicted. Big business had better learn not to trifle with this heroic band of brothers at the bar.

One can only speculate about how much money such a suit would be worth to the vendors of nationally branded sugar waters of iniquity. It could be millions and billions, one must suppose. The hero lawyers are naturally creatures of rectitude when it comes to mention of such pedestrian matters as mere money. (Money quote coming. Watch for it.) .

Mr. Gardner said he and the other lawyers realize that damages could run into the billions. "We haven't decided about this yet," he said. "We don't want this to come off looking like a greedy-lawyer lawsuit."

Oh, certainly not.

Islamic Professor not a conspirator . . .

Oh, so he's not guilty of the crime of conspiracy. Conspiracy is a hard crime to prove. A jury has decided there's not enough evidence to prove him guilty of conspiracy of aiding the other side, and I can live with that.

My question is, was there any evidence of any kind at all to support the proposition that he's on our side?

That's the question that should determine how he is to be treated in the U.S. from now on. I don't think somebody who isn't on our side should be given a university lectern to stand behind. I know. I know, he has a right to say what he thinks. That isn't the same thing as a right to be given a soapbox to stand on and a crowd to talk to. With our money.

I passed. . .

Ten out of ten. Can you?

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

Ramsey Clarke, a modern oracle.

Ramsey Clarke, who somehow found himself stuck with being Saddam's defense attorney, (it's funny how fate can move) questions the charges that there was any torture during Saddam's rule, and asserts the defense that the court trying Saddam does not have the legal authority to do so.

With regard to the legal authority, evidently, Mr. Clarke hasn't heard that the people of Iraq have ratified a new constitution and government.

How does he do it? How is it possible that a person could be consistently wrong over an entire career? Chance would say that he would get something right sometime.

We either have to figure out a way of taking his citizenship from him -- which can't legally happen -- or we have to set him up as a modern oracle who can unnerringly indicate the right path. Just take the path 180 degrees from the line he indicates and you'll be cool.

Actually, now that I think about it, the "illegitimate forum" defense could work out. The court could agree at a televised hearing that the court lacked jurisdiction -- and might just kind of kick Saddam out of the courtroom without delay. I expect at this point that if live television were to point to Saddam walking down the street, sans bodyguards, being smacked by multiple thrown sandals would be the least of his worries.

An Un-P.C. Consideration of Hormones, and stuff. . .

I read something on the web yesterday that wasn't worth much, but I found myself pondering it. Apparently, there's a bunch of fish just off shore - probably around California - and the male fish are growing the beginnings of female sex organs. Evidently there are (a) people who can make such determinations and (b) people who are interested in such things.

A hypothesis was offered as if it were a complete explanation. There's way too much female hormones being flushed and washed into drainage that ends up in the sea and when the fish swim in this soup of femininity(femininininity - say that twice real fast), they get a little confused about their sexuality and start displaying the piscine equivalent of sashaying around with a little extra swish to their fish hips.

I guess this is a problem for the fish, although the article didn't leave me with that impression. But I'm skeptical about the explanation. I don't think that civilized humanity is necessarily the cause of all change that goes on in nature. We didn't kill off the dinosaurs with shopping malls. We didn't cause the first few ice ages and we probably won't be responsible for the next one. I think that whatever hormones are being shed are already pretty dilute when they hit the ocean, where they would have to be further diluted. Our hormonal application just doesn't sound like a very likely explanation to me. And what? We aren't dumping an equivalent amount of male hormones? Just female hormones?

And I wondered, hey, but if we really are dumping all that extra feminine hormone stuff around such that it would affect fish in the ocean, for heavens sake, how come that same extra hormonal blast isn't affecting male humans, and not just the male fish? Wouldn't we human males get exposed to this stuff before the male fish? We hang around female women all the time, and in fact, as much as we can. If that stuff can do it to the male fish, how come it isn't affecting us human males, making us more feminine and less masculine?

And then it occurred to me. Maybe there are signs.

Flouncing around on both coasts - close to the hormonal oceans, doncha know - is a concentration of metrosexuals shrieking and carrying "Bush Lied" and "War is Not the Answer" signs. I say, well, hey. It's a volunteer army. Just don't volunteer and you don't have to go to the damn war and you can just go about your business and stop blocking the intersections with demonstrations. But then I noticed that it isn't that they are actually against war. They like the war on poverty and the war on illiteracy and the war on breast cancer, and if there were a war on bad interior design, they'd like that, too.

No. It's just the old fashioned masculine variety of war the peace party doesn't like. The kind fought traditionally by mostly male warriors who viscerally respond to threats to the safety of their family and country by taking up arms. The mention of the kind of threats offered by the Islamic jihadi terrorists and 9-11, are exactly the kind of threats that will naturally cause a human warrior-type to start listening and sniffing the air for signs of combat to be joined and dangerous enemies to be quashed, all in accord with a deep, biological imperative. That's what the so-called peace activists are really against when they condemn the war in Iraq.

They're hormonal.

How's that for a hypothesis? Could maybe we can test it by gathering up a clan of male protesters and moving them to Tulsa, away from the oceans, for a year and see if they recover their cojones?

Grownups on bicycles.

Here's a notion: bicycles as a form of urban transportation in L.A. Read the article.

Living in Portland, I have three observations.

First,the writer notes the absence bike lanes, etc. Apparently being able to use both streets and sidewalks just isn't enough. Well, here in Portland we have experience with cycling as alternative urban transportation. We have bike lanes and we invest gobs of money in huge overpass bridges for exclusive bicycle use, but we can't afford the expense and bother to repair Naito Blvd. It's a matter of priorities, right? In Portland, people on bicycles are entitled to come first. People who drive cars are just pedestrians who burn fuel.

Second, notice the end of the article. Evidently, much of the charm of bicycling is that most other people don't do it. If it becomes too popular, cyclists would just have to find some other way to feel exceptional. (Less like Americans and more like . . . people who aren't Americans. Like the Dutch, maybe.)

Third, well, somebody has to say it. Grownups on bicycles just flat look goofy. And they frequently smell bad.

Oooops! Seemed like a good idea at the time . . .

Demand for biofuels is destroying the rain forest. (You remember the rain forest. It's where all the oxygen we breath comes from, according to smart people who conceive of themselves as environmentally sophisticated.)

Once again, politician types mandate a condition without looking at the means to achieve it. Those bozos have a childlike belief that scientists and big business can do anything, lacking only the firm hand of government to guide them along to desireable objectives.

The U.N.'s nose under the Internet tent . . .

Saturday, November 5, 2005, Kofi Annan says:

The main objective of the World Summit on the Information Society to be held this month in Tunisia is to ensure that poor countries get the full benefits that new information and communication technologies -- including the Internet -- can bring to economic and social development. But as the meeting draws nearer, there is a growing chorus of misinformation about it. One mistaken notion is that the United Nations wants to "take over," police or otherwise control the Internet. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The United Nations wants only to ensure the Internet's global reach, and that effort is at the heart of this summit.

Ensure the global reach of the Internet? But the U.N.’s proposal to take over the internet core functions doesn't do a damn thing to install the electronic communication infrastructure that let’s anybody get on the web in the first place, and it doesn't do a damn thing to reform thuggish governments' control of access to communications in the other first place. No, Kofi, it won't play. You aren't trying to help globalize the net; you want to own it. Just as feeding poor Iraqis in the Oil for Food program wasn’t your main concern. You have sticky fingers.

Strong feelings about protecting the Internet are to be expected. In its short life, the Internet has become an agent of revolutionary change in health, education, journalism and politics, among other areas. In the United Nations' own work for development, we have glimpsed only the beginning of the benefits it can provide: for victims of disaster, quicker, better-coordinated relief; for poor people in remote areas, lifesaving medical information; and, for people trapped under repressive governments, access to uncensored information as well as an outlet to air their grievances and appeal for help.

There are also legitimate concerns about the use of the Internet to incite terrorism or help terrorists, disseminate pornography, facilitate illegal activities or glorify Nazism and other hateful ideologies. But censoring cyberspace, compromising its technical underpinnings or submitting it to stringent governmental oversight would mean turning our backs on one of today's greatest instruments of progress. To defend the Internet is to defend freedom itself. (emphasis added.)

You got that right, pal. And defending the Internet and freedom itself is exactly what is being accomplished by declining to hand over control. Keeping the U.N. out of control is defending the internet from guys with sticky fingers and a global domination appetite who have demonstrated a pitiful lack of concern for freedom, itself, in Iraq and Africa, among other places, and who have demonstrated a woeful willingness to profit from the miseries of others by supporting people who don’t hesitate a minute to rape, steal, and murder. Globalization, hah!

Governance of matters related to the Internet, such as spam and cybercrime, is being dealt with in a dispersed and fragmented manner, while the Internet's infrastructure has been managed in an informal but effective collaboration among private businesses, civil society and the academic and technical communities. But developing countries find it difficult to follow all these processes and feel left out of Internet governance structures.

If it is difficult for the developing countries to follow all these processes, then why should they be involved in governance structures? You already said they can't do it. Oh, I know. To protect their delicate feewings. C'mon. Let them buy a computer and a modem and then they can join right in as soon as they develop the capability. It isn't as if the consortium is going around excluding capable people, organizations, or governments of whatever citizenship. Precisely the reason the net has been successful is because it is open and not monitored or governed.

Now, the U.N., on behalf of un-named developing countries, wants to step into the “Internet governance structures?” That means Kofi wants to control who gets domain names. The worry isn’t that people will be able to get on the web and read stuff. They worry a lot more that somebody can get on the web and publish stuff. And they should. It isn’t the traditional, mainstream governments that have been most active in directing attention to the U.N.’s “fellow travelers” profiting from the Oil for Food program, and opposing doing anything about the thug who was running Iraq.

The United States deserves our thanks for having developed the Internet and made it available to the world. For historical reasons, the United States has the ultimate authority over some of the Internet's core resources. It is an authority that many say should be shared with the international community. The United States, which has exercised its oversight responsibilities fairly and honorably, recognizes that other governments have legitimate public policy and sovereignty concerns, and that efforts to make the governance arrangements more international should continue.

For “historical reasons” the U.S. has authority? “Historical reasons?” The history is that the web was originally developed by the U.S. government for the security and defense of the United States of America. It was certainly not created for the entertainment and enrichment of the U.N. I guess in Kofi-speak, one owns one’s own property merely for historical reasons, those reasons being that at some time in the past you bought it and paid for it and unfortunately there is a record of purchase, so that makes it historical. Are we starting to get a little insight into how the U.N.ers view private property rights? You betcha. Your stuff is yours by a mere temporary accident of history, subject to correction by appropriation.

And hey, wait a minute. Just when did the United States “recognize” that “efforts to make governance arrangements more international should continue?” Did I miss the memo? I think Kofi is saying that "No" doesn’t mean "No."

The need for change is a reflection of the future, when Internet growth will be most dramatic in developing countries. What we are seeing is the beginning of a dialogue between two different cultures: the nongovernmental Internet community, with its traditions of informal, bottom-up decision making, and the more formal, structured world of governments and intergovernmental organizations.

And I guess we know "culture" side the U.N. is on, and it is not on our side.

The Internet has become so important for almost every country's economy and administration that it would be naive to expect governments not to take an interest, especially since public service applications in areas such as education and health care will become even more widespread. They need to be able to get their Internet policies "right," and to coordinate with each other and with the Internet community. But governments alone cannot set the rules. They must learn to work with non-state stakeholders. They, after all, are the ones that have played critical roles in building and coordinating the Internet, and they will remain the driving force of further expansion and innovation.

Okay, so Kofi recognizes that it isn’t governments that added the World Wide Web to the Internet, and turned this into something great. But, governments are now inviting themselves to the table. Get used to it. Governments, with Kofi at the forefront, intend and expect to share the rule making process, and the “non-state stakeholders” will remain the “driving force of further expansion and innovation,” that is, non-state stakeholders will continue to do any of the actual work.

At the summit two years ago in Geneva, discussions on Internet governance reached a stalemate. So the U.N. member states asked me to establish a group to examine the issue further. This Working Group on Internet Governance presented its findings in a report that reflects the views of its members, but not of the United Nations. It proposed creation of a "new space for dialogue" -- a forum that would bring all stakeholders together to share information and best practices and discuss difficult issues, but that would not have decision-making power.

The group also offered several options for oversight arrangements, with varying degrees of government involvement and relationship to the United Nations. None says that the United Nations should take over from the technical bodies now running the Internet; none proposes to create a new U.N. agency; and some suggest no U.N. role at all. All say that the day-to-day management of the Internet should be left to technical institutions, not least to shield it from the heat of day-to-day politics. These and other suggestions are being considered by U.N. member states.

In other words, the U.N. camel sees the tent, and requests very politely if it would be okay if it could slip just the tiniest bit it its nose into the tent.

Everyone acknowledges the need for more international participation in discussions of Internet governance. The disagreement is over how to achieve it. So let's set aside fears of U.N. "designs" on the Internet. Much as some would like to open up another front of attack on the United Nations, this dog of an argument won't bark. I urge all stakeholders to come to Tunis ready to bridge the digital divide and ready to build an open, inclusive information society that enriches and empowers all people.

Nonsense. Kofi demands nothing less than for "stakeholders" to show up in Tunis and hand over control. He says that any opposition to his scheme is an attack on the U.N.

Hey, the internet works precisely because there’s no authoritarian government structure. On the other hand, authoritarianism and corruption is precisely all that Kofi's little band of second-raters offer. And if you don't think the U.N. will screw this up if they ever get their hands on it, just take a look at which countries are running the human rights show at the U.N. Take a look at the U.N.'s record at preventing genocide in several locations in Africa and in the Balkans and in Indonesia.

And notice what Kofi didn’t say. He didn’t say what the U.N. would do differently to make access and use of the web any more widespread.

C’mon, now, access isn’t that tough. I get this blog site for free – thanks Google. And I have my own domain name (junewick dot com)and a web host for a price that’s low enough that I can do it just to fool around if I want to. I don’t have to get anybody’s permission to publish pretty much anything that comes to my mind. It isn’t as if access to the internet is difficult.

So, just what does Kofi propose to do to make access easier? Give all third worlders their own domain name? Add servers and bandwidth? What? (Google probably has plans to do it already, and to do it better.)

I think we all know the answer. The U.N. wants to dole out bandwidth and domain names to their friends and large contributors. There is money and power at stake here. We have it; they want it, and they are counting on the “conscience” of our own collectivists to see to it that they get it. And like any commodity, the “value” of the internet access will increase when the demand for the resource exceeds the supply, whether the supply is restricted by lack of production or a political constriction.

As it now stands, some governments feel threatened by the internet because increased use leads to increased freedom of citizens who might use their increased freedom to throw out the bums presently running their country. To such countries, it might be worth the cost of having the U.N. in charge of bandwidth and domain names. But I don’t think anybody else would be benefited by the U.N. taking over the web – except for the Kofi and sons family corruption business.

The Road to Serfdom . . .

Last year I read Hayek's The Road to Serfdom for the first time. This week I've been reading it again, at odd moments. Two things come to mind. First, he nails the dangers of socialism, by whatever name it decides to appropriate for itself, liberalism, collectivism, progressivism. Second, that man was smarter than me. The second is a particularly difficult admission for me to make, as ever since I got a law degree, like all lawyers, I've been dead certain of my unique cleverness. ( I only suspected it before the degree.)

I recommend the book, particularly in these times when politics seems to look less like the art of the possible based on facts and shared objectives, and more like a simple craft of invective and accusation, based on some sort of weird tribal association and nothing more.

News you can rely on. . . .

Ah, the press. We know that you can't believe what they say all the time. But pictures don't lie, do they?

Fat Flush and the Last Gasp . . . .

This is about the fat flush diet. If I can save just one person . . . .

Okay, so I am a pound or twenty or more overweight. It's okay. I am an American and I can afford too much food.

Nevertheless, I am now about to start week four of the "Fat Flush" diet -- the one that has been selected by my bride . She has, in response to my questions, pointed out to me that this diet will not only take extra pounds off rapidly, but more important it will cleanse me internally which is important for my continued good health. When I timidly suggested that I am naturally very healthy and maybe I wasn't all that dirty inside and it didn't show, anyway, she made that sad little smile that tells me I am a hopelessly uninformed husband as usual.

Anyhow, I've been cleansing and losing weight. At least I was losing weight at first. Now I'm just losing.

The key to this diet is not eating anything that makes life worthwhile. Then, cut out anything else that you can still put up with. What remains is a handful of worthless vegetation plus several glasses of concentrated evil called a "long life cocktail." You know how when the baby won't eat the nastiness on the spoon, you say "ummmmm" and pretend to eat it? It's in that sense that this stuff is a long life cocktail. Ummmmm. Long life.

After some days of this, I found that I had no energy, not even enough energy to whine about the lack of humanity in this diet. And my organs of elimination have been doing uncomfortable and inconvenient things for the past weeks. Of course, that's just the cleansing going on. So I'm told.

It get's worse. Last weekend, I cheated. I snuck out and had the cheeseburger of my constant dreams. Hell, I approached Burger King with the same reverence some offer up to the Vatican. But, it just wasn't good and I finished the burger only out of sense of obligation to the starving childen of India I heard about in my youth. So, it's official.

I've lost my taste for food.

And now I notice that when I get really hungry, I can't think of anything I want to eat. I don't want to eat anything.

I've lost the will to eat.

In fact, I've lost the will to live.

It's probably only a matter of days before I'm pronounced dead from acute disinterest. But I'm pretty sure the coroner will be impressed by my internal cleanliness.

Trial by Discovery Gotcha . . .

Here's the report. Famous, politically-connected attorney David Boies (remember Clinton and Gore?) is a member of a firm which uses a document management company to deal with providing responses to discovery requests to produce documents. In an odd twist of fate, the document company happens to be owned by several of Boies' children.

His firm is defending a client obliged to respond to a discovery request to produce documents, and in a sad coincidence, his children's document production company was retained to send the response.

The response to the request to produce documents consisted of seventy-seven million pages of documents produced, with a bill in the millions of dollars.

Now the plaintiff is highly perturbed-off, complaining that the bill is too high and that in that many documents nobody could tell what is important or not. (There's a needle in that haystack somewhere.)

Betcha I know what happened. Plaintiff's counsel was probably responding to an excessive document request by the defense - a usual defense tactic - and sent a grand and all-encompassing retaliatory document request of his own.

The defense now smugly points out that they merely produced a complete response to what was requested and one could of course locate pertinent documents with a data base search. (Put a magnet into that haystack.) But that presupposes that plaintiff can formulate the appropriate search words and phrases. And if plaintiff could do that, don't you think they could have formulated a more pointed discovery request in the first place?

As one who has responded to discovery requests, it's kinda fun to laugh at attorneys who now are punished by having to choke down what they asked for in an their over-broad discovery request. The use of excessive and overbroad discovery requests, is, in my mind, an all too frequent violation of the spirit of discovery, encouraged by judges who are consistently reluctant to rein in some attorneys. I still remember the time (insert a little George Bush type cackle here) when an attorney called me to complain loudly that my document requests were excessive and out of line. It got real quiet on the other end of the telephone when I told him that my request to produce was a copy, with only a few changes, of the request for production he himself had sent me the week before. He said his paralegal did it.

But attorneys of this caliber certainly know when a request to produce is excessive and when you have to produce 77 million pages, that's a real good hint. What you do in a case like that, is go file a motion. You don't provide 77 million pages and a $4 million dollar bill, which, when paid, will go to the named partner's children. You don't do that, that is, if you have any interest in resolving the case on the basis of the facts and the law.

On the other hand, one of the widely practiced trial strategies has become, "Starve the bastards out." That means you keep the other attorney, and your own, real busy cranking out billable hours. The client least able to afford this game frequently caves in. And it comes as no surprise that modern litigation overwhelmingly favors the wealthy party who can afford extensive discovery whomped up by attorneys who get paid for every whomping. A side benefit is that attorneys who are not particularly distinguished by brainpower as compared to the general run of the profession, get reputations as effective litigators mostly because their clients are wealthy and can afford to pay for excesses when the other side cannot. Of course, if questioned about the proprieties, such attorneys protest that they are merely doing their jobs as effective litigators. (A particularly nasty wrinkle in this scenario is the case of the class action plaintiff's attorney, who gets the other side to pay for both sides of the excessive discovery activity -- or enter into an agreed settlement.)

Attorneys of this ilk never appear nearly as effective, when opposed by attorneys of the self-same ilk. (Haven't used the word "ilk" in some time.) What results is that the attorneys on both sides end up revealing that they are small-minded and nasty little creatures who should have been smacked more as children.

And in some cases, such as this one, the smacking of both sides should go on into adulthood.

And when it comes to smacking small-minded, nasty little attorneys, one must confess to a slight pang that nobody ever invited me to be an Article III judge.

Ah, well. Life is still good.

Lord of the Flies at N'awlins Superdome. . . .

In case you missed it, what we knew about the atrocities in the Superdome is just another instance of the press running amok with a story they hope is true because it's bad. Yeah, I went for it too. But take a look at this interview.

Terrorist rhetoric and root causes. . .

What do the Islamic terrorists want? Here's an interesting take on the rhetoric from the other side. Sounds like we found the root cause of Islamic rage.

The United Nations still wants to control the web. . .

This is the sort of nonsense you can expect if the U.N. were to be given control of the Internet. We could use the power of the internet to stifle dissent.

The U.N. wants us to give them the Internet . . .

The U.N. wants us to give them control of the Internet, on the grounds that it is a global resource, and therefore they should control it, seeing as how they are now, in their own minds, a global government. In that regard, I seem to recall being taught, back when the U.N. was thought to be nice and shiny and high minded, that the U.N. was to be a place where honorable nations could go to settle differences between them in a peaceable manner. Of course, that was what they were saying during the "police action" in Korea, too. Those weasels have always thought of themselves as a government. Mind you, when I speak of government, I am alluding to an organization that has and will not hesitate to use force to compel compliance with its decisions. And where should the U.N.'s force come from? Why it's simple. We should just give them control of our military. The U.N. will give them blue hats to wear so it will be okay putting our military citizens under Kofi's control.

It's happened before.

But back to the Internet. It was after all originally a U.S. Defense project with a strategic mission to increase U.S. security. It isn't as if it was originally intended to be a "global resource." It still isn't a just another resource. But it is definitely something the U.N. minions would like to get their sticky fingers on, so the U.N. could dole out access to its friends, as in the scandalous Oil for Food program benefitting Kofi and Jacques.

If the Internet isn't a resource, what is it? Well, among other things, it is a means of production. And there is a system of thought that says that the means of production should be "owned" by the people and administered by gummint overseers who appropriate assets as agents of the people. I refer, of course, to socialism.

Well, let me see now. There are some nations that don't want their citizens to have unlimited access to the web. And guess what. They aren't capitalist countries. And what are the chances that, if given control, after they've restricted access to the web for their own citizens, they would genially permit us to go on as we have been?

I.Q. doesn't matter . . .

it's just a test. Right?