Bloggasm

From the article:

Yet the night after hearing the Diebold defense proposal, according to investigators who recreated his actions from computer logs, Heller went back to work inside the word processing center at the law firm Jones Day and began printing every document he could access that its attorneys had created for Diebold — 107 memos, charts, actions plans and e-mails.

One memo warned that Die-bold could be prosecuted for illegally handling votes on Election Day. In a draft letter, Jones Day attorneys studiously avoided telling California elections officials of Diebold changes in a voting system component that ended up failing in presidential elections. In one e-mail, Jones Day advised Diebold of the need for sweeping civil and criminal defenses, billed at up to $450,000 a month.

In a meeting in a Ventura County park, the documents landed in the hands of Diebold’s most vociferous critics at BlackBoxVoting.org. From there, some were faxed to a documentary filmmaker for attempted hand-delivery to then-California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley in Manhattan.

I seem to remember that Diebold has already been approved for the 2006 elections. What a shame that democracy has become so fragile.

via boingboing

Sorry that there haven’t been any new posts for about a week, it’s been hectic around here. A new batch of interviews went out tonight and we should have our regularly scheduled posts soon.

I stumbled upon Sugarbank because it turns out we accidently stole the name Bloggasm from them (sorry about that, we really are!), but it has since turned into one of my favorite blogs. It’s a sex blog, but rather than focusing on giving us something to masturbate to (well, it does that too), it has some great posts on the porn industry in general, which I find fascinating.

They have a great new post up: How Influential is Porn?.

(more…)

Next to Crooks and Liars, my favorite liberal blog is Sadly, No!. It has almost no practical use whatsoever, and perhaps that’s why I like it so much. Instead of attacking the most influential conservative pundits, this blogger manages to find the most outlandish wingnuts out there and tear them to pieces. What makes the blog interesting isn’t the way he takes them down — that’s just too easy to do — but his unique talent for actually finding these whackjobs.

(more…)

Recently I got the opportunity to interview a friend of mine, the Martian Anthropologist. You might have heard of him – he’s a hard-hitting left-wing alien (ok, not really an alien) who, along with the owner of Bulldog Manifesto, starting the “Impeach Bush Coalition” in September 2005. I caught up with M. last week, and here’s how the interview went:

For the benefit of our readers, please introduce yourself, and if possible, tell us your real name?

I can tell you that my middle name is Dylan. My parents named me after Bob Dylan.

Are you really an alien? Or are the rumors unfounded?

No comment. Sorry!

What are your plans for Martian Anthropologist? It has a strong focus on political issues. Do you think you will ever be diluting the focus to include personal stories?

I think that I’ve been doing that already, somewhat. What I really want the Martian Anthropologist to be about is what I’m thinking. A lot of times, it’s about politics. Sometimes it isn’t.

Tell us a bit about how the Impeach Bush Coalition came into being, and where it stands now?

(more…)

No, the penguins aren’t even gay in the book. They just worked together to help raise an adopted egg.

A book about two male penguins that raised a baby penguin has been moved from the children’s section to the non-fiction section of two public library branches after parents complained about homosexual undertones.

The illustrated children’s book, “And Tango Makes Three,” is based on a true story of two male penguins in New York City’s Central Park Zoo.

The penguins, named Roy and Silo, adopted an abandoned egg in the late 1990s.

I don’t know why libraries become such a central issue of debate when it comes to conservatives. Do they just find them to be an easy target because libraries tend to back down really easily?

You know the opening credits to the Simpsons?

Well, they’ve created a real-life version of it. It follows the sequence pretty well.