I have no idea why I was listening to Bill O'Reilly on his radio show last week. But one of his topics was what he called a Judicial Coup d'Etat, where the "ACLU is hooking up with a number of liberal judges to declare things that they don't like as unconstitutional." I found it a bit hard to get worked up, particularly as I tend to agree with the ACLU and liberal judges more often than not. But Bill goes on to say:

It is obvious, ladies and gentlemen, that we the people are being directly attacked by secularists who want to change this country. They know they can't do it in the voting booth, so they are going to do it using the courts.

What bizarre timing that this issue re the no-call lists should hit the US national press less than a week later:

A federal judge in Denver late today ruled that the government's plan to curb unsolicited telemarketing calls was unconstitutional, another blow to plans to implement a national do-not-call list next week. ... News of today's court decision came after the Senate voted 95 to 0 for legislation that would overturn a decision by U.S. District Judge Lee R. West in Oklahoma City blocking the government's do-not-call plan.

Boy, every time I think I'm going to be able to do something design-related for my degree project, things get really "interesting" regarding technology and policy. On the one hand, I've not bothered to sign up for the do-not-call list. For me, caller ID works perfectly fine. On the other, this may be a harbinger of things to come re Internet policy. If history is any clue, this is a pretty darn critical time for the Internet, and even if there are some Chicken Littles out there, it certainly seems that now is the time to determine whether the Internet or WWW will go the way of radio (and be subject to the whims of commercial interest) or retain most of its anarchical features. Some think we may have already lost.

10:21 PM | linkme | home