The Daily Parker

Who was Saul Alinsky? Bill Maher explains, sort of:

Robert Wright secretly loves Newt's candidacy:

The horror I feel when I imagine Newt assuming a position of responsibility can give way to melancholia if I contemplate the prospect of life without the feisty, aging smurf. Here are some things I'll miss should anyone ever succeed in driving a stake through Gingrich's heart...

Newt boldly goes where no aspiring president has gone before. He has pledged that as president he would support something that he (who else?) dreamed up as a congressman: "the northwest ordinance for space," which says that, once you have 13,000 Americans on the moon, the moon can apply for statehood.

The problem isn't the conundrums this would raise. (With one senator per 6,500 moon residents, would lunar interests be overrepresented in Congress? Or might this effect be partly offset by the difficulty senators would have flying home to take the pulse of their constituents on three-day weekends?) The problem, rather, is that this sounds like a crazy person talking!

What's not to like?

Without Andrew Sullivan, I might miss some of the more outrageous events in public discourse. Take, for example, the Kansas House Speaker—i.e., the leader of the legislative branch of one of the states here in the U.S.—two weeks ago not-so-subtly called for the President's death:

"Pray for Obama. Psalm 109:8." That's the slogan an email from [Kansas House Speaker Mike O'Neal (R-Hutchinson) to his Republican colleagues] refers to, a phrase that's become popular in some circles on bumper stickers and other merchandise. The bible passage itself reads, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office." The real controversy arises in the next verse of Psalm 109, however, which continues, "May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow."

In a message accompanying the email, O'Neal writes:

"At last -- I can honestly voice a Biblical prayer for our president! Look it up -- it is word for word! Let us all bow our heads and pray. Brothers and Sisters, can I get an AMEN? AMEN!!!!!!"

Where to begin? I am overwhelmed.

Let's start with Exodus 20:13, yes? But no—you don't need a commandment from a deity to know this one is wrong, even if you're Mike O'Neal.

All right then, how about 18 USC 871? Again, though, that's an appeal to authority, which isn't entirely logical. I mean, if O'Neal were a three-year-old or a dog, a firm correction would help establish appropriate boundaries of behavior. But he's neither, which is unfortunate, because that means Kansans might be stuck with him as the guy representing their state to the outside world, whereas were he a toddler, he could be brought inside and made to stand in a corner until he grew up.

Golden rule, then? Appeal to self-interest (don't make threats against other people lest they make threats against you)? Appeal to politics (you hurt your cause by making statements like that in public)?

Ultimately, I don't think any appeals, logical or illogical, will work in this case. Mike O'Neal has demonstrated that he's not fit to hold public office in the United States. But we live in a republic; his district in Kansas elected him to the state house; and his colleagues elected him to speak for them. So let me broaden the question somewhat, and ask the people of the Kansas 104th: do you really want this guy speaking for you? If so, what the hell's the matter with you?

Now, O'Neal has apologized since the initial incident. But that doesn't diminish my point. He displayed contempt for republican ideals, contempt for democracy, and contempt for common sense with his email. He should not hold public office anywhere in this country.

Andrew Sullivan defines "hathos" as "the attraction to something you really can't stand; it's the compulsion of revulsion." This qualifies. Yesterday I noted that Bob Dole's assessment of Newt Gingrich told you all you need to know about Gingrich. Not so fast! Herman Cain has weighed in, changing nothing of the result, but providing some comic relief:

“I hereby officially and enthusiastically endorse Newt Gingrich for president of the United States,” Cain said in a brief speech at the Palm Beach County GOP Party Lincoln Day Dinner in West Palm Beach, Fla.

“There are several reasons, many reasons, as to why I have reached this public decision,” he said. “I had it in my heart and mind a long time ago.”

“One of the biggest reasons is the fact that I know that Speaker Gingrich is a patriot,” Cain said. “Speaker Gingrich is not afraid of bold ideas. And I also know that Speaker Gingrich is running for president, and going through this sausage grinder -- I know what this sausage grinder is all about. I know that he’s going through this sausage grinder because he cares about the future of the United States of America. We all do.”

Cain's address to the Florida GOP was entitled, "Incoherency."

Via Sullivan, a snippet of conversation between Bob Dole and Newt Gingrich in the 1990s:

"Why do people take such an instant dislike to me?" asked a perplexed Gingrich, to whom Dole bluntly explained: "Because it saves them time."

In unrelated news, Parker and I are about to walk around in abnormally warm, sunny weather on what is statistically the coldest day of the year in Chicago. This is the warmest winter in 78 years, with the fewest sub-freezing maximum temperatures in 40 years. (Today was above freezing until a cold front edged through this morning; right now it's -1°C.)

Two items I haven't had time to read fully, and intend to do over the weekend:

• The Economist explores Boeing's immense order book;
• James Fallows has annotated the State of the Union address President Obama delivered Tuesday.

That is all.

Oh, except: tomorrow the sun sets in Chicago at 5pm for the first time since November 5th.

The Hollywood Reporter has a lengthy (for them) description of how big-studio executives' SOPA effort looks, in retrospect, more like Pickett's Charge:

"They didn't understand the politics of the Internet, the power of the Internet, the perception people had of the things they were proposing," says an aide to a congressman who opposed the legislation. "The MPAA and the different lobbying organizations are trying to do it old-school and by the book. They ran into new technologies, new strategies, new techniques. I imagine they're sitting around discussing how they got beat."

The MPAA's [Michael] O'Leary concedes that the industry was outmanned and outgunned in cyberspace. He says the MPAA "is [undergoing] a process of education, a process of getting a much, much greater presence in the online environment. This was a fight on a platform we're not at this point comfortable with, and we were going up against an opponent that controls that platform."

More concisely: they just don't get it. And they probably never will, even after they become irrelevant (see under: record companies).

A couple of things have happened on two issues I mentioned earlier this week:

• On SOPA, my congressional representative, Mike Quigley, came out with a statement this morning formally declaring his opposition to the bill. Yes, he was also a dollar short...but we'll give him a pass.
• The Economist spent six column-inches about it in this week's issue explaining how this year's leap second would be the world's last. Today, however, the International Telecommunications Union punted the decision to 2015, leaving open the possibility of more leap seconds in the future.

That is all for now. We in Chicago are bracing for 15 cm of snow tomorrow, so there may be Parker videos soon.

Oh, and: Kodak actually did file for bankruptcy protection today.

Via reader HF, the Supreme Court today decided Golan v Holder (pdf), in which the court held 6-2 that Congress was within its authority to restore copyright protection to some foreign works that had formerly lapsed into the public domain in the U.S.

Writing for the majority, Justice Ginsburg said: "Neither the Copyright and Patent Clause nor the First Amendment, we hold, makes the public domain, in any and all cases, a territory that works may never exit."

I'm still digesting the opinion, but let me say on first reading that it does not give Congress blanket authorization to restore copyright to works in the public domain, despite Wired's alarmist article. The circumstances of this case seem clear, well-defined, and narrow. Only works that never left copyright protection in the country where the work or the author came from, but lapsed into public domain in the U.S., are covered. Also, the decision only applies prospectively, so that authors whose works were copied or performed here during the lapse period will not require retroactive royalty payments. And the works will, in due course, return to the public domain, in most cases 70 years after the author's death.

To give an example: the works of Sergei Prokofiev, which generally went into the public domain in the U.S. 28 years after he wrote them, will return to copyright protection until 70 years after his death; i.e., at the end of 2023. But none of the recordings of his music made before today are affected. (Clarification: copies that exist as of this morning are not affected; any copies made from today forward are.)

Also, with the merciful strangling of SOPA this afternoon, the Copyright Police aren't going to block the iTunes store on suspicion of harboring "Peter and the Wolf." (Youporn, on the other hand, probably shouldn't have that one to begin with.)

Congress enacted the law in question to ensure that U.S. copyright holders get the same protection from other WTO members that other countries' authors get from us. Of course, who many of those copyright holders are, and the way they cling pathetically to an obsolete business model the way rats cling to flotsam in the ocean, is a different matter entirely. I recommend Lawrence Lessig's thoughts on SOPA to get you riled up about that problem.

Welcome back. We were dark today to protest two flawed legislative proposals, the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act.

The administration today hinted at a threat to veto SOPA, while several senators have withdrawn support for PIPA in response to the blackout protests around the Internet:

Co-sponsors who say they can no longer support their own legislation include Senators Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, and Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat. Republican Representatives Ben Quayle of Arizona, Lee Terry of Nebraska, and Dennis Ross of Florida also said they would withdraw their backing of the House bill.

Rubio said he switched his position on the Senate measure, the Protect IP Act, after examining opponents’ contention that it would present a “potentially unreasonable expansion of the federal government’s power to impact the Internet,” according to a posting today on Facebook. Blunt said in a statement today he is withdrawing as a co-sponsor of the Senate bill.

The Washington Monthly explains the administration's volte face on SOPA:

The White House didn’t issue a veto threat, per se, but the administration’s chief technology officials concluded, “We will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” The statement added that any proposed legislation “must not tamper with the technical architecture of the Internet.” The White House’s position left SOPA and PIPA, at least in their current form, effectively dead.

The state of play in the Senate is a little different — a PIPA vote is likely next Tuesday — but even in the upper chamber, the bill is quickly losing friends. Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) announced his opposition yesterday, and Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), a former co-sponsor of PIPA, is also now against it.

The President did, however, shut down the Keystone XL pipeline (at least for now).

So, in all, this was a pretty good day for the people.

Update: Via Coding Horror, Mozilla Foundation Chair Mitchell Baker has a great description of why PIPA and SOPA are so awful.