In an unprecedented move, Justice Louis L. Stanton of the Southern District Court of New York has ordered Google to turn over every single record of every single video ever watched on YouTube, including each user’s name and IP address. That’s right, that includes you.
What will be included in my history? Well, more recently…
Bo Jackson - Tecmo Super Bowl Run
Putting aside the unsurprising fact that Google keeps these records (they’re to be delivered in 4TB segments), it’s truly astounding that a judge would decide to violate the privacy of individuals that may in no way be involved in the copyright infringement argument that Viacom is making.
Thanks to Serious Eats, the wife and I will be enjoying the FastPass lane at the Big Apple BBQ in early June. And it’s all thanks to the books at my local library!
The always excellent Glenn Greenwald makes note of an interesting exchange between Anderson Cooper and a former White House corespondent for ABC News, reporter Jessica Yellin:
JESSICA YELLIN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning. When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.
And my own experience at the White House was that, the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives — and I was not at this network at the time — but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president.
I think, over time…
(CROSSTALK)
COOPER: You had pressure from news executives to put on positive stories about the president?
YELLIN: Not in that exact — they wouldn’t say it in that way, but they would edit my pieces. They would push me in different directions. They would turn down stories that were more critical and try to put on pieces that were more positive, yes. That was my experience.
With the recent release of former Press Secretary, Scott McClellan’s book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, it would appear that the media has gone all out to cover their own asses, and for good reason. Here’s an excerpt from the guy that these reporters are supposed to be asking the “hard questions” to:
If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.
Anyone who has watched a White House presser during this Administration already knew this of course, but it sure is news to them. Lifting again from Greenwald:
Network executives obviously know that these revelations are quite threatening to their brand. Yesterday, they wheeled out their full stable of multi-millionaire corporate stars who play the role of authoritative journalists on the TV to join with their White House allies in mocking and deriding McClellan’s claims. One media star after the next — Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer — materialized in sync to insist that nothing could be more absurd than the suggestion that they are “deferential, complicit enablers” in government propaganda.
As most regular readers here know, I’m not a big fan of the mass media in this country, so it makes for kind of fun watching.
Culberson tries to hide behind the troops with lies that he can’t back up. Then, he proceeds to get served. “NAME ONE!”
I never thought I would say this, but between Obey and Feingold, the people of Wisconsin clearly have more sense than most when it comes to electing intelligent members of Congress.
Nice to see a main-stream reporter asking an uninformed pundit to back up their wild, baseless claims with facts for once. Kevin James just gets fitted for an ass hat in this video. For those of you who want to get to the good stuff, skip to 4 minutes in.
During a public appearance on Saturday, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) belittled a U.S. soldier in Iraq who was following orders and wouldn’t let McHenry go to the gym without the proper credentials. McHenry referred to the guard as a “two-bit security guard”
I swear, every time this douche opens his mouth, a kitten dies.
One guess who departing House of Representatives member and chairman of the NRCC, Tom Davis III was referring to. Give up?
“It’s no mystery,” said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.). “You have a very unhappy electorate, which is no surprise, with oil at $108 a barrel, stocks down a few thousand points, a war in Iraq with no end in sight and a president who is still very, very unpopular. He’s just killed the Republican brand.”
This quote, of course is courtesy of Kim Sung Soo, a Korea Food Research Institute scientist. He goes on to say, “without kimchi, Koreans feel flabby. Kimchi first came to our mind when we began discussing what Korean food should go into space.”
Three years in the making, and at the cost of “millions of dollars” for research, Koreans have finally uncovered the technology that will allow them to make space kimchi. Having overcome the one reason stopping Koreans from bothering to go to space , on April 8th, 2008, Ko San will be the first Korean to make the trip.
There are some great quotes in the article:
- Lee’s team found a way to kill the bacteria with radiation while retaining 90 percent of the original taste.
- “This will greatly help my mission. When you’re working in space-like conditions and aren’t feeling too well, you miss Korean food”
- “We managed to reduce the smell by one-third or by half,” Kim said. “So the other astronauts will feel comfortable trying our space kimchi.”
- Prime Minister Chung Il Kwon, told Johnson during a visit to the White House that when he traveled overseas, he longed for kimchi more than his wife.
