I just wanted to say that I heard a tape of Rep. John Sweeney’s talking about his “shut it down” comment on the radio today, and Carl Hiaassen was wrong, Sweeney was saying to shut down the recount, not shut down the protest. Again, I don’t think the protest intimidated the canvassing board in Dade County, but it’s obvious that intimidation was its intent.

Steve pointed to this transcript of a Tom Daschle/Dick Gephardt press conference in which they make the point that the uncounted votes in Florida will be available through the FOIA, so it’s in Bush’s best interests to go ahead and have all the votes counted now. I heard a rumor yesterday that I have not yet been able to confirm, which was that New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman suggested banning FOIA requests for the Florida votes for the next 8 years. If that’s true, it’s one of the most undemocratic ideas I’ve read.

As a followup on the Miami riot thing, here’s a link to a column by Carl Hiaassen on the incident. He says that GOP Rep. John Sweeney’s “Shut it down” statement was in reference to the protest, not the recount, contradicting the Salon article I linked to yesterday. For what it’s worth, I don’t believe that the recount was stopped because of this protest. What bothers me is that members of the GOP leadership hoped that this protest would shut down the recount. I also don’t necessarily believe that Bush was involved in any of this, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Tom DeLay and his buddies hatched this plan all on their own.

Some ideas are just bad.

This is what we refer to as an industrywide problem.

Microsoft’s purchase circle at Amazon.com is kind of funny, I thought the antitrust stuff wasn’t a distraction.

A really ugly story is developing around the riots at the site of Miami’s recount headquarters. Apparently the rioters were mostly out of towners brought in by the Republicans to sow chaos and discourage Miami-Dade County from continuing with their recount. And by Republicans, I mean elected officials like Trent Lott and Tom DeLay. I find it disgusting that the same people who are advocating the use of violence and mayhem to thwart the legal process are accusing Gore of trying to steal the election. If you read one story about the election, this one should be it.

These coins kind of scare me.

Today, the Supreme Court struck a blow against the police state in ruling that random roadblocks set up for the purpose of catching drug traffickers are unconstitutional. Unsurprisingly, arch-conservative justices Rehnquist, Thomas, and Scalia joined in a dissent.

Salon has combined its technology and business sections. I hope this doesn’t mean that they’ll be reducing their tech coverage, which is generally excellent.