The Washington Post has a story on Vanessa Leggett, the writer who is currently in jail for her refusal to turn over her notes for a book to the U.S. Attorney. And in other news of abuse of the legal system, Dmitry Sklyarov was indicted yesterday.

Google is looking to obtain archives of Usenet posts to expand their database of old Usenet articles.

Salon has picked up the story of Brian West, the guy in Oklahoma who notified the local paper of a security hole on their site after rifling through their files. Damien Cave uses that story to explore the larger issue of hacker ethics and the treatment of hackers by the legal system.

Opportunism at its best: Debian GNU/Linux for BeOS Refugees.

Last night I finished reading Robert Reich’s memoir of his four years spent as Clinton’s Secretary of Labor, Locked in the Cabinet. The book covers Clinton’s first term, which included Clinton’s failed effort to launch a universal health care system, the Republican takeover of Congress in ’94, and the subsequent hiring of Dick Morris. Even if you disagree with Reich’s politics (they seemed benign to liberal me), you’ll probably find the book fascinating from the standpoint of reading how a truly principled non-politician deals with the constant compromises and sellouts involved in national politics. This book offers a sharp perspective of all of the major personalities that defined Clinton’s first term, and insightful commentary on the state of the U.S. economy at the time the book was written. Reich isn’t shy about admitting and dissecting his own mistakes, either. It’s really a great book, I recommend it highly.

I just read a message on a mailing list saying that some companies lay people off by bringing them to a conference room and showing a video that tells them they’ve been laid off. I had never heard of such a thing, but I can’t really imagine treating people more callously. If you’re going to give people their walking papers, you should at least tell them face to face. If you work at a company that does this (or were laid off in this fashion), please send email, I’m dying to know more.

I love stories that would work as well in The Onion as they do in non-satirical newspapers. For example, the LA Times reports that tree-hugging Secretary of the Interior Gail Norton has named the Fresno municipal dump a national historical landmark. What’s next? Is she going to make the Exxon refinery in Baytown, Texas a national recreation area?

The Web site for the West Memphis 3 seems to have disappeared. I wonder what’s up with that?

Another chapter closed yesterday in the sad saga of Jim Bell as he was sentenced to 10 years in jail for stalking a federal agent. The feds made it pretty clear that they don’t take it lightly when you publicize schemes for anonymously paying to have federal officials killed. I think that the sentence is pretty outrageous, being that he has a constitutional right to come up with insane anti-government schemes, and that’s not what he was on trial for in the first place.

The Merc has an interesting story on slowing growth in the consumer broadband market. If you had told me two years ago that people wouldn’t be crazily flocking to broadband as soon as it became available to them, I’d have laughed at you. I honestly can’t imagine someone opting for using a dialup connection if they have broadband available to them, especially at only $20 to $25 more per month.