Here’s another Judge Pickering link, submitted by Rogers Cadenhead. It’s an op-ed by NWU law professor Steven Lubet on Judge Pickering’s insistence on lenience for a convicted cross burner back in 1994. Perhaps there are mitigating factors that professor Lubet leaves out, but taken unto itself, the story is pretty damning.

Hiawatha Bray on the SSSCA, also known as the bill that will kill open source and perhaps the entire computer industry.

rc3.org is nothing if not balanced. Here’s a Byron York article, submitted by a reader, that defends Judge Charles Pickering’s record. It raises the valid point that Pickering was confirmed unanimously by the Judiciary committee in 1990 when he was appointed to the federal bench. It also presents a lot of facts that speak well of Pickering. My gut feeling on this is that liberal watchdog groups and Democratic Senators learned how to treat judicial nominees from the Republicans during the Clinton administration, and are generally taking a more obstructionist tack. The Byron article is mainly a response to this report from PFAW.

Can’t we all just agree to stop nominating segregationists to the federal bench now that the 21st century has arrived? Charles Pickering’s nomination to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was supposed to have been dead in the water, but President Bush had a photo op with him today to try to revive it. The guy is your typical old time southern segregationist Bible thumper who claims to have changed. I hope the Senate Judiciary Committee flushes him and moves on.

Remember the Office of the Independent Counsel? Just in case you were under the mistaken impression that we quit spending our tax money on their “investigation,” Robert Ray has released a report covering part of his investigation. There’s more to come, too. Anyway, Findlaw has a copy of the report up.

The Economist weighs in today on President Bush’s renunciation yesterday of the free trade religion and return to protectionism with the imposition of a 30% tariff on steel imports. He’s not even halfway through his first (and, God willing, only) term as President, and he’s already plunged us headlong into deficit spending, proposed a Reaganesque defense budget, and imposed tariffs to protect decaying American industries. We also have an Attorney General more comfortable with the moral climate of the Victorian period, and Cold War dinosaurs running the Defense Department. Honestly, things are much worse than I had feared when Bush was “elected.”

So, there’s been a lot of Bjorn Lomborg news recently. I mentioned a few months ago that Scientific American featured four articles criticizing Lomborg’s book, The Skeptical Environmentalist. Well, Lomborg responded to the articles on his Web site, but had to take down the responses because SciAm threatened to sue him. It seems like he’d have a good fair use case here, but I’m no lawyer. Anyway, you can read his response in Google’s archive.

One thing I notice on Lomborg’s Web page is that he doesn’t list a lot of the sites that criticized his work, which smacks of dishonesty. For example, he doesn’t have a pointer to the site set up by his colleagues at Aarhus University that features criticism of his work. That site has been around since at least November, so it’s not like he hasn’t had time to read their criticism or respond. He also fails to mention these critical articles from Grist Magazine, which seem to raise valid basic points that should be addressed, at least.

I particularly recommend the articles from Grist, they’re clearly written and the present powerful arguments. It’s also important to remember that Lomborg’s book was not peer reviewed, so it’s pop science at best.

The Osbournes has become the best show on TV in only one episode. Well, maybe not the best, but at least the funniest.

Ever wonder where the whole “liberal media” accusation got its start? It can be argued that it started in 1969, when Vice President Spiro Agnew delivered a series of speeches attacking the press on behalf of Richard Nixon. (See the second item on the page.) The administration was offended by press analysis of a speech on the Vietnam war, and so Pat Buchanan and William Safire wrote speeches for Agnew that attacked the press establishment.

A huge study conducted by the American Cancer Society has determined that air pollution is just as likely to kill you as living with a smoker.