One thing I’ve noticed is that certain developers are not big fans of Struts, a framework for Web applications in Java. Dave at Blogging Roller found a succinct list of why some people don’t like Struts (and a rebuttal). I know there are frameworks other than Struts, but honestly I’ve never looked into them. The main reason I use Struts is that it’s popular and well documented. Not only does that make things easier from a maintenance standpoint, but I believe that the popularity of Struts insures that many of the good ideas developed for other frameworks will eventually be subsumed into Struts. Struts isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough for the work I do, and its strengths match up well with my requirements.

Well, after I complained here that the Trent Lott gaffe/self-immolation wasn’t getting any press, it started getting tons of press. (Correlation definitely does not imply causation in this case.) This is looking like one of those snowballing affairs where the story kind of takes on its own momentum. People are unearthing all sorts of nasty bits from Lott’s past: an amicus brief in favor of Bob Jones University (a racist institution that many Republicans pander to), a comment from 1980 where Lott said basically the same thing he said just a few days ago about Strom Thurmond’s 1948 Presidential campaign, and all of that Council of Conservative Citizens stuff that should have drummed Lott out of the Republican leadership years ago. In the meantime, Lott has issued several utterly bogus apologies which haven’t helped him a bit. The New York Times ran an editorial today under the headline Fire Trent Lott. In any case, I feel like my work here is done. I’m going to stop linking to Trent Lott items. Josh Marshall has been following the story with fervor, so if you, like me, can’t take your eyes away from the Trent Lott train wreck, visit Talking Points Memo regularly.

HP and Gateway are giving some of their employees holiday furloughs from December 24 to December 31 in order to save some cash and make the fourth quarter results look better. Of course that probably comes as small consolation to the people who are losing a week’s pay during the holiday season when they’ve probably already overspent. I certainly hope that these employees didn’t find out this week that they’re going to lose a week’s pay at the end of the month. One thing the article doesn’t report is what the compensation packages are for Carly Fiorina and Ted Waitt. Waitt is the company’s chairman and holds a big chunk of Gateway stock, so he probably gets less compensation than Fiorina, but either way, I find it unsurprising that executives are screwing employees to gloss up the numbers a bit rather than picking their own pockets.

Brad DeLong casts Lawrence Lindsey as a victim of general Bush administration incompetence in a piece published in his online journal (found at Scott Rosenberg’s blog). Basically, DeLong says that the administration never used any of Lindsey’s, so he’s not really to blame for the big mess that the administration has made of the economy.

Snow Job – President Bush appoints yet another phony businessman, this time as treasury secretary, by Daniel Gross. I have a lot of respect for my friends who are true believers in the free market. I’ll believe in free markets, too, just as soon as somebody shows me one. Most fat cat Republicans are believers in the free market only when they can’t reduce the freedom of the market to favor themselves. As I’ve said here many times before, businesses don’t want to compete, they want to make money. Competition demands that you be smart and rigorous, and forces you to lower your prices or raise your quality, both of which can cut into profits. It’s a hell of a lot easier to go to the government trough to get money legislated your way, or to get bills passed to smack down your competitors. At the same time, this ruling class of corporate board members and Washington insiders is widely accepted by people who actually have to work for their money and expect or believe that winners in our economy will be chosen based on merit.

An Australian court has ruled that Dow Jones & Co can be sued under Australian law for defaming an Australian businessman in Barron’s, which is published on the Internet (and on dead trees, of course). Despite the fact Barron’s is a US publication, the Australian court has ruled that it is subject to Australian jurisdiction. Needless to say, for any Internet publisher, this is scary stuff. Australia, like many other countries, does not require the same high standard of proof for libel that we require in the United States. Someone like me could write something about an Australian and be sued in Australian courts. Needless to say, even that is relatively benign when you consider countries like Saudi Arabia, Zimbabwe, or North Korea. This is the dark side of publishing in a global medium, and the really disturbing thing is that there’s no way to clean it up. The only way to start is to get an international treaty ratified, and most countries in the world aren’t going to accept US libel laws (shame on them for it).

For those of you keeping track at home, President Bush has appointed yet another Iran-Contra retread (Salon Premium link) to an important post:

And now there’s Elliot Abrams, another major Iran-contra villain who was convicted of lying to Congress (this resume seems to be virtually required for Bush appointees lately), but was saved from iron sorrows by Bush the First, who pardoned him on Christmas Eve. Abrams, in fact, had already been rehabilitated last year, when Bush appointed him to head the National Security Council’s democracy, human rights and international operations division. Recently, however, Abrams has been promoted to one of the most crucial jobs in the administration: making NSC policy on the Middle East.

Salon’s Anthony York has more on the lack of reaction to Trent Lott’s comments by Congressional Democrats. Do I think that Trent Lott was thinking specifically of segregation when he made his comments? No. But the fact that segregation was not the first thing in Lott’s mind when he opened his mouth should tell us something. I’d guarantee that any black person who remembers Strom Thurmond’s 1948 Dixiecrat campaign knows that the entire purpose of the campaign was to prolong segregation. Is Trent Lott a racist? I have no idea. But clearly he doesn’t really care whether he looks like one.

A federal judge has dismissed the GAO lawsuit against the White House seeking records of Dick Cheney’s so-called energy task force on the ground that the GAO lacks standing to sue. Isn’t this the oldest cop out in the book for judges? I honestly don’t even really care what Cheney discussed with the campaign contributors, we already know that this White House is as pro-energy industry as it gets. And it’s disheartening to know that the voting public obviously doesn’t give a crap that the President and his henchmen feel that it is their right to rule without any accountability whatsoever. Given that the public doesn’t seem to want to hold them accountable, I guess maybe they’re right.

One thing we sure hear a lot from politicians is that bipartisanship is important. On that note, both parties came together in this year’s election and used gay bashing campaign ads where they could. Isn’t it nice to see them agree on something?