The Israeli army robbed several Palestinian banks today of the funds that they claimed were in accounts associated with terrorism. Of course, anyone who understands how banks work knows that the money in your account isn’t waiting there for you to come withdraw it, so it’s hard to see how the Israelis can justify taking money from the funds on deposit in the bank and then claiming that it belonged to terrorists (or supporters of terrorists). In its defense, Israel says it’s going to use the loot to help Palestinians:

Israel has promised the money will be used instead on projects “that benefit Palestinian welfare.” Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz last night ordered the government coordinator in the territories to draw up plans to use the confiscated money for “humanitarian” purposes in the territories. Mofaz is issuing orders for improvements in the Palestinian health services, busing for school children and improving infrastructure at checkpoints and other crossing points. “The money should be used to improve conditions for the residents of the territories, not to kill Israelis,” he said.

Maybe we can get a quote from Grover Norquist explaining that this was really no different than income tax in the United States.

Everybody is linking to this comparison of the top 50 sites today with the top 50 sites of 1996. Obviously the fact that a .edu site was in the top 10 in 1996 is quaint, but what I find more interesting is that the Well (well.com) was in the top 10 back then. These days, it’s pretty hard to recall just how influential the Well (or more specifically, its membership) was back then.

Looks like the talk of open source Java is heating up quickly. As far as I’m concerned, Sun may as well change the license for Java, since they’re just about the only company in the software industry that isn’t making money from Java these days.

Rebecca Blood: 13 Ways to Save Orkut. I was heavily into Orkut for about a day and a half, but I haven’t been back again since then. Orkut did enable me to get in touch with a guy who I hadn’t spoken to or emailed in over 10 years, but beyond that I haven’t gotten much out of it. I haven’t done much with LinkedIn, either, but I have relayed a number of requests for other people, so it seems like some people are getting use out of it.

Republicans are saying all sorts of things about John Kerry’s voting record on defense programs. Fred Kaplan has a piece that sheds some light on things. The Republicans must tar Kerry as soft on defense because President Bush’s best hope of getting reelected is to make Americans afraid that terrorists will overrun the country if they fire him. So Kerry must be painted as a wimpy Democrat who isn’t serious about defending the country, and believe me, the RNC isn’t going to let the truth get in the way.

That said, I’m not too happy with John Kerry today either. I heard a bit of a stump speech today wherein he promised to force companies to give workers three months notice if they’re going to be replaced by offshore workers. Nobody who has worked in the private sector would be impressed by this pledge. The way things work is that when a company needs to improve its bottom line, it often lays off workers. It doesn’t fire them and replace them with people overseas, it just gets rid of them. Then, when more manufacturing capacity is needed or a new IT project is about to get under way, when it comes time to staff up, the company decides whether to hire here or overseas. The three months notice thing just isn’t going to be effective in doing whatever Kerry wants people to think it will do.

You know, my views on the gay marriage issue have really polarized over the past few weeks. I’ve never been opposed to gay marriage, but I also didn’t feel particularly zealous about opening the option of marriage to gay people either. I have thought it’s a right they should have for a long time, but I was OK with civil unions as an alternative, because I was focused on the legal rights that married couples have. Then a few things happened. My views started changing when the Massachusetts Supreme Court said that legislation providing separate but equal civil unions would not suffice to meet their requirements, because separate but equal usually isn’t. I found that argument persuasive.

What really changed my attitude, though, was the marriage licenses being granted in San Francisco. Most people have seen the pictures of jubilant couples who are getting married after decades of waiting in vain. After seeing those couples, I’m ready to grant the right to marry nationwide, right now. Getting married was the best decision I ever made, period. Seeing other people joyfully getting married reminds me of how much joy marriage has brought to my life. I no longer have the energy to see the issue in a politically safe manner — we need to grant this right to same sex couples in every state immediately. Do any married people in this country look at the pictures of the same sex couples in California and feel that their own marriage is debased? If so, I feel sad for them.

My fervor for granting this right to same sex couples has also been increased by the response among politicians to it. When President Bush made his speech today advocating an amendment to “defend marriage,” it sounded like unvarnished bigotry to me. The response among Democrats has been sickening to me as well. Democrats are trying to do what they think is politically expedient, but to me it comes across as craven. I hope that Americans see the supporters of a constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage as the bigots that they are. We’ve amended the Constitution 27 times since it was written, and 10 of those adendments comprise the Bill of Rights. The idea of soiling the Constitution to deny a right to a certain group of Americans should be something we’re past.

Declan McCullagh has written a sort of Free Trade 101 column in defense of President Bush’s economic advisor, Greg Mankiw, who made the mistake of pubicly defending outsourcing last week.

OK, I can sleep well tonight knowing that the singing creatures in the Quizno’s ads are called Spongmonkeys. For what it’s worth, I love those ads.

If you’re interested in the Grey Tuesday protest but you don’t want to host MP3s or turn your site grey, another option is to seed the Grey Album through BitTorrent all day. I downloaded the Grey Album a week or so ago just to see what all the fuss was about, but I haven’t listened to the whole thing yet. I’m up for anything that shows the copyright industry that they have less power than they assume that they have.

Fred Kaplan published a piece today looking at the details of the budget for the Deparment of Homeland Security. I was surprised at some of the programs that have been cut or eliminated.