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Yesterday Lawrence Lee emailed me and told me that the Google AdSense terms of service had changed, but he hadn’t noticed the change that had been made. As it turns out, the change was to add a clause prohibiting people who agree to the new terms from discussing them publicly. Google is one of those companies that I can say has improved my quality of life. They’ve done a number of really great things for the Internet and Web in general, not just by providing great search services but by rescuing the Usenet archive from deja.com and providing Google News, which is just a fantastic service. That said, it seems like some people inside Google are making some bad decisions for their brand and for their customers. More transparency, please. ...

Just for the record, I think that reviving the independent counsel statute and appointing one for the Plame affair would be a bad idea. I think that it needs to be thoroughly investigated, but I don’t believe that we’re any more likely to get a fair and thorough investigation from an independent counsel than we will get from the Justice Department. That’s probably because in my experience, independent counsel appointments have been horrible failures? Can anyone point to one that’s been a success? If the Clinton case is too politicized to bring up, then take a look at the sad case of Mike Espy. He was acquitted in 1998 after a multi-year investigation that cost millions of dollars (and left Espy millions of dollars in debt due to legal bills). If you believe that Espy was innocent, then you have to wonder what good the costly investigation did us. If you think he was guilty, then you can’t be pleased that it failed. I think that the Plame affair demands a fair and full investigation, but I don’t think that we’re any more likely to get one from an independent counsel than we are from the Justice Department. ...

John Gruber has a nice explanation for the success of the iPod.

The libertarians taking part in the Free State project have chosen New Hampshire as their target for takeover. The goal is to get 20,000 libertarians to move to a small state where they can have some electoral clout and enact as many libertarian policies as possible. I think NH is a good choice – its state culture is already quite libertarian. I don’t see how they’re going to get 20,000 people in two years when only 5,000 voted. ...

There’s a brewing controversy over the terms of use of Google’s AdSense program: Eric Thauvin got cut off with no real explanation. Russell Beattie started examining the contract that AdSense members sign on to. I forgot, Anil Dash also commented on some problems with AdSense the other day. I’ll be keeping an eye on where this goes.

I wonder what amount of reading and studying of the field of economics would enable me to critically read about economic theory and come away confident in my impressions. For example, I read this Krugman essay and thought, “That makes sense to me.” Then I read Zimran Ahmed’s rebuttal, and thought, “That makes sense to me, too.” Perhaps Slate should run some kind of dialogue between the two or something.

The Slacktivist writes about the conundrum we face in handling Iraq’s foreign debt (and ongoing reparations to Kuwait).

Spinsanity has a strange item wherein they criticize various pundits and Presidential candidates for making ad hominem attacks on John Ashcroft. Tarring John Ashcroft is bad if you’re trying to launch a substantive debate about how civil rights are respected by our government, but it’s good if you’re trying to score points against the Bush administration, and that’s the objective here. When Bush nominated Ashcroft for the Attorney General spot, he knew that Ashcroft would draw exactly this sort of fire – the flip side is that religious conservatives loved him at the time (I don’t know if they still do). Many Democrats wanted to block his nomination because he was (and is) so odious, but Russ Feingold said that Bush should get the cabinet he desires, and then should be held to account for it when the time comes. The time has come. Ashcroft has been as bad as everyone said he’d be, and now we get to beat the Bush administration over the head with it. That’s politics. ...

Bruce Sterling: Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die. It’s hard to pick a favorite from the list.

This is funny. (Via Unqualified Offerings.)