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It doesn’t seem like there were many surprises in the Energy Department documents obtained by a FOIA request on Monday. This pretty much sums it up: A first review of the 11,000 pages of documents bolsters the contention of Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups that the Bush administration relied almost exclusively on the advice of executives from utilities and producers of oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy while a White House task force drafted recommendations that would vastly increase energy production. ...

New York Times: Anger and Isolation Roil Israeli Arabs The Supreme Court ruled that it’s OK to kick entire families out of public housing if a single member uses drugs. I can understand the need to clean up drug crime in public housing, but this seems rather harsh to me. How bad is the CBDTPA? Check out this bit of reductio ad absurdum from Declan McCullagh. It’s impossible to keep up. I’ve been working with Struts for the past month, and now there’s WebWork, which is supposed to be an improvement on Struts. ...

Tom Ridge gets points from me for having a sense of humor. I don’t necessarily agree with his agenda for homeland defense, but at least he can take a joke. I watched the whole 16 hour Oscar spectacle last night, despite the fact that I had to get up early this morning to come to work because people in marketing decided that we needed to launch the web site first thing in the morning and I wasn’t quite done with the work necessary for the launch. For whatever reason, I enjoyed the Oscars more than I can remember having enjoyed them before. ...

The New York Times has the scoop on Iran’s recent friendship with the Palestinian leadership. They’re happily militarily supporting not only the Palestinian Authority, but also both Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The bottom line here is that Islamic states throughout the Middle East delight themselves in fighting proxy wars with Israel using any group dumb enough to go along with them. None of the Islamic countries have the will to actually invade Israel (thank goodness), but they’re more than happy to prolong the fight between Israel and the Palestinians as long as it isn’t really costing them anything. The bottom line is that the people actually interested in some sort of rapproachment between the Palestinians and Israelis are overwhelmed by people who want to see the fighting continue. ...

Sun is adding support for Web services to J2EE 1.4. Despite the fact that Web services are the most overhyped thing since XML, or perhaps since Java, or maybe since .NET, some of the new Web services I’m seeing are actually pretty cool. Sullivan’s Travails: Eric Alterman flames Andrew Sullivan so I don’t have to.

Nobody is more vehemently against the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport than I am, and even I think it’s ridiculous that a British Olympic medalist lost his medal for using a Vick’s inhaler. Today I learned the difference between the words “alternately” and “alternatively”. Speaking of doping in athletics, Salon’s big premium story today is on the coming wave of genetically-engineered performance enhancements in sport.

This AP story on browser cookies exposes cluelessness on many levels. For starters, the writer doesn’t know what he’s writing about. Then there’s the fact that the government policy doesn’t seem clear on how cookies work, how they are used, and what the negative implications are. The guy who complained about the cookies doesn’t seem fully clued either, to be honest. Looks like the Supreme Court is predisposed toward a bit more friendly fascism in the school system. The court seems likely to decide that it’s OK for schools to subject students involved in any extracurricular activity to drug testing, and from the sound of things, several of the Justices would be just fine with mandatory drug testing for all students. Drug testing is humiliating and degrading, regardless of whether you pass or fail. ...

The court battle between Microsoft and the states continues unabated. I honestly don’t know whether I even still care about this case. I’m still trying to figure out what plausible outcome might actually improve my life, but I’m coming up blank. So I got something cool in the mail yesterday – several copies of my SQL book translated into Chinese. I’ve gotten foreign language versions of my books before (I think more exist, but the publisher doesn’t always send me copies), but this one is particularly cool. Mainly, I’m just amazed that anybody thinks it’s worth translating something I wrote into Chinese. I wonder how long it took the translator(s), and I wonder whether anyone is actually buying the book, and where it’s sold. I think it’s amazing that there are book stores in Asia selling a book with my name on the cover. ...

Natasha Berger blames blogs for wrecking Doris Kearns Goodwin’s career. I wish I could wreck somebody’s career from my lofty perch here at rc3.org. I’ll start with Tom DeLay, move on to Trent Lott, and finish up with Jim Allchin. Democratic Senator Russ Feingold has won me over to his way of thinking. When John Ashcroft was nominated as Attorney General, Feingold argued that Ashcroft should be confirmed because the President has the right to get the cabinet he wants. If we give the President free rein to choose his cabinet, then we’re free to judge his administration on the actions undertaken by that cabinet. I feel the same way about the secret energy policy stuff that the GAO is suing the Vice President over. Ultimately, I don’t care what was said at those secret meetings, because we can judge the Administration on the energy policy that it enacts. ...

The New York Times is still piecing together the story of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan from documents left behind in their safe houses and training camps. The details of Al Qaeda’s structure, training programs, and the day to day lives of the people who travelled to Afghanistan to join the jihad are all becoming clearer as journalists put the pieces together.