Jimmy Breslin is pissed off. Who can blame him? He says he’s thinking about getting out of the news business. Hope he doesn’t. This government’s kidnapping of Faris/Rauf violated the laws handed down by Madison, Jefferson, Marshall. A small religious zealot, John Ashcroft, takes their great laws and bravery and using our new Patriot Act, turns it into Fascism. He could do this openly because news reporters go about the government like gardeners, bent over, smiling and nodding when one of the owners shows up. You only have to look at a White House news conference to see how they aggressively pursue your right to know. ...

T-Mobile is removing the games from the color Sidekick (via Boing Boing). That’s pretty much the suck. I don’t know that I like having a provider who removes functionality from my cell phone. Apparently it was a licensing issue, but guys — suck it up and pay for the license. Hrm. Palm Tungsten? Treo? I have a portable cell phone number now, so I can switch when my current plan expires.

Big revelation of the night: Bill Simmons sounds exactly like any random 16 year old fan. I caught him calling into 1510 on the way home, and he really is the voice of the Boston fan. To a tee. I think that’s a compliment. Notes on the NBA draft (original) follow in real time. I’m shamelessly ripping off Bill’s format, by the way. Just saying.

The new World Trade Center designs are a vast improvement over the previous set of designs. I don’t like all of them, but I like that this set takes risks. I do like a few of them very much; in particular, the Peterson/Littenberg seems to me to be elegant without being boring, and the Studio Daniel Libeskind proposal would be my choice. It maintains certain features of the current site, so that we won’t forget, and the shattered crystal feel of the buildings seems really appropriate.

In an orgy of sporting expenditure, I find myself with four tickets for each weekend 11 AM session in the 2003 Reebok Pro Summer League (original). There’s a chance LeBron James will be playing, and even if he isn’t — hey! It’s summer basketball! How cool is that? I also got one ticket for the evening session on Sunday. Hopefully I’ll be able to drag my brother and his wife and my nephew along; if not I’m sure I can find a good home for the excess tickets.

Showtime is filming a two hour movie based on Bush’s 9/11 actions (original). This might be a good time to refer back to the CCR timeline of his movements on that day. I’m suspecting that since the movie is put together by a White House supporter who describes himself as “a member of the administration,” it won’t really touch on the sense of uncertainty one gets from that chronology. I’m pretty much gobsmacked, here. I’m not big on the “What liberal media?” call, because there are some aspects of our media which are very liberal — and some which are very conservative. However, I can’t believe Showtime is going to air a two hour campaign commercial. You can talk about the media loving Clinton if you like, but man, his movie was Primary Colors.

It’s a victory for masked politicians everywhere! The Great Sasuke just won the right to sit in the Iwate Prefectural Assembly while masked (original). Good on him.

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Now, that’s a truck (original).

Yeah, Danny’s pretty serious about running this team. I think it’s kind of sneaking up on us. During the glory years of the 80s, Danny was clearly the least talented starter. Mind you, on a team with Larry Bird, Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, and Dennis Johnson that leaves plenty of room to be pretty damned good — and he was — but he was still the least talented starter and in a lot of ways he was the kid on the team. I think that Boston fans, on occasion, have trouble thinking of Danny as a hard-nosed GM. Look at me; I’m still calling him Danny. Everyone does. ...