Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden; Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner; Virginia Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott; Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers; North Carolina Republican Rep. Howard Coble; and California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. What do they have in common? Those are the Congressmen who signed a letter asking the Justice Department to aggressively prosecute people who download copyrighted music files. Cause jail time for MP3 downloading is so very appropriate.

Very cool blog covering appellate litigation. Quite informative. Covers all kinds of interesting legal cases so much better than I ever could.

Well. Verbal confirmation of employment today, and an offer on Monday or Tuesday. I would be very surprised if I didn’t accept the offer. Oh; it’s back in Boston. There will be moving in my future.

Tried moving the SQL database over to my G4, which is somewhat more powerful than the piddly little Performa that runs www.innocence.com. No real speed increase. I conclude that MovableType is slow cause of the perl. Not a dig on MT, there; I mean, this is a Performa. Might try mod_perl, though.

I’m off to Boston for a few days — back Wednesday.

The roleplaying industry is so damned quirky. A glam science fiction RPG about the transformative power of rock and roll? Why not?

While I’m on the subject, Judge Kessler’s decision is now available from FindLaw. It’s a PDF document. It warms my heart: “Difficult times such as these have always tested our fidelity to the core democratic values of openness, government accountability, and the rule of law. The Court fully understands and appreciates that the first priority of the executive branch in a time of crisis is to ensure the physical security of its citizens. By the same token, the first priority of the judicial branch must be to ensure that our Government always operates within the statutory and constitutional constraints which distinguish a democracy from a dictatorship.” ...

The U.S. government is, of course, unhappy about naming the 9/11-related detainees (original). For some reason, admitting who’s been arrested would impair the course of justice. This sort of thing has been a habit for the government this week. (Previous post on this subject here.)

It must be Joe Biden’s (D-Del) week for attacking civil liberties. This time round, he’s sponsoring a bill that would criminalize raves. It’s already a felony to knowingly house and profit from a drug enterprise; OK, I have no real issues with that other than my general feelings about the War on Drugs (which are negative). However, extending that law to cover people who throw raves seems sketchy — yes, there are going to be drugs at raves. But there have also been drugs at every rock concert I’ve ever been to in my life. You can’t hold promoters responsible for drug use in the culture; they didn’t create the culture. ...

I caught a late show of Signs on Friday night. Non-spoiler review: brilliant from a technical standpoint, but lacking in storytelling acumen. There are spoilers in what follows.