Fracking Ken Starr

I can't think of a man more deserving of the title "Worthless Waste of Otherwise Useful Oyxgen" than Mr. Ken Starr. Case in point? This lovely piece courtesy of Calitics:

The Yes on 8 campaign wants to invalidate 18,000 same sex marriages - they've filed a brief with the California Supreme Court to that effect today.

With Ken Starr - yes, that Ken Starr - as their lead counsel:

The sponsors of Proposition 8 asked the California Supreme Court on Friday to nullify the marriages of the estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who exchanged vows before voters approved the ballot initiative that outlawed gay unions.

The Yes on 8 campaign filed a brief arguing that because the new law holds that only marriages between a man and a woman are recognized or valid in California, the state can no longer recognize the existing same-sex unions.

"Proposition 8's brevity is matched by its clarity. There are no conditional clauses, exceptions, exemptions or exclusions," reads the brief co-written by Pepperdine University law school dean Kenneth Starr, the former independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton....

Question: Is Apple really immune to the economic downturn?

Answer: I doubt it.

Participating in his first earnings conference call in eight years (and doesn't that very fact say enough?), Steve Jobs did his best to sound confident and cocksure. But this recession isn't exactly leaving Apple untouched. While sales still seem relatively robust, Apple's stock price is off 50% from its height, and even Apple's once mighty refusal to reduce its prices has recently fallen to market pressures. But the real revelation from the conference call was Jobs' answer to the question of when Apple would be a low-priced laptop. Apples, Jobs insists, doesn't "know how to build a sub-$500 computer that is not a piece of junk."

As I sit here writing this blog on a great Compaq laptop that cost all of $400 and is decidedly no piece of junk, I think it is that attitude that may ultimately turn the tide in Apple's seemingly endless capture of market share. Jobs may not know how to build a low-cost laptop, but the American public sure as hell knows how to buy them. And after the steep discounts on many laptops that this Christmas season has seen, you'd better believe that people aren't going to be content to blithely pay $800+ for the privilege of computer portability.

Even Mac lovers might find that Apple loses its shine if it becomes the most expensive technology on the block.

A better idea than I gave Obama credit for

I admit I was the first to criticize when President-Elect Obama announced he was keeping Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense. I wouldn't have considered his tenure all that spectacular a success up to know - we are, after all, still fighting two futile wars - and I thought the tendency not to "change horses mid-stream" was stupid when we tried it the first time while reelecting Bush in 2004.

However, this article from Slate points out some of the thinking on Gates' that must have been evident to Obama, and that undoubtedly informed Obama's decision to keep Gates on at least for the near future. Deciding that a military that has spent the last six years figthing an insurgent force in the middle of a desert could use fewer stealth bombers and navy warships and more armored vehicles to protect against roadside bombs may not seem like revolutionary thinking, but in a military that has been painfully slow to change its thinking since the end of the cold war, its practically a renaissance in tactics. And it is men like Gates in positions of civilian power - in conjunction with men like Petraeus in the military ranks - that are accomplishing some of the most fundamental change the American armed forces has seen in decades.

Here's hoping it works.