The release for a new Harris Poll is titled “Large Majority of Drivers Who Own Cell Phones Use Them While Driving Even Though They Know This Is Dangerous.”  The key findings:

• 72% of those who drive and own cell phones say they use them to talk while they are driving;

• A quarter of drivers with cell phones report using them to send or receive text messages while driving, although a large majority (74%) does not.

• Most of these people (66%) say they usually use hand-held rather than handsfree telephones to talk;

• Even in states that have banned the use of hand-held cell phones while driving, half (49%) of cell phone users use hand-held, rather than hands-free, phones;

• Only 2% of those who use cell phones while driving believe this is not dangerous at all. Most believe it is very dangerous (26%), dangerous (24%) or somewhat dangerous (33%);

• A 71% majority of those who use cell phones while driving believes that handsfree cell phones are safer than hand-held phones (even though some research suggest otherwise);

• Younger drivers are more likely than older drivers to talk on the phone while driving. Most (58%) “Matures” (people older than Baby Boomers, currently aged 64 or over) who drive and own cell phones say they do not use their cell phones while driving; and,

Andrew Malcolm quips, “So much for legislating chatter” and snarks “Prohibition laws caused the entire nation to stop drinking alcoholic beverages so successfully.”  And, indeed, the two may be comparable in that it’s very hard to stop people from doing what they want to do.  Even good citizens routinely exceed the speed limit and jaywalk, for example, because they (er, we) trust our own judgment and value our own convenience.

He also cites a 2003 Harvard study showing that “cellphone use contributed to 6% of all U.S. crashes, or 636,000 collisions, 330,000 injuries and 2,600 deaths annually.”  From this, he concludes, “Put another way, the risk center numbers would tell determined cellphone drivers that if they’re ever in an automobile accident, there’s a 94% chance it won’t have anything to do with their phone. Better odds than the lottery.”

Certainly, the odds of a particular cell phone conversation resulting in a serious accident are virtually nil.  The problem, of course, is that having most drivers on the road — and especially teens, the least safe among them — yapping on their phones increases everyone else’s risks.  And, while you or I may be able to successfully drive while engaging in a conversation via our mobiles, some percentage of the other drivers (in my experience, a number approaching 100%) are much less intelligent.

I’m not at all sure what the solution is.  The poll already demonstrates that people are aware of the danger; they merely discount it.  So education isn’t the likely solution.  Similarly, the fact that it’s illegal doesn’t seem to make much difference; people rationally conclude that the odds of getting caught are nil. And, frankly, I don’t want an army of cops out there peering into our windows.

So this may just be one of those dangers of living that we’ll have to cope with.

Photo by Flickr user Ryan Harvey under Creative Commons license.

A while back, I asked for reader suggestions on posts but, alas, have published no posts in response to said suggestions.  Most of the suggestions were for posts and post series requiring research.  Three of my colleagues have volunteered to write something in response to suggested topics and I have underway a post on General and Flag Officers, which was to be the inauguaral post in my “Know Your Military” series, only to accidentally overwrite it with a version about 90 minutes of work earlier in the process and haven’t regenerated a desire to do that work again.

Kevin Drum’s statement that the federal government’s ability to obtain your location via GPS “cell phone tracking should indeed require a warrant hardly seems disputable” has given me a ready opportunity, though, to inaugurate “A recurring series that expounds on each paragraph in the US Constitution — its origins, intent, current interpretation, significance today” as suggested by Charles Austin.   I don’t know that we’ll ever get to every paragraph but we’ll hit the highlights as opportunities present themselves.

On its face, the 4th Amendment couldn’t be much simpler:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

As with most of the rest of the Constitution, though, it’s become barely recognizable after two hundred plus years of litigation.  It’s safe to say that “the greater number of searches, as well as the vast number of arrests, take place without warrants.”  Indeed, “searches under warrants have played a comparatively minor part in law enforcement, except in connection with narcotics and gambling laws.”

A whole body of case law has carved out judge-made exceptions to the warrant requirement, under the rationale that the 4th Amendment only protects against “unreasonable” searches and seizes.  Seemingly, damned near anything constitutes a reason.   FindLaw has a superb discussion of the relevant case law and judicial reasoning. To oversimplify greatly, however, suffice it to say that police can pat you down under the pretense of looking for a weapon if you’re anywhere but inside your home; can search your person and the room you’re in if you’re being placed under arrest; you have essentially no “expectation of privacy” in your vehicle once police have stopped you for any “valid” reason, including a completely random roadblock where they have no reason to think you’ve done anything wrong; and you’ve got even less protection in a boat than in a car.

Similarly, the “open fields” doctrine gives no protection against “police searches in such areas as pastures, wooded areas, open water, and vacant lots” and materials in “plain view” of police may also be seized without warrant.  Very limited protections exist, furthermore, in public schools, government offices, or (obviously) prisons.

Kevin, though, is talking about electronic surveillance rather than searches.  FindLaw has an excellent discussion of the case history there, too, beginning with the 1928 Olmstead Case which held that “wiretapping was not within the confines of the Fourth Amendment . . . so long as there was no physical trespass on premises owned or controlled by a defendant.” That rationale would ultimately be overturned in 1967.   Still, the Court has given wide berth to police so long as they weren’t physically entering a person’s property.

So far as I’m aware, there’s no case law on the tracking of a person’s location via a GPS-enabled mobile phone.  Given the above, however, it’s hard to imagine that the Court would hold a warrant was required.  Police don’t have to enter your home to get such information (it’s presumably triangulated based on cell tower locations) and the information conveyed (your approximate location) is something to which your reasonable expectation of privacy is quite low.

Indeed, while I’m much more of a 4th Amendment purist than most, finding much of the above history to be a classic case of “judicial activism” not merely being something that liberals do, I’m hard pressed to get too excited by the feds keeping tabs on the general whereabouts of “persons of interest” without judicial supervision.

Image credit:  BillofRights.com

The landline telephone is going the way of the dinosaur, with many households doing away with them entirely and others using them only as FAX lines.

For nearly three in 10 households, don’t even bother trying to call them on a landline phone. They either only have a cell phone or seldom if ever take calls on their traditional phone. The federal figures, released Wednesday, showed that reliance on cells is continuing to rise at the expense of wired telephones. In the second half of last year, 16 percent of households only had cell phones, while 13 percent also had landlines but got all or nearly all their calls on their cells.

The number of wireless-only households grew by 2 percent since the first half of last year. Underscoring the rapid growth, in early 2004 just 5 percent had only cell phones. Households with cell phones who rarely if ever use their landlines grew by 1 percent since the first half of last year.

[...]

The survey also found that:

_Low-income people are likelier than the more affluent to have only cell phones.

_Those with only cells tend to be living with unrelated roommates, renters rather than homeowners, and Hispanics and blacks rather than whites.

_About a third of those under age 30 only have cell phones.

_Households with both cell and landline phones who rarely or never get calls on their landlines tend to be better educated and have higher incomes.

_About 2 percent of households reported having no telephones.

Since a cell phone is moving into the range of necessity rather than luxury, it makes sense that the poor are the first to give up their landlines and that the affluent would be most likely to hang onto them even while rarely using them. I suspect the other demographic information (age and race/ethnicity) merely restates those trends rather than providing separate information.

My wife and I are certainly in the own both but seldom use landline camp. We need a phone line for FAX transmissions and because we subscribe to fiberoptic Internet and television transmission (FiOS). We’d likely have it anyway, though, for peace of mind, 911 calls, and convenience.

Media Bloggers Association president Robert Cox argues in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed that the line between “citizen” and “journalist” has become so blurred as to have all but disappeared.

This issue has reared its head again because of the so-called “Bittergate” episode.

Mayhill Fowler, a maxed-out Obama contributor, was invited to attend a fundraiser in San Francisco that was off-limits to the press despite her being a blogger for the Huffington Post. Fowler openly recorded the senator’s remarks and accurately reported his words. Afterward, Obama campaign officials acknowledged that the event was on the record and that they assumed everything said would be recorded and published. The issue then is not that Fowler did what she did but that there was a negative reaction to what she said that he said.

Some have taken this opportunity to challenge the notion of citizen journalism altogether, asking whether it is appropriate for a “citizen journalist” to attend a no-press event as a “citizen” and then report on the event as a “journalist.”

I’ve been to many “Chatham House rules” (no attribution or disclosure of who participated) events and a handful of off-the-record (no reporting, period) events and have respected those rules. Fowler, though, was under no obligation to refrain from publishing damaging quotations. Indeed, she meant no harm to her candidate.

The past five years have seen unprecedented changes in the media landscape. Bloggers have been credentialed to major political conventions; played a key role in ending the career of a powerful news broadcaster; derailed a major political campaign, thus shifting power in the U.S. Senate; received media credentials to cover a high-profile federal trial; and, most recently, were embedded in presidential campaigns.

The advent of near-ubiquitous recording devices such as cell phones, iPods and digital cameras, combined with Web-based broadcast platforms such as blogs, video-sharing sites and podcasts, means “news” can be broadcast by anyone to anywhere at a speed of thousands of megabytes per second with an audience reach of infinite size – all at little or no cost. The world is only slowly catching up with implications of this new media landscape where any person is potentially gathering news at any given moment.

[...]

The reaction to Fowler’s blog post then is just another bump in the inexorable sorting out of what the First Amendment means in a society where every person with Internet access has his or her own global broadcasting and publishing facility. The issue is less the distinction between “citizen” and “journalist” and more whether the Founding Fathers ever contemplated such a distinction in the first place.

A close reading of the First Amendment and centuries of legal precedent says “no.”

Quite right. There’s a reason that freedom of speech and freedom of press occupy the same space in the Bill of Rights; they’re inextricably linked. Without information to form opinions, the ability to express opinions is meaningless. Conversely, information is useless unless one is free to share one’s opinions.

America’s early journalists were merely citizens interested in the news. There was no such thing as J-School and the concept of credentialing would have seemed absurd. Over time, however, journalism moved from a craft to a profession, with many of the accouterments of the latter. This has been mostly, but not entirely, positive.

Professionalism arose out of a dark period in American media. Yellow Journalism and a tabloid mentality stripped newspapers of any value, since people had no reason to trust what they were reading. A canon of ethics was necessary, including the expectation that reporters attempt to present information objectively and truthfully. Theoretically, at least, opinion was to be clearly labeled and distinguished from factual reportage. In reality, of course, that ideal was never reached. Given that human beings staff newspapers and other media, it was never attainable to begin with.

With Vietnam and Watergate, and later the advent of 24/7 cable news and the Internet, the mentality of the professional media changed. The always present pressure to get “scoops” and “break” stories ratcheted up to new heights and old rules about double checking sources and editorial oversight were loosened in order to accommodate “reporting at the speed of thought.” More importantly, the aspiration shifted from good reporting to doing good. Everyone wanted to be the next Woodward and Bernstein.

The advent of blogs and other self-published media turned us full circle to the days of the pamphleteers. Most citizen journalists are untrained and, frankly, most are rather poor. But it has created ability for more facts to get out (reporting staffs are limited; they can’t be everywhere), more expertise to be brought to bear (it would be almost inconceivable for someone at CBS to have had expertise on 1970’s typewriter fonts, for example), and for more opinions to compete for readers.

Citizen-journalists won’t replace professional journalists. That’s a good thing. We want well-trained, full-time people out there covering the news. But the Army of Davids that Glenn Reynolds described are a welcome addition to the fold.

UPDATE: In “Where’s the Business Model for News, People?” Jay Rosen gives us a short history lesson:

It’s worth going back to the first business model in reportage: the merchants, traders, and other “men of affairs” in early modern Europe who employed letter-writers in cities where the man of affairs did not happen to be located. These letters—the most famous example is the Fugger Letters from the latter 16th century—conveyed much the same news that a trader would want today: prices, conditions for trade and transport, what the local authorities were up to, rumors of war, court news and gossip, natural disasters, and anything the people were seriously buzzed about.

Quality was important, accuracy essential, an ability to interpret and amuse definitely part of the deal. Everything a pro journalist would want an employer to demand, except for one thing. The letters were not intended for public distribution. There was no public then, and “public opinion” was not a phrase in common political use.

He also points to Jeff Jarvis‘ “The press becomes the press-sphere.”

One problem I’ve had with much discussion about the future of news lately is that it’s too press-centric. It focuses on the press as if it were at the center of the world, as if it owned news, as if news depended on it, as if solving the press’ problems solves news. That’s not the ecosystem of news now.

[...]

The press may be involved and may create a news story. But we might have found that via links from our peers who tell us it’s news (“if the news is important, it will find me”). Either of those might have linked to source material from a company or government site — which now plays a press role in adding to the whole of a story. Witnesses can join in the process directly. Background might come via links to archives. Commentary from observers may add perspective. An accumulation of data may alert us to news or augment it. All of these elements add up to news.

That’s a lot more work, though, than watching the evening news, listening to the radio on the way to work, or even reading a daily newspaper. But for information junkies, this is absolutely right: There’s a ton of outstanding content out there and myriad ways to reach it. Indeed, while I subscribe to Jarvis’ blog via RSS, I’d missed this piece but stumbled upon it two weeks later via Rosen.

The Ninth Circuit has ruled that the Federal Government can search through the contents of laptops and other personal data devices, without cause, of people who are coming through the border.

Federal agents at the border do not need any reason to search through travelers’ laptops, cell phones or digital cameras for evidence of crimes, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, extending the government’s power to look through belongings like suitcases at the border to electronics.

[...]

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, finding that the so-called border exception to the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches applied not just to suitcases and papers, but also to electronics.

You can read the full ruling of the Court here. I am not surprised by this result, as the courts have held over the past several decades that a border search is “automatically reasonable” by its nature. Indeed, the Fourth Circuit has already previously ruled that laptop searches of this nature are permissible.

Personally, I disagree with this doctrine, noting simply that the Fourth Amendment does not provide any exception for searches at the border, and given that the Founding Fathers were well aware of the concept of Customs Officers, they could have easily included such an exception had they felt it warranted.

When I first heard the story about Lenore Skenazy, the New York woman who made headlines for allowing her nine-year-old to ride on the subway alone, the first thing I thought to myself is: Why is this news? New York City is one of the safest cities in America now. Why shouldn’t a kid ride the subway alone? It turns out, though, that for hordes of frothing-at-the-mouth parents, what she did was tantamount to child abuse. She is now defending herself in the New York Sun in an article I’d encourage everyone to read:

No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, “Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.”

Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.

Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating — for us and for them.

This is absolutely right — read the whole thing. When I was a kid, me and my friends would frequently go out and — GASP! — play while unsupervised by an adult! Occasionally we even got hurt! Why there were bruises, and one of my buddies broke his arm when he fell out of a tree. Horrors! I even, on two separate occasions — brace yourself for this — flew on an airplane by myself. How I managed to go unkidnapped is a miracle.

To be fair, there’s obviously a certain age where one can debate the line where adult supervision is necessary, but nine is definitely a good age to start exploring one’s life without the constant stare of parental authority. How are you going to learn independence if there’s always somebody hovering over you, making sure you don’t get a boo-boo?

Nowadays, when I drive through neighborhoods, even my old ones, there’s one thing I can count on not seeing — and that’s kids playing outside. I never see kids under the age of 14 or so unaccompanied by adults on airplanes, buses, or other modes of transportation. Nowadays, there are whole industries devoted to tracking kids–by their fingerprints, by their cell phones, by RFID tags in their backpacks.

That’s American parenting for you — ensuring that kids grow up being used to not having privacy, not having independence, and always having somebody watching over them.

Call me crazy, but I think there might be a problem there.

For students who found taking college classes over their computers too constraining, a Japanese university now offers one of their courses via cell phone.

Japanese already use cell phones to shop, read novels, exchange e-mail, search for restaurants and take video clips. Now, they can take a university course.

Cyber University, the nation’s only university to offer all classes only on the Internet, began offering a class on mobile phones Wednesday on the mysteries of the pyramids. For classes for personal computers, the lecture downloads play on the monitor as text and images in the middle, and a smaller video of the lecturer shows in the corner, complete with sound. The cell phone version, which pops up as streaming video on the handset’s tiny screen, plays just the Power Point images.

[...]

Sakuji Yoshimura, who heads Cyber University and gives the pyramids course, said the university provides educational opportunities for people who find it hard to attend real-life universities, including those with jobs and those who are sick or have disabilities. “Our duty as educators is to respond to the needs of people who want to learn,” Yoshimura said.

He scoffed at those who question the value of Internet and cell-phone classes, noting attendance is relatively high at 86 percent. Whether students play the lecture downloads to the end can be monitored by the university digitally, officials said.

Although real-time exchange with professors and other students isn’t possible in Net classes, social networking and other cyber-discussions are flourishing, said Hiroshi Kawahara, professor in the Faculty of Information Technology and Business.

This gives new meaning to “phoning it in,” a practice of which not a few senior professors have been accused.

Having taught several graduate-level courses online and found the quality of the exchange decidedly inferior to the traditional residential experience, I’m incredibly skeptical of the value of classes delivered in a tiny screen without sound or the ability for students to engage the professor or their colleagues.

Story via OTB News. Photo via Wired Gadget Lab.

America’s greatest journalist, Radley Balko, has an excellent piece on why a Clinton II Presidency would differ very little from the Bush II Presidency.

For seven years, the left has been up in arms about President Bush’s aggressive foreign policy, his secrecy, his partisanship, and his expansive claims on executive power. It’s odd, then, that they’re prepared to nominate Hillary Clinton to carry the party into the 2008 elections.

[...]

Then there is Hillary Clinton on the issues. Cato Institute President Ed Crane recently wrote a piece for the Financial Times pointing out that when you strip away the partisan coating, Mrs. Clinton’s grandiose, big-government vision is really no different than that envisioned by the neoconservatives so loathed by the left. Clinton, remember, not only voted for the Iraq war, she still hasn’t conceded she was wrong to do so, and has made no promise to end it any time soon.

[...]

Hillary Clinton voted for both the Patriot Act and its reauthorization. She voted for building a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border. She voted to loosen restrictions limiting the federal government’s ability to wiretap cell phones. In the past, she has supported a robust role for the federal government in enforcing “decency” standards in television and music. She teamed up with former Sen. Rick Santorum on a bill calling for the federal government to restrict the sale of violent video games.

[...]

What about secrecy and executive power? It’s difficult to see Hillary Clinton voluntarily handing back all of those extra-constitutional executive powers claimed by President Bush. Her husband’s administration, for example, copiously invoked dubious “executive privilege” claims to keep from complying with congressional subpoenas and open records requests—claims the left now (correctly, in my view) regularly criticizes the Bush administration for invoking.

Hillary Clinton herself went to court to keep meetings of her Health Care Task Force secret from the public, something conservatives were quick to point out when leftists criticize Vice President Cheney’s similar efforts to keep meetings of his Energy Task Force secret.

Read the whole thing.

Personally, my Election 2008 nightmare is one in which next November, the country is forced to choose between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. Both persons are, by personality and inclination, more authoritarian than just about anyone else in the field. Both are smart enough to take advantage of the past two decades of increasingly consolidated presidential authority to bolster their own power. Both seem to think that the threat of military force is the end-all be-all of American diplomacy. Both have little regard for individual liberty.

And both of them are the current frontrunners.

Kathleen Parker begins her latest column, “The Pornification of Politics,” thusly:

If our enemies don’t hate us, it’s an oversight.

The confluence of the worst of modern American trends — national narcissism, the sexualization of all things animate and otherwise, and the devaluing of currencies from literature to public discourse — has reached a perfect storm of idiocy in the form of MTV-style political videos.

Can the culture possibly go any lower before the barbarians simply waltz through America’s front door, left lazily ajar by the last one to shake her booty?

The videos are the latest rage in virtual politics: Pouty girls in scant clad bump ‘n’ grind their luv for this presidential candidate or that.

For which they are rewarded millions of views on YouTube, the favorite medium of narcissists gone wild, and recognition by the alleged mainstream media. For just a few humps and bumps, fame belongs to the teeniest bikiniest.

Ezra Klein observes, “There are a lot of people in America who really don’t like America, and for much the same reason that they think Osama bin-Laden doesn’t like America. . . . [I]nsofar as he also finds our freedoms distasteful, so too do some on the right.”

He’s got a point. Now, of course, liberals hate America, too, for entirely different reasons. We allow the rich to keep too much of their money. We’re too militaristic (except in the cases where suffering is happening outside or geostrategic sphere of interest, in which case we’re insufficiently militaristic). We’re the only civilized country that executes our murderers, doesn’t provide universal health care coverage, or mandate eleven months of paid vacation. Our cell phones suck. Our cars are too big. And so forth and so on.

Mostly, people who are passionate about politics have two things in common: 1) They want to use government to make the world fit their vision and 2) They complain that people on the other side of the issue are busybodies who want to use government to impose their will on everybody.

I must admit, though, that it’s amusing to see youngish people like Parker and Dinesh D’Souza lamenting the decline of our moral values. It’s especially funny when they don’t know that MTV hasn’t played music videos on a regular basis since they were in high school.

Now, I’m enough of a curmudgeon to think that “Obama Girl vs. Giuliani Girl” is a rather silly way to pick a candidate. Then again, I’ve studied politics long enough to know that 99% of the people watching these videos 1) aren’t going to make a political decision based on them, since they’ve likely already decided, given that they’re interested enough to watch in the first place and/or 2) aren’t going to vote, anyway, since they’re likely too young. Further, I’m much happier with silly girls shaking their tushies on camera than with such classics from the good old days as “Flower Girl,” which insinuated that Barry Goldwater was going to get the nation blown up in a nuclear war.

Americans have always lamented the moral decline of the world around them. Hollywood was too wild in the 1920s, so the public demanded movie ratings. Comic books were too violent and sexually suggestive in the 1950s, seducing the innocent and all that, leading to the Comic Code. Then there was this thing called Rock and Roll — itself a suggestive racial euphemism — culminating in Elvis wiggling his hips. (Thankfully, the Ed Sullivan show had the good decency to film his gyrations from the waist up, sparing the public the shock.) Then there was the debauchery of Woodstock. And gangsta rap.

Look, there’s not much doubt that our popular culture is more profane and sexually explicit than it was twenty, let alone fifty, years ago. Whether that’s a good thing is largely a matter of taste. The larger context in which that’s happened, though, is almost certainly a good one. We’re more free, more affluent, more educated than ever before.

Salon’s Farhad Manjoo notes the fight of one brave lawmaker to end the impossible tyranny of Apple and AT&T over the Must Have Gadget of the Century, the indispensable iPhone.

Edward Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the committee, began the affair by holding up the phone and hailing its “sheer brilliance and wizardry,” noting that “undoubtedly consumers will cherish this device as though it is a part of their family.”

But the iPhone, Markey said, “highlights both the promise and the problems of the wireless industry today.” The phone sells for full price, yet owners get essentially no rights over how to use it; the phone forces you to sign a two-year contract with poorly ranked AT&T service, at pain of a $175 early-termination fee. “Many consumers feel trapped having bought an expensive device or having been locked into a long-term contract with significant penalties for switching,” Markey said. And it’s not just iPhone owners. Nobody likes their cell provider; people are sick of the fees, they’re sick of the stringent contracts, they’re sick of the bad cell signal. But what are you going to do? There are four large cell carriers in the U.S. — AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint — and none has customers who are particularly happy.

Ezra Klein remarks, “It’s really rather remarkable how totally we let cell phone companies screw us over.”

Truly, this is a national tragedy. If only — if only — there were some way to escape this abuse at the hands of our corporate overlords.

Now, some of you are probably thinking, “But, James, you don’t have to sign a long-term contract with AT&T. And you don’t have to get an iPhone. Generations of Americans have gotten along without them. And, if nobody buys one, Apple will change their business model.”

Now you’re just talking nonsense. Didn’t you read what Markey said about “sheer brilliance and wizardry”?! Plus, as Manjoo points out, AT&T has a veritable gun to your head, forcing you to give up your rights to chose other companies:

Many people might consider this a good trade; get a free phone, sign a long-term contract. But as Chris Murray, an attorney at Consumers Union, pointed out at the House hearing last week, wireless companies don’t give customers a choice over whether they want to take this deal. You can’t offer to pay full price for a handset in exchange for a reduced early-termination fee and an unlocked phone — no major firm will let you do that. Indeed, in some instances carriers will charge you a fee even when they don’t offer you any break on the price of the phone. The iPhone is the primary exhibit: AT&T doesn’t subsidize the price of the phone, but you’re still locked to a single provider.

So, you see, if you don’t enter into a contract with them, agreeing to do some stuff you’d rather not do, they won’t enter into a contract with you and give you the stuff you want from them.

That’s pretty harsh. It reminds me of when I was 15 and joined the Columbia House Record Club. They sent me 13 albums for a penny. Then, they had the audacity to expect me to buy six more albums from them — at prices higher than Wal-Mart charges for them — over the next three years plus pay shipping and handling. Sure, I knew that going into the deal but all I could see was “13 albums for a penny.” The rest of the deal was not to my liking. Boy, was I steamed.

Now, sure, I could get the really cool phone and cough up the extra $175 and break the contract with AT&T so that I could get the far, far better cell phone service offered by other companies — where they let you transmit not only voice but also text via “satellite signals.” But, sheesh, who wants to do that? There oughta be a law!

UPDATE: Triumph thinks the last option unavailable because Apple has “locked” the phone to protect the exclusivity given AT&T. While not part of Markey’s discussion, Manjoo notes that issue later in his piece. Apparently, there are numerous ways around it.

Still, I’m not sure how this is different than the “proprietary” game that Sony played unsuccessfully with BetaMax and Apple has played very successfully with the iPod. Ultimately, people buy the product under the terms it’s being offered or they don’t. If the product is good enough, people will put up with it. If a suitable substitute exists, they don’t.

For the record: I don’t own an iPhone and have no plans to buy one anytime soon. I have had cell service with AT&T (mostly, under the Cingular name) for years. My two year contract is actually up and I’m going month-to-month for now.

Bringing you my local news, I have problems categorizing this as embracing. I also wonder about a specific state law against embracing, when a simple driving while distracted would suffice, same as with cell phones.

A state trooper was patrolling Interstate 90 near Bellevue Way last week when he noticed a sport utility vehicle drifting between lanes, sometimes speeding up and then slowing down to well below the speed limit.
When the trooper stopped the vehicle, he found the 19-year-old male driver and a 20-year-old female passenger naked and engaged in sexual activity, according to a State Patrol news release Wednesday.
The woman began hiding alcohol containers and put on a shirt, but the driver, a Seattle man, made no efforts to cover up.
The man was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and having sex while driving, the patrol reported Wednesday…..
Trooper Jeff Merrill, who wrote the news release, said “embracing while driving” is a misdemeanor. In this case, the woman said she was performing oral sex on the driver while he was driving.
“You are not supposed to be hugging or kissing while driving,” Merrill said. “It’s so distracting.”

Um, no, he wasn’t arrested for having sex while driving. No specific WA law against having sex while driving, but there is one in WA State against embracing while driving. At least they aren’t being charged with felony sodomy (which isn’t necessarily what you think it is, oral sex is considered sodomy in some states, and in the military.) And no pictures?

Let the puns begin.

Cross-posted from PoliBlog:

Via the AP: Spain Arrests 15 on Terror Charges

Fifteen North Africans were arrested in Spain on Monday on suspicion of recruiting volunteers to fight in Iraq and other countries.

Spain’s Interior Ministry said computer material, jihad propaganda and several cell phones were seized during at least five pre-dawn raids throughout Spain. No arms or explosives were discovered.

Thirteen of the 15 were Moroccan and two were from Algeria, according to the statement, which said the group was operating as a cell that allegedly send money and fighters to different terrorist organizations in north Africa, Iraq and other countries.

When one wonders “why Spain?” one must remember:

Al-Qaida has frequently claimed that it intends to recover ”al-Andalus,” a reference to the vast area of Spain ruled by the Moors for 800 years until 1492.

Humphrey Taylor, the chairman of the Harris Poll, offers a plausible defense of online polling. Mark Blumenthal has a superb critique.

Ultimately, they’re saying the same thing: online polls have not yet proven that they are as reliable as telephone surveys but there is evidence that, properly conducted, they can be useful. Both agree that telephone surveys, because of declining response rates and some demographic concerns, may lose their status as the primary polling method in the not-too-distant future.

Because my wife works in the business, I talk to some of the best pollsters out there on occasion. While they’re generally fearful that cell phones and hangups will eventually put them out of business–or at least force them to fundamentally rethink the way they operate–that concern is purely theoretical at this point. Recent election polling using proper likely voter screens have continued to be uncannily accurate.

Incidentally, Taylor is the author of a 1998 essay, “Myth and Reality in Reporting Sampling Error: How the Media Confuse and Mislead Readers and Viewers,” that I frequently assigned my Intro to Poli-Sci students back in my teaching days. It’s still worth a read.

The FCC has decided to continue the ban on use of cellular phones while in flight. They still have no plausible reason for doing so.

Federal Communications Commission has officially grounded the idea of allowing airline passengers to use cellular telephones while in flight. Existing rules require cellular phones to be turned off once an aircraft leaves the ground in order to avoid interfering with cellular network systems on the ground. The agency began examining the issue in December 2004.

[...]

In an order released Tuesday, the FCC noted that there was “insufficient technical information” available on whether airborne cell phone calls would jam networks on the ground.

While I’m happy not to have people yapping on their infernal cell phones while I’m crowded on an uncomfortable plane, this is nonsensical. Given that there is NO EVIDENCE that cell phones can jam networks on the ground, wouldn’t it seem reasonable that the burden of proof would be on those who want to ban them?

Then again, this is the Government we’re talking about, so they don’t need no stinking logical explanations. After all, after I’ve been forced to check my luggage lest I conceal explosives in my over-three-once vial of shaving gel, watched my wife have to throw away a perfectly good bottle of water so that she’ll have to buy an identical one at three times the price on the other side of the magic security window, and walked around the airport in my socks because some idiot unsuccessfully hid a bomb in his shoes, being deprived of my cell phone is the least of my worries.

When I saw the NYT headline “Poor Nations to Bear Brunt as World Warms,” I was naturally reminded of the classic spoof headline, “World to End Tomorrow: Women and Minorities Affected the Most.”

Andrew Revkin’s story does not make me feel guilty for having that reaction.

The world’s richest countries, which have contributed by far the most to the atmospheric changes linked to global warming, are already spending billions of dollars to limit their own risks from its worst consequences, like drought and rising seas.

But despite longstanding treaty commitments to help poor countries deal with warming, these industrial powers are spending just tens of millions of dollars on ways to limit climate and coastal hazards in the world’s most vulnerable regions — most of them close to the equator and overwhelmingly poor.

[...]

Two-thirds of the atmospheric buildup of carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas that can persist in the air for centuries, has come in nearly equal proportions from the United States and Western European countries. Those and other wealthy nations are investing in windmill-powered plants that turn seawater to drinking water, in flood barriers and floatable homes, and in grains and soybeans genetically altered to flourish even in a drought.

In contrast, Africa accounts for less than 3 percent of the global emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel burning since 1900, yet its 840 million people face some of the biggest risks from drought and disrupted water supplies, according to new scientific assessments. As the oceans swell with water from melting ice sheets, it is the crowded river deltas in southern Asia and Egypt, along with small island nations, that are most at risk.

“Like the sinking of the Titanic, catastrophes are not democratic,” said Henry I. Miller, a fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “A much higher fraction of passengers from the cheaper decks were lost. We’ll see the same phenomenon with global warming.”

Those of us who emphasize the advantages brought by the advances in technology that have helped contribute to global warming (i.e., hundreds of millions of human beings spared from starvation and disease) have also expressed confidence that the same ingenuity would help insulate us from its bad effects. That seems to be happening. And, yet, the reaction of the environmental Establishment is “It’s not fair!”

Pollution and clean-up are two sides of the same coin. As societies seek to advance, they will naturally consume resources in ways that are long-term foolish and short-term smart. In a little more than two hundred years, industrialization moved the societies which adopted it further than in all previous human history. The wealth and technological know-how created by these advances has now given us the ability to work to undo some of the damage that was the unfortunate byproduct of modernization.

This strikes me as very much a good thing.

Further, as history has repeatedly shown, the adaptation curve is very steep. Yes, the wealthy societies are the first to benefit from the advances that we create. That’s not terribly surprising, really. Yet, very quickly, cutting edge technology becomes yesterday’s news. Those old technologies then move downstream in the economy at a rapid rate at a fraction of the initial cost.

Sometimes, as with communications technology, whole generations are skipped. Countries that never had a landline telephone system outside the big cities can put up cell towers quickly and cheaply, for example. Satellite television dishes adorn the sides of shanty apartments in the slums of Third World cities.

The same thing happens within the West. The wealthiest are early adopters of new technologies, whether it be personal computers, mobile telephones, high definition television, or what have you. At increasingly shorter intervals, those technologies become widely available as economies of scale catch up. People living in subsidized housing and collecting food stamps have PCs, cell phones, and MP3 players nowadays. Should we emphasize the “unfairness” of rich people getting those perks first or the fact that those people paid five times as much for the same products–paving the way for the economies of scale that allowed poor people to eventually buy them–so that they could enjoy them a couple years earlier?