There are some (I'm not among them) who'd argue that Google has become so omnipresent in the world of internet search that it ought to be regulated, like a public utility or some trust from the 1890s.  I use Google for my search needs because I find it, well, good enough, and better so far than the competition.  With a little effort I can find anything I like on Google, from kids' sites to reference to the vilest pornographic filth imaginable.

Consider Scott Greenfield, of Simple Justice. Scott seems to believe that Google, because it holds the power to block my access to information through its search portal, ought to be regulated in some fashion, either through litigation or bureaucracy (knowing Scott, I'll choose litigation), to prevent it from silencing those whose political views may cause offense to Google or its more sensitive customers:

While we pretend that the internet is huge, open, level playing field, the reality is that essentially none of us can access it, whether to add to it or take from it, without going through a private entity.  When those entities start messing with content, the only question is when will they take a hard look at yours.

The context in which Greenfield writes is the flagging as "inappropriate" of the Blogspot-hosted weblog known as "Just A Girl In Short Shorts Talking About Whatever." Blogspot, or Blogger, is a subsidiary of Google which allows beginning bloggers to get their feet wet, for free, before eventually moving on to the deeper end of the blogging pool: self-hosted WordPress or Moveable Type blogs, which require a little more technical work on the part of the writer than a Blogspot blog, and in return allow the author more freedom to "talk about whatever."  It is an unfortunate truth that one cannot "talk about whatever" on Blogger because readers are allowed to "flag" blogs as "inappropriate," for any reason or no reason.  I've done this myself, to spam blogs that try to flood our comments, but at Blogger I could do it just because I disagreed with the author's opinions, and if I do it enough, something bad might happen to that blog.

So far as I can tell, Just A Girl In Short Shorts was flagged, and now sits behind a "warning: you are attempting to read a site which has been identified by some users as objectionable" screen, not because it featured images of girls in short shorts or other revealing attire (it did), but because some ninnies out there disagreed with the author's words.  Her words and political opinions were saucier than the images, and that's just too much for some idiots to bear.  And that's a damned shame, because Google, through its subsidiary Blogger, now rests the site behind a wall that makes it appear to the reader that he is about to click on Japanese vomit-rape porn, rather than cheesecake and political commentary.

What's more of a shame is that Google allowed this to happen in the first place.  Despite its hippie-granola image and "Don't Be Evil" motto, Google is as evil, and profit-motivated, as any bank, insurance company, or coal-mining company.  I agree with Greenfield on that.

Where I disagree is with Greenfield's apparent notion that something must be done about the search-engine trust, apart from getting the word out that Google is not your friend, and that its Blogger service is a particularly shitty platform from which to host one's blog.  If we ran Popehat from Blogger, yes, any moron could flag our content as "inappropriate," whatever that means, and if enough of them did Blogger would shut the site down or place it behind a wall.

But we've chosen not to do that.  We're in control of the Popehat domain, and pay a company that hosts, among other things, genuine porn sites, for the comfort of knowing that if someone tries to "report" us for what we write, we can laugh at him.  (Try it.  There's a button below which will allow you to report this post.  If you do so, I'll know about it and laugh at you, because you're reporting it to me.)  There are hundreds or thousands of companies only too happy to take our money for the privilege of letting us write anything we want.

Google is of course perfectly free, but more importantly it should be free, to offer a blogging service which allows idiots and hammerheads to "takedown" sites whose content they find objectionable.  And as long as there are competitors, and there always will be as long as there's a buck to be made, I'm free not to use it.

So it falls to the author of a blog like Just A Girl In Short Shorts Talking About Whatever, if she truly wants to talk about whatever, to move on to another platform.  It falls to Google to remain a hypocritical money-making giant.  And it falls to Scott, to me, and to other bloggers out there to warn potential consumers of blogging platforms that if they choose to host with Blogger, they can be silenced at any time by idiots, with no recourse whatsoever.  And that there are alternatives to Google, as a blog host or as a search engine.

Caveat lector.

Update: Through other channels, Scott Greenfield advises that I should be careful about attributing a desire for regulation to him.  In fairness to Scott, he did not say that.  In fairness to me, Scott's post, veering off-topic to call out libertarians and the like, does not make that point at all clear.  His comments, particularly toward the end of the thread (and if you don't read the comments at a blog like Simple Justice, you're missing half the content and more than half of the fun) do make that point more clearly.

I confess to a certain affection for BureauCrash, though I don't read it often.

For the uninitiated, BureauCrash is a right libertarian multiauthor blog and discussion forum devoted to ending business regulation as we know it and elimination of income taxes, with a bit of Ayn Rand objectivism, Ludwig Von Mises goldbuggery, and probably casual marijuana use thrown in.  The audience at BureauCrash is in some ways as close to anarchism as to libertarianism.

Or they were.

In actuality, BureauCrash some time ago was acquired by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think tank which certainly advocates vigorously for free enterprise, but in other respects is about as unconventional as the Rotary Club.  Think Main Street Republicans.  Think Zell Miller Democrats, assuming any of those are left.  As foundations go, CEI is probably as close to the Brookings Institution as it is to the Cato Institute.

Last month CEI showed  its hand.  In a "hope you like our new direction" move, CEI has installed an administrator who announced his intent to moved the content in a decidedly less individualistic direction, along with adding links, since removed, to such libertarian stalwarts as Rush "warrantless wiretapping is good for America" Limbaugh, and Michelle Malkin, who thinks concentration camps are essential to ordered liberty.

And in the BureauCrash chatroom, the new "Crasher in Chief" dropped CEI science on the longhaired hippie kids thus:

The fact that the government violates its own laws doesn’t change the fact that it is my government

You should accept that might makes right…and that is why we have a government

Since America has the most powerful military we are in control

The government is there to protect life liberty and property

Did I like McCain….no. Did I vote for him over Obama yes.

None of which went over too well with a member base that worries, in its heart of hearts, that Dr. Ron Paul is a secret stooge because he voluntarily complied with licensing requirements of the Texas Medical Board.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the "Crasher In Chief's" stated desire to expand the site's userbase by thousands upon thousands of good-thinking, like-minded Republicans like Joe the Plumber, participation seems to have declined precipitously, even as America soaks in the dregs of a million tax-protesting tea parties.  The hard libertarians, minarchists, and anarchists are moving to  blacker pastures.

All of which brings to mind a couple of questions: What did these kids see in a state-controlled Competitive Enterprise Institute-run social networking site in the first place, and why did the CEI want to add them to its holdings?

Via Kalim Kassam through Twitter.

Continuing a theme, it appears that certain ideologies and modern social networking technology just don't mix.  Michigan Congressman Peter Hoekstra, last covered in these pages in February, led us to call his judgment into question through inappropriate use of Twitter.

Today it's not his judgment that's in question.  It's his perspective.

Yesterday Hoekstra demonstrated that 140 characters are more than enough to make an ass of oneself.

Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House.

Hoekstra refers to an incident in which Speaker Nancy Pelosi limited debate on a bill, while House Republicans bravely protested on the service.  And yes, apart from the fact that House Republicans were stymied by parliamentary manuevers rather than truncheon wielding imported goons, and were fighting on a budget bill rather than against a fraudulent election, it was just like what's going on in Iran today.

Not to be outdone, Hoekstra's Texas Republican colleague John Culberson tweeted:

Oppressed minorities includeHouseRepubs: We are using social media to expose repression such as last night's D clampdown shutting off amends

Forgive my grief, Mr. Culberson.

If you'd like to see what other Twitter users have responded to Mr. Hoekstra's plight, you can follow along at Donklephant's brand new website, Pete Hoekstra is a Meme.

I was particularly pleased with Tweets like:

@petehoekstra I didn't put milk in my coffee this morning. It was just like being held in a Vietnamese tiger cage.

Our own small effort to communicate with Hoekstra, about our own difficulties, very similar to those of the House Republicans, may be found here.

If you have a Twitter account, perhaps you have exaggerated tales of distress to share with the House Republicans.  They're your congressmen.  Let them know all about it!

Via Radley Balko.

We've written numerous times about Canada's censorious speech laws. We've lauded Ezra Levant, a man with whom some of us agree on almost nothing but whose tenacious defense of his own right to free speech we admire.  We've beaten that horse.

And we're going to beat it again.

Had I been charged with hate speech 10 years ago, I could not have fought back as effectively. If all this had happened in 1996 instead of 2006, few would have known anything about my battle. YouTube, which brought my story alive for 600,000 people by the time the traffic died down, debuted only in 2005. Before that, there was no universally surfed repository of current event–themed videos, and bloggers were much less prevalent. And without the credit card donations made possible by PayPal (which was started in 2000), it’s unlikely that I could have raised the money to cover my legal expenses.

In short, the Internet saved me. In that sense, my story isn’t just about free speech. It’s also about the way new technology has leveled the playing field between big government and private citizens.

Levant faced a lifetime ban on certain forms of speech, for publishing cartoons.  This is a sample of Levant's self-defense before a bewildered government drone, who expected to be the one conducting the hearing and asking the questions.  Thanks to Youtube, Google, and blogs, probably a million people have seen it.

Of course it's true that in 1996 the idea of charging a news magazine publisher with "hate speech" for publishing cartoons, even in a nation like Canada which lacks vigorous speech protection, would have been considered ridiculous.  Legal theory moves on.

But not as fast as technology.  The theocratic government of Iran suffered protests in 1999 that were as vigorous as those going on today.  The rest of the world paid little attention, not because it didn't care, but because it didn't know.  The basiji and the mullahs made sure of that.

We in America take our liberties, and our internet, for granted.  I recently read of a French court decision that declared internet access, at least in a liberal technological society like France, a human right.  At the time I laughed, and filed it away as something not worthy of blogging.  Stupid Frogs.

I'm not so sure now.  Maybe the French got it right.

This is the face of the generation that will lead Cuba's revolution for the next forty years.

Continue Reading »

Do you consider yourself to be a good-looking man?

Do you have an extroverted personality?

Do you want to make love to one of the world's most beautiful actresses?

Perhaps marry her?

Become famous on national television?

And get paid to do it all?

Have we got an opportunity for you!

North Korea is smaller and better mapped, and orcs are more noble than communists.

[M]y friend Curtis Melvin is kind of a badass. The hardcore libertarian "vacations" in authoritarian countries like Zimbabwe, Iran, and Turkmenistan.

He has also been to North Korea–twice–and and in 2007 started a fascinating project where he’s using Google Earth, news reports, and North Korea’s own government propaganda to pull the veil back on the country’s secretive infrastructure. Since he started the project, collaborators from all over the world have joined the effort, including defectors and former military intelligence officials.

My friend Ken, in my humble opinion, is one of the finest bloggers on the interwebs.  His second best post posed the question:

[A]sk yourself — couldn’t I do this on some subject that interests me? Why haven’t I? What would the nation be like, if a hundred thousand people did?

That was in the context of discussing one blogger's irritating phone calls (sorry Ken, she's a better blogger than you, or me for that matter), which exposed and busted a fake charity.

About a hundred thousand people have contributed to WOWHEAD's project to map and database every zone and quest in the imaginary world of Azeroth, where World of Warcraft is played.

Ask yourself: If 100,000 people have mapped an imaginary world; if 35,000 people have mapped the most awful and secret parts of North Korea, where the orcs are real; why haven't you started a blog?  You probably know something that none of us knows.

If you don't, though I doubt it, why haven't you downloaded SETI at home? Why haven't you uploaded something to WikiLeaks?

One person and a laptop can make all the difference.  Get to work.

While it's always satisfying to see a troll get his just desserts, it's especially satisfying when the troll is an agent of the United States government, goofing off on the public dime.

From the AntiPolygraph message board:

The poster LieBabyCryBaby has been banned. The decision to ban him from these forums comes after numerous violations of AntiPolygraph.org's posting policy. In his own words: "I come around every now and then to ruffle your feathers and laugh at you, and then I find other entertainment."

At this time, we feel it is appropriate to disclose LieBabyCryBaby's true identity: Special Agent Shawn Hacking of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), currently assigned to DEA's Seattle Division.

The sort of behavior displayed on these forums by SA Hacking is particularly disturbing coming from a federal law enforcement officer. In view of the fact that SA Hacking at times posted from IP addresses registered to his employer, it is not clear whether his activity here is sanctioned by his superiors in the polygraph unit, Seattle Division SAC Arnold R. Moorin, or DEA senior management.

Of course I'm not in a position to say whether DEA Agent Hacking is indeed trolling anti-polygraph message boards, or creating sock puppets, but it would hardly be the first time a government employee has done something like this.  Perhaps Agent Hacking was investigating the AntiPolygraph site based on a tip from the Canadian government. Perhaps, like some government agents, he simply has a problem with those who dispute the reliability of lie detectors.

I will note that it is a very simple matter for the owner of a website or forum to determine where most traffic originates, and that most US government agencies do not mask their IP addresses.  I'll simply assume that this story is true, until the government sets the record straight.

We've not written about the sad case of Jessie Logan, who killed herself last year after nude photos she'd "sexted" to another high school student got sent to other students and, well, you went to high school.  You can guess what happened next.

But last week Miss Logan's mother, Cynthia Logan, upped the ante.  Now she's filed suit for wrongful death against the recipient of the photos, the students to whom he forwarded them, Jessie Logan's high school, and the school's security officer, all of whom, allegedly, either spread the photos, or failed to prevent other students from behaving like beasts toward Miss Logan once the photos got around, and failed to charge the students who'd received the photos with a crime for … receiving the photos.  Photos that depicted an 18 year old girl, or, as the law refers to people like Jessie Logan, an "adult." Or as they referred to people like Jessie Logan when I came to be of age, a "Playmate."

A very young adult, to be sure, who did an incredibly foolish thing.  But as an adult, Miss Logan was free to do all sorts of dangerous things that adults do all the time, such as joining the Army, smoking cigarettes, driving an automobile at high speeds, or getting a credit card. And voting, though that's usually dangerous to other people, since 18 year olds don't earn enough to pay taxes.

Or for that matter posing for nude photos, and distributing them as she saw fit.

I don't blame Miss Logan's parents for their daughter's suicide, or their grief.  As Marc Randazza, discussing this case earlier, pointed out, the warning signs are generally obvious only in hindsight.  But as Scott Greenfield, also discussing the Logan case pointed out, most foolish choices have consequences, and the most foolish choice anyone made in this sad chain of events was that of Miss Logan herself.  An adult who was, as my grandparents would have put it in less progressive times, "free, white, and 21."  (A phrase rendered obsolete by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 26th Amendment).  And as Marc and Scott have also mentioned, though not with as much vulgarity as I do, the elder Mrs. Logan has been working the publicity circuit as hard as she can.  She seems poised to position herself as the head of a future Mothers Against Sexting.

Of course when word gets around, we can expect Oprah, Good Morning America, Katie Couric, and the like to treat this case as one of utmost importance and to demand a ban on "sexting," camera phones, and nude photos of young adult women.  All of these outlets, it's worth noting, like my priggish, puritan co-blogger Ezra, think it's perfectly acceptable to vilify a 20 year-old as a near-whore for for making the same choice Jessie Logan made, if her political opinions are incorrect.

As an old man of 41, I'd be happy to increase the ages for drinking, smoking, and sexting.  And voting, don't forget voting.  But at some point, a child reaches adulthood, even if it's as old as 40.   As a 41 year old, I'm not comfortable with giving up digital cameras.

Nor am I comfortable with giving up some level of personal responsibility for foolish choices made by adults, at whatever age the law determines you kids to become adults, just to please Oprah and Cynthia Logan.

Following up on Ken's excellent debunking of the myth that juvenile bombing threat suspect Ashton Lundeby was arrested and held incommunicado under the PATRIOT Act, we have a partial retraction from Mr. Lundeby's mother.

Lundeby acknowledged that the Patriot Act connection was her interpretation.

"None of the law enforcement officers used that term," she said. "But I knew by their actions that it was the Patriot Act. What else could it be?"

Lundeby also claims that her son has been denied due process. She said Thursday that after two months in lockup he has not yet been charged with a crime.

By Lundeby's own admission, though, Ashton had a hearing the morning after his arrest, before Judge James E. Gates in federal court in Raleigh. Juveniles are not charged but "adjudicated" in the parlance of the legal system.

In addition to her claims that Lundeby is the victim of the PATRIOT Act, rather than juvenile criminal procedure common to all courts, Ms. Lundeby now claims that her son, who allegedly was active on the infamous 4chan Anonymous board (or "/b/" as its also known), was the victim of hackers.

Lundeby, who home schools both of her children, said Ashton did spend a lot of time on the computer, in chat rooms and playing games. In the months before his arrest, he had started to exchange messages with computer users who dared him to make crank phone calls. "But they were to places like Wal-Mart," Lundeby said. "They were harmless."

In February, however, someone asked Ashton to make a bomb threat and he refused, Lundeby said. She thinks someone hacked her son's computer and used his IP address to make the bomb threat, traceable to his computer.

Perhaps, when his PATRIOT Act ordeal ends, Mr. Lundeby can star as the victim in the first Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act case.

If you'd been meaning to start that free webpage on Geocities (now known as Yahoo! Geocities), I regret to inform you that the moment has passed.

Of course, I don't regret that as much as Yahoo!, which paid almost three billion dollars for Geocities ten years ago.  Fortunately, while new Geocities pages will not be created, the old pages remain, including these, picked at random:

• Brisbane Insects and Spiders
• Homebuilt Dance Dance Revolution Arcade Style Metal Pad
• Organs of the United States and Canada Database
• Diskus Krisis Ekonomi
• The Confederate Infantry Private; and
• Sailor Moon in Bondage (probably not safe for work)

The Brisbane insect page, by the way, is excellent.

Rush Limbaugh is a hotlinker.

For those who don't know, hotlinking occurs when one website links directly to another website's data-intensive assets, such as images and .pdf files, on its own page, presenting the images or documents as its own.  In the blogging context, it means doing it without credit.  The hotlinker does not even provide a direct link (meaning credit, the only currency that matters to bloggers) to the website or post from which the image or other data-intensive item is stolen.  Morally, hotlinking is theft.

Hotlinking goes on all the time.  We've had images and documents hotlinked by people at this or that forum, and it's generally no big deal, because the drain on resources from this or that forum is not a problem.  But when it comes from a site with huge readership, and awesome resources, like the Excellence-In-Broadcasting-Network, it's a serious problem.  The small site slows down, and gets no appreciable increase in readers in return.

When a Rush Limbaugh hotlinks, it's the rich stealing from the poor.

It's also stupid.  We've been fortunate in that we've had only one serious hotlinking problem, in which a very large weblog devoted to the inside workings of spoiled, rich, Ivy League associates at Biglaw firms linked directly to a document (rather than the overlaid post) which we hosted at our site, without giving credit or a link to our site.  I paid money out of my own pocket to get that document, and was rather angry until the author at that site agreed that what he'd done was wrong, and sent Popehat a link.  Everyone was happy.

But if he hadn't, I might have removed the document from our site at midnight, exchanged it for a photo of "Goatse", and watched the fun in the morning.  (That Goatse link, for those who do know, is safe.)

So kudos to the Liberty Papers for taking the high road (I'd have Goatse'd Limbaugh and his audience in an instant), and shame on Limbaugh for his theft.

Thanks to Doug Mataconis for the tip.

The tiny country of Moldova was once the Romanian province of Bessarabia.  Though predominantly Romanian in population, Bessarabia was forcibly amputated from Romania by Stalin in 1945, ostensibly as punishment for siding with Germany, but really because it had Europe's largest oilfields.  After undergoing the horrors of communism, including mass executions, deportations, and imprisonment of anyone deemed unreliable, Moldova remained a part of the Soviet Union until the dissolution of that tyranny, but has stayed under Russia's thumb since.  While today even Russia isn't ruled by a communist party (Putin's Unity Party could be better described as Peronist), Moldova remains the sole European state ruled by communists.

Which is just the way Putin and Medvedev like it.  Despite past obvious vote-rigging, on Sunday the Communist Party of Moldova "won" parliamentary elections with just over 50% of the vote.  The opposition claims the vote was rigged again.  And young Moldovans aren't happy.

The tiny republic of Moldova erupted in violence today as anti-communist demonstrators stormed the parliament in protest at what they said were rigged elections.

Angry crowds smashed windows and threw furniture and computers from the building after overwhelming riot police in the capital Chisinau. Up to 20,000 people were said to be on the streets, many chanting "Freedom, freedom" and "Down with the communists".

At least 30 protesters and police were reported hurt in clashes. Police fired tear gas and water cannon to try to regain control as the demonstrators, many of them students, lit fires and attacked a nearby presidential administration building.

20,000 people organizing in such a short time is quite a feat.  Dmitri Medvedev, the Russian President, claims it's a pre-orchestrated plot by the European Union, which must be news to actual Europeans, whose governments can't agree on a uniform tariff for cheese.

In fact, the outside agitating forces are American in origin, though they're international now.  You probably know them.  They're your friends Facebook and Twitter.

If you asked me about the prospects of a Twitter-driven revolution in a low-tech country like Moldova a week ago, my answer would probably be a qualified "no". Today, however, I am no longer as certain. If you bothered  to check the most popular discussions on Twitter in the last 48 hours, you may have stumbled upon a weird threat of posts marked with a tag "#pman" (it's currently listed in Twitter's "Trending Topics" along with "Apple Store", Eminem, and Easter).

No, "pman" is not short for "pacman"; it stands for "Piata Marii Adunari Nationale", which is Romanian name for the biggest square in Chisinau, Moldova's capital.

Which is precisely where the crowds are.  Though it's around midnight in Chisinau, in the five minutes it's taken me to write this post there have been 72 new twitters/tweets with the hash-tag #pman.  Most are in Romanian, but a growing number are appearing in English, as the world takes notice.

I'm about to add one myself.  Too often, Americans think of the internet as a way to chat or to shop.  Those are wonderful things, but the internet also provides a communication tool that can change the world.

Which is why the World so desperately wants to control it.

Could it be taxpayers?  Thomas Dart, the sheriff of Cook County Illinois, is suing Craigslist.

In the words of Sheriff Dart…

Prohibited activity rarely transpires in secret.  Rare is the instance when such conduct occurs unabashed.  Yet as these words are read, Defendant's website Craigslist.org ("Craigslist") is facilitating prostitution.  To say Craigslist's "erotic services" forum makes prostitution accessible is an understatement.  Advocacy groups consider the website to be one of the largest sources for prostitution in the country.

Informed sources tell us that Craigslist is also one of the nation's leading sources for broken down cars, slightly used mattresses, and cheap yard work.  The site facilitates those who would play Dungeons and Dragons in secret, but those activities escape Sheriff Dart's attention for now.

No, Craigslist, according to the complaint filed by Sheriff Dart today in the Northern District of Illinois, is a public nuisance, and must be abated.  Read his complaint, in page after page of lurid detail that reads like the script from a 50s  exploitation film titled "Prostitution: Communist Threat to America's Children?" for yourself:  dart-v-craigslist.

I have not yet had time for full digestion of Dart's masterwork, but a few thoughts stand out:

1. This appears to be a shakedown without legal merit.  This is a civil suit, not a criminal action.  The Communications Decency Act immunizes websites for postings by third parties (which the denizens of Craigslist's "erotic services" forum assuredly are), unless the site's very purpose is illegal.  Presumably plenty of people use Craigslist for unpaid hookups that are entirely legal, unless Dart also intends to enforce antiquated sodomy and cohabitation laws in the future.  The other exception to this shield is for violations of federal criminal law, and while interstate prostitution is a federal crime (remember the Mann Act?), this is not a criminal action, and Dart has no more authority to prosecute criminals in Illinois than I do.  He isn't even a lawyer.
2. The Communications Decency Act's shield preempts state law, and yes, it even preempts the municipal code of Chicago.
3. It would appear that Dart was unable to get the Cook County District Attorney to go along for this ride.  The suit was filed by private counsel, Daniel F. Gallagher, Paul O'Grady, and Christopher P. Keleher of Querrey and Harrow in Chicago, all of whom I congratulate for drafting some of the most wretchedly purple prose I have ever seen in a legal pleading.  Truly outstanding, guys.
4. Isn't this killing the goose that laid the golden egg?  Come on, guys, if you want to end prostitution, use the Craigslist!  If Craigslist makes it so easy to find a prostitute for Johns, surely it makes it just as easy for cops.
5. Doesn't the sheriff of Cook County have better things to do than suing Craigslist?  Or did crime and corruption in Chicago end with the impeachment of Rod Blagojevich?
6. Depositions in this case, if it ever gets that far, should make for endlessly entertaining reading.  I particularly want to know how many Cook County users of Craigslist's "erotic services" forum are cops, as well as how many of the posts on said forum are "stings" set up by cops masquerading, or not masquerading, as whores.

Once again, read the complaint.  If you live in Chicago, note the multiple references to "the Sheriff's constant surveillance of Craigslist's erotic services," and consider how Tom Dart uses his time when next you have an election.

In high school, the rumors don't spread so fast, and once you leave for college, they're gone for good.

Have a look at a current Google News search for Verizon iPhone. Currently there are around fifty stories, all from the past few days, pumping the rumor that Apple will ink a deal with a wireless carrier other than AT & T.  Many cite "unnamed sources," which is journalism for "aonymous leakers."

But did the anonymous leakers exist?  Did any of these journalists actually speak to any source at Apple or Verizon?  Or were they just repeating the same rumor, sparked by the appearance of a story from September 2008 in a February 2009 RSS feed?

Correction 11:56 a.m. PST: We messed up. The 9 to 5 Mac blog we cited below is in fact from September 2008, so it turns out this is an old rumor. Because it showed up in our RSS feed Saturday, we, like a number of other publications, took it as a recent post and went from there. Apologies for the confusion.

To its credit, CNet has acknowledged the goof (and it's a serious one, because the date is stamped right under the headline of the old blogpost which started the rumor), but many haven't.  There are still recent stories floating around citing a five month old rumor, and those "unnamed sources" predicting the imminent arrival of the Verizon iPhone.  Of course it's anyone's guess as to whether a source, named or unnamed, was actually interviewed.

More's the pity.  I'd consider buying an iPhone, but I won't deal with AT&T.