The Hoosier Pundit has a post entitled Fairness Doctrine, Redux. He mentions Democratic attempts to bring the Fairness Doctrine back to radio. The Fairness Doctrine was a regulation of the FCC which required broadcast licensees “to present controversial issues of public importance, and to present such issues in what was deemed an honest, equal and balanced manner. It has since been repealed by the FCC and aspects of it have been questioned by courts.”

After the Fairness Doctrine was rolled back, we saw an explosion of conservative talk radio — Limbaugh, et al.

The Hoosier Pundit says:

Talk radio, they say, is unfairly dominated by conservatives.

Something about the free market not producing a result that is not politically suitable to their anti-free-market ideology, I guess.

What I want to know, though, is whether this “Fairness Doctrine” can be made to also apply to the Internet.

I have mixed feelings about the Fairness Doctrine generally, but the Hoosier Pundit’s critiques are addressed easily enough:

1. Radio broadcasts are not done in a free market. Want to test this? Fire up your transmitter to broadcast on an AM frequency and see what happens. I’ll bet you a corporation goes to the government court and asks it to enforce the government issued license by, if necessary to stop you from competing on that frequency, sending the government paid police to lock you in the government run jails. Because frequencies are limited, the government sells licenses to the public airwaves. That means only government sanctioned owners — usually those rich enough to afford a license — get to speak over the public airwaves.

2. No fairness doctrine for the Internet — there is nothing like frequency scarcity on the Internet, so the FCC doesn’t get to regulate the speech that goes over it. (At least that’s my hope — sometimes the scarcity doctrine that permits government regulation of broadcasts seems more like a pretext for regulation and not the real reason.)

Fort Wayne Observed talks about “Cornhole” getting Page 1. It provides a link to a post about “Cornhole Tournaments” which has phrases like “Cornhole Leagues” and “Cornhole Doubles.”

I know that, in this context, cornhole refers to a bean bag game sort of like horse shoes. But, as it turns out, there is a little part of me who is still a thirteen year old boy at heart. I keep laughing like The Great Cornholio. Because, where I grew up, “cornhole” had a whole different meaning.

The Associated Press has an article entitled 18-year-old elected official quits after arrest . Eighteen year old David Wichlinski resigned from the Porter Township board in Porter County, apologizing to his family, friends, and the Republican Party after being arrested on drug paraphernalia and underage drinking charges.

Joh Padgett has a thoughtful post entitled When Geeks Go Bad. He is responding to Ruth Holladay who commented on a Wired story about Hans Reiser, a geek who murdered his wife.

Personally, I earn a respectable 36.29% (Major Geek) on the “Geek Test.” I think that puts me more at the “social adversity has made me stronger” end of the spectrum and less at the “nice boy, didn’t talk much” end.

(h/t Blue Indiana) WBAA is reporting that Steve Buyer might have a challenger in Indiana’s Fourth District.

Nels Ackerson, an attorney from Zionsville and former aide to Sen. Birch Bayh, is considering a run against Rep. Buyer. He says running a credible campaign against Buyer will be expensive but he’s up for the challenge. He describes himself as “passionately moderate” and willing to work with lawmakers from both parties.

Just doing a quick websearch, I came across a reasonably interesting article in the American Lawyer discussing Ackerson’s role defending land owners from incursions by utilities seeking to lay telecommunications cable along railroad rights of way where it was not at all clear that the railroads had the property rights to give away to the telecommunications companies.

Via bilerico.com:

Somehow, somewhere along the way, faith stopped being used to bring us together and started being used to drive us apart. It got hijacked.

Part of it’s because of the so-called leaders of the Christian right, who’ve been all too eager to exploit what divides us. I don’t know what Bible they’re reading, but it doesn’t jibe with my version.

Barack Obama in a speech at the United Church of Christ national meeting.

Barack, I love you, but with all due respect, faith has been used as a wedge since the invention of wedges.

I took my three year old son on a train ride from Lafayette to Chicago and back. Intellecutally, I support the concept of mass transit. As a practical matter, I now understand why train travel isn’t very popular locally. Round trip, we spent about 8.5 hours on the train (and I won’t include the drive time from Union Station to my friend’s house in Naperville and back). For my son and I to get tickets was about $60. Since I already have and pay for a car anyway, the marginal cost for me to have simply driven to my friend’s house would have been (assuming 30 miles to the gallon and $3 per gallon) $30 and, round trip, door-to-door would have been about 5 hours. For the train experience, I paid twice the money and added 3.5 hours to my travel time.

Even so, it would have been an o.k. undertaking if not for the hour delay on the way up between Dyer, Indiana and Chicago. No explanation from Amtrak during the wait. Just stopped on the tracks for an hour. After the wait, word circulated that a big freight train was just completely blocking a yard we had to pass through. I get the sense that this kind of thing is not isolated. Fortunately, my son was quite well behaved. He got a little antsy toward the end of each train ride, but hey, he’s three.

All my bellyaching aside, I could see taking a train as an enjoyable experience if I was traveling without kids, for a reasonably long distance, and on a really loose time table. The coach seats were fairly comfortable — being able to walk around makes the train much more palatable than an airplane or the bus. If I could just wander off to the dining car and have a beer when I wanted or just hang out and read a book or a magazine, getting up periodically to stretch my legs on a trip where I was happy to get to the destination anytime during the day, the train could be relaxing and enjoyable. Still, that’s a pretty narrow subset of the population who has to get from Point A to Point B. So, something fairly dramatic would have to change before we see a shift from automobile travel to train travel. Maybe all of the subsidies for roads, cars, and gasoline get dumped and the cost of traveling in this fashion becomes prohibitive. Maybe, train travel somehow becomes more reliable and expeditious. Or, more likely I fear, nothing changes too dramatically and train travel remains unrealistic as a serious commuting option.

Seems like it was a dangerous day in area court houses today. The Indy Star has an article entitled Scuffle erupts after conviction with respect to an incident in Jeffersonville. After a verdict was rendered, a relative of the defendant fought with sheriff’s deputies in the hallway.

Meanwhile, in Lafayette, the Journal & Courier is reporting that a man was arrested after he allegedly attempted to throw an attorney over the fourth-floor railing. The suspect is a plaintiff in a civil case. He apparently attacked the attorney for one of the Defendants. The hearing today was held on the Defendants’ motion to enforce a mediation agreement wherein the Plaintiffs would dismiss their case in return for $42,000. The Plaintiffs apparently had second thoughts and attempted to back out of the agreement. The judge said that they couldn’t and, in addition, had to pay some of the Defendants’ attorneys fees.

So, today was a bad day, but all in all, I am a little surprised that more of that kind of thing doesn’t go on.

Back before I had kids, I enjoyed watching a good movie or two. The Journal & Courier put the American Film Institute’s Top 100 movies in a sidebar.
Oddly, I have watched only one of the top 10 — The Wizard of Oz. Of the remainder, I feel pretty silly for not having seen The Godfather. Also, I think I’d enjoy Raging Bull. The rest of the top 10, maybe, maybe not. I’ve put in bold the ones I’ve seen. In italics are ones that I haven’t seen, but want to. Even though I like movies quite a bit, apparently there are a ton of great ones I’ve not seen or only seen parts. Maybe my tastes are not very refined, though, because a lot of them just hold no interest for me.

The American Film Institute’s 2007 list of the top-100 American movies:
1. “Citizen Kane,” 1941.
2. “The Godfather,” 1972.
3. “Casablanca,” 1942.
4. “Raging Bull,” 1980.
5. “Singin’ in the Rain,” 1952.
6. “Gone With the Wind,” 1939.
7. “Lawrence of Arabia,” 1962.
8. “Schindler’s List,” 1993.
9. “Vertigo,” 1958.
10. “The Wizard of Oz,” 1939.

[Read more…]