This is sort of interesting -- a judge in Boston has slapped a gag on a television station to keep it from reporting on drunk and drugged firefighters.

It’s “very unusual” for a judge to issue an order preventing news organizations from running or publishing stories, a Boston civil rights attorney said yesterday.

“They should have been allowed to run the story,” attorney Howard Friedman said of WHDH-TV (Ch. 7), which was banned by a judge from airing a story yesterday on the autopsy results of two Boston firefighters killed in August.

“In our system with the First Amendment, in almost all instances, you can run with the story but suffer the consequences,” Friedman added. “Obviously, they publish at their peril. If it’s inaccurate, if there’s some damage caused . . . there could be lawsuits.”

Why? Because the autopsy records they gained access to are not public records, even though they reveal misconduct y public employees on the job which certainly endanged public safety and may have contributed to their own deaths.

In court, Paul Hynes, the attorney representing the Boston firefightersÂ’ Local 718, argued that it was a privacy issue and pointed to a 1989 decision by the state Supreme Judicial Court that said medical examinersÂ’ autopsy reports are not public because they are medical records.

That decision reversed a lower court ruling that said autopsies were public record after the Boston Globe sued the stateÂ’s chief medical examinerÂ’s office for the autopsies of three patients who died at Bridgewater State Hospital.

Hopkins, who was sworn in as a judge in August 2006, is Boston Mayor Thomas M. MeninoÂ’s former chief of staff and was his legal counsel for more than a decade.

Last night, the Herald published an online report detailing the autopsy results, which found that one of two hero firefighters who died fighting a West Roxbury blaze was legally drunk at the fire while the other had traces of illegal drugs in his bloodstream.

During its 11 p.m. newscast last night, WHDH reported that it had the information, but was blocked by the judge from reporting it.

Looks like a political hack of a judge is covering up for her former employers union thug supporters.

This is sort of interesting. If it stands, it means that the press can publish our nation's most sensitive secrets on the front page during time of war without legal jeopardy, but is subject to prior restraint when reporting on a matter of public concern and safety on the theory that dead men have privacy rights.

What a screwed up notion.

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Posted by: Greg at 03:32 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Does anyone else find this mildly disturbing?

They give them nicknames, worry when they signal for help and sometimes even treat them like a trusted pet.

A new study shows how deeply some Roomba owners become attached to the robotic vacuum and suggests there's a measure of public readiness to accept robots in the house — even flawed ones.

"They're more willing to work with a robot that does have issues because they really, really like it," said Beki Grinter, an associate professor at Georgia Tech's College of Computing. "It sort of begins to address more concerns: If we can design things that are somewhat emotionally engaging, it doesn't have to be as reliable."

People -- it is a vacuum. It isn't a pet. It isn't alive, and it doesn't have feelings. What is your problem?

More to the point -- what next? Are you willing to accept a less reliable car because of your emotional attachment to it? How about a less reliable computer, microwave, or television? We all know that wouldn't be the case. So why accept a less reliable vacuum because it is cute or different?

Posted by: Greg at 10:03 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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What is it with these major Democrat Party donors? Seems like they all have major corruption problems. So much for the claim that the Dems are the party of clean government -- this case would clearly make them the party of trading with the enemy.

In an unexpected midtrial reversal, Oscar S. Wyatt, Jr., the Texas oilman accused of corrupting the United NationÂ’s oil-for-food program, pleaded guilty today to paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal kickbacks to Saddam HusseinÂ’s regime in 2001 to gain access to lucrative Iraqi oil contracts.

Mr. WyattÂ’s guilty plea came without warning this morning, on the 14th day of his trial in United States District Court in Manhattan, and it arrived before federal prosecutors had even finished presenting their case.

Under an agreement with the government, Mr. Wyatt pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The sentence he receives is likely to be between 18 and 24 months in prison, rather than the potential maximum of 70 years he could have faced if convicted on all five counts of the indictment.

This sudden change of mind was somewhat startling, not only because it came as the prosecution was about to rest its case, but also because Mr. Wyatt, a former drill-bit salesman, had proclaimed his innocence almost from the moment he was first arrested two years ago at his home in River Oaks, Houstons most exclusive residential district.

After rising before Judge Denny Chin to admit his guilt today, Mr. Wyatt, a plain-spoken octogenerian, embraced his wife, Lynn, a doyenne of the Houston social scene who is known for her philanthropic work and for her taste for haute couture.

Somehow, the New York Times missed the Democrat connection -- something that wouldn't have happened if Wyatt's donations had trended Republican. But for your information, here is a list of his contributions -- and I should remind you that Wyatt's wife matched these donations as well out of the couple's community property, so you should probably double the amounts. But a 3 or 4-to-1 disparity in favor of the Democrats is hardly worth noting, right?

The donations over the years include, to Democrats:

$1,000 to Bill Clinton
$3,900 to Hillary Clinton
$2,300 to Bill Richardson
$150,000 DNC
$101,000 DCCC
$60,000 DSCC
$2,000 to Texas Democratic Party
$500 Democratic Party of Harris County
$2,000 to Ted Kennedy
$500 to Joe Kennedy
$1,000 to Sheila Jackson Lee
$5,000 to Martin Frost.
$2,000 to Dick Gephardt
$1,000 to Jeff Bingaman
$1,000 to Lee Hamilton
$4,000 to Nick Lampson
$2,000 to Bob Kerrey
$1,000 to Jim Turner
$7,000 to Tom Daschle
$2,000 to Henry Gonzalez
$2,000 to Chris John
$1,000 to Chris Bell
$7,000 to Ken Bentsen
$1,000 to John Glenn
$4,000 to Greg Laughlin
$1,000 to John Bryant
$1,000 to Joe Biden
$1,000 to Scott Baesler
$1,000 to Leonard Boswell
$2,000 to Bob Graham
$1,000 to Max Sandlin
$1,000 to Ed Bernstein
$1,000 to Bill Sarpalius
$1,000 to Tim Johnson
$500 to Charles Sanders
$1,000 to Dick Zimmer
$7,500 to Gene Greene
$1,000 to Joel Hyatt
$5,000 to John Dingell
$4,300 to Jay Rockefeller
$1,000 to Richard Romero
$1,000 to Kent Conrad
$1,000 to Jim Mattox
$1,000 to Joe Lieberman
$2,000 to John Breaux

Donations to Republicans include:

$100,000 RNC
$5,000 NRSC
$5,000 Americans for a Republican Majority
$1,000 to Larry Craig
$1,000 to Don Nickles
$1,000 to Richard Shelby
$1,000 to Bob Bennett
$1,000 to Michael Huffington
$1,000 to James Hansen
$1,000 to John Isakson
$2,000 to Jim DeMint
$2,000 to Pete Domenici
$3,000 to Kay Hutchison
$3,000 to Jack Fields
$2,000 to Bob Dole
$2,000 to Phil Gramm
$4,600 to John Cornyn
$2,000 to Al DÂ’Amato
$3,000 to John McCain

And let us note that, even while under indictment, Democrats are taking donations -- on June 1, Jay Rockefeller took $2300 from Wyatt. I guess being indicted for trading with the enemy isn't all that big a deal.

H/T Don Surber

Posted by: Greg at 10:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Does this mean that the economic crisis that has been predicted is over? Or that it was never really a crisis at all? That is what we have to ask as the Dow soars to a new high.

Stock markets rallied into record territory today as investors bought back into the banking and housing sectors, a sign that Wall Street could see an end to the summerÂ’s subprime housing woes and a lower risk of recession.

The Dow Jones industrial average opened the fourth quarter by soaring more than 200 points at one point, putting the index well above its previous high set in July. At the close, the Dow was up 191.92 points, or 1.4 percent, at 14,087.55. The Standard and PoorÂ’s 500-stock index rose 1.3 percent to 1,547.04, trading just beneath record levels, and the Nasdaq rose 1.5 percent, to 2,740.99.

The advances came as Citigroup and UBS, two of the worldÂ’s largest banks, predicted steep declines in third-quarter earnings and announced billions of dollars in losses and write-downs related to subprime mortgage-backed securities and loans.

“When I got in this morning I would have bet quite a bit of money that we would be going the other way today,” said Joseph Brusuelas, the chief United States economist at IdeaGlobal.

But the profit warnings eased some investorsÂ’ anxiety about the long-term effects of the subprime collapse, analysts said, leaving Wall Street with a sense that the worst of the fallout from the summerÂ’s credit crisis had passed.

“The market believes that the crisis is over,” said William Rhodes, the chief investment strategist of Rhodes Analytics, a market research firm. “Whatever problems emerged last quarter are last quarter’s problems. They’re over, that’s it, they’re done. So let’s move onto the next thing.”

So rather than a meltdown, it appears we were really dealing with a readjustment. If this continues, the subprime mortgage "crisis" will have run its course in a matter of weeks, not the months and years that some analysts predicted.

Posted by: Greg at 09:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Which will no doubt lead to more denials of success from the anti-war crowd.

Deaths among American forces and Iraqi civilians fell dramatically last month to their lowest levels in more than a year, according to figures compiled by the U.S. military, the Iraqi government and The Associated Press.

The decline signaled a U.S. success in bringing down violence in Baghdad and surrounding regions since Washington completed its infusion of 30,000 more troops on June 15.

A total of 64 American forces died in September — the lowest monthly toll since July 2006.

The decline in Iraqi civilian deaths was even more dramatic, falling from 1,975 in August to 922 last month, a decline of 53.3 percent. The breakdown in September was 844 civilians and 78 police and Iraqi soldiers, according to Iraq's ministries of Health, Interior and Defense.

In August, AP figures showed 1,809 civilians and 155 police and Iraqi soldiers were killed in sectarian violence.

The civilian death toll has not been so low since June 2006, when 847 Iraqis died.

I know that there are folks out there who will do their best to downplay this good news – but when you consider that success in Iraq undermines their political agenda, why should we expect anything else?

Posted by: Greg at 09:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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