As President Obama has said, the budget really is something to lose sleep over. Current deficits are enormous due to the weak economy, fiscal stimulus, and the costs of fighting the financial crisis. But the long-run outlook is even scarier, with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security pushing spending up much faster than tax revenues. The result is a tsunami of debt.

Cyberprof Michael Risch has posted some interesting thoughts on the emerging complexity of Section 230. The provision pretty much immunizes web sites and other internet providers from liability for a host of legal infractions arising from user-generated content, including defamation and invasion of privacy. While some cases are pretty simple, now we are seeing more complex situations arising. Among the newest is the recent lawsuit filed by St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa against Twitter.

A friend recently directed me toward the website of The Foundation for a Drug-Free World, a Los Angeles-based non-profit whose tagline is "an effective drug education and drug prevention program." I was shocked and dismayed to see the "drug facts" section (they seem to have a monopoly on "the truth" about drugs), which reads like an amateur 1950s terror campaign.

We've all heard about the Chinese "Great Firewall" and their attempts to pollute all new PCs sold in the country with special 'security' software. Well, thanks to two major Western tech companies, Iran is more competent and equally determined to ensure that their people have no networking communication with the outside world.

I'll let the ad speak for itself. I'm not a prude by any stretch of the imagination but when a mainstream-Americana company like Burger King chooses to put such a degrading image of women out there as a way to peddle their junk food to the public, I feel the need to say something.

I've read a number of diaries here from the perspective of the insured (or uninsured), and most of these stories are pretty compelling and persuasive in pushing for single payer or a public option. But I'd like to share with you the perspective of a provider and why I think a public option would benefit us.

The repeated abuse of short selling over the past eighteen months has led to the destruction of businesses, cost countless numbers of jobs and created systematic risk in the global economy. Though some have asserted that short selling aids liquidity and price discovery in the market, the possibility of such functions should not be used to justify the damaging and corrosive consequences of abusive short sales.

Just today I was listening to a debate on Capitol Hill over the proposed health care reform. Lobbyists from the health industry were testifying before a House committee about what a disaster a public option would be, how it would destroy private health care. They kept repeating that there were no studies, no examples to guide us, of what a public option would be like. Allow me to provide one.

The Supreme Court decided last week, in District Attorney's Office v. Osborne, that convicted Americans have no Constitutional right to further DNA testing of evidence. This decision is reprehensible on its own merits, but it leaves open a bigger question. Is actual innocence a ground for relief from a conviction under the United States Constitution?

When folk singer Pete Seeger and some friends launched the Clearwater project in 1969, the Hudson River was an open sewer for industries, cities and towns along its majestic sweep from the Adirondack Mountains to New York Bay. In the years since, the full-sail sight of the Clearwater sloop tacking up and down the river with a pickup crew of excited kids and adults has been paced by outbursts of activism on shore that has prodded cleanups and publicly targeted the major sources of pollution. The inspiration for this hearty brand of environmental activism is a 90-year-old guy who still tramps around with a banjo singing old-fashioned folk songs.

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