It looks like McCain’s presidential bid is coming to an end. His chief strategist and his campiagn manager have both resigned. Even the guy who has co-authored 5 books with him has left his campaign. It is rumored that none of the three left amicably from the campaign. It was definitely interesting to see one of the most beloved republican senators turn traitor and self-destruct.

McCain Campaign Suffers Key Shake-Ups

By LIZ SIDOTI
The Associated Press
Wednesday, July 11, 2007; 4:03 AM

WASHINGTON — John McCain jettisoned his two top aides Tuesday as the one-time Republican front-runner struggled to right a presidential bid in deep financial and political trouble.

Campaign manager Terry Nelson and chief strategist John Weaver offered McCain their resignations, which the Arizona senator accepted with “regret and deep gratitude for their dedication, hard work and friendship.”

At least three other senior aides followed the two out the door, and the campaign announced that Rick Davis, who managed McCain’s 2000 bid and has served as the current campaign’s chief executive officer, will take over.

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The White House is similarly showing signs of implosion. A Senate appropriations committee has refused the Vice President’s office’s request for more funding until they hand over the subponeaed documents. (And yes, the Vice President’s office is part of the executive branch, regardless of what Dick Cheney would like to believe).

U.S. Senate panel moves to cut off funding for Cheney in flap with Dems over executive order

The Associated Press
Published: July 10, 2007

WASHINGTON: Senate Democrats moved Tuesday to cut off funding for U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s office in a continuing battle over whether he must comply with national security disclosure rules.

A Senate appropriations panel chaired by Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin refused to fund $4.8 million in the vice president’s budget until Cheney’s office complies with parts of an executive order governing its handling of classified information.

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I haven’t blogged for a while due to a massive amount of work, but I expect to blog more now that I’m caught up.

It seems like the white house is now in a quite a serious bind. President Bush has once again cited executive privilege and refuse to turn over documents subpoenaed by Congress. This time though, the head of the senate Judiciary Commitee, Senator Patrick Leahy, has suggested that he is willing to press criminal contempt charges against Bush.

Incidentally, there is also a bill floating around Congress to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. Why this bill has gotten absolutely no media coverage is beyond me.

Blacked Out by the Corporate Media, Impeachment Advances
by Dave Lindorff | Jul 1 2007 - 9:55am

The corporate media are disgracing themselves even further, if that is possible, on the impeachment story.

On Thursday, three more members of Congress signed on to Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney (H Res 333), bringing the total number of co-sponsors of the bill to 10. That in itself would be national news, but there is more to it than simple numbers. The new sponsors include two freshman, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, who ran for office calling for impeachment, and Hank Johnson, who took over the seat of pro-impeachment Rep. Cynthia McKinney (McKinney filed her own bill of impeachment against President Bush in the waning days of the last Congress), but the group also includes Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA).

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The White House is practically an insane asylum at this point, the better question is why hasn’t everyone been impeached yet. Apparently in Japan, the public is so outraged with a pension scandal that the prime minister was forced to give up his bonus and take responsibility for the blunder. If only we in the US could hold our own government to such high standards.

Japan PM Abe’s support rate stuck near danger zone

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Abe, who faces his first major electoral test in a July 29 upper house poll, is trying to soothe voter outrage over mismanaged pension records, but the Nikkei said its survey showed he has failed to do so.

Disapproval of Abe’s cabinet stood at 52 percent, up 8 points from May, according to the telephone survey conducted from Friday to Sunday among 898 voters, the Nikkei said.

The government has come under fire after revelations that no proper record was kept of millions of pension premium payments, meaning some retirees could be short-changed.

Abe will return 2.34 million yen ($18,890) of his summer bonus of 5.36 million yen to take responsibility for the pensions issue, chief cabinet secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told a news conference.

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Now, for a random but interesting graph:

As reported from Slashdot and BBC, Advanced Access Content System (AACS), the maker of HD-DVD’s encryption scheme has declared war on the blogging community.

It all started when AACS’s HD-DVD encryption was cracked and the compromised key began leaking onto the web. Instead of perfecting their technology, AACS decided to pressure various websites (including the tremendously popular digg) to remove the offending key. The online community revolted and the compromised key soon appeared all over the web.

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Now AACS is promising legal and technical recourse for EVERYONE who posts the above key. (Read BBC’s account here, and slashdot’s account here). Hey, if they want a war, we’ll give them a war.

What is kind of amusing and sad about all of this is that an unrevokable crack has already been developed by the good folks over at doom9. Read more about it here.

I am storongly against DRM technology in general, and as these implementations become more and more draconian, it’ll only be a matter of time before the general public revolts too.

I spent a few hours today reading Next by Michael Crichton.  Though Next was not particularly well written, it is remarkably thought-provoking.  Under the guise of a novel, Crichton attempts to show the potentially disasterous consequences of current US policies on the future of biomedical research.  The Author’s notes highlight broadly the five issues that he tackles:

• Patent on Genes
• Use of Human Tissues
• Availability of Gene Testing Data
• Government interference on research
• The Bayh-Dole Act

With one of his other works Prey, I became very excited about Cellular Automata and its potential ability to explain many of nature’s greatest mysteries.  With Next, on the other hand, I became genuinely scared and disturbed with the future of biotechnology.  The increasingly commercialized atmosphere (i.e. greed) that now pervades all the major research institutions in the US is especially troubling.  The large majority of engineers and medical scientists now finish their training without having taken a single course in ethics.  Yet, these same institutions are racing to combine the all-mighty MBA with all forms of other degrees.

I have always believed very strongly in the concept of social responsibility.  Every entity, ranging from the individual to global corporations has an obligation to contribute positively towards society.  However, with so many of tomorrow’s potential leaders oblivious about the potential repurcussions of their actions, how can we expect them to guide us?

Via Sara at Orcinus (read at Geoff’s blog):

I’ve been saying for a long while now that the power to end the Intelligent Design fiasco, firmly and finally and with but a single word, rests in the manicured hands of the chancellors of America’s top universities. The message is short and simple: “Teach what you like, it’s all fine with us. But if you put ID in your science courses, we will not accept those courses as adequate for admission to our campus.”

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In a story that seems to have gotten almost no attention outside the local area, the University of California — the nation’s largest university system (motto: Fiat Lux, or “let there be light”) — has been engaged in a legal battle with Calvary Chapel Christian School over the question of what is an acceptable science education, and what rights a university has when it comes to drawing those lines.

While various school boards around the country continue to start small skirmishes over the merits of intelligent design, it is nice to finally see a university take a firm stand in such matters. It is very frustrating, and indeed quite maddening to watch so many institutions capitulate to the mere possibility of bad publicity. Whatever happened to standing up for one’s principles?