The presidential power grab

The Boston Globe has a fascinating article on what Bush’s refusal to veto bills really means: Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation’s sponsors to signing …

how to think about security

Security is all about tradeoffs. Bruce Schneier has five steps you need to take when making a security-related decision: What problem does the security measure solve? How well does the security measure solve the problem? What other security problems does the measure cause? What are the costs of the security measure? Given the answers to …

How did Stephen Colbert get away with it?

Such a brilliant performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner: But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go …

pave save the internet

MoveOn is organizing a net neutrality awareness campaign. Sign the petition to the US Congress asking for meaningful and enforceable network neutrality: I signed this petition, along with 250,000 others so far. This petiton will be delivered to Congress before the House of Representatives votes next week. When you sign, you’ll be kept informed of …

the magic growing text box

Here’s a text box that grows as you type to hold just the right amount of text: <textarea name=”foo” rows=”1″ cols=”20″ onkeypress=”resizeme(this);”></textarea> <script type=”text/javascript” charset=”utf-8″> // <![CDATA[ function resizeme(t) { var characterCount = t.value.length; // assuming proportional font var columnCount = Math.floor(t.cols * 1.25); var height = t.rows; var newHeight = 1 + Math.floor(characterCount/columnCount); if …

top 20 CDs of 2005

Luke Doucet/Broken (and other rogue states) Kyler England/Live Wire Jason Mraz/MR. A-Z Sylvie Lewis/Tangos & Tantrums Libbie Schrader/Taking the Fall Samantha Murphy/Somewhere Between Starving & Stardom Josh Rouse/Nashville Pocket Dwellers/PD-Atrics Erin McKeown/We Will Become Like Birds Sarah Harmer/I’m a Mountain Kathleen Edwards/Back to Me Emm Gryner/The Great Lakes Great Big Sea/The Hard and The Easy …