Aside

The New Yorker: Patrick HenryÕs president, Michael Farris, is a lawyer and minister who has worked for Christian causes for decades. He founded the school after getting requests from two constituencies: homeschooling parents and conservative congressmen. The parents would ask him where they could find a Christian college with a ÒcourtshipÓ atmosphere, meaning one where dating is regulated and subject to parental approval. The congressmen asked him where they could find homeschoolers as interns and staffers, Òwhich I took to…

From Veljo Haamer: Yet another great Internet video.

Ed: Tom Randall and I attended this hearing. Check out my photos here. NYT: The United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously today that Internet file-sharing services like Grokster and StreamCast Networks could be held responsible if they encouraged users to trade songs, movies and television shows online without paying for them. The case, which pitted the entertainment industry against technology companies in the continuing battle over the proper balance between protecting copyrights and fostering innovation, overturns lower court decisions that…

Via Boing Boing: CNN: (CNN) — In 1994, people had to call the bank to check their balances. Or inquire in person, or wait for a paper statement to arrive in the mail. Baseball box scores were found in the newspaper. Weather forecasts came over the phone from the weather bureau, or on TV. Back then, most Americans still had to lick a stamp to send mail. Then along came the Internet, and an experimental browser called Mosaic, followed by…

So I’m sitting here in my house with the front door open, working on the couch, and a raccoon walks in. When I stood up, it got scared off. Whoa.

Congrats to Jennifer Weiss, for her first piece in the NYT! ALEX SPENCER did not say hello. Instead, he silently took the hand of Masha Khokhlova, his partner, and stepped into the song that was filtering through Ballroom on Fifth, one of the city’s premier dance studios. It was the kind of instrumental ballad from the 1940’s to which either dancer’s grandparents – his in Germany, hers in the former Soviet Union – might have fallen in love. Mr. Spencer…

AP: WASHINGTON (AP) Ñ With barely a word about it, workers at the Justice Department Friday removed the blue drapes that have famously covered two scantily clad statues for the past 3 1/2 years. Spirit of Justice, with her one breast exposed and her arms raised, and the bare-chested male Majesty of Law basked in the late afternoon light of Justice’s ceremonial Great Hall. The drapes, installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, allowed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to…

LA Times Ahmadinejad, 48, who has never held an elective office and was the appointed mayor of Tehran for two years, was the young challenger. A former Revolutionary Guard and instructor to the “basiji” militia, who wears a fighter’s symbolic kaffiyeh, Ahmadinejad talks tough toward Iran’s enemies. He promises to reverse what he and his followers based in the military, the bazaars and the clergy view as the watering down of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s militancy. His foes fear he will…