Events

The Chicago Tribune reports that Anheuser-Busch is buying a stake in Goose Island Brewing Co.: Anheuser-Busch Inc., which brews Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob and other beers, is close to purchasing up to 35 percent of the local brewery and taking over distribution of the Chicago beer that is growing in popularity. Neither Goose Island president and founder John Hall nor his son Greg, Goose's brewmaster, could be reached for comment on the negotiations that have stretched on more than six months. A deal...

In the ongoing, and now expanded, case the Electronic Frontier Foundation has brought against AT&T for its role in aiding the National Security Agency's efforts to spy on us, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughan Walker will allow confidential AT&T documents into the case: The evidence at issue was filed as support for EFF's motion for a preliminary injunction against AT&T, seeking to stop the company's ongoing violations of the law and the privacy of its customers. AT&T had requested that the evidence be...

It's about time. After years of being robbed and lied to, a new ABC/Washington Post Poll shows Americans finally connect the Republican control of government with the theft and lies: Dissatisfaction with the administration's policies in Iraq has overwhelmed other issues as the source of problems for President Bush and the Republicans. The survey suggests that pessimism about the direction of the country—69 percent said the nation is now off track—and disaffection with Republicans have dramatically...

Incompetence and cronyism, the handmaidens of the Bush administration (980 days left), explain its failure to create a working prescription drug program. Simply put, they (a) don't want government to work and (b) want to enrich their friends, as Paul Krugman underscores (sub.req.): [W]hile a straightforward addition of drug coverage to Medicare would have been good policy, it would have been bad politics from the point of view of conservatives, who want to privatize traditional social insurance...

In the four days since USA Today reported that the NSA has millions of phone records, millions of decent, hard-working Americans have said, "So what?" I think there are two reasons for this: first, data security seems like an esoteric and hard-to-understand sub-field of computer science, which makes people disinclined to think about the problem; and second, most people need concrete examples to understand things clearly. How about this simple, concrete example: ABC News is reporting today that...

I arrived in Nashua, N.H., from Chicago just a few minutes ago, and two hours later than anticipated because of rain. Lots of rain. In fact, it turns out, they've had more rain than during any May on record—and the month isn't even half-over: Two weeks into the month, rainfall totals in Concord were expected to wash out the May record of 9.52 inches set in 1984, Cannon said. Official totals have been tracked since 1864. I believe it has rained almost every day this month, and rain is forecast every day...

Reported by Bruce Schneier: The NSA would like to remind everyone to call their mothers this Sunday. They need to calibrate their system. Don't know whether that's funny or scary...

Here's some code I discovered while tracking a bug this morning: const string DATE_FORMAT = "M/d/yyyy"; string dateString = ConfigSettings.GetString("Some setting", DateTime.Now.ToString(DATE_FORMAT)); DateTime someDate = DateTime.ParseExact(dateString, DATE_FORMAT, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture); The DateTime.ParseExact method throws a FormatException if the string (dateString) doesn't exactly match the format string. I mean, exactly. So when dateString comes back from the configuration settings class...

A grand jury has indicted Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher on three misdemeanor charges of conspiracy, official misconduct and political discrimination: The jury also indicted former transportation Cabinet official Sam Beverage for perjury, which is a felony. And the jury also submitted to Franklin Circuit Judge William Graham 14 more indictments that are under seal. Those indictments cover crimes that may have occurred before Aug. 29, 2005 when Fletcher pardoned all administration officials except...

USA Today reported earlier that the National Security Administration has collected an enormous volume of phone records from AT&T, Verizon, and Bell South. Only Qwest refused the NSA's request: With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers...