Rob Enderle does not know the meaning of surrender. Or disclosure.

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It’s no secret that I'm not a big fan of “analyst” Rob Enderle, but to me, this takes the cake. In his latest “column” on TechNewsWorld, among discussions of Steve Jobs’s health, Enderle also talks up Dell’s plans to launch a digital music player and download service, which we discussed last week—and, as you might remember, a project that Enderle himself is a consultant on.

Here are a couple of excerpts from Enderle’s piece:

The Wall Street Journal got wind of a secret project at Dell to possibly take the music lead away from Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL), but not necessarily the device lead, making it kind of interesting.

[…]

What Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) believes, and I agree, is that folks don’t want to spend lots of time managing music — they just want to listen to it. The fact that few refresh the music on their iPods is a clear indicator that there is untapped potential here, even with iPod owners.

[…]

It has to provide more choices among better services — while containing complexity and creating a great user experience — to be successful. It can be done; we’ll know in a few months whether Dell can do it. I’m not sure I’d bet against Michael Dell.


Yet, nowhere in the article does Enderle mention that he has been hired by Dell to consult on the project. Classy. Or—to put it another way—of questionable ethics.

Is Enderle bound by journalistic ethics? Technically, he’s an analyst, not a journalist, but given that he’s writing a column on a site where it will be disseminated alongside news content, it seems at the very least awkward that he not mention his involvement in this project.

Just another tickmark in the questions column for: why the heck would anybody hire this guy?

Senate Bill Would Bar Secret Changes to Executive Orders

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The President would no longer be able to secretly modify or revoke a published executive order if a new bill introduced in the Senate yesterday becomes law.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Russ Feingold and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, responds to a Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion that was revealed last year by Senator Whitehouse on the Senate floor. According to that unreleased opinion, “There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new Executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous Executive order. Rather than violate an Executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.”

What this means is that any published executive order may or may not actually be in effect. It may or may not correspond to the legal framework that governs the executive branch. The public has no way of knowing.

“No one disputes that a President can withdraw or revise an Executive Order at any time,” said Senator Feingold yesterday. “That is every President’s prerogative. But abrogating a published Executive order without any public notice works a secret change in the law.”

“Worse,” he said, “because the published Order stays on the books, it actively misleads Congress and the public as to what the law is.”

To remedy that problem, the new bill requires notification of any change.

“If the President revokes, modifies, waives, or suspends a published Executive Order or similar directive, notice of this change in the law must be placed in the Federal Register within 30 days. The notice must specify the Order or the provision that has been affected; whether the change is a revocation, a modification, a waiver, or a suspension; and the nature and circumstances of the change.”

“The bill does not require the publication of classified information about intelligence sources and methods or similar information. The basic fact that the published law is no longer in effect, however, cannot be classified,” Sen. Feingold said.

“On rare occasions, national security can justify elected officials keeping some information secret,” he said, “but it can never justify lying to the American people about what the law is. Maintaining two different sets of laws, one public and one secret, is just that–deceiving the American people about what law applies to the government’s conduct.”

See Sen. Feingold’s July 31 introduction of the Executive Order Integrity Act of 2008 (S. 3405).

At an April 30 hearing of Sen. Feingold Senate Judiciary subcommittee, I testified on the various categories of secret law, including the problem of “reversible executive orders.” That testimony is available here (pdf).

FCC Says BitTorrent Throttling Illegal, EFF Releases Tool for You To Test Your ISP For It

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Reposted from Read Write Web.

The Federal Communications Commission ruled this morning by a 3 to 2 vote that Comcast's arbitrary throttling of customers' use of BitTorrent was illegal. Hours before the ruling, the Electronic Frontier Foundation released software that anyone can use to see if their Internet Service Provider (ISP) is engaging in the same or similar behavior.

BitTorrent accounts for a substantial percentage of traffic on the internet and some people believe it causes unfair slowdowns for web users doing anything else online. Many other people argue that ISPs have an obligation to treat all internet traffic equally regardless of content. This is a key battle in the Network Neutrality debate.
Enforcement Against Comcast
Comcast voluntarily stopped throttling in March, but today's FCC decision is important FCC Chair Kevin Martin says so that "consumers deserve to know that the commitment is backed up by legal enforcement." Martin, a Republican, is believed by some to be taking an out-of-charecter populist stance on the matter because he's preparing to run for a position in the US House of Representatives.
EFF Releases "Switzerland"
The Electronic Frontier Foundation today released software called "Switzerland" (as in, the neutral country) that can be used by consumers to test our networks for ISP interference.

The EFF explains:

"Switzerland is an open source, command-line software tool designed to detect the modification or injection of packets of data by ISPs. Switzerland detects changes made by software tools believed to be in use by ISPs such as Sandvine and AudibleMagic, advertising systems like FairEagle, and various censorship systems. Although currently intended for use by technically sophisticated Internet users, development plans aim to make the tool increasingly easy to use."

We'll keep our eyes peeled for a version of the tool that doesn't require using the command line, though every network in the land can now assume that it has users tech-savvy enough to be monitoring its behavior.

This quote from the EFF release puts things into context:

"The sad truth is that the FCC is ill-equipped to detect ISPs interfering with your Internet connection," said Fred von Lohmann, EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney. "It's up to concerned Internet users to investigate possible network neutrality violations, and EFF's Switzerland software is designed to help with that effort. Comcast isn't the first, and certainly won't be the last, ISP to meddle surreptitiously with its subscribers' Internet communications for its own benefit."

What Do You Think?
The FCC's ruling was narrowly decided, through a 3 to 2 vote. Do you think ISPs have a legitimate interest in favoring some web traffic over others? On one hand, a future where big players get preferential treatment could cause a major slowdown in innovation. Startups and unknown application providers could be prevented from leveraging maximum bandwidth to offer new types of services to consumers. The most common example given is that YouTube may have struggled to make online video so common if they were discriminated against in their earliest days.

On the other hand, people downloading long lists of huge media files over common networks could be seen as an onerous drain on the "bandwidth commons." Slowing down an entire neighborhood's web use because you want to get the entire archives of some TV show is arguably pretty anti-social behavior.

We'd love to get our readers' thoughts on these questions - and for those of you able to put Switzerland to use, let us know if your ISP appears to be doing the same kinds of shady things that Comcast was slapped for today. These are going to be very big issues for the near-term future of the web.

Reposted from Read Write Web.

McCain Makes Historic First Visit to Internet

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Will Spend 5 Days At Key Sites

In a daring bid to wrench attention from his Democratic rival in the 2008 presidential race, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) today embarked on an historic first-ever visit to the Internet.

Given that the Arizona Republican had never logged onto the Internet before, advisors acknowledged that his first visit to the World Wide Web was fraught with risk.

But with his Democratic rival Barack Obama making headlines with his tour of the Middle East and Europe, the McCain campaign felt that they needed to "come up with something equally bold for John to do," according to one advisor.

McCain aides said that the senator's journey to the Internet will span five days and will take him to such far-flung sites as Amazon.com, eBay and Facebook.

With a press retinue watching, Sen. McCain logged onto the Internet at 9:00 AM Sunday, paying his first-ever visit ever to Mapquest.com.

"I can't get this [expletive] thing to work," Sen. McCain said as he struggled with his computer's mouse, causing his wife Cindy to prompt him to add that he was "just kidding."

Having pronounced his visit to Mapquest a success, Sen. McCain continued his tour by visiting Weather.com and Yahoo! Answers, where he inquired as to the difference between Sunnis and Shiites.

Sen. McCain said that he had embarked on his visit to the Internet to allay any fears that he is too out-of-touch to be president, adding that he plans to take additional steps to demonstrate that he is comfortable with today's technology: "In the days and weeks ahead, you will be seeing me rock out with my new Walkman."

Courtesy of Borowitz Report.

Taxes!

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Having watched the Obama campaign for the last six weeks, I can tell you two things for certain about this election:

First, Issue #1 for the Obama campaign is the economy. Duh.

Second, Issue #1 for the majority of the electorate is also the economy. Duh.

Why then does the McCain camp seem so intent on dodging the subject; forever trying to make this election about military/foreign policy experience (probably a bad idea) and the Iraq war ?

I think I have a few ideas:

Those signs are all over Ohio right now. So are these:

Americans are feeling the sting of this economic downturn. Gas prices are increasingly unbearable, the housing situation remains dire, lending institutions are hanging on by a government financed thread; things are not going well. Besides the fact that McCain is not so well versed in economics, what does he have to fear from whiny American voters?

Well, his tax policy.

Courtesy of the Washington Post.

This spiffy graphic comes from the Washington Post, based on data from a study done at the Tax Policy Center. The juicy entirety of the findings can be found here, and they are actually interesting even to those of us not well versed in economics.

If I were an economist, I could make all sorts of informed inferences about what this graph and the full study means. Maybe Kevin can help us out with that. For now, all I want to do is to point out some very clear points:

While both candidates aim to mostly reduce taxes, McCain’s most drastic decreases are on the top 1% of Americans, while Obama’s only increases affect the same people. The difference between them tops $1 million.

Stances on taxing the rich are a rather fundamental element of most voters’ political psyche and are not likely to change over the course of one debate. McCain wants to drastically lessen the progressive nature of our tax code, while Obama wants to deepen it at the highest tiers. It is pretty simple and I’ll leave the merits of either stance to our readers to debate. The point is that this dichotomy is pretty typical of a Presidential race. Republican wants to tax the rich less, Democrat more. Whoopee.

The next point is the big one: After you account for the richest 1% of Americans, every other bracket would actually see a tax reduction in Obama’s plan. This goes against conventional wisdom for 99% of Americans that Democrat=higher taxes. This brings me back to the signs in Ohio. With Obama’s plan, 95% of Ohioans would see at least a $1,000 decrease in their taxes. I daresay that helps out average Americans with spending, fuel consumption and other life expenses more than any relief package (of which Obama believes we need another, by the way).

I won’t go into whether or not one tax plan is actually better than the other, because again, I’m not an economist. However, I’ll venture a guess as to what most Americans are interested in hearing about. As you move down the income scale, Obama’s tax cuts are more substantial than McCain’s. As you move down the income scale, the number of American’s fitting into the bracket is much higher as well. And I’ll tell you what, with the breadth and effectiveness of the Obama campaign’s voter registration and get out the vote efforts, this is something for the McCain camp to seriously worry about. People are listening.

Fewer taxes is always a welcome element to any politician’s platform in the eyes of most voters. However, when you are coming into office during an economic downturn, during a long term war investment and one of the most serious national debt situations in the nation’s history, the government has to make money somewhere, doesn’t it? China already holds over $1 trillion in reserve, I don’t think they want much more of our debt. I’m not so sure the gold standard is the answer yet either, but maybe Dr. Paul can sell me on that one on Sept. 2nd.

I don’t have answers, but I think its pretty clear why McCain isn’t keen on discussing the economy. Obama is driving the issue hard, and has the policies to actually compete and really out do McCain on an issue that is traditionally a strength of the Republicans. “It’s the economy, stupid” isn’t enough for the Obama camp. They are pointing that slogan at their rival and backing it up with some real ideas. We’ll see how that works out for them.

Meanwhile, hold on to your hats kids, the economy is going to be it this year.

AP's Washington Bureau Chief, Ron Fournier, exposed as a McCain shill

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On Tuesday Michael Calderone at Politico produced definitive evidence of Ron Fournier's bias in favor of John McCain. He did it by linking the Associated Press Washington Bureau chief directly to the McCain presidential campaign. Over a period of several months during 2006, Fournier discussed taking a high-level communications job with the McCain campaign. Apparently Fournier turned down the job offer in the end.

I say 'apparently' because often it is difficult to tell from the reporting produced by Fournier and his Bureau whether or not he views himself as a campaign operative.

The most striking thing about this story is what is absent. Although he oversees reporting on the presidential race for the purportedly unbiased and nonpartisan AP, Fournier has never disclosed to the public his close contacts with the McCain campaign. And though he doesn't deny the contacts, when asked about them Fournier declined to discuss the matter and referred Politico to an AP spokesman (who issued a bland statement). If Fournier has had nothing to hide, then why the secrecy and evasiveness? Who would argue that the public does not have a right to know that the AP Washington Bureau chief considered working for a presidential candidate?

Here are details from Politico:

In October 2006, the McCain team approached Fournier about joining the fledgling operation, according to a source with knowledge of the talks. In the months that followed, said a source, Fournier spoke about the job possibility with members of McCain’s inner circle, including political aides Mark Salter, John Weaver and Rick Davis.

Salter, who remains a top McCain adviser, said in an e-mail to Politico that Fournier was considered for "a senior advisory role" in communications.

"He did us the courtesy of considering the offer before politely declining it," Salter said.


Discussions with McCain's top aides lasting months don't constitute a mere 'courtesy' no matter how Salter tries to spin it. If Fournier had not been interested, he would have rejected McCain's advances at the outset.

After entertaining this job offer, Fournier should not have been covering the presidential campaign, certainly not while keeping his contacts with McCain secret. That's not a hard call, ethically.

This is just the latest in a series of controversies surrounding Fournier, from his unseemly attention to John McCain's donut-gustation at an interview, to his eager embrace of Republican talking points, to the extraordinary changes he introduced at AP encouraging the freer expression of opinion in news stories. His predecessor at the AP Washington Bureau, Sandy Johnson, sees Fournier's policies as a threat to it.

"I just hope he doesn’t destroy it."

Fournier's ties to the Republican establishment were exposed garishly earlier this month by a House Oversight and Government Reform report. Discussing the Bush administration's political response to Pat Tillman's death in 2004, it cited emails sent to the WH offering political advice. This exchange stood out.
Karl Rove exchanged e-mails about Pat Tillman with Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier, under the subject line "H-E-R-O." In response to Mr. Fournier's e-mail, Mr. Rove asked, "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this," to which Mr. Fournier replied, "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."

Fournier tried to explain away his seemingly cozy relationship with Karl Rove.
"I was an AP political reporter at the time of the 2004 e-mail exchange, and was interacting with a source, a top aide to the president, in the course of following an important and compelling story. I regret the breezy nature of the correspondence."

However he convinced almost none of his critics that his Rovian correspondence was appropriate. For one thing, Fournier has never written about Tillman. So what was the need to contact Rove in the first place? The episode gives the impression that Fournier was just worshipping at Rove's altar.

Even before that email correspondence came to light (almost accidentally), Fournier had long been notorious both for carrying water for John McCain in particular, and for savaging McCain's rivals. Among other things, under Fournier's leadership AP reporting this year has consistently downplayed or suppressed information about McCain's many contradictory, false, and otherwise embarrassing statements. Last week at Media Matters Eric Boehlert surveyed Fournier's long and tawdry record of partisanship:

In two "Analysis" pieces and a column, Fournier questioned whether John Edwards was a "phony," announced the Clintons suffered from "utter self-absorption," and claimed that Barack Obama was "bordering on arrogance." That's the right of a pundit. But at the same time, Fournier avoided raising any doubts about Sen. John McCain, and in fact rushed to his aid in print during the senator's time of campaign need.

That ethos seems to have been adopted by the larger AP political team, which, honestly, writes as if it's completely in the tank for McCain...

Fournier wrote those pieces in which he routinely unloaded on the leading Democratic candidates -- Edwards, Clinton, and Obama -- while thoroughly questioning their motives and their character.

Yet I have searched in vain for a single example from the primary season in which Fournier raised a column's worth of uncomfortable questions about McCain's motives and his character...

In fact, one of the few times that Fournier dedicated a column to the Republican primary battle was following the Michigan contest, which McCain lost to Mitt Romney. The win presented Romney with his one brief window of opportunity to knock McCain from his front-runner perch. Fournier unleashed a wild column targeting Romney and practically threw his body in front of McCain to protect his beloved candidate.


Boehlert highlighted a series of reports and columns in which Fournier has advanced unfounded assertions and used flagrantly biased language to promote McCain or belittle his rivals. He concluded, as many others had already, that Fournier has a man-crush on McCain.
The fact is, Fournier's McCain love runs deep and goes back years.

The Associated Press desperately needs to find a new Washington Bureau chief.