SOPA Hearings: This is terrifying to watch yet almost amusing. Except that this time, the joke’s on us.

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Mike Masnick, writing on Techdirt:

All in all, the process should leave you frightened for our country. This was not an attempt to fix a broken law. It was an attempt to please some Hollywood funders at the expense of innovation and jobs. It's insanity. Worth the read.

How Fox News is Helping Barack Obama's Re-Election Bid

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Jonathan Freedland wrote an article for the Guardian that makes a lot of sense to me.

Because Fox has put off the best Republican candidates, Barack Obama will be much less vulnerable at the election

Whoever wrote the political rulebook needs to start rewriting it. It used to be an iron maxim that voters' most vital organ was neither their head nor their heart, but their wallet. If they were suffering economically, they'd throw the incumbents out. Yet in Britain a coalition presiding over barely-there growth, rising unemployment and forecasts of gloom stretching to the horizon is holding steady in the opinion polls, while in the US Barack Obama is mired in horrible numbers – except for the ones showing him beating all-comers in the election now less than 11 months away. Even though the US economy is slumped in the doldrums, some of the country's shrewdest commentators make a serious case that Obama could be heading for a landslide victory in 2012. How to explain such a turnaround? In the United States, at least, there is one compellingly simple, two-word answer: Fox News. I think he's 100% correct. Worth the read.

A Statement From Louis C.K. (December 13, 2011)

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Louis C.K., writing on his website:

It's been 4 days. A lot of people are asking me how it's going. I've been hesitant to share the actual figures, because there's power in exclusive ownership of information. What I didn't expect when I started this was that people would not only take part in this experiment, they would be invested in it and it would be important to them. It's been amazing to see people in large numbers advocating this idea. So I think it's only fair that you get to know the results. Also, it's just really cool and fun and I'm dying to tell everybody. I told my Mom, I told three friends, and that wasn't nearly enough. So here it is. Spoiler alert: it worked. Also, Mike Rundle makes a very good observation:

My Problem With Polls That Say Congress Has 9% Approval

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Congress is not a person. The country, as a whole, does not vote for a person by the name of "Congress". My parents vote for their congressman in southern Virginia. My wife and I vote for our congressman in Alexandria, VA. I think, mostly, that my congressman has done an okay job. Given that I will be faced between the choice of him and a Republican, I will vote for him again. My parents dislike their congressman (because he's a Republican) and will vote against him. He will probably be reelected, though, because most other people in their district vote Republican. My point is that these polls are asking the wrong question. Most people like their own Congressional Representative (that's how he/she got elected) but dislike everyone else's. Unfortunately, I don't get to vote for or against any other Congressional Rep other than my own. These shallow headlines that proclaim, "HEY LOOK HOW MUCH PEOPLE HATE CONGRESS" also don't clarify that those poll numbers are likely to have zero major impact on the next Congressional election. Instead, the issues that directly (whether real or perceived) affected each district will be what the voters use to base their votes on. When you see headlines that proclaim how low Congress's approval rating has dropped, stop to ask yourself if you think your own representative is likely to get re-elected or not. I'm willing to bet that for the most of you, they will.

The New Twitter (R.I.P Tweetie)

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Twitter launched its new design today. Yes, they only just launched a redesign back in September. This is not the New Twitter, but the New New Twitter. Many people do not like the new redesign, which has been rolled out across their entire client ecosystem: their website, their iPhone & Android apps, Tweetdeck, the web version of Tweetdeck, their mobile website… everything. John Gruber, writing on Daring Fireball, wrote an excellent point-by-point critique of the new changes. Now, that being said, like John I too have quit using the iPhone Twitter client and primarily use Tweetbot on my iPhone. Also, due to Tweetbot not having an iPad app, I use Twitterrific on my iPad. Still though, John's article is worth reading and accurately sums up the problems with the new design. From Gruber's article:

What also worries me is that these changes suggest not only a difference in opinion regarding how a Twitter client should work, but also regarding just what the point is of Twitter as a service. The Twitter service I signed up for is one where people tweet 140-character posts, you follow those people whose tweets you tend to enjoy, and that’s it. The Twitter service this new UI presents is about a whole lot more — mass-market spoonfed “trending topics” and sponsored content. It’s trying to make Twitter work for people who don’t see the appeal of what Twitter was supposed to be. It all makes sense if you think of the label under the “#” tab as reading “Dickbar” instead of “Discover”. Twitter 4.0 for iPhone lacks the surprise, delight, and attention to detail of a deserving successor to Tweetie, offering instead a least common denominator experience that no one deserves. Read the rest.

Romney Spent $100,000 In Taxpayer Money To Conceal Digital Records

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Alex Seitz-Wald writes on ThinkProgress:

Then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney spent almost $100,000 in taxpayer funds to replace computers when he left office “as part of an unprecedented effort to keep his records secret,” Reuters reports. ThinkProgress has previously noted, Romney led an obfuscation campaign that state officials described as “unheard of.” Staffers deleted emails, purchased official hard drives, and otherwise obliterating digital records of Romney’s time in office. … Now, according to Reuters, Romney used state funds to carry out this political activity:

The cleanup of records by Romney’s staff before his term ended included spending $205,000 for a three-year lease on new computers for the governor’s office, according to official documents and state officials. In signing the lease, Romney aides broke an earlier three-year lease that provided the same number of computers for about half the cost – $108,000. Lease documents obtained by Reuters under the state’s freedom of information law indicate that the broken lease still had 18 months to run. As a result of the change in leases, the cost to the state for computers in the governor’s office was an additional $97,000.