Podcasting’s Reluctant Evangelist

in

"Just 10 months ago, Leo LaPorte stood before attendees of the first-ever Podcast and Portable Media Expo and said he didn't ever want to take advertising on his wildly popular programs. Sell your air, he said, and you sell at least a part of your soul.This weekend, at the 2006 PME in Ontario, California, his second consecutive keynote address was a bit different. His programs have been sponsored by Dell, Visa and T-Mobile in recent months, and he declared podcasting "the best advertising medium ever."

Yet the 49-year-old host of This Week in Tech is so beloved that it was tough to find anyone who had heard both addresses and thought he was hypocritical. LaPorte acknowledged he had hoped a listener-supported business model would work, but quickly realized it wouldn't and advertising didn't have to ruin the show.

Indeed, in a world where stars become despised and their every perceived fault and mistake assaulted by jealous rivals, LaPorte has remained arguably the most popular person in podcasting. When Leo changes his mind about something, it is seen not as a flip-flop but rather as a reflection of the evolution of the medium as a whole.

That, his admirers say, is because no matter how big LaPorte becomes, he's also been self-effacing and friendly and, most importantly, involved in a variety of tech communities."

Read the rest of the article over at Wired News.

The Daily Show as Substantive as Broadcast News

in

From Slashdot:

"Anyone who watches the evening news with any regularity knows that it's not a bastion of substance. However, a new study conducted by researchers at Indiana University reports that The Daily Show has just as much substance to it as the broadcast news. 'The researchers looked at coverage of the 2004 Democratic and Republican national conventions and the first presidential debate of the fall campaign, all of which were covered by the mainstream broadcast news outlets and The Daily Show... There was just as much substance to The Daily Show's coverage as there was on the network news. And The Daily Show was much funnier, with less of the hype — references to photo ops, political endorsements, and polls — that typically overshadows substantive coverage on network news, according to the study.'"

Diebold execs accused of using software patch to fix election results

in

Courtesy of John Dvorak:


If this is true, the real nightmare begins. Who will bell the cat?
Top Diebold corporation officials ordered workers to install secret files to Georgia’s electronic voting machines shortly before the 2002 Elections, at least two whistleblowers are now asserting, Atlanta Progressive News has learned.

Former Diebold official Chris Hood told his story concerning the secret “patch” to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Kennedy’s second article on electronic voting in this week’s Rolling Stone Magazine.

Hood’s claims corroborate a second whistleblower who spoke with Black Box Voting and Wired News in 2003.


Is it possible to examine the machines involved, and see what software is on them?

ABC News: Pages ‘Sending All Sorts of Messages About Possible Other Members’

in


From Think Progress:


Tonight on ABC, investigative journalist Brian Ross suggested there may be other members of Congress who engaged in inappropriate behavior towards congressional pages:
BRIAN ROSS: So far, Foley is the only member whose overt sexual approaches have been documented. Charlie?

CHARLES GIBSON: The only one to be documented, but are there other shoes to drop?

ROSS: We’re hearing quite a bit from former pages. They’re sending us all sorts of messages about possible other members.

Republican Page Board Member Confirms: No Investigation Happened

in

From DailyKOS:
In addition to Kildee's statement, now there's this, from the Charleston Daily Mail (via AMERICAblog):

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., says she was not told about suggestive e-mails that a Florida congressman sent to a 16-year-old former Capitol page, even though she is one of three representatives who oversee the page program. [...]Several high-ranking House Republicans have known about the e-mails for months, including Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., chairman of the House Page Board.

Late last year, Shimkus met with Foley about the e-mails. But Shimkus never told Capito or the board's other member, Rep. Dale Kildee, D-Mich., about them until Friday, according to all three.

"There's only three of us on the page board. I feel that we should have been informed," Capito said. "I'm absolutely disgusted by what I'm hearing. I was caught totally unaware."  [...]

Capito said she would have been very concerned if she had read those e-mails.

"I don't think it would pass the sniff test," she said. "Even asking those questions -- that is not normal between a 52-year-old adult and a 16-year-old. It's not like they're family friends or anything. I think it would raise some serious questions. But I wasn't given that opportunity."

Late last year, Shimkus and former House Clerk Jeff Tandahl met privately with Foley to talk about the e-mails, but did not tell the other House Page Board members or launch an investigation.


Hastert -- unbelievably -- is changing his story yet again, trying to claim that the House leadership "didn't know." That's a flat lie. There have now been at least two high-level GOP figures, Boehner and Reynolds, who gave direct quotes to the press saying Hastert personally knew about the Foley "problem". Boehner then rather astonishingly called up the Washington Post to retract his previous quote -- but Reynolds didn't, and Hastert has pointedly refused to dispute Reynold's assertion.

The undisputed facts here are these: the GOP pages (but not the Democratic pages) were "warned" about Foley as of 2001. Alexander, Shimkus, Reynolds, Boehner, Tandahl, and Hastert, at minimum, knew about the problem. It came up very directly again in late 2005, and there are stories in the press describing Hastert and the others as discussing the problem multiple times between then and the spring of 2006.

And nothing happened. Hastert himself knew, his office knew, and a sizable chunk of the leadership knew -- and they just didn't do nothing, they prevented the usual channels from even investigating the claims. As Capito says, it doesn't pass the sniff test.

They were afraid to offend gays? Thats their excuse?

in

From DailyKOS:

The Mighty Wurlitzer is a bit off kilter, with seemingly dozens of excuses making the rounds for why the Republican leadership would allow a sexual predator to continue preying on teenagers despite knowledge of the danger.

But my favorite is this one:

Tony Perkins of Dobson's Family Research Counsel was on CNN earlier and I think we are hearing the contours of the Christian Right's argument. They are going with Newt Gingrich's formulation: Poor Denny was afraid of being called a gay basher so he didn't say anything.

This from the party that has made gay-bashing a key and recurring component of its reelection strategy. As Digby notes:
Since when has the GOP been afraid to be called homophobic or gay bashers? They positively revel in it. In fact, just a couple of months ago 202 Republican House members voted for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. (It failed to get the required 2/3rds for passage.) Somehow, I don't think the Republicans are quaking in their boots at being called anti-gay.

And if they were so afraid of being called anti-gay that they allowed a 52 year old congressman to stalk 16 year old boys on the internet, then they are much too timorous to be running the government. These guys are charged with making laws and running wars, for gawd's sake.


This line of defense is cute and quite ballsy, no doubt, but they'd be better served simply throwing Dennis Hastert overboard. But cross your fingers that they're too stubborn to pull that off.