Greetings. In April 2004, President Bush made a seemingly direct and unequivocal statement regarding U.S. wiretapping policies in the fight against terrorism. We now know that he spoke these words after authorizing the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

You can watch this very short video of his comments (Windows Media) for yourself.

The White House explanation for this seemingly gaping discrepancy is that the President was supposedly (we're now told) only talking about "ordinary" secret wiretaps under the PATRIOT Act, not about what we might call "Double Secret" NSA wiretaps (legal or not).

Newspeak is alive and well. Dean Wormer of Animal House fame would be proud.

--Lauren--

Greetings. In case you haven't noticed, communications conglomerate SBC Communications is in the process of a "rebranding" effort -- part of their Oedipal transformation back to "AT&T" -- where they originally sprung from Ma Bell's loins decades ago.

The history of AT&T logos is interesting indeed, and it's not surprising that SBC would want a change from the divested AT&T's infamous "Death Star" logo to something different.

But there's something very "small" about their new choice, and I'm not talking just about the "oh so cute" use of all lowercase letters, either.

We've gone from The Death Star to what I'm calling the marble. What this portends for the telecommunications industry and its customers we can only imagine.

See for yourself:

--Lauren--