Divided U.S. Senate Confirms Ashcroft 58-42. At least he didn’t quite get the 60 confirmation votes that gloating Republican leaders predicted. But it wasn’t quite the united front of opposition the Democrats are preening over either. The cave-in started in the judiciary committee with Sen. Russ Feingold (D.-Wisc.) who said it would be important for the Democrats’ political future not to take a purely ideological position against a nomination and said he felt the president should have the prerogative to choose like-minded people for his cabinet. Well, hello, the Senate Democrats are the only thing that can stand between a rabid unelected President without a popular mandate and the more than 50% of the electorate whose ideological positions won’t otherwise get a hearing for the next four years. The fallback position will have to be a hard line against the explosion of conservative judicial appointments that’s surely coming. Can you spell f-i-l-i-b-u-s-t-e-r?

Well, the only development in the bursting of the dot.com bubble that has the potential to affect me directly, since I’m not involved at all in the new Internet economy, is happening. Pyra is folding. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, it’s the parent company of Blogger, the software/web
service I use to
publish this site. This essay from Pyra co-founder and CEO and Blogger developer Evan Williams, from his weblog evhead, offers assurances that he’s going to continue to work on and support Blogger, but a shudder passes through me considering the possibility of being without it, or having to migrate FmH to a different platform. Because it’s web-based, if Blogger is down, as it has been for the past day or so, it’s nearly impossible for me to post to my weblog; you may have noticed the dearth of new content for the past day or so, if you’re a regular reader. I’d been sitting on my hands thinking about my dependence on Blogger even before hearing about the demise of Pyra.

I wish Ev all the best in his future endeavors and, unabashedly, hope Blogger will remain among them as he promises. I was heartened by the response from the weblogging community to his recent fund drive for new servers, and hope he takes it as an indication of the support of his user base. I’m eagerly awaiting the souped-up Blogger Plus he has projected, not only for the promised enhancements but because his plan to charge for it may contribute to the stability of the platform. If Blogger’s been “shareware”, the trial period is certainly over and it’s time to register.

Congratulations to the winners of the Bloggies, especially Wockerjabby, the winner in the best-kept-secret-weblogs category (where Follow Me Here was a contendah).

The California GOP is seriously considering drafting Arnold Schwarzenegger for Governor. As Chuck Taggart put it at Looka!, ” Jesus H. Christ on a
bike. Our most talented satirists couldn’t make up anything as
absurd as this.” He also spewed some four-letter words at the prospect, which I’m tempted to echo.