Bush Puts Brakes on Memorial To Reagan.

The Bush administration surprised Republican members of Congress yesterday by saying that it is too soon to build a memorial to honor former president Ronald Reagan on the Mall.

The spectacle of the new GOP administration casting doubts on a proposal to speed a monument to the party’s most admired living hero arose when Richard G. Ring, an assistant director of the National Park Service, testified to the House that it was Reagan himself who signed a 1986 law that barred any memorial on the Mall until 25 years after a person’s death. Washington Post

Boy, 14, Gets Life in Prison. “A boy who says he was
imitating body-slamming pro wrestlers when he killed
a little girl at age 12 was sentenced to life in prison
without parole Friday after a judge refused to reduce
his first-degree murder conviction.”

The Elvis Costello 500: “From Abba to Zamballarana, and from Mozart to Eminem, one of rock’s finest talents has
identified 500 albums essential to a happy life. It was a long, tortuous undertaking, but the man
knows music – and his aim is true.” Compare and contrast with the Recording
Industry of America/National Endowment for the Arts 365 best songs of the century. And the National Public Radio top 100, to which I previously blinked.

Canadian student plans to set up Napster clone in Sealand, beyond the reach of copyright law …if he can raise enough money. The Register

Google Search: “-pound gorilla”, à la Jorn Barger’s cliché searches.

Neil Gaiman uses Blogger to keep a journal about slouching toward the June ’01 publication of his new book American Gods

Rebecca Blood muses about fighting the merchants of cool after watching the Frontline documentary and digging into the website, which I previously blinked.

The Web Standards Project: Fighting for Standards in our Browsers: “Old browser versions are keeping the Web (and your
experience) from being all it could be. Please consider upgrading to one of the following
browsers, which make it easier for Web builders to be sure the sites you visit will work
correctly.”

Three big corporate giveaways by the Shrub’s administration are probably just the beginning of repaying those who bought him the Presidency:

Bankruptcy reform for MBNA

repeal of the Clinton administration’s expensive workplace ergonomic regulations to prevent repetitive strain injury

In a bitter battle, pork producers who voted in January to end mandatory fees on their hog production which funded the promotion program responsible for the famous “other white meat” advertisements have had their vote disregarded and are being forced to continue in the “checkoff” program which funds the National Pork Producers’ Council. This organization, a large contributor to the Shrub campaign, represents the interests of the large agribusiness concerns in whose hands pork production is increasingly concentrated at the expense of independent, family hog farmers being squeezed out of the market.