North Korea V. Intellectual Property Rights

An interesting read from the Wall Street Journal about North Korea's illegal use of FIFA broadcasts and censorship of their own national team's games.

A Reason To Like The World Cup.

Over-the-top political correctness has stricken the U.K. in recent years even worse than it has the U.S.  One symptom has been an all out attack on English national pride.  Over there, it is apparently fine to celebrate the U.K. (the political state as a whole, comprised of England, Scotland, Whales and Northern Ireland) or even Great Britain (the island home to England, Scotland and Whales) but not England. 

 

In fact, the city of London reportedly spends up to a £100,000 on other national and group pride days, including St. Patrick's Day, but in recent years has tried to downplay St. George's Day.  The English national St. George's flag has become something of a controversial issue as well. 

 

Yet for the next month it will not be the U.K or Great Britain competing in South Africa, but rather it will be England.  And during this time, English pride will be at full force.  In fact, a recent article in the Fulham Chronicle featured a Member of Parliament coming to the support of a group of renters whose landlord had barred them from flying the St. George's flag during the World Cup.  This sort of story usually only comes out of the U.S. 

Biggest Race Today: Nevada.

Today is a super-Tuesday of sorts, and the most notable race of the day will be the Nevada Republican Senate primary. Arkansas also has a close Democratic Senate run-off, but the winner of that is very likely to lose in November. In California, Republicans still appear to have an outside chance in both the November Senate and Governor's race, but the primaries are growing ever uncompetitive.

It is only in Nevada that there is a close primary race today and the chance of a competitive race in November.

Politico describes the Nevada race as follows:

For most of the election cycle, the conventional wisdom has been that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is toast in November. His polling has been awful, it’s a tough year to run as a Democrat, and he just can’t seem to get any traction back home.

His saving grace, all along, has been the weakness of the GOP field. Now, as Reid has show some signs of life in the polls — he raised eyebrows recently simply by having a slight lead in some matchups — the prospect of former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle emerging as the GOP nominee is providing another burst of enthusiasm among his supporters.

Democrats see Angle, who has surged to the lead in recent polls, as fatally flawed — the weakest candidate in a GOP field that includes former state party Chairwoman Sue Lowden and businessman Danny Tarkanian and one whose views aren’t well-suited for a general election or for the onslaught of spending that Reid will release.

If Angle indeed emerges as the winner, look for an immediate pivot to the general. And if it doesn’t happen quickly, Reid will be poised for one of the all-time political comebacks.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38238_Page2.html#ixzz0qG48JnoP

The Strasburg Bandwagon

Today's Politico features a front page story on new Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg.  As one may imagine, Politico is a political paper.  It does not have a sports section or regular coverage of sporting events, even ones in the DC area.  To our knowledge this is the first purely sports story to make the cover…ever.  This goes to show the buzz that the new pitcher is getting in the nation's capital.

 

Back In The Old 1990's

We stumbled across this CNN.com article from 1998 written in the wake of the Drudge Report’s breaking of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The whole thing is a fascinating read in a time capsule sort of way, but the most ironic part has to be the following:

"The case for Drudge," he writes in TIME, "is that there ought to be a middle ground between the highest standards and none at all. And the Internet, which can be sort of halfway between a private conversation and formal publication, is a good place for that middle ground. The middle ground, of course, should be acknowledged as such ... People should understand that the information they get this way is middling quality -- better than what their neighbor heard at the dry cleaner's but not as good as The New York Times." http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/01/30/pandora.web/

Quick Thought Of The Day.

The basic, primary issue in the Blagojevich trial is not all that different than the Sestak scandal: Government officials using their power to trade jobs for political favors. So it is odd that Democrats had no qualms about demonizing Blago last year, but tried to downplay and excuse the Sestak situation before all the specifics were even known.

Another Tea Party Challenger Shows That This Is A Conservative Leaning Year.

In Alabama's 2nd District, Martha Roby had been a heavy, heavy establishment favorite when she was challenged from the right by tea party activist Rick Barber. She failed to avoid a runoff on Tuesday. See: http://tiny.cc/ntbrp