November 10, 2004

I got my first Exhale-related e-mail!  I'm excited, but only partially 
because the user seems to have found a bug.  I need to investigate this 
evening at home, but it will probably be a small fix.  Pretty exciting!

I'm happy to see that John Ashcroft has resigned.  I don't trust that
man.  I'm never happy when civil liberties are marginalized in every
way.  I think that feeling first started for me in high school, back
when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was passed.  The part forbidding
the distribution of "indecent material" really made me angry. I'm not
going to lie here; as a teenager, the world of the alt.binaries.*
newgroups were about the greatest thing I had ever experienced (my life
was a little lame in high school).  In fact, I would never have learned
so much about computers were it not for wanting to find "indecent
material" and subsequently hide it from my family.  When the
questionable groups that I frequented as a lurker were deemed illegal, I
was outraged.

Nowadays, I don't really go pouring through those groups anymore, but 
the feeling that someone is "cramping my style" has endured.  For that 
reason, I'm a rabid free speech advocate.  My free speech feelings have 
rubbed off on other topics now that I'm a bit older, however.  I support 
just about everything the ACLU stands for, which is why I'm a member.  
Ashcroft and the PATRIOT Act are skirting the line between free- and 
police-state. But Ashcroft is leaving, so hooray!  Although, from the 
looks of it, the successor will be another bad one. 

Adios,
Jeff
.