Something wonderful this way comes. This story from Dave Winer telling of the weblog conference at Harvard October 4 includes some powerful stuff: the bloggers are coming out for the Election of 2004. All I can reveal at present is "watch this space".
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The full article is here:
http://davenet.userland.com/2003/08/11/the2004Election
The 2004 Election
Mon, Aug 11, 2003; by Dave Winer.
BloggerCon

We're having a weblog conference at Harvard Law School on October 4.
It's probably the first academic conference on weblogs, but it certainly won't be the last.
We're going to look at how weblog technology will be used in politics, business, journalism, the law, medicine, engineering and education.
Because we're coming into a political year, 2004, when the US will elect a new president, I'm focusing on the role weblogs will play in the campaign.
Candidate schedules
Over the weekend I scanned the candidate websites and put together a list of candidate schedules that say where the candidates are going to be when.

If you want an idea of what the new game looks like, check out the cast of characters in the California recall. Look at all the citizens participating in the electoral process. Everyone told us they don't care. Heh. And even that's just a hint of a glimpse. Government of the people, by the people and for the people, for better or worse, is what's coming. That's my stake in the ground. All this may happen in the next few months.

Dave Winer

Excellent short read today on the Bush Executuve Order on Iraq's Resources/Oil:

Unilaterally declaring "a national emergency," Bush wrote: Any "judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void with respect to . . . all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein . . . in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons."

August 8, 2003
Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive
http://www.progressive.org/webex03/wx080803.html
Get-out-of-Jail-Free Card for Oil Companies
Take a gander at Executive Order 13303, which President Bush signed on May 22.

It is innocuously entitled, "Protecting the Development Fund for Iraq and Certain Other Property in Which Iraq Has an Interest."

But that "other property" refers directly to-surprise, surprise--oil. And the purpose of the Executive Order seems to be to shield U.S. companies and oil execs from prosecution.

This just in to my attention: http://www.plastic.com/article.html;sid=03/08/07/05215530
See: website Plastic has an article contributed by a poster from the Washington Post story today. Privacy advocates? I would have thought we ALL were that, to some degree! "The MATRIX Has You" is all about TIA, and the US government is just using the $4 from the Justice Department to expand the project nationally, and $8 million in contribution from the Dept. of Homeland Security to this project to get around the TIA publicity. Same song, different singer.
FINDING OUT ABOUT US GOVERNMENT FUNDING FROM TECH NEWS, NOT FROM CURRENT EVENTS OR NATIONAL NEWS - HMMMMMMMM!

"The MATRIX (short for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange) database enables investigators to find patterns and links among people by combining police records with commercially available collections of personal information about most American adults. The system began operating in Florida over a year ago and is used by at least 135 police agencies. The Justice Department has provided $4 million to expand the Matrix program nationally and will provide the computer network for information-sharing among the states, according to documents and interviews. The Department of Homeland Security has pledged $8 million, state officials said," MrTripps writes. "The project was created by Hank Asher, founder of Seisint Inc. In 1999, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI suspended information-service contracts with an earlier Asher-run company due to his involvement in a drug smuggeling operation. Another player is former Secret Service head Brian Stafford who recently went to work as a senior executive at Seisint.