Polinaut: March 12, 2006 Archive

CD controversy redux

Posted at 8:06 AM on March 12, 2006 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

According to MDE, the GOP CD on gay marriage has begun arriving in the mail at homes of voters in districts represented by some senators who have prevented the same-sex marriage (and its legal equivalent) ban from a Senate vote.

You may recall the flap here -- and elsewhere -- after the GOP held a news conference to unveil the spiffy technology, only to have it discovered that the CD also extracted identity and other information from the computer and went to a Republican database to be used in other party activities.

The party contended that even though no mention of the CD's purpose was made at the news conference, and that the packaging contained no warning that the CD itself was doing something other than trying to tell you about the marriage amendment, and that no disclaimer or opt-out appeared during the program, it was always the intention to put that stuff on in the 4 following days after the news conference.

Looks like it went out about a week later than planned. I have no idea other than the picture on the MDE site what changes were made since the Party did not follow through on the promise to get me an evaluation copy as soon as they had it. Nor, for the record, did I ever hear again from the party spokesman who promised to "look into" the questions I had regarding conversations the party officials and the CD developer may -- or may not -- have had about privacy and data issues prior to the time when they were revealed by the media.

BTW, judging by the number of people asking for a copy of the CD (the Symantec "crisis response team" even asked me for one), it may have some value on E*Bay.

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House cleaning

Posted at 6:08 PM on March 12, 2006 by Bob Collins

Cleaning out my RSS feeds. Not watching the Kirby Puckett thing. I liked the guy, fine, but I don't think there's anything left to say, so I doubt there's much more to hear. So on goes the old Ricki Lee Jones CD and up goes the laptop.

How closely to link to the White House? That's the issue Republicans who think they might live there one day had to wrestle with this weekend, according to the New York Times.

In interviews, officials attending the Southern Republican Leadership Conference here described themselves as shaken by mistakes that have afflicted the White House, culminating with the collapse of the deal to allow a Dubai company to manage six American port terminals. Several urged the president to bring in new advisers to avoid losses in the midterm elections ahead and three fallow years in the White House.

Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine has another one of his blurbs on blogging and its role in the universe. I don't know, frankly, how much any of the things like this are true or false but I do know the more you predict the future, the more likely folks will listen to you in this business and create it.

Journalism schools gave out degrees in PR (which I think is a mistake for both). PR became more powerful and lucrative. Spin became an art. Soon, everyone was no longer famous for 15 minutes; that’s so over. Instead, everyone got media training. The problem with gatekeepers is that they try to control, to get in the way, to keep us from getting what we want.

Speaking of which, at some point, the Star Tribune is going to have to write an article on something that they got beaten on by the bloggers without taking a swipe at the bloggers who beat 'em. But not yet, I guess. You know, I'm with Jarvis, I just don't think the blogs are going away.

Wouldn't mind seeing a few more northern versions of The Bluegrass Report. No name calling. No grenades lobbed from one blogger to the next. Just stuff that would be, you know, useful if I lived in Kentucky.

David Kirchner's got that mapping software humming at The Analyst. David was kind enough to let me know that a future post will probably not be real complimentary toward Select A Candidate. That's fine. I'm having a hard time getting this thing put together and out the door so I'm not real happy with it right now, either.

By the way, on the governor's race, I sent out a bunch of questions to candidates for governor via their Web sites (they all have links to contact them, so I thought I'd try 'em out). I think I sent them to everyone but Kelly Doran (I had all of his positions), I think. I only heard back from Sue Jeffers, who -- incidentally -- has one hell of a great Web site. I think she updates it every day. You won't find much mincing of words there, either.

As for the others, c'mon... answer your mail.