Cornerstone Schedule Released

The 2005 Cornerstone Festival Schedule is now available here.

Biggest scheduling conflict I've noticed so far:
Friday 7:40 PM -- Skillet
Friday 8:00 PM -- Hanover Saints
Friday 8:00 PM -- Life In the Way
Friday 8:15 PM -- The Huntingtons (farewell show)

That's right. On Friday, July 1, I will have to find a way to be four places at once.

Flatfoot 56 In Metromix Contest

Hey all! Go here and vote for Flatfoot 56 in order to help them get some major recognition!

Tooth and Nail deal

Still busy with work and everything else, but here's a quick deal:

BestBuy.com is selling all Tooth and Nail CD's @ 2 for $15. Check it out here.

Lack of Updates

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've been really busy both with work and personal life. And then when I try posting something here (which has happened twice this week), blogger/blogspot has gone down completely!

So I'll be kinda surprised if this goes through. Anyways, hopefully next week I'll have a little more time to post.

Autoblink Update

The guys at Searchguild have updated the Autoblink code, making it faster and adding an Amazon referral switch option. They've also created a new meta tag, currently unsupported by anyone, that they hope to convince tools like Autolink to honor.

Venezuela Outsourcing ID's To Cuba

This is unsettling.

Maureen Jagmin Resigns

SICA UPDATE!

The Sun-Times has the resignation story here.

Maureen's husband, Gary Jagmin, made a very scary defense of his wife:

"It was an overheard conversation between possibly a man and wife," a visibly shaken Gary Jagmin said haltingly. He read a statement in a small board room packed with parents, reporters and school officials. "Should she be judged on what she says in the privacy of her own home, speaking to her husband, in a private conversation?"

He told the board he couldn't tell the context of the conversation from the transcript printed in Tuesday's Sun-Times. He also suggested the caller may have been expressing someone else's opinion, and questioned how the recording ended up on the Sun-Times voice mail.

He asked the board to delay accepting his wife's resignation until she and her lawyer reviewed the recording. But the board already had accepted the resignation.

Gary Jagmin said his wife was a dedicated board member. "Her actions speak louder than her private conversations," he said.

Someone (maybe H. Jackson Brown, Jr.) once said, "Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking." The conversation caught on the Sun-Times voicemail was a candid look at Maureen Jagmin's character and beliefs, and thus just as important -- if not more so -- as her public actions.

But her public actions do show character. For instance, she continues to deny that she is the voice in the recording. Since all the other facts in the matter point to her as the culprit -- the caller ID, the matching names in the recording, her resignation, and the fact that her own husband basically admitted to it by defending her privacy to say such things -- all indications are that her denial is merely an attempt to save face. The right thing to do would be to own up to the responsibility and publicly apologize to the schools she slandered, as the Lincoln-Way school board has already done.

Should she be fired or charged for what she said? No, and she wasn't. Freedom of speech extends to statements such as these, and as a (presumably elected) public official, she can't be forcibly removed from office for making such statements. But though perfectly legal, what she said was morally reprehensible, her actions after the fact have been shortsightedly self-serving, and her husband's defense is ethically bankrupt.

Curtailing My Freedom Of Speech

Check out this interview with Federal Election Commissioner Bradley Smith, titled "The Coming Crackdown On Blogging". The FEC is planning to apply the McCain-Feingold bill to blogs.

What does this mean? Well, McCain-Feingold restricts the contributions from corporations and individuals to political campaigns. In the case of websites and blogs, the FEC is planning to judge "contributions" in interesting ways:

How can the government place a value on a blog that praises some politician?
How do we measure that? Design fees, that sort of thing? The FEC did an advisory opinion in the late 1990s (in the Leo Smith case) that I don't think we'd hold to today, saying that if you owned a computer, you'd have to calculate what percentage of the computer cost and electricity went to political advocacy.

It seems absurd, but that's what the commission did. And that's the direction Judge Kollar-Kotelly would have us move in. Line drawing is going to be an inherently very difficult task. And then we'll be pushed to go further. Why can this person do it, but not that person?

How about a hyperlink? Is it worth a penny, or a dollar, to a campaign?
I don't know. But I'll tell you this. One thing the commission has argued over, debated, wrestled with, is how to value assistance to a campaign.

Corporations aren't allowed to donate to campaigns. Suppose a corporation devotes 20 minutes of a secretary's time and $30 in postage to sending out letters for an executive. As a result, the campaign raises $35,000. Do we value the violation on the amount of corporate resources actually spent, maybe $40, or the $35,000 actually raised? The commission has usually taken the view that we value it by the amount raised. It's still going to be difficult to value the link, but the value of the link will go up very quickly.

. . .

If Congress doesn't change the law, what kind of activities will the FEC have to target?
We're talking about any decision by an individual to put a link (to a political candidate) on their home page, set up a blog, send out mass e-mails, any kind of activity that can be done on the Internet.

Again, blogging could also get us into issues about online journals and non-online journals. Why should CNET get an exemption but not an informal blog? Why should Salon or Slate get an exemption? Should Nytimes.com and Opinionjournal.com get an exemption but not online sites, just because the newspapers have a print edition as well?

. . .

So if you're using text that the campaign sends you, and you're reproducing it on your blog or forwarding it to a mailing list, you could be in trouble?
Yes. In fact, the regulations are very specific that reproducing a campaign's material is a reproduction for purpose of triggering the law. That'll count as an expenditure that counts against campaign finance law.

And this will apply to Heroes from the Past, although it's questionable whether the FEC will target such a small blog as this. If I reproduce campaign literature, even if it is with permission and correctly attributed, I may be breaking McCain-Feingold. If I hyperlink to George Bush's campaign website, I may be breaking McCain-Feingold. If I ever incorporate myself (which is a real possibility, longterm) and do any of this, I will probably be breaking McCain-Feingold.

Whatever happened to free speech in this country?

BTW -- who is at least partially to blame?

In 2002, the FEC exempted the Internet by a 4-2 vote, but U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly last fall overturned that decision. "The commission's exclusion of Internet communications from the coordinated communications regulation severely undermines" the campaign finance law's purposes, Kollar-Kotelly wrote.

Smith and the other two Republican commissioners wanted to appeal the Internet-related sections. But because they couldn't get the three Democrats to go along with them, what Smith describes as a "bizarre" regulatory process now is under way.

GodBlogCon 2005

Just heard about this yesterday on Hugh Hewitt's radio show. Here's the latest info. It'll be held at Biola University in California, October 13-15.

I'm thinking about it . . .

Illinois Sports Blog

Just found a blog dedicated to Illinois Sports, from the Cubs down to high-school stuff. Check out The HH Bullpen.

SICA UPDATE

The Sun-Times has a huge scoop on the SICA story that is going to blow up the secession talk to front-page importance -- perhaps even national news.

A Sun-Times reporter received a call that, according to caller ID, originated at the house of Lincoln-Way district board member Maureen Jagmin. When the caller received voicemail, apparently the phone failed to hang up, and a subsequent conversation was recorded in which the primary speaker was referred to as "Maureen" and referenced another family member by name.

Select quotes from "Maureen":

The caller refers to three mostly black schools that are part of the 35-school conference, the South Inter-Conference Association, or SICA.

"The schools that used to be good like Rich Central, Rich East and Rich South are all failing schools," the woman said. "Why are they failing? Because of what's in 'em. One of the teachers right down the street said he couldn't wait to get the heck out from 30 years ago when he started teaching when it was just the normal kid. I mean it's a zoo."

Earlier, she spoke in general about black people.

". . . It's getting to the point where I'm tired of the welfare, tired of the mentality that poor blackie because let's give them a job so they can be supporting themselves and, be, make them work. You know, forget this I want to be a bum type of thing. I think it's a forever problem in this country, you know, it's never going to go away in this area here."

Jagmin denies that the voice in the recording is she.

For once, I almost agree with Jesse Jackson, Jr:

"The school board member should step down immediately," said Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), whose district includes many SICA schools.

Maybe this is an elaborate fraud, but I think Jagmin should voluntarily suspend herself until the issue is cleared up. But I don't think it will be cleared up -- the evidence, to me, is pretty convincing.

SICA Secession

Local news!

Ten high schools are planning to secede from the South Inter-Conference Association at the end of the year: Andrew, Bradley-Bourbonnais, Bolingbrook, Homewood-Flossmoor, Joliet, Lincoln- Way Central, Lincoln-Way East, Lockport, Sandburg, and Stagg. If you know anything about the south suburbs, you'll see the pattern. These high schools represent the more affluent (and whitest) communities in the south suburbs.

"It takes a large group of white students out of the knockings and I think that is important to keep the conference balanced. So, there is a huge impact when they leave. They're taking the bulk of the white population out of SICA," said Robert K. Wilhite, Thornton Factional superintendent.

Black student athletes in lower income neighborhoods east of Interstate 57 are less likely, if ever to compete against more affluent whites west of the expressway. While the defecting superintendents concede that economics is part of the reason they will leave racial issues were not considered.

"Race in this whole thing is absolutely not a problem. It has never been a problem for the seven of us in our entire careers and as far as I'm concerned, it's never been an issue when it's come to a decision for me, whether it be racially motivated or not. Absolutely is not an issue," said Wyllie.

Wyllie says the new conference would be called the southwest suburban conference and would begin operating in all sports except football beginning next fall. Football will have to wait a while because of SICA contracts already in place.

The list of schools that will remain in SICA, according to this obviously outdated and badly-kept SICA website: Argo, Bloom Township (incl. Bloom Trail), Bremen, Crete-Monee, Eisenhower, Hillcrest, Kankakee, Oak Forest, Oak Lawn, Reavis, Rich Central, Rich East, Rich South, Richards, Romeoville, Shepard, Thornton Fractional North, Thornton Fractional South, Thornridge, Thornton, Thornwood, Tinley Park.

Hmm. Surprised Argo didn't bail with the rest.

Ace Troubleshooter Is No More

Dude, it stinks. John Warne, lead singer of Ace Troubleshooter, has left the band to be the new bassist for Relient K.

Now, coming off a two-month break, the band is refreshed and hitting the road on a headlining club tour. With Ace Troubleshooter singer John Warrant [sic] taking the spot of recently departed bassist Brian Pittman and with Jonathan Schneck joining existing members Matt Thiessen, Dave Douglas and Matt Hoopes, Relient K for the first time will be playing as a five-piece band.

Here's Ace Troubleshooter's official statement.

I guess John never got the memo that Ace was better than Relient K. . .

Crazy Happenings in Lebanon

Have you been following Lebanon at all? You should be. It looks like it might be solid evidence that Bush's domino effect hopes will be realized.

After the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri earlier this month, Lebanese citizens began to turn out in force to protest Syrian occupation of the country. Drawing explicit parallels to the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine from a few months back, the "Cedar Revolution" has won a major victory today: the Lebanese government, generally considered a puppet of Syria, has resigned en masse.

The Lebanese government abruptly resigned Monday during a stormy parliamentary debate, prompting a tremendous roar from tens of thousands of anti-government protesters in central Beirut.

The demonstrators, awash in a sea of red, white and green Lebanese flags, had demanded the pro-Syrian government's resignation -- and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon -- since this month's assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Demonstrators in Beirut's Martyrs Square chanted, "Syria out! Syria out!" after Prime Minister Omar Karami announced his resignation in a speech aired by the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation.

In his speech, Karami said he would have won a no-confidence vote scheduled for later in the day, but was resigning to avoid making his government a stumbling block to peace.

The country's pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, now must pick a prime minister to form a new government until scheduled elections in May.

Rock Rebel

Check this out -- my post about Christian Music Makeover has just been linked on the front page of rockrebel.com.

Seems like a very good site, probably deserving of a sidebar link.

NO AUTOLINKS HERE

I don't know whether you guys are keeping up on the latest target of bloggers' outrage (Blog Rage?). This time, it's an entity that usually gets tons of respect from the blogosphere -- Google.

Google has just released a new beta for its toolbar. What has bloggers (and many other web developers) up in arms is the bar's Autolink feature. Read about it on this page.

What Autolink does is automatically create links on a page where there are none. Great feature for users, right? Except it's messing with someone else's copyrighted content. This website here, Heroes from the Past, is my own house/poetry book/art gallery/phone book on the web. Google is now offering to 'help out' web surfers by turning my content into their adspace. I have no problem when my host (which is letting me put together this site absolutel free) packages ads around my content, such as you may see at the top of this page. But when you add links to my blogposts that are indistinguishable from the links that I have made myself, that's crossing a line.

So, for the moment, I've found a way to make it stop. The folks over at Searchguild have kindly written some Javascript that breaks Autolink for a page, and I've added the script to my template here.

I'm not sure how permanent this solution is, however. For one thing, the toolbar is still in Beta, and the Autolink feature is likely to be changed to combat this anti-autolink script. Secondly, I depend on Google in two ways -- hits through its search engine and hosting through its ownership of Blogger. If the company chooses to do so, it can easily detect the Javascript and either automatically remove anti-autolink pages from its search engine, or decide not to host me anymore.

We'll see where this goes. I don't think anything major is going to come of this, but maybe I should look into heroesfromthepast.com just in case.

CUBS TICKETS!

----------------------------------------------------------
The tickets you have purchased are:
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Cardinals at Cubs
Saturday, 8/13/05 at 12:20PM CDT
Terrace Reserved Outfield

Section Row Seat Price Type
237-3 17 107 $27.00 ADULT
237-3 17 108 $27.00 ADULT
237-3 17 109 $27.00 ADULT
237-3 17 110 $27.00 ADULT
237-3 17 111 $27.00 ADULT
237-3 17 112 $27.00 ADULT

MAN BITES DOG STORY

Literally.

The Other Extreme of Government Vs Property Rights

Instapundit and Professor Bainbridge have been pointing out one extreme of government abuse of property rights. Their posts talk about the use of eminent domain in contravention of the Fifth Amendment: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." In these cases, governments are forcibly purchasing private property for questionable ends. For example, in the case of Kelo vs. City of New London, the city of New London has allowed a private non-profit organization to forcibly purchase the houses of Susette Kelo and neighbors for as-yet-unspecified private use.

But there's another extreme -- landmark status. When landmark status is invoked, a governmental body forces owners of property to continue to own and maintain such property in perpetuity, even if funds are not available or ownership is no longer desired. Stinks, don't it? And now Chicago politicians are thinking of forcing about 200 churches to accept it.

Owners of houses of worship currently are permitted to reject landmark designation, but a proposal co-sponsored by 10 aldermen would end their ability to opt out.

Experts say that at least 200 Chicago churches are of landmark quality, and the owners of any of them that were to win designation would lose the ability to tear down and be forced to maintain them in perpetuity.

"Our absolutely last choice is to demolish a building," said Jim Dwyer, a spokesman for the Catholic archdiocese. "But if we have no use for it, we are not going to spend money to keep a vacant building open at the expense of our ministries and our schools, even if somebody finds it aesthetically pleasing.

"I think [the new proposal] would be a concern to anyone who believes in religious freedom," Dwyer said.

You read it right. If this gets passed, churches could have landmark status forced upon them by the secular city government. And that means that the churches would not be able to tear down the church or make major changes without permission, and would be legally required to keep the property in good shape.

So what if the church is low on funds? Or, on the other hand, what if the church wants to build a new, larger sanctuary? They're stuck with the current property as a legally-mandated drain on resources and options.

Preservationists now are pushing to save St. Boniface, a shuttered Catholic church at Chestnut and Noble Streets, as Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. (27th) seeks to fashion a compromise in which a developer would purchase the building from the archdiocese, save the facade and construct condominiums on the site.

"I think we have to come up with a creative way of helping [religious organizations] out," Burnett said. "If they don't have the money to be able to fix the building, they can go to jail or be fined" if they failed to maintain a building with landmark status," he said.

"You are going to make someone do something they can't afford to do," Burnett said.

Korn Guitarist Becomes Christian, Leaves Band

MTV has the story here. God is amazing.

Guitarist Brian "Head" Welch, a founding member of Korn, has left the band and has rededicated his life to Christianity, according to the group's management.

"Korn has parted ways with guitarist Brian 'Head' Welch, who has chosen Jesus Christ as his savior, and will be dedicating his musical pursuits to that end," a statement from the band reads. "Korn respects Brian's wishes, and hopes he finds the happiness he's searching for."

Hat tip Israel from Staple, who are already targeting Welch for the band :P.