In fact, Carly has forgone presenting any ideas, much less new ones. Instead, she's decided to sling some mud at Senator Barbara Boxer. Same old GOP tactic. If you can't run on ideas and merit, just muddy the field to confuse the voters. The funny thing is that Carly is putting the cart before the horse.

She is not the senatorial nominee yet. There has to be an election before that happens. So it's interesting that she is running her campaign with the presumption that the nomination is already hers.

Meg Whitman has not made that kind of presumption. But like Carly, she is trying to run on her record as the CEO of a major company. Also like Carly, her success as a CEO is up for debate. There is also some doubt that their abilities to head a large company is even relevant to the offices they are seeking.

As I said before about Whitman, running a state is not like running a company. No matter how much you think you can accomplish by trying to implement sound fiscal policy, your efforts will be thwarted by the fact that government doesn't have a bottom line. There are no profits to be made and distributed. At the same time, if you cut everything to the point that all public services cease to exist, you effectively eliminate the reason for government in the first place. So you are fighting a losing battle if you apply sound business practices to government.

As for Carly, running a business has no bearing on writing and evaluating legislation. Unless Carly can demonstrate real knowledge of formulating public policy and drafting bills, I don't see how she can be a good senator.

One more thing that both women have going against them is their poor or even non-existent voting record. People have a hard time believing in someone who neglects to exercise their right a responsibility to vote in all elections. If you can't be bothered to vote, how do we know you really care about California?

This is an obvious case of one person maliciously vilifying another, for a petty and personal reason; the victim "may have" bad-mouthed the perpetrator in front the latter's boyfriend. Now Google is being dragged into the fight because they released the perpetrator's real identity under court order and the perpetrator is suing Google for failing to protect her anonymity.

In this case, I don't think Google was wrong. They have no responsibility to shield someone who is engaging in the defamation of another, from civic justice. People should not be able to say whatever they want behind a curtain secrecy. If you want to publicly attack someone, then you should be brave enough to do so in the open.

I know that there are bloggers living in countries with oppressive governments that rely on anonymity to speak out against oppression. When Yahoo and Google cooperated in exposing some individuals who were then arrested, tried and imprisoned, I was very critical of their actions because their motives for cooperating was economical, not legal.

But speaking out for freedom is different from calling someone a skank. One is an issue of free speech, while the other libel.

On the plus side, we're saving thirty bucks a month for standard cable. And don't forget, that $30 is only good for a year. After that, Comcast jacks the price up another $20. It is outrageous to have to pay that much just to watch a couple of cable only channels. As a result, we're also watching less TV because, let's face it, the networks really don't have a lot to offer. But this is a good thing. Our Netflix queue is getting shorter by the day thanks to our changing TV habits.

On the down side, we can't watch Food TV, Discovery Channel, Cartoon Network, Sci-Fi Channel, HGTV, CNN or ESPN. We will also miss the continuing adventures of Jon & Kate's pending dissolution of their marriage. OK, maybe that's not really a down side. But I will miss Shark Week.

The first case was related to the strip search of a 13-year-old girl at her middle school. The court ruled that her constitutional rights against unreasonable search were violated. The ramifications of the case are mild since the decision did not eliminate the possibility of a strip search, it merely set parameters of when a strip search is appropriate, including taking into account how dangerous a substance is, and how likely it is hidden in an intimate place. Clearly ibuprofen does not fall under the dangerous category, and school officials only had the word of another student that the victim had the pills to begin with.

What is more remarkable about this decision is the court was nearly unanimous in handing down this decision. The court voted 8-1 in favor of this decision. Clarence Thomas was the only dissenter. He cites concerns that public school policy is not the domain of the constitution. So if schools started imprisoning students based solely on scurrilous accusations and without benefit of a trial, that's OK with Thomas as long as the schools are safe. Thomas also expressed concerns about students now armed with the knowledge of the best place to hide contraband.

Clarence, get a clue. Hiding stuff in your underwear is not a great revelation. Besides, even before this decision, schools had other means to conduct searches of students without violating their right to privacy with strip searches. I don't know of any police department that does not have a drug sniffing dog that can detect the presence of drugs without requiring a subject to disrobe in order to find drugs on their person. Once a drug sniffing dog reacts positively to the presence of drugs, the school officials would have probable cause to perform a more intrusive search. The difference now is that school officials will have to exercise some good judgment before mangling a person's fourth amendment rights.

As to the reverse discrimination case, no surprise here. The conservatives on this court including Thomas have a well established record against any kind of affirmative action policy. So to say that this decision is a clear rebuke of Supreme Court nominee, Sony Sotomayor is going a little too far. This decision came down to the usual 5-4 vote. That's not a rebuke.

The unfortunate consequence of this case is that employers have one less policy to help them ensure that they maintain a diverse work force that is free of discrimination. Some might see that as a positive, but most minorities not named Clarence Thomas, see the decision as yet another hurdle they'll have to clear in order to excel in the work place.

Certainly Berkeley has its own problems and issues, but few of them have such a direct impact as those you encounter in Oakland. Within six months of moving into our old place in Oakland, we had a break-in and several valuable items were stolen. Our insurance covered our losses, but it did little to restore our sense of security in our own home. To make matters worse, once the police arrived, they told us it would be more than six months to process the fingerprints they collected because the lab was understaffed due to budget issues.

It's no secret that crime is a major issue in Oakland. But there is very little being done to actually reduce crime. It's not enough to just throw more police on the streets. Since living in a police state with curfews and cops on every corner is not a option, other solutions are needed. The root of the problem is societal and cultural. Unless and until the social issues that plague Oakland's underprivileged are resolved, the problems will persist and crime will continue unabated.

Unfortunately, in this age of no new taxes, the situation will only get worse in Oakland. It seems that we have gotten out just in time.

When the home page first loads, your first instinct is to type in a search query and hit enter. But the results returned are anything but helpful. If your query generates no results, you get a page that has samples of queries that SHOULD work for the site. Clearly the folks behind W|A need to re-think their design. If you are going to present a user with a search box, and then give them zero results AND tell them how they should have searched, not only are you breaking user expectations, you are insulting the user as well.

They have obviously invested an enormous amount of time and resources designing and developing this service. But it seems obvious that they haven't spent very much time on user testing. If they had, they would not need to have primer on how to use what appears to be a simple and familiar service to begin with. I don't think they have to go back to the drawing board, but they do need to reconsider what it is they want the user to accomplish and then create an interface that helps the user succeed.

After all, both houses of the state legislature costs nearly a quarter billion annually to staff and maintain. If they can't do the job of balancing the budget and passing laws, then we don't need them. Lets dissolve the state legislature, institute direct democracy and spend that money on something worthwhile like education, public health or roads.

When she agreed to enter that beauty contest, she agreed to abide by the terms of her contract if she won. But her various appearances in the media to defend her views on marriage were not pre-approved by pageant officials. So she violated her contract. You can speculate that pageant officials may not have approved her appearances to begin with, but the fact is she never sought their approval so the point is moot.

Prejean is entitled to her opinion whether I agree with her (which I don't) or not . But if she is going to use her position to advance her beliefs and morals, she needs to accept the consequences of her actions. You can't take a stand on a controversial issue and then cry when your critics call you on them. And you certainly can't expect to violate a contract and get away with it.