Larwyn's Christmas Eve Links

21st Annual Awards for the Year's Worst Reporting - Media Research Center
Times City Room Will Not Mention Caroline Kennedy's Special Friendship With Pinch Sulzberger - Gawker
New York Times ad revenue falls 20% in November - Reuters

ACORN Whistleblowers - Protein Wisdom
Barack Obama's Arrogant Conceit - John Stossel
Princeton Physicist Calls Global Warming Science "Mistaken" - DailyTech

Lawrence Lessig: It's time to demolish the FCC - Newsweek

Since the birth of the Republic, the U.S. government has been in the business of handing out "exclusive rights" (a.k.a., monopolies) in order to "promote progress" or enable new markets of communication [such as] giving away slices of the airwaves... No one doubts that these monopolies are sometimes necessary to stimulate innovation... [but] government has never given a thought to when these monopolies help, and when they're merely handouts to companies with high-powered lobbyists... For example, much of the wireless spectrum has been auctioned off to telecom monopolies, on the assumption that only by granting a monopoly could companies be encouraged to undertake the expensive task of building a network of cell towers or broadcasting stations... [We must] test this assumption [and ask] do these monopolies do more harm than good? With a strong agency head, and a staff absolutely barred from industry ties [we] avoid the culture of favoritism that's come to define the FCC...

...the nation's basic communications infrastructure spectrum— the wires, cables and cellular towers that serve as the highways of the information economy— [must] remain open to new innovation, no matter who owns them. For example, "network neutrality" rules, when done right, aim simply to keep companies like Comcast and Verizon from skewing the rules in favor of or against certain types of content and services that run over their networks. The investors behind the next Skype or Amazon need to be sure that their hard work won't be thwarted by an arbitrary decision on the part of one of the gatekeepers of the Net.

GM downgraded by Credit Suisse - The Street
How the Feds will govern GM and Chrysler - Yahoo! Finance
Why America is shunning GM - US News & World Report

U.S. needs to 'Americanize' immigrants, or face trouble, federal task force says - Salt Lake Tribune
Democrats are the new ethics story - Wall Street Journal
Ballot Madness in Minnesota - Fox News

The Best (and Worst) Sex Scandals of 2008 - Gawker