The anti-Obama right’s latest obsession

Did you know that there is a movement afoot on the right to demand that Barack Obama produce his birth certificate on the grounds that it might prove he’s not a “natural born Citizen,” as the Constitution requires of presidents? I hadn’t heard that one until it came tumbling out of Jay Severin’s careless mouth on WTKK Radio (96.9 FM) yesterday.

Anyway, I went to Google Blog Search, entered “Obama ‘birth certificate,'” and got 3,416 returns. Perhaps that’s not indicative of a major groundswell — many of the posts appear to be refutations of the crazier conspiracy theories out there. But the crazier conspiracies are indeed out there, including the notion that he was born in Kenya, and that he’s lying about his date of birth in order to cover that up.

This post on Daily Kos strikes me as smart and comprehensive. And National Review’s Jim Geraghty — a conservative who thinks Obama should produce his birth certificate — nevertheless offers a reasonable and non-hysterical perspective.

Gmail, heal thyself

Gmail bounced back a lot more quickly than the threatened 24 hours, I’m pleased to report. But I’ve been pondering the possibility of changing the way I use it, and this gives me additional impetus. I know there are some Media Nation readers who love this stuff, so they’ll indulge me, and perhaps provide some advice. The rest of you can skip this.

I made the switch to Gmail a little more than a year ago. For a while, I used it in conjunction with a POP account, but soon I switched to Web-only. Why?

  • My mail was the same wherever I was, even if I was using a different computer — including my archives and my address book, which are also in Gmail.
  • I could download my mail and send outgoing messages hassle-free even in places like public libraries, which often block POP access.
  • Gmail on the Web is just a nice online experience — the labeling, the display, the search features and the like. Aesthetics matter.

Over time, however, I’ve become frustrated. I hope to stick with Gmail in some way, mainly because it does such a good job of filtering spam. But I might change the way I use it. My complaints:

1. It does not integrate well with my non-Gmail account. I use Gmail to access my Northeastern e-mail. Theoretically, I should never have to log on to my Northeastern account. But it hasn’t worked out quite that conveniently.

For a long time, I had NU e-mail forward to Gmail. Mail arrived instantly, and life seemed to be good. But there were minor problems too arcane to mention, so I turned off forwarding and set up Gmail to grab my NU mail directly. There’s a delay that can last from a few minutes to an hour or more — usually not a problem, but occasionally a big problem.

It also seems as though, every so often, Gmail simply refuses to deliver a piece of mail on the NU server. Therefore, every day, I have to log on to my NU account separately to see whether there’s anything I missed. A waste of time, to say the least.

2. Every piece of outgoing mail is somehow stamped with my Gmail address. When I send an e-mail from Gmail using my NU address as my outgoing address, my Gmail address appears somewhere in the header as well. This is not a big deal, but I don’t like it.

3. Gmail’s advertising sometimes sets off spam filters. I have sent messages from Gmail using my NU address that have been marked as spam on the receiving end. In attempting to troubleshoot this, all we could think of was that Google’s ads rang the alarm.

Now, I could go back to using Gmail with POP — or, even better, IMAP. But there are some really nice features I would lose. My Gmail address book cannot easily be exported to Apple’s Address Book. The biggest sacrifice is that I’d no longer be archiving my mail on Google’s servers unless I set things up to make a separate, time-consuming operation out of it. I love the labeling feature and I love the super-fast searching, and I don’t want to give those up.

If there’s anything I’m saying that shows my ignorance, please enlighten me. I’d love to be able to improve my Gmail experience without giving up what I like.

Gmail woes

I’m increasingly disenchanted with Gmail. And it just got worse. Here’s a message I received a little while ago:

This account has been locked down due to unusual account activity. It may take up to 24 hours for you to regain access.

Unusual account activity includes, but is not limited to:

  1. Receiving, deleting, or downloading large amounts of mail via POP in a short period of time.
  2. Sending a large number of undeliverable messages (messages that bounce back).
  3. Using file-sharing or file-storage software, browser extensions, or third party software that automatically logs in to your account.
  4. Leaving multiple instances of your Gmail account open.
  5. Browser-related issues.

Please note that if you find your browser continually reloading while attempting to access your Inbox, it’s probably a browser issue, and it may be necessary to clear your browser’s cache and cookies.

If you feel that you have been using your Gmail account according to the Gmail Terms of Use, you can troubleshoot your problem by clicking here.

I’m probably in trouble over #4. I am a heavy e-mail user — especially so today, as I am doing some heavy multi-tasking while working on a story. I make no apologies, and I’m not going try to troubleshoot my problem. At least not at the moment.

Kennedy versus Rosen

I’m debating Jay Rosen on the controversy over Mayhill Fowler, the citizen journalist who quoted Barack Obama on “bitter” white people who “cling” to religion and guns and, more recently, who prodded Bill Clinton into going off on Vanity Fair writer Todd Purdum.

The question: Are citizen journalists bound by the same ethical rules as mainstream reporters? Read the set-up, then see the comments. Feel free to weigh in.

Headline news

A couple of odd headlines in today’s Boston Globe:

  • “Judge resists push for prison for drunk driver.” In fact, the judge sentenced the guy to three years in the House of Correction, with about a year off for time already served. Not good enough for the sister of the victim, but prison nevertheless.
  • “25-year sentence in pornography case.” The pornography, in this instance, was produced by the perpetrator, who filmed himself having sex with girls as young as 6 and 8. This is about rape, not porn. (Note: The online headline, as you will see, is slightly different.)

Curt Schilling, hoop god

No doubt the first thing you did after reading the papers this morning was log on to Curt Schilling’s blog so you could get the full rundown on his criticism of Kobe Bryant. It’s good stuff. Schilling even knows how to be disingenuous. While claiming that he’s a newcomer to basketball, and hey, maybe NBA players are supposed to act like self-centered crybabies, he offers this:

Kevin Garnett, and not that this needs to be stated, but I’ll say it anyway, is as focused and locked in as any athlete in any sport I’ve been around. From pre-game shoot around to last seconds on the clock, this kid is legit. The intensity and reputation are there, wow. His eyes are on the floor, or the ball, all game. What an incredible pleasure it is to watch and be a fan of. I am blown away in that he came out of high school, something that can be a huge disadvantage, and has ALWAYS maintained who he was purported to be.

The first game I saw from these seats the Coach for Washington was basically taunting KG when he was at the line, saying a bunch of things, KG was ignoring him for the most part until he said something that must have been a bit too much, KG pauses, looks over and basically tells him to go piss up a rope.

Last night KG goes to the line, Lamar Odom (who I became a fan of last night) is saying “Hey KG why don’t you help on the ball down here?” Pointing to the paint, and I am guessing he’s referencing the fact that KG wasn’t down in the paint mixing it up. He says it again, loudly, KG doesn’t even acknowledge him, and sinks both. Impressive, total focus.

Schilling also offers a spirited defense of Garnett over that technical that got called Sunday night: “These guys are playing for a world championship, they are as amped up as you expect the best players in the world to be, they are grown men, there’s going to be some PG-13 language, and you are giving a T to a guy for dropping an F bomb? Stupid.”

The section on Bryant comes shortly afterward, and the contrast couldn’t be more stark.

Schilling’s a pretty good writer. He’s got a way with words — who can forget his invocation of Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy’s “inherent ‘toolness,'” a phrase I swear I’m going to steal one of these days. He needs copy editing (who doesn’t?), but other than that, I’d think editors at the Globe or the Herald would jump at the chance to have him in their pages.

Deval Patrick’s gambling addiction

What on earth is Gov. Deval Patrick doing? As I and many other casino opponents have pointed out repeatedly, the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe cannot open a full-fledged casino in Middleborough — or anywhere else — unless the state Legislature legalizes casino gambling.

Yet WBZ-TV (Channel 4) reports that Patrick is negotiating with the tribe in an attempt to strike a deal that will bring a casino to Middleborough. Unfortunately, casino opponents lost a bit of leverage last week, as federal officials backed away from a proposal to crack down on video bingo. The Mashpee would be able to build a bingo hall regardless of whether casino gambling is legal in Massachusetts.

But considerable obstacles remain. The tribe’s Middleborough application could well be rejected by the U.S. Department of Interior, as it seeks to allow a casino to be built on newly acquired property rather than traditional tribal land.

Moreover, the process followed by Middleborough town officials was a disgrace. Casino opponents could no doubt keep this tied up in court for years if they have the resources. It’s a shame they have to fight the governor, too.

The iron lady versus the press

The Watertown Tab & Press will be in Waltham District Court today to argue that a subpoena brought against one of its reporters should be dropped. The subpoena was filed by town council member Marilyn Devaney, who faces charges that she threw a box containing a curling iron at a clerk in a Waltham store in April 2007.

Devaney wants Tab reporter Jillian Fennimore to testify about her knowledge of the case. But Fennimore, through Tab lawyer (and Friend of Media Nation) Rob Bertsche, counters (PDF) that Fennimore has no direct knowledge of what happened, covering the story only through “the traditional tools of journalism: official police reports, interviews with witnesses, and other shoe-leather reporting.”

Forcing Fennimore to testify, Bertsche adds, would have “the effect of preventing her [Fennimore] — the reporter with the most extensive knowledge of these proceedings — from reporting to the public about this criminal trial.” Such a result, Bertsche says, would interfere with the Tab’s newsgathering activities as protected by the First Amendment.

But Devaney’s lawyer, Janice Bassil, counters (PDF) that Devaney is entitled to know who supplied Fennimore with a Waltham police report labeled “Not for Public Release,” saying, “The information sought by the defendant goes to the heart of her claim for vindictive prosecution.”

That report, appended to Bassil’s brief, is highly entertaining. What allegedly set Devaney off was the clerk’s insistence that she couldn’t write a check without the proper ID. By far the best part is this quote from Devaney, which she allegedly spoke to the clerk shortly before hurling the bag at her: “Do you know who I am? I work for the Governor! I’m a lawyer! I’m in the Senate!”

Now, there are a few problems here. Assuming that Devaney knows what positions she holds, there is a good chance that she has been misquoted. She does not work for the governor, but she is a member of the Governor’s Council. She is not in the Senate, but, rather, serves on the Watertown Town Council. I could not immediately determine whether she’s a lawyer.

Devaney is something of a local legend — a contentious presence on the town council who has battled with her colleagues (there’s a whole section of Devaney clips on YouTube). As a Governor’s Council member, well, let’s just say she fits right in.

All kidding aside, it’s appalling that the Tab — part of the GateHouse Media chain — has been forced to spend one dime and devote more than one minute to fighting Devaney’s subpoena. Bassil, in her brief, makes a ludicrously offensive assertion:

The free flow of information will not be damaged as Ms. Fennimore will continue to be able to report on numerous matters similar to this so long as the information sought was authorized to be placed in the public domain.

This is a Soviet-style definition of journalism: Fennimore will continue to be able to do what is authorized, so where is the harm? I hope the judge can see through that and throws out Devaney’s subpoena with alacrity that it deserves.

Photo found on TheBeautyBrains.com.