Washington Post: In Brazil, 'Ill Will' Over O'Neill. There was no good reason for O'Neill to be named Treasury Secretary in the first place, and it is painfully clear that there is no longer any good excuse to let him keep the job. He's done nothing to calm investors in the US; indeed, he's been conspicuously absent as the market crisis has worsened. And now he's causing political and economic damage to a critical economy that's already teetering on the brink. Bush won't fire him (malfeasance isn't a firing offense in this Administration), so he should do the right thing for once and quit.

Did you know that the snakehead fish "votes straight-ticket Republican"? If not, you probably could have guessed.

Daniel Kurtzman: Learning to love Big Brother - George W. Bush channels George Orwell.

Washington Post: The Fall of Enron. This is a five-part series that started yesterday, and will run thru Thursday. Funny, but the Post doesn't have today's article linked from the series index page, but it is linked from the front page; hopefully, they will fix this little bug soon.

Charles Krauthammer is both evil and stupid.

Washington Post: Harken Papers Offer Details on Bush Knowledge. This is pretty close to a smoking gun — Bush found out Harken was going to take a loss for the quarter just days before he sold his stock. Time to talk independent counsel. Oh, and it would be very interesting to find out who the "institutional buyer" was that bought all of Bush's stock.

Washington Post: For '04 Run, a Walk in Carter's Shoes. My first boss in DC, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, is running for President. The Post provides a nice profile of how he's doing that. I don't like all his positions (pro-gun??), but I like him. He's a good man, as the (p)Resident would say, and deserves a good run. Need a good website, Howard? Your existing site needs to be updated… or just totally redone.

Via /., a great article by singer/songwriter Janis Ian on the state of the music industry today. Bottom line: the labels are evil, downloads are good, and the RIAA doesn't have a clue.

Robert L. Borosage: The Conservative Bubble Boys. "It is no accident that the current wave of costly corporate scandals followed the rise of modern conservatism to political power two decades ago." Yes, it is Reagan's fault!

I'd thought I'd heard it all, but I was wrong. GOP Congressional candidate Jay Dickey decided he didn't like the coverage he was getting from a paper in his district, so he wrote his good friend, the publisher, and asked for an endorsement. And that the paper write stories on his press releases without seeking comment from his Democratic opponent, Rep. Mike Ross. And that the paper always seek his comment when Ross issues a release. And that the paper's general coverage of the campaign reflect it's endorsement. Dickey deserves to lose just because of this incident.

Paul Krugman is right again: the big question isn't why Bush failed to follow the law and file his SEC papers on time, but rather whether or not he illegally profited from shady accounting practices and insider knowledge. Even with as little as we know now, it seems the answer to the latter question is clearly "yes".

I just watched "When Harry Met Sally" again for about the hundredth time. I don't know why, but I always tear up at the end. I think most people do. This movie means something to me and I don't know why. I'm certainly not the Harry character, but I guess I identify with him just enough to make me feel. The same fear of being involved, the same motivation to run. I just lack the same willingness to put myself on the line, and expose my emotions for others to see. I suppose I should put that on my to-do list.

Frank Rich has a great column in today's New York Times about the Bush Administration's reaction to (and responsibility for) the current wave of Enron-style corporate bad behavior. "It is now more than six months since the president promised 'a lot of government inquiry into Enron.' Since then, Playboy has done a better job of exposing the women of Enron than the Bush administration has done at exposing its men. Just as the Justice Department rounded up some 1,000 alleged Sept. 11 suspects and failed to indict a single one of them for terrorist activity, so it has made a big show of its shaky Andersen conviction while failing to indict a single Enron executive or individual Andersen accountant."

A few days late,but… Happy Independence Day!

Wolfenstein 5K. Amazing what you can do in Javascript these days.

Cringely nails Microsoft's Palladium initiative: "This is NOT about making things better for the user. This is about removing the ability for the end user to make decisions about how his or her computer functions. It is an effort by Microsoft to take literal ownership of Internet technology…" A must-read.