Hey Schieffer, Incorporate Some Breaking News

Waiting on the debate, which I think has about a 50/50 chance of turning into a smear factory. But if it does, it would be nice if Bob Schieffer could work it around to one of today's top stories and see what the Maverick would have to say in his defense:

Early in 2007, just as her husband launched his presidential bid, Cindy McCain decided to resolve an old problem -- the lack of cellular telephone coverage on her remote 15-acre ranch near Sedona, nestled deep in a tree-lined canyon called Hidden Valley.

By the time Sen. John McCain's presidential bid was in full swing this summer, the ranch had wireless coverage from the two cellular companies most often used by campaign staff -- Verizon Wireless and AT&T.

Verizon delivered a portable tower know as a "cell site on wheels" -- free of charge -- to Cindy McCain's property in June in response to an online request from Cindy McCain's staff early last year. Such devices are usually reserved for restoring service when cell coverage is knocked out during emergencies, such as hurricanes.

In July, AT&T followed suit, wheeling in a portable tower for free to match Verizon's offer. "This is an unusual situation," said AT&T spokeswoman Claudia B. Jones. "You can't have a presidential nominee in an area where there is not cell coverage."

If you think this sounds perfectly reasonable, consider that Ted Stevens is facing jail time for pretty much exactly the same thing. Oh, and the McCain campaign's spin is that the Secret Service made him do it - which the Secret Service denies.

"The Washington Post story regarding Verizon providing a cell tower to the McCain Ranch is wrong," (Verizon PR guy) Thonis said. "Verizon received a request from Mrs. McCain, but declined.

"Subsequent to that, the Secret Service made a legitimate request for a temporary tower for its work and Verizon complied as is required by our contract with the agency. The Secret Service request, made on May 28, specifically said it needed the service urgently and requested that Verizon 'explore every possible means of providing an alternative cellular or data communications source in the referenced area and provide any short term implementation of any type as a solution in the interim."

But James Grimaldi, the Post reporter who broke the story, has the Secret Service saying they did not formally request the tower.

Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren told the paper: "This was something that was being addressed before we were out there."

Just the Verizon flack's protestations are revealing. They confirm that Cindy McCain asked for a cell phone tower for her personal use - and pretty much only the McCain family's use, as there are few other homes in the area. They confirm that the request was in well before McCain took the nomination.

McCain, of course, regulates these phone companies as part of his day job, and mixes with their lobbyists on his campaign staff.

Ethics lawyers said Cindy McCain's dealings with the wireless companies stand out because Sen. John McCain is a senior member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the Federal Communications Commission and the telecommunications industry. He has been a leading advocate for industry-backed legislation, fighting regulations and taxes on telecommunications services. (he was a past chair of the Commerce Committee, too -ed.)

McCain and his campaign have close ties to Verizon and AT&T. Five campaign officials, including campaign manager Rick Davis, have worked as lobbyists for Verizon. Former McCain staffer Robert Fisher is an in-house lobbyist for Verizon and is volunteering for the campaign. Fisher, Verizon chief executive Ivan Seidenberg and company lobbyists have raised more than $1.3 million for McCain's presidential campaign and Verizon employees are among the top 20 corporate donors over McCain's political career, giving more than $155,000 to his campaigns.

McCain's Senate chief of staff Mark Buse, senior strategist Charles R. Black Jr., and several other campaign staffers have registered as AT&T lobbyists in the past. AT&T Executive Vice President Timothy McKone and AT&T lobbyists have raised more than $2.3 million for McCain. AT&T employees have donated more than $325,000 to McCain campaigns, putting the company in the No. 3 spot for career donations to McCain, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

I don't know, rather than Bill Ayers, that might be something the public would like to know, Mr. Schieffer.

Or, you could mention the international terrorists tied to John McCain, otherwise known as "anti-Castro Cubans".

Ma Bell Returns

When the iPhone came out I said I'll wait a year or so until they release a new version that has better features and is substantially cheaper, and maybe, just maybe, is available with any cellular carrier instead of just AT&T. Sure enough, they released one this week that has expanded features, is indeed cheaper (although the more expensive service contract cancels out almost entirely the cost of the phone), but is still locked to AT&T. And according to Tim Wu, that's not changing.

If my iPhone were a motorcycle, she'd be a chopper. I'm the owner of an unlocked, jail-broken iPhone 1.3 that runs on the T-Mobile network, fortified with third-party apps (like Tap Tap Revolution), adorned with Death Star wall paper, and running a natty customized interface named "Manhattan." Sure, not everything works perfectly (recently, the clock went off by an hour or so, for no apparent reason). But that's part of the fun of iPhone-modding, a vibrant scene that resembles the Apple II culture of the 1980s.

Unfortunately, for me at least, it may all be coming to an end. After Monday's iPhone 2.0 debut, it's just a matter of time before I trade in my chopper phone for Apple's new 3G phone—and swallow that AT&T contract.

That may sound like trading a dune buggy for a Toyota Corolla. But like most such decisions, there is a depressing inevitability to the whole thing. As an ever-uncooler Steve Jobs (clad in atrocious jeans) made clear on Monday, the new iPhone pounds the hell out of the old one. Apple has rigged the thing with a better battery, GPS capabilities, and, most importantly, download speeds faster than the rate at which a man passes a kidney stone (at least if you live in a city, as David Pogue points out). I'm nostalgic but I'm not stupid—the new phone will be too handy not to have. But as Jobs neglected to mention, getting your hands on a new iPhone will mean signing, at the moment of purchase, a two-year AT&T contract. Tough news for the free iPhone movement.

The fact that someone like me is switching to AT&T is a sign of the times in the telephone world. The wireless industry was once and is still sometimes called a "poster child for competition." That kind of talk needs to end. Today, the industry is more like an old divorced couple; the bickering spouses are AT&T and Verizon, the two halves of the old Bell empire. (To its credit, the Bell company, in internal memos, proposed a wireless phone in 1915 and then spent 70 or so years deciding how to deploy it without hurting its wired-phone business.) While you can't blame this on the iPhone, nearly every non-Bell phone company is, in the long tradition of such firms, dying or being purchased. Sprint Nextel lost an astonishing $29.5 billion in a single quarter last year—a loss of nearly double the annual revenue of Google. Alltel, one of the last independents, is being bought by Verizon. The exception is T-Mobile, which, while healthy, simply doesn't have the spectrum to play with the bigs. By the end of this year, we may find that the wireless world, in industry structure at least, will be pretty close to where it was at the beginning of the 1990s, before "deregulation."

That's quite a shame. Wireless freedom is connected to the net neutrality movement, and the apparent loss of it is quite a shame. It's like if Zenith and RCA televisions would only work on DirecTV. I don't know how to pry open this monopolistic practice short of Congressional action.

You're All On Pins And Needles Waiting To Hear About My New Ipod

So I left my iPod on a plane about a month ago, and I was about to replace it when I got wind that a new product line would be coming out today. As you may know, they released what amounts to an iPhone without the phone part, with a touchscreen, wi-fi, 16 gigs of storage for audio, video and photos, etc., for about $200 less than what they were selling the iPhone for. Thinking this is a great deal, I jumped on it, only to find out minutes later that they also cut the iPhone price by $200, which is just beyond bizarre. Apparently, people at the product launch thought so too:

The decision to cut the price of its most expensive iPhone to $399 from $599 - and phase out an entry-level iPhone that had sold for $499 - was clearly a shocker. Barron's tech writer Eric Savitz, who was in SF for Apple's product announcement, said "this was a move that no one in the room expected; people were truly stunned; and I mean jaw-dropping, mouths agape, stopped in their tracks stunned. The news almost erased all the good feeling in the room from the day’s various product announcements, and replaced it with a sense of shock. You’d think a dementor had flown into the room." Why all the fuss? Well, how would you feel if you had spent hours, even days, waiting in line for a $599 iPhone just two months ago - and now find that it's being priced at $399?

Apparently the stock dropped on this news too. If I had an iPhone I'd be pissed. From what I heard, the phone was the worst thing about the iPhone; the plan is locked in to AT&T, the service is scattershot at best, and the plans are costly. Getting all of the features I wanted without having to deal with the phone is like the best of all possible worlds, and I kicked in for the extra memory to get 16 gigs (I only used about 10-12 gigs of my old 20Gb iPod; seriously, does anyone even KNOW 40,000 songs for the 160Gb model they released today?).

Maybe if they opened up the device to competition from other cellular networks, it wouldn't be seen as too expensive considering it doesn't work well. Making the device open would allow more people to keep their service and transfer it over, and would make the phone more attractive to those who like their plans. But Apple was stubborn, fell in line with the typical way things are done in the cell phone industry when they had the juice to be bold, and now they're paying the price in a big way.

Technology is like information; it wants to be free.

UPDATE: This is not the publicity any company desires:

Steve Jobs' casual announcement today that Apple (AAPL) was cutting the price of the 8GB iPhone by $200 is not going over well among customers who paid $599 for theirs. In fact, it has sparked an outright rebellion in the Apple support forums, where discussion threads filled with hate mail are piling up faster than Apple can delete them.

"The more the day goes by, the more furious I become," writes VSiskos in "1 Million People Slapped In The Face Today," one of the forums still standing.

"I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS!" adds graphicalliber425. " Somewhere in my heart I'm hoping, Apple's going to offer all of us an extended return policy, or a brand new iPod nano right?"

Under's Apple's standard return policy, customers who bought a product within 14 days of a price reduction can ask to be reimbursed the difference, and some Apple stores have reportedly done the same for iPhones purchased earlier than that. But those random acts of flexibility seem only to have further inflamed the wounded feelings of those who weren't extended the same courtesy.

"They told me to shove it," wrote tulanejosjh. "14 days or nothing."

"Same here," added jmolina1313. "The guy treated me like I was on drugs!"

Apple had to know that people would be furious about this. They obviously calculated that they would rather take that hit (and the loss of perhaps fifty million dollars in revenue, if a just a quarter of iPhone purchasers turn theirs in) than try to sell a lame product. They must be cursing AT&T something fierce right now.

Did I Say That Out Loud

While decrying the public debate over the FISA bill and wiretapping, and actually claiming Americans are going to die if the debate persists, NSA head Michael McConnell also gave up a bunch of information about wiretapping that nobody knew before, certainly not during what sadly passed for public debate.

Some highlights of McConnell’s revelations:

Court ruling declared Bush’s program illegal on May 31: “After the 31st of May we were in extremis because now we have significantly less capability” when a federal court ruled part of the wiretapping program illegal, McConnell said.

Private sector actively involved in wiretapping program: “Under the president’s program, the terrorist surveillance program, the private sector had assisted us,” said McConnell. “Now if you play out the suits at the value they’re claimed, it would bankrupt these companies,” McConnell said, arguing for legal immunity for the companies when Congress returns from recess.

McConnell denies White House involvement: “The president’s guidance to me early in the process, was, ‘You’ve got the experience. I trust your judgement. You make the right call. There’s no pressure from anybody here,” McConnell claimed.

Thousands overseas are being monitored via warrants. “Offering never-disclosed figures, McConnell also revealed that fewer than 100 people inside the United States are monitored under FISA warrants. However, he said, thousands of people overseas are monitored,” states the AP.

Takes 200 hours to assemble a wiretapping warrant: McConnell alleged that “the issue is volume and time” as to why he was so adamant about pursuing warrantless wiretapping. “My argument was that the intelligence community should not be restricted. … It takes about 200 man hours to do one telephone number.”

I don't believe that it takes 200 hours to write up a frickin' warrant, but even if it did, tough guys, democracy is hard work. But the real revelation here is that AT&T and other telecom companies collaborated with the government to violate our civil liberties through spying. It's clear that McConnell has validated the lawsuits filed against these telecom companies by admitting this illegal involvement. Which is why there is going to be ENORMOUS pressure on the Congress to bail them out by making these companies immune from prosecution. Which the Democrats should respond to with some version of "Sorry, I can't hear you, maybe you should get a new phone, one that doesn't spy on me," but I am not optimistic about that happening.

AP has more. This is a major blunder by McConnell. Once again, Republicans see nothing wrong with leaking state secrets for their own political purposes.

Why We Need Net Neutrality

While I was in Chicago for Yearly Kos, Pearl Jam was playing Lollapalooza just down the street in Grant Park. Some lucky convention-goers could see and hear the concert from their hotel windows. AT&T webcast the event, and they decided to save our virgin ears from some of Eddie Vedder's political statements.

During the live Lollapalooza Webcast of a concert by the Seattle-based super-group, the telco giant muted lead singer Eddie Vedder just as he launched into a lyric against President George Bush. The lines — “George Bush, leave this world alone” and “George Bush find yourself another home” were somehow lost in the mix.

“What happened to us this weekend was a wake up call, and it’s about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band,” Pearl Jam band members stated in a release following the incident.

AT&T claimed it was an oversight and a mistake, but now a whistleblower has come forward and claimed it was official policy to censor speech on the webcast. (h/t Open Left)

A crew member who worked on a show webcast by AT&T confirmed that there was a policy in place to remove artists' political comments from shows before they were webcast.

"I can definitively say that at a previous event where AT&T was covering the show, the instructions were to shut it down if there was any swearing or if anybody starts getting political. Granted, they didn't say to shut down any Anti-Bush comments or anything specific to any point of view or party, but 'getting political' was mentioned."

The head of AT&T, Randall Stephenson, is on the record saying that "We're going to control the video on our network." And that's exactly what they've done in this webcast. The implication being that, if AT&T has control of the pipeline, they're going to monitor and meddle with content. That's why we need a free and open Internet where big telecom companies like this cannot throw their weight around and fundamentally change the uniqueness of the Web.

(hopefully you'll see this message at all!)

Through The Looking Glass

There was apparently a spirited circuit court hearing yesterday in San Francisco, with Bush Administration lawyers arguing that the President is a king and has the power literally to block your eyes from reading.

Lawyers for the Bush administration encountered a federal appeals court Wednesday that appeared deeply skeptical of a blanket claim that the government's surveillance efforts cannot be challenged in court because the litigation might reveal state secrets.

"The bottom line here is the government declares something is a state secret, that's the end of it. No cases. . . . The king can do no wrong," said Judge Harry Pregerson, one of three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit who grilled administration lawyers at length over whether a pair of lawsuits against the government should go forward.

Deputy Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre was forced to mount a public argument that almost nothing about the substance of the government's conduct could be talked about in court because doing so might expose either the methods used in gathering intelligence or gaps in those methods.

"This seems to put us in the 'trust us' category," Judge M. Margaret McKeown said about the government's assertions that its surveillance activities did not violate the law. " 'We don't do it. Trust us. And don't ask us about it.' "

At one point, Garre argued that courts are not the right forum for complaints about government surveillance, and that "other avenues" are available. "What is that? Impeachment?" Pregerson shot back.

Man, I wish I was in that room.

This state secrets privilege has been completely abused by many Administrations, but particularly this one. Their entire argument seems to be "you can't allow this clear case of illegal spying to go through because then the people we illegally spied upon would know about it!"

It's just completely divorced from reality and from the American system. So of course, watch the right-wing Supreme Court sanction it. (They're getting the case no matter what the SF Appeals Court says, anyway)

CDP Convention: On Net Neutrality

Julia Rosen gives an excellent backgrounder on how the net neutrality resolution was shanghai'd:

Several weeks ago the Party leadership and upper level staff had a conference call lasting several hours to discuss the proposed resolutions. They have these calls prior to every convention. At that meeting they discuss who is on either side of the issue, what the party has at stake and decide what to do about them. They have several choices. The ones they want to have heard are allowed to proceed. All others are either denied due to technicalities, or referred to other committees.

In this case they knew that AT&T, a major party donor and sponsor of the convention, opposed the deal. Since Alexandra Gallardo-Rooker, 1st Vice-Chair of the Party sits on the Executive Board of CWA #9400 they knew about CWA's issues with net neutrality. They also knew that Jim Gordon, Chair of the Labor Caucus, is also with CWA. Thus, they could be assured that the concerns of the organization would be addressed when the resolution is heard at a later date. In addition, one must be a member of a union and a dues paying member of the Labor Caucus to be heard at their meetings. Those supporting net neutrality would be unlikely to have someone to carry this for them at any meeting.

The only way a net neutrality resolution will ever have a chance of being endorsed by the California Democratic Party is to have CWA on board. The focus would have to be on how packets get treated and not deal at all with the issue of big companies like Google helping pay for building out the next generation of high speed in the country. Otherwise the Party leaders will deny us at every turn. Now it is possible to navigate the system and pass a net neutrality resolution, but it will take a lot of effort to make it happen.

The bloggers in California are not big enough and powerful enough to do this alone. We have the respect of the CDP, but not the leverage. We need to cultivate partners that can tap into the activist communities and mobilize people so that we can get an inside-outside strategy the way that progressives did on the impeachment issue. Fortunately, I was told that PDA is going to spend the next year "scaring our membership to death" about net neutrality. "Without net neutrality, we can't organize," I was told. So I think the opportunity is there to coordinate on the issue and get the partners we need. There are good people who want to move forward and take up this fight. I know what Governor Richardson said to us in our private meeting with him (more on that later). "Don't let the telcos swallow you up, because they'll take you out." If you explain this issue to people, it hits them where they live. I'm confident we can duplicate the inside-outside strategy. But it will take an incredible effort.

Nuñez Drops $4 Million on Sweet AT&T Home Entertainment Center

In preparation for his upcoming appearance on MTV's Cribs, California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez has constructed perhaps the most state-of-the-art home entertainment system that anyone has ever seen, using equipment exclusive to AT&T and costing a whopping $4 million dollars - in fact, exactly $4 million dollars, to the penny. Nuñez reportedly paid with a co-signed check.

"This system's got it all," said an ebullient Nuñez while introducing the system to reporters at his downtown LA condo. "There's complete wireless Internet throughout the place, unlimited long distance and cellular service through Cingular, an iPhone, IP television through AT&T U-verse (just OK'd by the state Public Utilities Commission), and we even threw a cell tower on the roof so we'd never drop a signal." AT&T doesn't currently make computers or television monitors or what Nuñez described as "kickass" speakers, but they made a special dispensation for the Speaker, creating limited-edition electronics and hiring some of the best engineers from Sony and Toshiba to do it.

Amazingly, the bill for this service came to precisely $4,000,000.00, coincidentally the same cost that the California Democratic Party refunded to Nuñez last fall after the 2006 elections. AT&T spokesman Donald Ralston denied that this home entertainment system was simply the final piece of some secret deal made between the company, Nuñez and the Party. "Hey, if I had a spare $4 million lying around, I'd get myself this same deal," Ralston said. "You can get Internet in the bathroom. Did you hear me? The bathroom!"

The home entertainment center may prove an asset in the upcoming statewide initiative over relaxing term limits for state legislators. Nuñez plans to offer voters free nights in his "tricked-out" Web-enabled condo, so they can obtain more information on the term limits battle and why state lawmakers need the wisdom of experience to negotiate the difficult straits of Sacramento. He also is using the AT&T deal itself as a selling point. "Do you think some rookie lawmaker could get himself this kind of setup? Did the spokesman tell you that you can get Internet in the BATHROOM???"

Other amenities in the condo include a Web-based kitchen with cooking timers and automated appliances "like the Jetsons," in Nuñez' words. The bathroom reportedly is also Internet-enabled. A text message from Nuñez' iPhone can also unlock the front door.

Fellow lawmakers in the Assembly have offered tepid but mildly jealous support, although Minority Leader Mike Villines claimed that the living room blinds with a giant representation of the AT&T logo on them was "a bit much."

Fabian Nunez Should Be Primaried

Let me first say that I am generally a supporter of relaxing restrictive term limits, in the larger context of reforming elections generally so that the people get to decide when their legislator's time is up. But take a look at the condescension dripping from this statement from the Assembly Speaker:

Riding high from a session last year that many praised as the Legislature's most productive in years, and without an obvious landing pad when he is termed out next year, Nuñez has increasingly said in recent months that he thinks that voters will be open to adjusting term limits.

"You can't do the job effectively if you can't be there for a reasonable amount of time, to have a real grasp on the issues," he told a group of newspaper publishers last month. " … It takes a couple of years to develop the level of expertise and know-how to negotiate a balanced budget."

To me, that reads as "I own this seat, and I deserve to be here as long as I possibly can."

There are these things called primary elections, and the people (in a perfect world, anyway) are supposed to judge the qualifications of each candidate and make their own choice. You can run on experience, but you're not entitled to your position because of it. And you certainly should not be able to change the rules mid-stream and subvert the prior will of the voters in a power grab to keep the Speaker's gavel:

The proposed initiative would extend the terms of sitting lawmakers by allowing them to remain in place until they have served 12 years in their current house. Some could end up serving as many as 20 years in the Legislature before having to leave.

People already termed out of the Assembly or Senate could not run for those houses again. Former lawmakers' years of service would count toward the 12-year cap if they returned to the Capitol.

How clever. So those who used to be in government and see this as an opportunity to return get the door slammed in their face, but Nuñez gets to extend himself for six more years. It's like a sentencing law that only applies to people who have already committed the crime instead of those who are in the process of committing it.

We all know that this was the real reason for the move of the Presidential primary to February. Nuñez wants to run again in 2008, so he crafted a law that will enable him to do so. He also has over $7 million in the bank for any possible campaigns, $4 million of it from AT&T laundered through the California Democratic Party for services rendered.

At least Don Perata, who also stands to gain from the change in the law (although according to Frank Russo he may have to get the law rewritten to benefit), is a little more discreet about it, and he says the right things:

After he learned of the proposed initiative Thursday from Nuñez, Perata issued a statement that any modification should be tied to a discussion of how to make government more open and accountable.

"It's not just about how long we serve," Perata said, "but how well we serve."

But Nuñez is so lustful of power that he doesn't mind the appearance of impropriety. If he is serious about relaxing term limits in the pursuit of more enlightened public officials, he would sign a pledge vowing not to run again and benefit from the law he is shepherding. Nunez could run for state Senate and serve 8 years if he wanted to stay in public office. He could bring his experience in Sacramento to bear in the other chamber. But he's just got to have that gavel in his hand. It's the only way to enrich his campaign coffers, I guess.

If he refuses to sign such a pledge, and insists on using the state initiative process as a personal power grab, then someone in the 46th Assembly District ought to challenge him for that seat. And there would be exactly two issues in that campaign: this initiative, and the $4 million handoff from AT&T. And while Nuñez has a nice record in other areas and a great deal of powerful friends and influence in his district, I suspect those two issues would be very persuasive.