after seven years of delay, the US Senate passed legislation desiged to reform campaign finance by eliminating unregulated "soft money" contributions and restricting "issue advertising". the legislation's most strident critics have vowed to take their challenge to the courts.

opponents argue that campaign finance reform infringes upon free speech, and constitutes an undue regulation of the actions of all Americans. this is the kind of language you would expect to hear in opposition of, say, Sen Hollings' SSSCA/CBDTPA, or the DMCA, or the Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, (CTEA) but in those cases we're actually dealing with free speech. in Washington "free speech" means "money".

the seemingly indefinite extension of copyright shrinks speech and ideas in the public domain. the forced compliance with copyright owners' "copy-protection" schemes erodes our right to fair use. the criminalization of any activity or speech that aids in circumventing those schemes (regardless of the reason) stifles protest, creativity, and commerce.

if money is the lifeblood of politics, then Big Content has performed a massive transfusion in this election cycle, injecting nearly $7 million dollars into the electoral process [that is, unless you count Haim "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers" Saban's recent largesse to the Democratic party, estimated to be between $7 million and $10 million] about half of that was in "soft money" contributions, which would be banned under the new legislation. against this opposition, we have the efforts of you, me, and organizations like the EFF.

citizens and consumers desperately need a seat at the policy-making table. the only way we're going to get that is to reduce the overwhelming influence that corporate and special interests have through campaign contributions.

Eastgate Systems has released Tinderbox 1.0 (for Mac OS 8.5-9.x and Classic, but Mac OS X is coming "very soon"), a personal content management assistant built by hypertext pioneer Mark Bernstein. the idea behind Tinderbox -- agent-based adaptive organization of notes -- is interesting, and could make a huge difference in the way you approach writing and sharing frequently-updated content (like weblogs). (via MacInTouch)