Pravda isn't reading David Brooks.

I refer to this piece: "US Congress Cracks Down on Freedom of Speech in Russia"

American congressmen ought to know that the present-day Russia is one of the world leaders on the quantity of US-based newspapers and magazines published in Russia. One can go out and buy a variety of publications - from Russian Newsweek to Russian Penthouse. None of their top managers have ever complained of any pressure from the authorities.

The US administration disregards the fact that liberal media outlets, to which American law-makers have a great fondness, can work in Russia absolutely freely (including that pesky Andrei Babitsky of RFE/RL?). Liberal journalists harshly criticized the Office of the Prosecutor General during the development of the notorious Yukos case, for example. If a similar situation occurred in the States, the directors of such publications would obviously be punished.

Quite on the contrary, limitless freedom of speech does not exist in the USA at all. The New York Times, which is considered to be the example of objectiveness in the USA, is the tribune of the Democratic Party. If a journalist's opinion differs from the one of the party members, he or she will not be allowed to work in the newspaper.

Yes, I am around, as I had to demonstrate this evening for the November 8th gubernatorial election; and, actually, my somewhat frenzied travel schedule has slowed down (must do something about that), so I will actually be in town on election Tuesday.

"I'm a special circumstance," I told the poll worker in reply to her question, would I be out of town that day. She blinked. "The county government thinks I'm in Kazakhstan." Some things just make more sense to me than they do to others.

Did I have an absentee ballot, she asked. Oh yes, I told her; it's been sent to my address in Kazakhstan, and will be returned to me, I'm quite confident, in several months.

This was troublesome. She thought I should vote via a paper ballot on election day. She thought, perhaps, that I should have noticed the deadline by which I must notify the county officials that I'm in-country. I knew, on the basis of a phone conversation with the powers-that-be at the county office to whom I'd been referred, that I needed to vote in person via a paper absentee ballot, and to sign an affirmation that I had never received my absentee ballot in the mail, and would not, should I ever receive it. Her supervisor affirmed this.

As another poll worker phoned down to Richmond to confirm my status, she told him that my ballot was lost in the mail. I broke in to say that it was not lost; it was merely slow. She corrected me: lost. Now wait just a minute: "under penalty of perjury" is dotted across materials all over the absentee ballots, and I had honestly stated the valid reason that I had never received my ballot.

"You can't say that!" she told me. Well, why not, I thought; what I can't say is the reason you're insisting is true. "I haven't yet received it and I don't expect to receive it before the election." She didn't contest me again.

I'm troubled, too, at the request for an absentee ballot: in the list of reasons why absentee voting is needed, my case is not listed among them; nor is there a space for "other". The poll worker finally decided that I worked in Rosslyn, I couldn't vote in person on account of my job.

At no point during any of this was I asked to present identification; I was only asked if I happened to have my social security card on me, for the computer system was having difficulties pulling my record.

But at the end, after I'd finally voted, the poll workers gave me information on what website to find the downloadable absentee form for next November, should I need it. Thanks, but I'll be in Chicago, I told them. Oh, in that case, vote several times. Will do my best, I promised. And when my absentee ballot does finally arrive, I won't throw it away, as I had planned to do, but return it, unopened, to the county office.

Timothy Burke has a typically thoughtful post about the complicated state of unionism in this country; the comments are worth reading, too.

On a vaguely related note, Russell Arben Fox put up a bunch of entries lately. Check 'em out.

Jacob Levy reminding Crooked Timberites about that whole enumerated powers thing here.

Also briefly here, on the biasedness of simple definitions of "judicial activism."

Man, those commentators can get pretty worked up.

I finally finished slogging my way through Maureen Dowd's vanity piece in the New York Times Magazine. Mostly, I did this so I could eviscerate it on the blog, since seven pages of "Dowdworld" is, in my opinion, a level of hell too horrid to show Dante. (I recognize that this is, perhaps, not healthy.)

Besides containing levels of Dowdness that should be classified as toxic by the EPA, this article falls into my least favorite category of Times story: late-night office bitch-fest turned into alarming trend article. Times trend reporting is so often so amazingly insular that is seems to describe a foreign culture even to me--and I'm an intellectual, socially liberal yuppie living in Manhattan! Even more amazing is the utter failure of the writers of these articles to display any sort of awareness of how their reporting is informed by their class status: educated and connected enough to move in elite circles, but not wealthy enough to feel secure there.

But to return, alas, to La Dowd. Apparently, Ms. Dowd is not happy because, despite being undeniably foxy for a fiftysomething woman, she's not married. Apparently as well, somehow her failure to successfully hook a man richer, more famous, and more powerful than herself indicts modern feminism (Or maybe the failure of modern feminism. She kind of waffles on this point). Also, evolution is to blame. And, it's totally a trend because all her girlfriends who work at the Times totally feel the same way.

Frankly, this article deserved to be published about as much as an article by a male columnist lamenting the social injustice inherent in the lack of supermodels who want to marry Times reporters. However, any man who felt that way wouldn't write such an article, because he would have happily settled down with an off-Broadway actress or yoga teacher, or similar available supermodel substitute. Men understand that the patriarchy is not a magic genie that grants them their every wish. I have no idea where the idea got started that feminism was some sort of fairy godmother that was going to give women everywhere everything their heart desires, but it's a surprisingly persistent idea that has the effect of obscuring, for both conservative and liberal critics of contemporary feminism, the very real gains women have enjoyed in so many areas over the past generation.

So yes, perhaps you can't be both a high-powered executive and a devoted mother (just as you can't really be a high-powered executive and a devoted father), or the eviscerating, bitch-queen columnist of the New York Times and have men not be intimidated by you. Life's full of tough choices and tradeoffs, and nothing will do away with them all. The point of feminism lies in allowing women to make those choices for themselves, not have the choices made for them by a paternalistic society.

Or maybe, it's just that Maureen Dowd is as shallow, mean, and self-centered in person as she is in her writing.

(Phoebe is more forgiving, Amber is not.)

Unbeknownst to me, I appear to have sued Netflix, the mail-order service that keeps me supplied with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and West Wing DVDs. What is more, I-- along with thousands of others-- appear likely to win a settlement. The result is this settlement, which, if approved, will give me about an extra 5 DVD rentals from Netflix unless I decide to opt out and sue on my own. In other words, I am unwittingly in a class action. The information is here, via Anthony Rickey.

Now in some sense this feels like manna from heaven; I had no idea that I was wronged, no particular interest in suing, but will now receive a benefit with the cash value of about 6 dollars. Not much manna, but manna nonetheless.

On the other hand, the experience verifies for me the basic weirdness of public commercial regulation by the California district courts. At the moment, my concern is to ask-- why should I be paid in services (allegedly defective services) rather than cash? I understand why Netflix wants to do it this way, but given that my represntation in the class is tenuous at best, and given the imperfect nature of intra-group altruism, why not have a procedural rule that class actions like this ought to be settled in cash, or at least that contignent fees for the class lawyers ought to be based on cash rather than coupons?

Not that I'm not perfectly happy to get a few more DVDs, but if I had an extra six dollars one month I wouldn't spend it on upgrading my Netflix account.

UPDATE: A Friend of Crescat points out that after the Class Action Fairness Act (PDF) (which doesn't apply retroactively), things are likely to be different.

UPDATE TWO: This website is devoted to complaining about the settlement, which apparently netted the lawyers 2.5 million dollars. I still think it ought to have netted them 2.5 million dollars in Netflix DVD rentals.

UPDATE THREE: I have more thoughts and links here.