onfocus

Instead of auto-posts from del.icio.us, I'm going to post links in batches—maybe once a week. (?) This time around I'm focusing on the three P's: Politics, Parenting, and the iPhone.

If I detach from the mess our federal government is in, watching the gears grind is fascinating. In school they'd throw out wild scenarios just to show that the framers built a robust system with multiple redundancies that couldn't possibly be toppled by one of the branches loosing their collective minds. We have a system for Presidential succession, checks and balances, and an orderly justice system that can ferret out corruption even in the halls of power. With the administration pushing the limits of our system, reading the news everyday is like a civics lesson. Follow along:

• Washington Post: Broader Privilege Claimed In Firings: "...administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege." This article mentions congress' power of inherent contempt not used since the 30's.
• Harper's: A Republic, If You Can Keep It: "...they will argue that the president, because he controls the apparatus of the administration of the law—the Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorneys—can do exactly as he likes, and the Congress can do nothing about it." This article puts the current swing toward authoritarianism in historical perspective.
• Why bother with impeachment? That's the question Bill Moyers put to Bruce Fein in a fascinating interview. Bill Moyers: Tough Talk on Impeachment.

Like I mentioned, if I emotionally detach from the situation at hand, it'll be interesting to see if the American system can handle the strain. I'm not giving up hope yet.

Here are a few parenting-related bookmarks:

• Alternatives to mainstream baby paraphernalia? Every single thing we've received from the hospital has been branded—diaper brands, mostly. And the diapers themselves are branded with children's TV show characters. So this question about finding non-branded baby stuff is something I've been wondering for a while.
• We're still considering names, and for a while I had the Baby Names Voyager up more than Google. The other day sk found Nymbler, a nice Ajax-y interface for name recommendations. I wish it had a bit more information about each name, but it's a great start.
• Megnut: How I ate while pregnant: "Believe me when I tell you the pressure to ensure everything you eat isn't going to kill or permanently damage your unborn child is intense."

I'm loving my iPhone. Related:

• TUAW: ssh on iPhone. Hackers have found a way to get SSH working. This is early, but ssh would let me do administrative crap on my servers via the iPhone. I hope this gets solid soon.
• iPhone VNC. A remote desktop tool that runs in the iPhone browser. Very nice hack, but I'm not sure I trust running a modified VNC on my servers.
• I've been trying to figure out if I like the standard Google interface on the iPhone, or the mobile interface better. And now there's this: Google iPhone Search. Too many choices.

And we're up to date.