Supreme Court to consider hearing case challenging Obama’s citizenship

By James Janega
Chicago Tribune

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider Friday whether to take up a lawsuit challenging President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship, a continuation of a New Jersey case embraced by many opponents of Obama’s election.

The meeting of justices will coincide with a vigil by the filer’s supporters in Washington on the steps of the nation’s highest court.

The suit originally sought to stay the election, and was filed on behalf of Leo Donofrio against New Jersey Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells.

Legal experts say the appeal holds little chance for success, despite appearing on the court’s Dec. 5 schedule. Legal records show it is the tip of an iceberg of nationwide efforts seeking to derail Obama’s election over accusations that he either wasn’t born a U.S. citizen or that he later renounced his citizenship in Indonesia.

The Obama campaign has maintained that he was born in Hawaii, has an authentic birth certificate, and is a “natural-born” U.S. citizen. Hawaiian officials agree.

Among those filing lawsuits is Alan Keyes, who lost to Obama in the 2004 Illinois Senate race. Keyes’ suit seeks to halt certification of votes in California. Another suit by a Kentucky man seeks to have a federal judge review the copy of Obama’s original birth certificate — which Hawaii officials say is locked in a state vault.

Other suits have been filed by Andy Martin, whose case was dismissed in Hawaii, and by a man in Ohio whose case also was dismissed. Five more cases have been filed and dismissed in Hawaii by a person currently suing the “Peoples Association of Human, Animals Conceived God/s and Religions, John McCain (and) USA Govt.” The plaintiff previously sought to sue Wikipedia and “All News Media.”

The most famous case questioning Obama’s citizenship was filed in Pennsylvania in August on behalf of Philip J. Berg and sought to enjoin the Democratic National Committee from nominating Obama. An appeal was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Earlier, a federal judge rejected it for “lack of standing,” which in this case means that, because the plaintiff’s alleged injury is shared equally by everyone else, the matter should be left for decision by the Electoral College or Congress rather than the courts, said legal scholar Eugene Volokh of the University of California at Los Angeles.

The remaining case with the highest profile is Donofrio v. Wells. Because it was distributed by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas to other justices for conference, it gained undue importance among people with little knowledge of Supreme Court processes, Volokh said.

Many petitioners seeking stays of pending events have their cases distributed to the full court, he said. Of those, Volokh found 782 were denied in the last eight years while just 60 were heard — and not all of those cases were successful.

Source: Detroit Free Press

de la Mancha has announced a special offer for bathtub, a flexible and configurable stereo compressor VST plug-in for Windows PC.

It’s that time of year again where the special offers come rolling in, and the elves at de la Mancha’s grotto wanted to join in. So until Thursday 11th December^*, if you buy *bathtub* dual compressor/limiter ($29) then you get a copy of *unstable* and *pitchfork* pitch wobblers for free (usual price $15 each)

All you need to do is purchase bathtub and both unstable and pitchfork will be included in the download with bathtub.

Visit de la Mancha for more information and links to download demo versions of bathtub, unstable and pitchfork.

^* offer ends at 09:00 GMT on Friday 12^th December

Current FuseBox Radio Broadcast Radio & Internet Affiliates (as of this week):

UrbanNetwork.com's The Mix Internet Radio Station - UN Power Jam Radio (owned by Urban Network Magazine, OKRP.com, ReeWineMusic.com/ReeWine Radio, Progressive Blend Radio, Sprint Radio Extra/mSpot (via the Worldwide Alpha Communications Network), SouthBound.FM, DeadBeat Radio, CrackAudio.com, TheBestJams.com/The Best Jams Radio, FlyTunes.FM/FlyCast, Planet Urban (Austrailia)/PlanetUrban.com.au, AmalgamDigital.com, BlockJams.com, ConspiracyUK.com , FONYE Radio , VI Radio , DurdeeSouthRadio.com , Beyond.FM , MyBlockRadio.net, Rutgers University Radio, WRSU 88.7 FM, Stop Beefin' Start Eatin' Radio, Ceesiety Radio, Mixshow Blast Radio, Slip-N-Slide DJs Podcast, The Best Jams, ExtravaGangsta Radio, HipHopSoulRadio.com , Digiwaxx Presents: The Blast , White Folks Get Crunk for DJs, Legion Music & Media, 1.FM Jamz (coming Jan. 1, 2009), The6.FM (coming soon), Blayze University Radio (coming soon), BlackCoffeeChannel.com (Coming Soon), Gutta Muzik (HD) Radio (Coming Soon), StreetsD.com (Streets Mos Magazine Radio) (Coming Soon)

Today Yahoo! Music made a big announcement: we’ll be partnering with CBS Radio to offer a jointly operated radio service to our users, which will be called LAUNCHcast Radio powered by CBS.

This will replace our existing service by moving radio to the CBS Interactive platform, with CBS providing the content, radio player and advertising. Our content team will continue to program our wide array of 150 radio stations using the CBS programming tools.

Though we’re announcing this today, the first release will take place on Feb. 12th, 2009, with subsequent releases afterwards to add features and functionality.

I’d like to walk you all through the rationale for this and then talk through the changes to the product.

In the past year and a half, the cost of operating Internet radio has changed drastically. There have been a series of court decisions, one in March of 2007 and one in April of 2008 that greatly increased the cost of Internet radio, to the point where we would be losing a lot of money if we continued to operate LAUNCHcast in its current form next year.

Yahoo! has never made a lot of money from Internet radio: it’s generally been a consumer feature and not a big profit center. However, we really couldn’t afford to pay the new rates, so we therefore faced a choice: either cripple the product to greatly reduce listenership, or find a partner with strengths in radio and different economics.

CBS Radio and Yahoo! started a discussion about the future of web radio several months ago. At the time, we were very impressed by their platform. CBS has a long tradition in the radio space, and has recently invested heavily in developing a great platform for the delivery of Internet radio. They’ve improved their offering by adding Last.fm and adding it to their family of companies.

The most critical part of our discussion was to ensure that any potential partner was committed to Internet radio and its users. CBS clearly has that commitment and is in it for the long haul.

CBS also has a great understanding of how to develop an excellent radio product. They’ve taken their deep knowledge of radio and built a platform that enables sophisticated programming, and through Last.fm they have access to great personalization technology.

So how will this affect users of LAUNCHcast Radio? When we flip the switch in February, here’s what you’ll see change:
- For the first time, the new ‘LAUNCHcast powered by CBS’ player will work on Firefox and on Macs, bringing LAUNCHcast radio to all of you who don’t use Internet Explorer. Yes, this is something we’ve wanted to do for a while, and it’s finally here.
- We’ll keep programming 150 radio stations for your enjoyment. You may see the content change slightly as we adjust to the new tools and catalog, but for the most part we’ll be offering the same radio stations, which will be programmed by our team here at Yahoo! Music using the CBS tools. All of these stations will now be free.
- We’ll continue to offer artist fan radio, which plays music related to an artist that you select. This will be offered as part of the redesigned artist pages we’ll be launching early next year.
- We’re going to be phasing out LAUNCHcast Plus. For all of you subscribers, we’ll be offering refunds for the remaining length of your subscription when we make the change on February 12. We will be making all subscription stations absolutely free, and will offer all audio at the higher quality bitrate.
- The major change you’ll see is that our beloved customized LAUNCHcast Radio will be going away. We spent a long time trying to figure out how to get this to work with the CBS platform, but unfortunately it wasn’t technically feasible. I understand that many of you have invested long hours in building your radio station, but the fact is that due to the increasing rates, we can’t continue to offer this service. Your ratings will continue to be accessible and those ratings will power recommendations of songs and music videos on our homepage, as well as your personalized music video station. We’ll also be introducing some social functionality in the next few weeks which will allow you to use your ratings to share music with friends across Yahoo!. Next year, we’ll be collaborating with CBS and Last.fm to redesign a set of personalized functionality for our site, as it’s something we certainly view as very important.

So that’s what we’re up to. Please feel free to post questions in the comments or refer to our FAQs for more info. We’ll try to answer all the questions as best we can.

Thanks,

Michael Spiegelman
General Manager, Yahoo! Music

DJ Rabano - Drum The Band (Melvin Reese And Greed N Pride Idiotic Mix) [Big Boss Records]

Vlado, 5prite - Cor Blimey (Andrew Nikolov Remix) [Seaburn Records]

Alex Cor - This Is Ibiza (Torsion System Remix) [Royal Tracks]

Tom Novy, Adrian Bahil - Ziganje (Original Version) [Kosmo Records]

Dole & Kom - Still The Same (Original Mix) [Parquet Recordings]

Henrik B - Waenern (Original Mix) [Joia Records]

Henrik B - Wettern (Original Mix) [Joia Records]

The Free Radicals Formation - Reign (Original Mix) [Sunset (Factomania)]

Chriss Ortega, Christian Hinzer - The Groove (Josh The Funky 1 & Jewelz Remix) [S2G Productions]

Manuel De La Mare, Matteo Matteini - More Than A Woman (Original Mix) [Hotfingers]

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Evan Parker is interviewed.

It may be almost impossible to be involved in free improvisational forms and not be influenced by the compositional genius of Evan Parker. As a saxophonist, he has created one of the most original voices in the history of the instrument and after several decades, remains one of music’s most important pioneers.

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