Jill Carroll freed

Good news: Kidnapped reporter Jill Carroll has been freed. Early indications are she doesn't know who kidnapped her, or why they did it; but she was not abused in her captivity. A whole big pile of questions will be asked in the coming days, likely with few answers. For now, it's enough to be thankful.

Supporting the troops

I wrote the last post on a lying wanna-be politician before his Web page, getting clobbered by the demand, would load on my computer. There's a great excerpt from the page:

It was called the "Voices of Soldiers" Truth Tour and it gave our troops the opportunity to report back to home exactly what was taking place in Iraq.

The stories told by our troops about the progress they are making in Iraq runs absolutely counter to what you see the old-line media report.

Funny how he has to lie on his truth tour.

Anyway, that name brings back to mind the old "Soldiers For The Truth" campaign run by the now-late David Hackworth, who often ran counter to military protocol to do what was right for his soldiers ... or what he thought was right ... or what he said he thought was right. Either way, Hackworth was an advocate, and just as a politician lies to present a "truth" I'm thinking the guy's rolling over in his grave over a GAO report described by Stars & Stripes:

The GAO found that the Army decided in November 2003 troops would need at least 3,780 truck armor kits to upgrade lightly protected vehicles in Iraq.

Those kits weren’t delivered until 2005, and they weren’t all installed until 18 months after the need was identified.

Maybe other people have different ways of supporting the troops. This seems like a great place to start. Whether you support the fact or the conduct of the war in Iraq, few Americans want to see American troops die needlessly.

Edit: Some objective facts about Iraq are found in the Brookings Institution's excellent Iraq Index. The reader is free to make his/her own conclusions. Note the document is broken into three major sections.

Politician off to an energetic start

Through Fark.com I found this DailyKos story, which shows a California political candidate lying even before he gets into office.

The politico in question, one Howard Kaloogian, hopes to replace the marvelously corrupt Duke Cunningham. Kaloogian's aim is far less effective than Cunningham, who shot down three MiGs in one day over Vietnam before adopting the morals of the Nixon administration.

Editor & Publisher has more details:

He posted on the official Web site for his campaign a picture taken in “downtown Baghdad,” he said, during his visit to the city, which supposedly indicated that the media was wrong about the level of violence in the city. “We took this photo of downtown Baghdad while we were in Iraq,” he wrote. “Iraq (including Baghdad) is much more calm and stable than what many people believe it to be. But, each day the news media finds any violence occurring in the country and screams and shouts about it - in part because many journalists are opposed to the U.S. effort to fight terrorism."

But the blogosphere quickly smelled a rat. The photo featured people who didn’t seem dressed quite right for Iraq, and signs and billboards that looked off, too. In the now-familiar pattern, the ace detective work leaped from obscure blogs to the well-known (Talking Points Memo, Eschaton, Attytood, more), and back again, as eagle-eyed experts proposed alternative locales, with Turkey a likely suspect.

A reader on DailyKos proved it was in Turkey.

Kudos to the readers who caught this one. It's not a perfect job -- the DailyKos page still has the politico's name spelled incorrectly -- but together they caught a lying politician with his pants down.

Media gunning for ignorance

So a guy in Dudley, Mass., made a stash of weapons. This story from Boston's Channel 7 refered to a gun as a .50-caliber machine gun. It's not.

One television station last night -- maybe a different one, I don't know -- referred to a .50-caliber assault rifle. There ain't such an animal.

Channel 7 at least has a picture, which sure looks like a M1917/M1919 .30-caliber machine gun, possibly in semi-automatic. In many places, probably not Massachusetts, it's legal for nearly anyone to buy; this guy on AuctionArms.com is selling a rare variant. This one is fully semi-automatic, so it's not technically a machine gun. I don't know about the gun in Dudley.

Why is it so few people in the media know anything about guns? I suspect they were fed bad information by the cops, who may not know any more. You'd think this'd be a job requirement somewhere ...

The stories out of Dudley refer to a "grenade launcher" or "rocket launcher." MeTheSheeple finds himself wondering just what it was.

Take our constitution. We weren't using it, anyway.

Interesting story via Fark.com and The Washington Post:

... President Bush signed into law a bill that never passed the House. [The bill] – in this case, a major budget-cutting measure that will affect millions of Americans – became a law because it was “certified” by the leaders of the House and Senate.

After stewing for weeks, Public Citizen, a legislative watchdog group, sued Tuesday to block the budget-cutting law, charging that Bush and Republican leaders of Congress flagrantly violated the Constitution when the president signed it into law knowing that the version that cleared the House was substantively different from the Senate’s version.

The issue is bizarre, with even constitutional scholars saying they could not think of any precedent for the journey the budget bill took to becoming a law. Opponents point to elementary school civics lessons to make their case, while Republicans are evoking an obscure Supreme Court ruling from the 1890s to suggest a bill does not have to pass both chambers of Congress to become law.

Remember, the terrorists hate us because of our freedoms.

A bit of fun

This just in from the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui:

Asked by his lawyer why he signed his guilty plea in April as "the 20th hijacker," Moussaoui replied: "Because everybody used to refer to me as the 20th hijacker and it was a bit of fun."

Sometimes, just sometimes, MeTheSheeple thinks cruel and unusual punishment ought to be encouraged by the courts, rather than prohibited.

MeTheSheeple remembers some margin notes in his copy of Dante Aligheri's "The Inferno" that refer to historical permanent solutions to recidivism among child molesters. Those folks could probably come up with something fitting.

Yet, unfortunately, even such disgusting, drastic steps wouldn't counter moves by extremists that think nothing of beheadings.

Lessons learned

Lest people think MeTheSheeple is merely disgruntled over a current war, he'll suggest he can find humor in the tragedies of the past. Quoted in its entirety is the finest letter to the editor he's ever read, via The Boston Globe:

THEODORE SORENSEN, Jack Valenti, Henry Kissinger, and Alexander Haig were at the John F. Kennedy Library recently to speak on lessons learned about the Vietnam War (''Vietnam-era aides cite the lessons of a US defeat," City & Region, March 12).

When I go over a test, I occasionally ask students to show their work on the board. I would never think of inviting failing students to explain how they did a problem.

MARK BRIDGER
Associate professor of mathematics
Northeastern University

*claps*

Hooh-ah

The third anniversary of the beginning of the war in Iraq is bringing about some odd looks back. One of them is via FAIR, a left-wing media criticism group that amassed optimistic quotes from 2003. Of course, FOX News is overrepresented in the quotations. Try this one on for perspective:

"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

My favorite, though, is this:

"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)

Hind sight, of course, is 20/20. But it's hard to expect a good outcome when somebody's wearing blinders. Unfortunately, that somebody is our commander-in-chief, and the blinders are still on. Bush spoke about the anniversary in Ohio yesterday. Bush spoke of successes, like the efforts to drive terrorists from Tal Afar. One wonders if he remembers when the terrorists were driven from Fallujah, and then presumably driven from Fallujah again. MeTheSheeple hopes Tal Afar will be more calm.
Bush concluded the speech with a huge, painful non-sequitur:

Americans have never retreated in the face of thugs and assassins, and we will not begin now.

Unfortunately, very unfortunately, that's not quite true. It was even pointed out a decade ago in the declaration of war by Osama bin Laden, who used to have nothing to do with Iraq. The United States retreated from Lebanon in the face of thugs and assasins. The United States retreated from Somalia in the face of thugs and assassins.

It'd be very nice if we didn't have to screw up again. I'd be much more confident in it if Fearless Leader had a clue. The blinders need to come off, and quickly. I'm afraid he's not just vainly trying to delude the American people; I think he's self delusional. Too many lives are at stake.

One nation under God

A word of warning to liberals and conservatives alike, courtesy of our friends in the War on Terror, via The Boston Globe:

An Afghan man is being prosecuted in a Kabul court and could be sentenced to death on a charge of converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under this country's Islamic laws, a judge said yesterday. ...

... ''He would have been forgiven if he changed back. But he said he was a Christian and would always remain one," [prosecutor Abdul] Wasi told the Associated Press. ''We are Muslims and becoming a Christian is against our laws. He must get the death penalty."

This should scare the hell out of the liberals who believe in cultural or moral relativism, for it shows religious freedoms may be governed by the state.

This should also scare the hell out of conservatives who believe the United States has a free hand to choose allies of convenience to persecute the war on terror. More directly, it should also frighten away those people that think the nation needs to embrace Christianity as a state religion, maybe starting with placing a version of "In God We Trust," already the national motto, onto the national flag, joining the phrase on our currency.

Ironically, The Boston Globe's story on the Afghan man facing execution for exercising his religious freedom came inside the same paper that points out the political problems it could cause Massachusetts' governor in his run for president. Yes, folks, even as the nation has spent three and a half years fighting a war largely on religious grounds, the next president could be a state governor evaluted for his ability to get federal money for religious projects.

Iraq war fatalities

I'm simply excerpting a bit directly from Al's Morning Meeting:

This sobering multimedia presentation makes anyone who sees it grateful for those who are serving in Iraq and those who have served -- and sad for the cost of war. It only takes a couple of minutes to watch.

Hanoi Jane

Some bloggers are ecstatic at action in the Georgia Senate, which first voted to honor "Hanoi" Jane Fonda and then, a day later, voted 1-38, dishonoring her after Republicans forced a vote.

Some people argue that decades of charity work have made Fonda someone to be honored. Others simply point out that she posed with a North Korean anti-aircraft gun that presumably was installed to shoot down American aircraft; at a minimum, then, she was giving comfort to the enemy and should have been tried for treason, the argument goes.

Typical is this reaction, via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

"To a person, we are happy that they voted down the resolution," Marvin Myers, president of the Georgia Vietnam Veterans Alliance said Thursday. "I do not know one Vietnam veteran who thinks Jane Fonda is anything but scum."

That seems to jibe with some veterans that I know. One of them is one of the friendliest, happiest, most out-going people I've ever met, volunteers his time and heart to work with veterans and children. He wears a jacket covered in badges recognizing friends, volunteer opportunities and the like -- even a Scouting badge from Iraq. The two exceptions to the "positive" rule are John Kerry and one that refers to "Hanoi Jane."

Time may not heal all wounds. However, I can point out, time wounds all seals. So, if you want to feel better, club a seal.

Justice on American soil

The Associated Press analyzed some 5,000 pages of Guantanamo Bay transcripts. Sure, nearly every true criminal says he's innocent. Yet some of this is just odd. Saying an Afghan is a terrorist soldier because he has a gun is like clamping down on drunk driving in America by arresting everyone with a car. The AP's reporters talked to one attorney who saw some classified evidence in a case with particularly serious charges:

"It was underwhelming," Hunt said, adding that he is barred from discussing the evidence, even with his client, Pakistani millionaire Saifullah Paracha. Paracha is accused of laundering money for al-Qaida and plotting to smuggle explosives into the United States.

This passage jumped out at me:

What is clear from the transcripts is the frustration of detainees trying to defend themselves against often unsubstantiated accusations.

Mohammed Sharif, an Afghan, was accused of guarding a Taliban camp. He denied it — and urged the military tribunal to produce the classified evidence against him. An unidentified tribunal member seemed as mystified as Sharif.

"Q: You mentioned that if we had facts or proof against you, you would understand why you were a prisoner, is that correct?

"A: Yes.

"Q: What could you have possibly done, that we might discover some of those facts?

"A: That's my point. There are no facts ... This is ridiculous. I know for a fact there is no proof."

Contrary to Fidel Castro's claims, Gitmo is on United States soil. I am appalled that the processes in America are so competely screwed up that a trial judge has to ask a defendant what he did wrong. Neither one of them knows.

I'm told by our nation's leaders that America represents freedom, openness, democracy. I'm told that America's enemies hate us for that. Witness this passage from President George W. Bush in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks:

The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.

I'm not sure the outcome is certain, or the good guys are always good guys.

Centers of power

London's Daily Mirror features a story by a reporter who risked a $1,000 kidnapping and beheading to find the hot running water and a separate power supply in bin Laden's old bunker, just outside Kandahar. Now, it's occupied by pit vipers and rotting human body parts.

Washington Post, meanwhile, ran a story on fatigue in the White House:

Of all the reasons that President Bush is in trouble these days, not to be overlooked are inadequate REM cycles. Like chief of staff Card, many of the president's top aides have been by his side nonstop for more than five years, not including the first campaign, recount and transition. This is a White House, according to insiders, that is physically and emotionally exhausted, battered by scandal and drained by political setbacks.

Wow. Are we actually getting told now that since the Bush White House is tired, they're going to start making mistakes?

I think what the Bush White House is missing at this point would by a Jimmy Carter-esque wonderment that the Presidency may be too big for any man. That would require, of course, that Bush can put away his arrogance and admit to failure. Sadly, then, he's lacking so much of what made one of America's least successful presidents one of it's best ex-presidents. Witness, from a farewell address by Carter:

We live in a time of transition, an uneasy era which is likely to endure for the rest of this century. During the period we may be tempted to abandon some of the time-honored principles and commitments which have been proven during the difficult times of past generations. We must never yield to this temptation. Our American values are not luxuries, but necessities - not the salt in our bread, but the bread itself.

Take my freedoms. I wasn't using them, anyway.

Fark.com has a great headline: "Federal judge delivers secret ruling using secret evidence that the defence was secretly not allowed to see"

The story is here, which is taken from The New York Times.

The prosecutors asked the judge to review their papers in his chambers without making them public or showing them to the defense. At midafternoon the judge issued a document announcing that he had entered the classified order denying Mr. Kindlon's request. ...

... [Defense lawyer] Mr. Kindlon asked that all evidence in the case stemming from N.S.A. wiretaps be given to the defense. He argued that the program was unconstitutional and so the evidence should be suppressed.

"The government engaged in illegal electronic surveillance of thousands of U.S. persons, including Yassin Aref, then instigated a sting operation to attempt to entrap Mr. Aref into supporting a nonexistent terrorist plot, then dared to claim that the illegal N.S.A. operation was justified because it was the only way to catch Mr. Aref," Mr. Kindlon wrote in his brief.

This, of course, is the same warrantless surveillance that almost nobody thinks is actually legal or authorized, and that Congress isn't exactly rushing to investigate.

What's next? Maybe we'll just start disappearing people, maybe like locking up American citizens and try to keep them from seeing lawyers. Wait. Oh. Sorry. Already doing that. What else can we do in the war on terror?

AHA! Let's lock up brown people! Hey, it worked before:

He was excluded [placed into a prison camp] because we are at war with the Japanese Empire, because the properly constituted military authorities feared an invasion of our West Coast and felt constrained to take proper security measures, because they decided that the military urgency of the situation demanded that all citizens of Japanese ancestry be segregated from the West Coast temporarily, and finally, because Congress, reposing its confidence in this time of war in our military leaders -- as inevitably it must -- determined that they should have the power to do just this. There was evidence of disloyalty on the part of some, the military authorities considered that the need for action was great, and time was short.

Schism-isms, part 2

If actions speak louder than words, the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston has officially declared it only likes gays to become close to children when the gays are molesters in their roster of clergy. Gays should be protected, yes, when they're priests molesting kids. But gays adopting kids? Nope, shut the whole damned charity down.

I can understand where the church is coming from on the latest issue. Yet the dogma's running over the karma. The hypocrisy of this in Boston, home to so many molested kids and an organization that protected the priests while allowing more molestations to occur, is simply appalling.

I can only offer a bit of irony:

Drink plenty of clear fluids?

There's some news about the dangers of soda, which generally uses corn syrup as a sugar substitute. Past research has suggested that corn syrup has no effect on satiety, e.g., drinking a soda gives you calories but does not reduce your intake of calories. (Curiously, drinking diet soda is also linked to obesity.)

The Pediatrics journal reported that in a small study, teenagers who cut back on soda over six months lost weight. The fattest teens who cut back their soda consumption lost more weight.

This comes at about the same time as another Pediatrics study, plus another journal, further explore the issue. The Harvard Crimson reports:

One of the studies, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, said that increased soda consumption in adolescent girls can predict increases in weight. This study, and another in the Journal of American Clinical Nutrition, add to the growing literature of the ill effects of soda.

“Over the long term, the excess calories [from soda] lead to weight gain and there is evidence that over the last decade caloric intake from sugar-sweetened beverages have gone up,” said Eric B. Rimm, associate professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. “I think that you can’t draw a direct link between the increased rates of obesity in this country and sugar-sweetened beverages, but there is an association.”

I suspect none of this comes as a surprise. Some folks interviewed by the Harvard tree-killers want a tax on soft-drink sales. Fortunately, there's an alternative.

A study sponsored by the owners of Lipton Tea suggested cutting back on sodas to make more room for coffee, tea, and .. er .. more. The AP reports:

Some prominent nutrition experts put out new guidelines Wednesday urging Americans to cut back on calorie-rich sodas while allowing more leeway for alcohol and lots of room for tea and coffee -- up to 40 ounces a day.

That's more than three tall cups at Starbucks, although that might bust suggested limits on caffeine.

They also allow men three times as much beer as sugary soda.

Oooh. Let's see that again.

They also allow men three times as much beer as sugary soda.

MeTheSheeple can get behind that idea!

Heck, beer is what made America ... well, America. According to one site, the Mayflower carried more beer than water and rum production was New England's biggest industry. This is, indeed, what made America great.

Now, it can be taken to extremes; one of MeTheSheeple's former roomates was fond of declaring "AA is for quitters!" Still, this news should be taken to heart, or at least the stomach. If you want to get healthy, put down the damned soda, turn your stupid monitor off, and take a stroll to the nearest pub.

China and the Internet

Remember when all these American geeks thought the Internet would foster a new wave of democracy, becoming a virtual bastion of freedoms? Yeah. Well, we got blogs. But we got more than that -- we also got porn, lotsa porn, and scams. Guess what? So did China, reports the New York Times:

On any of China's leading search engines, enter sensitive political terms like "Tiananmen Square" or "Falun Gong," and the computer is likely to crash or simply offer a list of censored Web sites. But terms like "hot sex" or "illegal drugs" take users to dozens of links to Web sites allowing them to download sex videos, gain entry to online sports gambling dens or even make purchases of heroin. The scams are flourishing.

...

Even the official New China News Agency seems to have gotten into the act. While the top of its news pages carries dispatches like "China Aims to Achieve Balance of Payments in 2006," some at the bottom feature links to soft-porn photographs of Chinese movie stars like Gong Li and Zhou Xun.

Is anyone really surprised?

Free speech on campus?

It's a busy week for issues of free speech on school campuseseses.

In Colorado, one student turned to talk radio after his geography teacher compared George W. Bush to Adolf Schickelgruber Hitler in what, he says, was for the sake of promoting critical thinking about issues.

In New York state, a team of Advanced Placement students has put Bush on trial for war crimes. (For those who aren't familiar with the program, AP classes may exceed some college courses in terms of academic rigor, and the high school students may exceed some college students in terms of maturity.)

And across the nation, law schools lost their efforts to keep military recruiters off campus. It's interesting, when the lawyers training the lawyers get shot down by a unanimous panel of lawyers on the highest court.

Broken Windows

Microsoft has replaced its "Beta 1" Microsoft Anti-Spyware software package with a "Beta 2" Windows Defender software package, available here. It's worth a download -- just know you'll need to shut down your Web browser before installing it. (I also shut-down my Anti-Spyware.)
The new Windows Defender found several things on Mrs. Sheeple's computer that the other one had not found. From the FAQ:

Windows Defender (Beta 2), subsequent beta versions, and the final release version will each be available at no additional charge for currently licensed Windows customers. You will be required to verify that you are using genuine Windows through a quick and easy online process called validation.

Good news. It only works on modern Windows systems (XP or 2000) that you actually paid for.

In "the Zone"

A Polish acquaintance found this link, which depicts a former town of 55,000 that has been all but abandonded for 20 years because of Chernobyl. It's worth a look.

Global ignorance

The Boston Globe today ran a story similar to this one out of Pakistan:

Tens of thousands of people massed Sunday in Pakistan and Turkey to protest cartoons of Islam's Prophet Muhammad that first appeared in a newspaper in Denmark and were reprinted in several other European countries.

A day after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, welcomed President Bush to Pakistan, about 50,000 people - many of them chanting "Hang those who insulted the prophet" - burned the Danish flag, hit an effigy of Bush with a stick and chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Musharraf."

Because clearly America's president and Pakistan's president do some artwork in their spare time. Unless the protest was supposed to be overly broad or the AP mischaracterized the protest, we seem to have found the Muslim versions of the Americans who believe Iraq caused 9-11 or who believe Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

There's only one real answer to debacles like this, both at home and abroad. It's education, because, as one wise philosopher once said, "We're going to have the best-educated American people in the world." The alternative, as the same man told us, is awful to contemplate:

What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.

Gallows humor

In response to Mayor Mumbles' efforts to rid stores of protective grates because they cause crime(1), Fark.com commentators have had some more worthwhile suggestions.

(1): The mayor says the grates cause crime, not the stores or the criminals or the mayor

ElsiumNow offers a note tinged with perspective: "Well, now that they got rid of the payphones, there's no more crime right? This is the obvious next step."

Nothingyet sees larger problems afoot:

"It sends a message that this is not a place where you want to shop," Mayor Thomas M. Menino said. 'It's not inviting.""

- ST*U Mumbles, have you looked at the murder rate in our fair city this past year? IT'S NOT INVITING you retarded ****!

Dittybopper offers anidea inspired by history:

You want to revitalize blighted urban areas in Boston?

Flood'em with molasses.

/Hey, it worked before.

Dittybopper's idea is indeed drawn from an often-forgotten, surreal but deadly moment in Boston's history, the Great Molasses Flood of 1919. No, really. MeTheSheeples offers a potentially less deadly thing to parody: Let's declare war on the United States, then rake in the rebuilding money.

Still maybe we ought to look to the wisest perspective of ReverendJasen: "Sure, I'd remove my grates. As soon as the city signs a contract agreeing to pay for any damages or thefts that occur afterwards. Maybe they should work on the cause of the grates being up? You know, like maybe the crime?"

Schism-isms

The same week I post stuff about an anti-gay hatemonger and the civil rights struggle, the Boston Globe reports the latest developments in the local Catholic Church.

Forgive me for a little cynicism here, for the local division of the Catholic Church moved to protect gay child molesters, those messing with kids. Now the same church wants to protect kids from gays. Better late then never? Other people working with the Catholics, presumably Catholics themselves, aren't sure:

... three members of the board of Catholic Charities of Boston resigned over the bishops' decision to seek the exemption from the state antidiscrimination policy, according to a board member. The 42-member board, which is dominated by lay people, has gone on record unanimously in favor of continuing to allow gays to adopt. The member declined to name the three members who resigned.

The state's four bishops released a statement yesterday saying they face ''a serious problem in which our religious freedom is challenged" because of the state requirement that they consider gays as adoptive parents. The Vatican has called such adoptions "gravely immoral."

Oh. So the same organization that has fought to protect gay child-molesting priests now thinks adoptions by gays "gravely immoral." 42 of 42 volunteers in the Catholic Charities of Boston believe that's wrong.

News of this comes at the beginning of Lent, the end of which celebrates one of the holiest days in the Catholic religion, marking the miracle resurrection of a guy who said his followers should love everybody.

Maybe they didn't get the memo.

Happy Ash Wednesday.

Wagging the dog

An interesting documentary about Bolivia is coming out. Politicians hired a bunch of American political consultants, who offer advice like:

"We must own crisis. We must brand crisis."

Rottentomatoes.com has some reviews and links to the trailers.

Spam sighted, 6 o'clock high!

Chances are you've already heard of several large companies planning to offer "certified e-mail"; this New York Times story captures part of the problem:

Danny O’Brien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation also argued that the new system would give Internet companies a financial incentive to let their standard e-mail service deteriorate.
"The only way you can sell a value-added service like this is by degrading the service you have now," O’Brien said

Regardless of the instant problem, you, too, can get some quality, free spam and anti-virus protection for your computer.
A great, free spam filter for Windows computers called K9 is available through keir.net. It may take you a few minutes to get it working with your e-mail program and your anti-virus software, but it'll be worth it. I'd recommend you go to the configuratin tab to turn on minimize to system tray icon and minimize on startup. Under advanced, turn on the blackhole list.What's that, you say? No anti-virus software to configure? Grisoft's AVG Free Edition is easy to use, frequently updated, and, of course, free.