Google has an interesting-looking Voice Search Demo online. The way it says it works is that you call the number, say your query then go to a link that will have your search results.
As far as I can tell, the current demo doesn't address the issue of how a system that supported multiple simultaneous users would match users with output (caller ID? cookies? dedicated dialup?) but it seems like Google is thinking ahead to the needs of cell phone surfers….
Below, in an update, I linked to Phil Carter's explanation of what records should exist of GW Bush's military service.
Now comes a respectable reporter and blogger with tales that suggest that these exact records may not exist, or might have been “sanitized.” It sounds like a tinfoil hat kind of suggestion…until you read the various evidence and hearsay assembled by David Neiwert at Orcinus. Then you may be seized by considerable doubt.
Hiding evidence is one thing. Shredding it and falsifying it is another. And in our recent history, we tend to get politicians for the cover up more often than the underlying offense.
This does not make me feel good at all. I actually find myself hoping it is not true, because I think it could tear the country apart. And I can certainly understand why reporters may be reluctant to look into this and set off the avalanche. Breaking Presidents gets to be too much of a habit after a while, and next thing you know you are living in an unstable society akin to a bannana republic.
Yet, these questions will not go away. And if any of this stuff is true then the country deserves to know it. In fact, if none of it is true, we'll all be better off for knowing that beyond a doubt.
The Bush administration has shown this week that when scared it bends to pressure. Not only are they setting up a commission to report back after the election on the Iraqi intelligence (and many other) issues, but today they announced that the 9/11 commission will be extended 60 days.
What sort of pressure will it take to get them to release whatever military records exist?
After two and a half years in the brig, one of the American Disappeared gets to see his lawyer, and learns he has a case, but the meeting is stuffed with military witnesses and taped, and he can't answer questions.
Recall that guilty or innocent, Hamdi is a US citizen. Captured in Afghanistan and brought to the US, the Bush people treat him as neither POW nor criminal. He gets no Geneva convention rights, nor any of the rights of a citizen. Although the facts of this case are not quite as raw as the Padilla case, they are troubling indeed.
How can anyone who says s/he's a conservative and cares about freedom or believes in a strict construction of the Constitution even contemplate voting for the Bush/Cheney/Ashcroft government when it says that says its policy is that it can arrest anyone it decides is dangerous, and can hold a citizen without formally charging them, incommunicado, indefinitely?
Terror Suspect, Attorneys Meet for 1st Time: Federal Public Defender Frank W. Dunham Jr. emerged from the one-hour meeting with Yaser Esam Hamdi, whom the government has declared an “enemy combatant,” and said he was pleased to finally see the man whose case he has litigated — sight unseen — for more than two years.
“This was becoming a hypothetical case to us, and now were are reminded it's about a human being who happens to be a U.S. citizen,” Dunham said. “Seeing the client in person, being able to put a human face on this case, had an effect on me that is not measurable.”
Dunham and Assistant Federal Public Defender Geremy Kamens delivered legal papers and newspaper articles to Hamdi, who Dunham said seemed equally happy to see his attorneys. “I'm sure it made an impression on a client who has been looking down a lightless tunnel for 21/2 years, not knowing anyone is doing anything for him, and now he knows that he has a case in the U.S. Supreme Court.”
But Dunham continued his criticism of the restrictions placed on the meeting at the Charleston Consolidated Naval Brig in South Carolina. Under guidelines drafted by Pentagon lawyers, military observers attended and recorded the meeting, and Dunham was not allowed to question Hamdi about the conditions of his confinement. “We were not able to talk about anything substantive,” Dunham said.
Legal experts said the meeting was significant amid a debate over the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism and with the U.S. Supreme Court scheduled to take up Hamdi's case in April. Hamdi is the first of the three people known to have been designated enemy combatants by the military to meet with an attorney.
If Sen Daschle, the vanishing Senate vanishing Minority Leader were to find his spine, it might look like this.
But of course instead we have to all sing along with this.
[dive into mark] explains the difference:
Specs are things with important-sounding words like “W3C Recommendation”, “RFC 2616”, or “ISO 8879” at the top. Weblogs are things with cat pictures at the top.
Today's Daily Howler is a must-read. Just don't be distracted by title, Ritter was right about WMD. Result? He's been dumped from the airwaves, which refers to the less interesting of the two items discussed.
The more interesting item—how hard it is to get facts about the GW Bush military record—actually comes first. There are two related issues. First, how and why the major papers in this country are badly bungling the task of informing us as to what the facts are, and when there are areas of uncertainty what the cause of that uncertainty might be.
The Howler compares the accounts in major newspapers and notes that they don't coincide at all. So not only are there divergences with what appears to be the record, but the reporters themselves appear to have very different views as to what the basic facts are.
Which leads to the even more interesting question of why that might be.
The Howler suggests that the key question is the extent to which a particular torn document proffered by the Bush people can be trusted. The purveyors of this document purport it to be part of the Bush service record. Yet the document is lacking key identifying marks such as his name. Is it or is it not an accurate and contemporaneous record of Bush's service? That seems like a pretty central question indeed…
If the “torn document” turns out to be fake, this story becomes much more serious. Indeed, if the “torn document” turns out to be bogus, this story becomes quite an A-bomb. This may be why papers are tiptoe-ing hard, as we’ll discuss later on.
…
How serious was Bush’s attendance problem? It all turns on that crucial “torn document.” And the Post and the Times have created confusion by careless handling of the torn document. We’re told that experts are going to publish further work about the torn doc. Until then, this story will be hard to judge. The Post, Times and Globe have divergent accounts. It’s quite hard to know which is accurate.
(For more on the “torn document” see the last paragraphs of this earlier Howler.)
Update: Via Calpundit, a link to a very, very useful blog entry by Phil Carter on Intel Dump explaining just exactly what records reporters should be asking for—and GWB providing—if the objective is to get to the truth of the matter.
…if I were a reporter sitting in the White House press room, asking questions of Scott McClellan, I'd start asking about his pay records, retirement records, and tax records from 1972. Maybe the attendance records are gone — but there are still plenty of ways to document the President's service.
Jotwell Blenderlaw