Davos Newbies

Today’s New York Times had a fascinating article about the alleged terrorist plot in London to mix liquid explosives blow up a number of airplanes.

But I can’t link to it. The Times explains: “Publication of this article on nytimes.com has been delayed temporarily on the advice of legal counsel. It is also being omitted from the British circulation of The International Herald Tribune. This arises from British laws that prohibit publication of information that could be deemed prejudicial to defendents charged with a crime.”

I’ve never seen anything like that before. I can understand the legal position: the Times article is filled with the kind of detail that British papers would never publish before a case came to trial. But in the Internet age, such restrictions seem a bit like Canute trying to hold back the tide.

I know the effort to draft Jeff Sachs to run for president is about as ludicrous as anything in politics could be. It’s also unclear to me how high the correlation is between brainpower and political effectiveness. But it certainly would be nice to have someone in the race whose heart is unquestionably in the right place on many issues.

I’m also happy about another arm-twisting attempt that has higher probability of success. Why not Al Gore (although he has consistently said he won’t run again)? The grassroots effort seems, however, to have run out of money pretty quickly, which strikes me as very odd. What were they spending money on?