Whitney Houston has died at age 48. She was in Los Angeles for the Grammys, preparing a tribute to Clive Davis. Cause of death is not yet known. Medics tried CPR for 20 minutes this afternoon at the Beverly Hilton Hotel where she was staying, to no avail. The New York Times has more on her life and career.

The Beverly Hills Police gave this interview, saying she was a guest at the hotel, her friends and co-workers were also there and identified her, and there were no obvious signs of criminal intent or drugs but the death is being investigated.

R.I.P. Whitney.

Bruce Springsteen will open the Grammys tomorrow night with "We Take Care Of Our Own", a single from his new album "Wrecking Ball." People are wondering whether it is a patriotic sequel to Born in the USA or a critique of America for failing to live up to its ideals? The song's hook (catchy, repetitive refrain) is:

Wherever this flag's flown
We take care of our own

But the somber visages of the everyday working people in the video and the remainder of the lyrics give the opposite message:

There ain't no help, the Cavalry stayed home
There ain't no one hearing the bugle blowin'
...Where's the work that will set my hands, my soul free
Where's the promise from sea to shining sea
Where's the promise from sea to shining sea

So what gives? Is he being ironic or sarcastic? [More...]

A New Zealand law professor asks which is worse, internet piracy or the privacy breaches of social networks and Google. He compares the MegaUpload alleged copyright violations to the practices of Google and Facebook and concludes the social network privacy intrusions are worse:

The law in both instances determined who gets to profit from the use of information and who does not and in both cases corporate power was able to trump the rights of individuals.

...Google is subject to an array of privacy and other laws. However, with the exception of fair trading laws in the United States, privacy laws globally are considerably weaker that the regimes that protect the rights of intellectual property owners.

[More..]

The FBI released its files on Steve Jobs today. You can read them here.

The 191-page document, released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), consists of the FBI’s 1991 background investigation of Steve Jobs for an appointed position on the U.S. President’s Export Council. The release also includes documents related to a 1985 investigation of a bomb threat against Apple.

Mimi Beardsley, now Mimi Alford, was a 19 year old intern for JFK. In 2003, JFK's former assistant Dave Powers, wrote a book in which he mentioned a young intern as one of JFK's paramours. She would not discuss it.

Now 69, she has written a book about it. The New York Post has excerpts. The affair lasted 18 months. She was interviewed on the Today Show this morning.

Her reason for coming forward now? She says living with this kind of secret is debilitating. [More...]

Update: Superbowl video here. Better quality here or here (but 15 second commercial.)

I'm tuning into the Superbowl but just for the halftime show with Madonna which is about to start. She'll sing 4 songs, 3 old and "Give Me All Your Luvin'" her new song with Nikki Manaj. She told Anderson Cooper she's nervous:

"First of all, it's the Super Bowl. I mean the Super Bowl is kind of like the holy of holies in America right? ... I have to put on the greatest show on earth, in the middle of the greatest show on earth. I have eight minutes to set it up and seven minutes to take it down and 12 minutes to put on the greatest show on earth. That's a lot of pressure."

How do you think she did?

It's been a busy day for Anonymous, which in addition to publishing the FBI-London police telconference call, has hacked the website of the law firm Puckett & Faraj which represents Sgt. Frank Wuterich, the marine who recently got a sweetheart deal for his role in the Haditha killings. You can view Anonymous' message (not the e-mails) here.

The link to the e-mails was posted on Pirate Bay in the last hour. And no, I'm not reading them. I don't have a Torrent program to open them and I'm not downloading one. [More...]

Anonymous strikes again. It has released a 17 minute conference call held Jan. 17, 2012 between the FBI and London's Metropolitan Police about hacking investigations into Anonymous, LulzSec, Antisec and related groups, and the cases of specific defendants and targets, such as Ryan Cleary, Jake Davis and Kayla. They also talk about whether Chronis is T-Flow and the mechanics of an extradition request.

The call reveals British police and the FBI discussing the delay of court proceedings against two alleged members of the LulzSec hacking group, which attacked a number of sites in 2011 including the US Congress and UK Serious Organised Crime Agency.

How embarrassing for the FBI and Metro police. It appears that an FBI agent sent out an email about the conference call and Anonymous had hacked the email account learning about the conference call. [More...]

The Donald is endorsing Newt Gingrich today[Update - fearing the point I am making here, Trump is going to endorse Romney and thus justify his not running. The short fingered vulgarian is a charlatan of course.] The Media needs to ask the short fingered vulgarian what happens when Gingrich loses to Romney. In December, Trump said:

It is very important to me that the right Republican candidate be chosen to defeat the failed and very destructive Obama administration[. . . .] But if that Republican, in my opinion, is not the right candidate, I am unwilling to give up my right to run as an independent candidate.

I demand that Trump run. Media, hold The Donald's feet to the fire. The clown car needs its biggest clown.

Speaking for me only

As everyone knows, Facebook filed a $5 billion IPO today. Here is the actual filing. Among the contents is a letter from Mark Zuckerberg, explaining his vision of Facebook. [More...]

Carpathia Hosting has set up a website, MegaRetrieval.com, where those who stored data at MegaUpload can get in touch with EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation). EFF is offering free legal services in hopes of assisting users who legitimately stored data on MegaUpload.

When the United States Government shut down access to Megaupload, a multitude of innocent users who stored legitimate, non-infringing files on the cloud-storage service were left with no means to access their data.

If you are one of these, are based in the United States, and are looking for legal help to retrieve your data, please email the Electronic Frontier Foundation at megauploadmissing-at-eff.org.

Here is their joint press release. [More...]

The late David Broder was wrong so consistently that pointing out he was wrong yet again may seem like a pointless exercise, but I think Paul Krugman's column today on Broder being wrong about British Prime Minister David Cameron's "expansionary austerity" (talk about an oxymoron) is important:

[I]n October 2010 David Broder, who virtually embodied conventional wisdom, praised Mr. Cameron for his boldness, and in particular for “brushing aside the warnings of economists that the sudden, severe medicine could cut short Britain’s economic recovery and throw the nation back into recession.” He then called on President Obama to “do a Cameron” and pursue “a radical rollback of the welfare state now.”

Strange to say, however, those warnings from economists proved all too accurate. And we’re quite fortunate that Mr. Obama did not, in fact, do a Cameron.

Sadly, High Broderism, with its combination of ignorance, lack of intelligence and misplaced confidence, lives on. We are ruled by idiots.

Speaking for me only