Wednesday, August 14, 2002

A judge who gets it Three cheers for U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar, who is currently hearing the petition by the father of American citizen Yaser Esam Hamdi to let his son see a lawyer. While I think the government has some legal ground to declare Hamdi an enemy combatant (he was apparently captured in Afghanistan - the government says as part of Taliban, his father said that he was a charitable worker who got caught up in the conflict,) I don't think that any US citizen can be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and held incommunicado forever, as the Bush administration claims the right to do. The Washington Post reports that Judge Doumar has been presented with a 2 page declaration by an undersecretary of defense, Michael H. Mobbs, explaining how Hamdi was determined to be enemy combatant, and the Government's position is that once the declaration was presented, the Judge is foreclosed from asking any more questions or getting any more involved. Fortunately, Judge Doumar seems to be made of sterner stuff. He has been asking questions like: "Can the military do anything they want with him, without a tribunal?" and he has been getting answers like: "The present detention is lawful," The best quote in the article was the final one: "I have no desire to have an enemy combatant get out of any status," Doumar said. "However, I do think that due process requires something other than a basic assertion by someone named Mobbs that they have looked at some papers and therefore they have determined he should be held incommunicado. Just think of the impact of that. Is that what we're fighting for?" A judge who gets it. Unfortunately, the 4th Circuit has ruled against Judge Doumar every time he has ruled that Hamdi is entitled to see a lawyer, and they will probably do so again.   Permalink  11:27:13 PM   Google It!  What do you think?  [] comments.

An evening with Regis McKenna Tonight I went to an event put on by The Entrepreneurs Resource Network, where Regis McKenna was the featured speaker, promoting his new book, Total Access. He is a good speaker, funny, and and a good storyteller. He also comes across as being very smart. I don't think that I can do justice to his ideas in a late night blog post, but suffice it to say that I had a new perspective on marketing after the night was over. Part of that is the history of marketing that he carries around in his head -- he spent a long time talking about what marketing was all about in the early 1900's -- distribution and enabling the consumer to buy. He also talked about how many more choices consumers have today than they had even 15 years ago. The statistic that stuck in my head was that WalMart now has 300,000 SKU's that they carry, and that WalMart updates the database of what people have purchased nationwide every 90 minutes. Holey Moley! Regis McKenna closed with a funny story to illustrate how different the buying experience is today from the past, and what assumptions our kids are growing up with. He was  driving somewhere with his two granddaughters, 7 and 9, and his father-in-law. His granddaughters were lobbying to have him buy them an iMac. McKenna said to his grandchildren, "but does the iMac come with enough software? - Maybe we should look into computers that have more software bundled in with them." The 7 year old replied, "But if I need more software, I can always get it over the internet", and the father-in-law chimed in with "Yeah, Dummy". I don't know enough to recommend buying the book Total Access, at this point, although I plan to, but I can highly recommend going to see him talk while he is on the book tour circuit. Hearing him speak reminded me of what I miss most about not having a full-time job -- not getting to spend the day interacting in person with really smart people. Also, I was reminded how everybody is connected, especially towards the top of social and financial networks. While chatting with him after the talk, I discovered that he is having dinner tomorrow night with my old boss at GO Corporation, Bill Campbell aka "Coach", currently chairman of Intuit. They worked together at Apple almost 20 years ago. Small World. Permalink  10:46:37 PM   Google It!  What do you think?  [] comments.