This One's For Kevin

Kevin Marks is adding his voice to important local political controversies. Just saw a neat looking resource featured on The Screen Savers: Minutes-n-Motion, a $9.95 per month service that says it

applies the most powerful parsing (categorizing) engine since computers were invented to research public records. eNeuralNet technology is applied to government bodies at all levels. Minutes-n-Motion will unleash volumes of data buried so deep within archives that until now, they were considered inaccessible.

Available cities in California to date include San Francisco, Berkeley, Laguna Beach and Aliso Viejo.

Politicians 2, Spam 0

California Senator Deborah Bowen's anti-spam bill, which would permit private individuals to recover the greater of actual damages or $500 per violation (see previous discussion), cleared its first legislative hurdle by passing the Senate's Business and Professions committee Monday. USA Today and the San Jose Mercury News have more.

In another development that bodes well for reducing the world's overall spam volume, not to mention the future of political campaigns, "Gary Hart is BLOGGING." [via Glenn Reynolds and Jenny Levine]

Month Of Blawgs

LexisONE's current Sites of the Month features legal weblogs, "or blawgs as the kids say."

Blawgroll Inductees

• Ditzy Genius is on her way to law school, and offers entertaining and intereresting quotes, articles and observations on her blog. [via the Blawg Ring]
• The Amazon Lawyer promises and delivers "a legally-inclined stew of a blog:" Alice Cooper, aviation and a whole lot more. [via Blawg.org]

Bovine Bliss

The California Milk Advisory Board can't be sued for falsely touting the happiness of California cows, said a Superior Court judge in San Francisco on Tuesday. [Court Throws Out "Happy Cows" Ad Suit] This is not because the cows necessarily are happy, as portrayed in ads like "Sprinkler," Adweek's September '02 Best Spot, but, according to the Chronicle, because "[T]he government is exempt from the false advertisement laws that apply to private individuals." The California Milk Advisory Board stands by its ad claims, (e.g., Cows on Waterbeds), PETA has other ideas (Unhappy Cows), and Sean Carter had a column last May (Happy Cows Make PETA Sad).