It’s ironic that the ACLU would probably defend pathetic attempts like this to get rid of it.
It’s ironic that the ACLU would probably defend pathetic attempts like this to get rid of it.
The Nevada Supreme Court sided with NBC in their decision to retract an invitation to Dennis Kucinich to the Democratic debate tonight. NBC had originally invited Kucinich, but then changed their criteria to only allow candidates who’d placed first, second, or third in the primaries. Kucinich sued and got a district judge to file an injunction against NBC. NBC complained to the state supreme court and it was decided that NBC didn’t need to include him–one hour before the debate was scheduled to start.
This is hardly surprising, actually. As unfortunate as it is, it’s typical of the mainstream media. Excluding and poking fun at the so-called “long shots” is what the media does best. NBC News correspondent Kevin Corke put it best: “We were expecting to have the three major candidates. Why? Well quite frankly, because those are the probable candidates. That pool is the most viable pool. And truthfully, most people want to hear what Hillary Clinton and John Edwards and Barack Obama have to say. After all, those are probably the three they’re going to be picking from.”
Most of what he says is true. Clinton, Edwards, and Obama are the frontrunners, and they’re the most likely to be nominated by the Democratic Party. However, the people of America still have a say. I, for instance, don’t want to hear Clinton and Obama bickering over race and gender and Edwards whining that he’s not getting enough attention. I want to hear from the candidates that I identify with. That means Kucinich and Mike Gravel. I don’t care if they’re long shots for the nomination. I happen to want to hear what they have to say.
It’s ironic that NBC invoked their First Amendment rights in keeping Kucinich out of the debates. What about Kucinich’s First Amendment rights? Doesn’t he have the right to appear in a debate he was originally invited to? Heck, don’t viewers have the right to hear from all the possible candidates? This situation actually reminds me of the midterm elections in 2006. During the race for senator in Washington State, the Libertarian candidate, Bruce Guthrie, actually made it into the debate between the Republican and Democrat candidates. He had to struggle like Kucinich and other long-shot presidential candidates, but it was worth it just to get recognition, even if he didn’t get that many votes (hey, 1.4% is a decent amount for a third party candidate).
If I were Dennis Kucinich, I’d strongly consider running as an independent. I know a lot of people who would vote for him. He’s the one candidate I like.
This may be an unusual problem, but I figured I’d post a how-to just in case. Anyways, ever since I installed Microsoft Office 2007 on my copy of Windows Vista Home Premium I have been unable to view recent documents. Normally, there’s a list of documents you’ve opened that shows up in a few places in Windows, including all the Office programs. For me, it has always been grayed out. Why? Apparently, my administrator (a.k.a. me) disallowed recent document history using group policy. Now, since I had done no such thing, it must have been something Windows did on its own. Or something. My copy of Windows is really screwed up.
Anyways, I know all about group policy. On any other version of Windows, you could simply go to your Start men, and type “gpedit.msc” (no quotes) in the Run box. Here’s a short tutorial for this on Windows XP and earlier. It should also work on Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate. Unfortunately, you can’t use gpedit.msc to edit group policy on Vista Home Basic or Home Premium. Instead, you have to directly edit the registry. Don’t panic! I’ll guide you through. But always be sure to make a backup before editing the registry. This is easily done by clicking File>Export… in the Registry Editor and selecting “All” at the bottom of the screen that comes up. Do it now. Do it.
Go ahead and open up the Registry Editor by typing “regedit” (no quotes) in your Start menu search box and pressing enter. Find the following registry key: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer. (HKCU stands for HKEY_CURRENT_USER.) Double-click on the value inside the key labeled “NoRecentDocsHistory”. Change the 1 to 0. If it’s already 0, you don’t even need this tutorial and have wasted five minutes of your life. Way to go.
Anyways, now that you’ve edited this value, you should be able to view recent documents in Office programs and Windows itself. At the very least, you can actually edit the recent documents options in Windows and Office. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone. Maybe I just have strange computer problems that never show up for anyone else… And if I was too technical or confusing in this guide, feel free to leave me a comment.
Finally, if you’re interested in editing more group policy stuff in Vista Home Basic or Home Premium, I suggest downloading this Excel spreadsheet from Microsoft, which lists all the group policy settings and their corresponding registry keys. Very useful, especially without gpedit.msc (which is basically an easier to use interface for these particular registry keys). Or you could spring for Vista Ultimate.