day before yesterday i began--but then abandoned--a piece about generalissimo gonzales' attempt to strongarm google with a subpeona demanding a week's worth of user search queries as well as a random list of website urls from google's database.

like the tools they are, yahoo, aol and msn appear to have already caved to government demands.

gonzales--who seems at times to believe his job title is attorney tsar rather than attorney general--claims the information is needed to persuade the supreme court to lift an injunction blocking enforcement of the 1998 child online protection act (anti-porn legislation intended to keep kids from accessing feelthy peectures by requiring users to prove they were adults with a credit card--as if all adults have em but no kids do).  according to gonzales' briefs (heh) this information is needed to "assist the government in its efforts to understand the behaviour of current web users, and to estimate how often web users encounter harmful-to-minors material in the course of their searches."

it aint as if the government has something more important to do...like wage an all out war on terror or something. 

anyway, i was gonna let this all slide when i had the good fortune to discover an alternative search engine which operates on rock-solid four-square patriotic principles.  none of that ridiculous leftwing whining about freedom of speech for these five-star sons of the homeland.  they PROMISE to automatically transmit to the government all the information they can grab from those who use their fine search engine.

but don't take my word for it.  check it out for yourself:  Link