Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

By 6:40 a.m. my briefcase was loaded with printouts and lunch (pink Odwalla drink, brown protein bar)–and I started north to NH. The courthouse was where my brother had said it would be, and the parking meter was just as quarter-hungry as he predicted. No computers, no cameras, no phones are allowed in the courthouse. And the x-ray guard asked me why I had so many quarters…

Upstairs, reporters and spectators shared one (1) hard wooden bench for the morning event–all the rest of the seats went to 60 prospective jurors. By 12:45, voirdire whittled that number down to a jury of 12 plus 2 alternates.

The wooden bench would have been much more annoying if not for the amusement of watching a slick DC lawyer woo prospective jurors, one by one, with identical smiles, nods, concerned question, extreme satisfaction with the answer to that question, etc. This charade goes on in full view of the whole jury pool, but I guess if the defense is basing its strategy on the idea that NH jurors are stupid and gullible, they might as well go for it all the way.

After lunch, I came back half an hour early to get a softer seat in the larger courtroom where we heard opening arguments and some evidence. Beverley Wang’s AP story gives the essence of the afternoon, but she left so much out! And I’ve got all the room in the world. Next story: the Government’s case against James Tobin.

On Slashdot, your public reputation boils down to one word–in the best case, that word is “Excellent.”

On Wikipedia, your readers can make more nuanced judgments–are you scholarly, helpful, or trollish?–assuming they take time to read your entire contribution history.

This informal reputation system may soon change, according to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who recently told the NYT:

“…he was trying to make Wikipedia less vulnerable to tampering. He said he was starting a review mechanism by which readers and experts could rate the value of various articles. The reviews, which he said he expected to start in January, would show the site’s strengths and weaknesses and perhaps reveal patterns to help them address the problems. In addition, he said, Wikipedia may start blocking unregistered users from creating new pages, though they would still be able to edit them.”

Big companies are racing into “identity” and “reputation” software systems–I hope Wikipedia will take this opportunity to debut and test many open-source alternatives, if only to create prior art and save useful methods from disappearing behind a wall of preemptive copyright.* Good reputation systems promote collaboration, something the world really needs.

* I was telling Jay McCarthy about this idea–he immediately suggested another benefit from trying out multiple reputation systems: you can compare different “reputations” to see which ones make useful predictions about the future.

The U.S. District Court trial of former Republican National Committee regional political director James Tobin is scheduled to begin Tuesday. It’s unclear whether a flurry of pre-trial motions filed by Tobin’s attorney this week will cause a delay.

Tobin is charged with conspiracy in connection with the election day 2002 phone jam scandal. He allegedly put former state party executive director Chuck McGee, the admitted mastermind of the operation, in touch with Virginia-based GOP strategist Allan Raymond, who, in turn, has admitted to arranging to have hang-up calls jam Democratic and union get-out-the-vote phone banks on election morning.

Judge Steven McAuliffe has scheduled a hearing for tomorrow morning on several pre-trial motions that provide insight into some issues that may come up at trial:

• Tobin’s attorneys — funded by the Republican National Committee, not Tobin — are asking the judge to disallow any suggestion that the RNC or its related National Republican Senatorial Committee was involved in paying for the hang-up calls.

• McGee has admitted signing a Republican State Committee check to Raymond to pay for the operation. But the state committee’s financial filings also show contributions from the RNC and NRSC. Tobin’s lawyers say those contributions were unrelated to the phone jam and do not want the jurors be confused about who paid for it.

• Tobin’s lawyers say it appears that the government will elicit testimony from Raymond on campaign finance and election law issues. They say such a move would be improper because Raymond would not be an expert witness.

• Tobin’s lawyers are asking the judge to exclude any evidence that the recipients of the hang-up calls were made to feel “annoyed” or “harassed,” since, they say, it would be an attempt by the government “to fit insufficient evidence into the statutory requirements.”

• The government wants to be sure that Tobin’s attorneys can not cross-examine Raymond on advice Raymond received from his attorney.

Each side recently submitted its witness list. All witnesses are not always called, but the lists in this case have some interesting names.

The government’s list includes:

• Prominent Democrats Buckley, the party vice chair, and state Rep. Jane Clemons of Nashua,

• Former state Republican chairs John Dowd and Jayne Millerick, Concord GOP Chair Jeff Newman, former state GOP finance director Kristy Stuart, former state GOP vice chair Mark Pappas and GOP strategist Chris Wood.

• National GOP strategists Terry Nelson and Chris Lacivita.

Tobin’s list includes some of the above, but also includes:

• Steve Forbes, the 1996 and 2002 presidential candidate who formerly employed Tobin and Raymond,

• Former state GOP legal counsel David Vicinanzo,

• Former national Republican Chairman James Nicholson.

Both lists also include McGee and Raymond, while Tobin is listed as a witness on his own behalf.

John DiStaso is senior political reporter of the New Hampshire Union Leader and Sunday News.

The text above appeared in Di Staso’s column “Granite Status” in the Manchester Union Leader of Dec. 1, 2005.

The text below appeared in an article by DiStaso in the Manchester Union Leader of Dec. 3, 2005, headlined “Attorneys want no talk of RNC in phone trial.”

Attorneys for an accused conspirator in a 2002 Republican phone-jamming scandal want no suggestions made in an upcoming trial that the Republican National Committee or its U.S. Senate campaign affiliate paid for the illegal operation.

The request for special jury instructions to that effect and for deletions on certain documents was made yesterday by the RNC-paid lawyers for former RNC official James Tobin.

The motion appeared to intrigue U.S. District Court Judge Steven J. McAuliffe. In a pre-trial hearing, he pointed out that federal prosecutors have not alleged that the RNC or National Republican Senatorial Committee paid for the operation.

McAuliffe said that undisputed evidence shows a $15,600 check to pay for hundreds of hang-up calls to Democratic and union get-out-the-vote phone banks on election day morning, 2002, was drawn on the New Hampshire Republican State Committee’s war chest.

Andrew Levchuck, the justice department prosecutor, said the RNC and NRSC contributed about $200,000 to the state committee prior to the election, but said he intends to present no evidence suggesting any of it was for the express purpose of funding the phone jam.

McAuliffe wanted to know why, then, Tobin’s attorneys were concerned about it.

“Do you feel there is a need for the jury to know this, or for the public to know?” McAuliffe asked Washington-based attorney Bradley J. Bondi.

The lawyer responded that he and his colleagues never try cases with an eye toward public opinion.

“That’s what this sounds like,” McAuliffe countered from the bench, denying the motion. “Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with this, either, but I’m not going to tell the jury that.”

McAuliffe said that if he told the jurors, “Don’t think for a moment that any of that money came from the RNC,” it would plant the idea in their minds that the RNC may have had something to do with it.

Tobin is scheduled to stand trial beginning Tuesday on charges that he conspired with former state party executive director Charles McGee and GOP political consultant Allen Raymond to deprive Granite Staters of their constitutional right to vote by jamming the phone lines manned by volunteers offering free rides to the polls.

The government says Tobin violated a federal law guaranteeing constitutional voting rights and a separate statute prohibiting telephone harassment.

The government says McGee, who has admitted coming up with the idea, asked Tobin to help him find a vendor to arrange the calls. It says Tobin then put McGee in touch with Raymond.

The government says Tobin also called Raymond, explained the scheme and told him to expect a call from McGee.

Raymond received the $15,600 state Republican Party check and used $2,500 of it to hire an Idaho telemarketing firm, which made about 800 hang-up calls to six telephone numbers on early on election day.

Tobin spent time in New Hampshire during that campaign as both RNC New England political director and Northeast political director of the NRSC. Republican John E. Sununu won a hard-fought Senate victory over Democrat Jeanne Shaheen by nearly 20,000 votes.

McAuliffe yesterday also said he will allow Tobin’s attorney to argue to the jury that Tobin was not part of a conspiracy because McGee and Raymond did not decide to go forward with the phone jam until Raymond received his attorney’s advice on the legality of the operation.

By the time Raymond and McGee went forward, a Tobin attorney said, Tobin was “off the reservation” and had no knowledge of the details of the phone jam.

McAuliffe said he will not allow Tobin’s attorneys to tell the jury what Raymond’s lawyer advised because, the judge said, it was irrelevant to Tobin’s actions.

The advice was that the scheme was legal.

Also yesterday, lawyers for the Republican State Committee and the government settled a key dispute.

The committee agreed to give the government its documents and computer hard drives from its own internal probe of the phone jam as long as they are not made public.

The proposed agreement was submitted to the judge for his review.

Director Joe Wright’s new Pride and Prejudice boils Jane Austen’s novel down to romcom period romp. Overcoming my prejudice, I enjoyed the movie–though I would have enjoyed it more if its lovely high-spirited ingenue and her standard-issue tortured, brooding swain hadn’t been called “Miss Elizabeth Bennet” and “Mr. Darcy.”

And would somebody please get poor “Mr. Wickham” out of that Legolas wig and into McDonalds? Feed him some cheeseburgers, I think he’s starving to death…

…at least that’s the message from my del.icio.us bookmarks:

• How to Start a Startup (Nick Denton)
• How to Start a Startup (Evan Williams)
• How to Start a Startup (Paul Graham)

Then, if you want some venture capital, you need this bookmark: How to Write a Business Plan.

Sadly, according to yet another bookmark, Venture capital is totally dead.

But don’t cry, I have one more bookmark, to save the day: How to Start Your Own VC firm.

I drank non-virtual coffee with real Lisa Williams this morning. She told me some fascinating things about improvised communities, and I told her I’m thinking about lightweight solutions to online “reputation.” Reputation avatars, if you will.

My Slashdot avatar has a gender-neutral name and excellent “karma.” My #joiito avatar uses my name and writes funny limericks. In Wikipedia, Betsythedevine writes about glacial movement and landforms (I’m from NH.) The reputation systems in these three arenas differ greatly in style and degree of formality.*

In our real lives too, we have lots of different personas for different occasions:

Lisa: And when two of our avatars collide, that’s the stuff of situation comedy.
Betsy: Yes, and of stories about “I got fired for blogging.”

Yours for more and better and funnier avatars that don’t get entangled with our credit card histories and college transcripts,
Betsy, my still-typing-darn-it avatar

* Slashdot’s reputation system is called “karma.”
Wikipedia users are kept accountable for their contributions because anybody can see anybody else’s.
Chat room users are either banned or not banned.

Leadership can feel so cold and lonely…meanwhile, the little ducks at the back of the line are asking impatiently why things aren’t moving faster…

Pity poor “airnxtz,” who got more than he bargained for when he asked MetaFilter’s advice on this sad story:

i bought a $3,000 item on ebay a laptop, i never recieved it, i paypaled him the money, and he transfered those funds to his bank account, and then withrdrew it. He then informed me that on the day he was going to ship it out, his car was robbed, and everything (including the laptop and $3,000 cash) was stolen…is this guy going to get away with it?

This question raised a red flag at MetaFilter, however, because airnxtz’s eBay profile showed he hadn’t recently bought a laptop. In fact, he’d recently sold one, and the buyer was complaining it never arrived.

MetaFilterians soon found that airnxtz been asking lots of questions about computer sales gone wrong. In October alone, he claimed, thieves had stolen two laptop computers he was shipping, replacing one with “a rock wrapped in bubble wrap” (October 8 posting) and another with “a jug of water” (October 15 posting).

These events gave extra meaning to airnxtz’s hypothetical question (October 30):

lets say i list an item for x amount of dollars, offering no shipping insurance. in the item description i state ‘by bidding on this auction buyer agrees that seller is not responsible for lost items or errors made by USPS’ now lets say the item gets lost in the mail, am i still obligated to refund the buyer, even though by bidding he agreed i would not be held liable for lost items in the mail?

Not surprisingly, airnxtz has received very bad eBay feedback as a seller. So why is his net feedback rating on eBay so high? Because his feedback as a buyer is good–he has bought many, many small-ticket items on eBay and paid for them promptly.

Note: I stumbled across this while researching reputation systems in general and eBay’s Feedback system in particular. Resnick and Zeckhauser’s study of eBay’s system is widely cited; fraudsters have found many ways to game the system..