This item is too good to resist:

Microsoft launches security for Windows

SEATTLE (AP) - Security software makers, the 800-pound gorilla has landed. Microsoft Corp. was to announce Wednesday that it is releasing software that aims to better protect people who use its Windows operating system from Internet attacks.

So, Microsoft is getting into the business of protecting people from itself? Sounds like a good racket.

So, the Justice Department has ended its probe into the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program. NSA wouldn’t allow investigators from Justice the security clearance needed to properly look into the matter. American citizens must now and forever hereafter take the administration’s word that having 72 hours to secure a FISA warrent (after the fact, no less) just isn’t enough.

I guess checks and balances don’t work within branches of government, just between them.

Is it just dumb luck that happens on the same day USA Today reports that NSA has, since Sept. 11, 2001, broadly collected information on millions of citizen’s telephone calls? (Note: I wanted to link to USA Today, but they don’t have permalinks.) Am I the only one that thinks “using the data to analyze calling patterns” is an awfully blunt and wide-ranging tool to catch terrorists?

Proselytizing. It even sounds inconsiderate.

And when it happens at 9 a.m. on a day off, I call it rude.

Today, two nice older ladies in flowery sun dresses woke me up. Jehovah’s Witnesses. “Hi, sorry to disturb you,” one said, obviously picking up on the fact that I’d rolled out of bed to answer the door. “We just wanted to leave you an encouraging message.” She pushed a pamphlet on “Life in a Peaceful New World” through the inch-wide gap of the barely open screen door.

I don’t normally answer my door because I know that anyone I want to talk to would call me before dropping by. (That, and I don’t have a bevy of “drop-by” basis friends here in St. Petersburg.) Today’s visitors dragged me from sleep with not one, not two, but four rings of the doorbell. With that much insistence, my comatose mind thought the person on the other side wanted to warn me to evacuate my apartment for a water main break or similar catastrophe.

I grumpily took their literature and closed the door while they uttered their have-a-nice-days.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no qualms with people relishing their faith. Go nuts. Not for me, but you just go ahead. However, don’t bring it to my door. Ever. I’m not buying, you shouldn’t be selling.

This makes maybe eight times I’ve had proselytizers come to the door since I’ve moved to Florida - compared to once in the 10 or so years I lived on my own in Michigan. I attribute that fact to living below the Bible belt in a state with an overabundance of the elderly. (I also never answered the door to see a door-to-door vacuum salesman in Michigan, like I did in Ocala. I thought they only existed in old cartoons, but that’s another post.) Each time I open the door to a zealot, I want to channel John Cleese as the taunting Frenchman from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

“Well, I’ll ask him, but I don’t think he will be very keen. Uh, he’s already got one, you see.”

Now go away, before I taunt you a second time.

OK, I feel for Masha Allen. She is the victim of abhorrent behavior from a sexual predator who managed to adopt her as a youngster from Russia. She testified to that fact before Congress today.

She will remain tortured by downloads for the rest of her life.

I don’t feel for Nancy Grace, who interviewed Masha for a segment that (apparently) reaired Wednesday. (The transcript I found is dated Jan. 18, 2006, but I saw ads for it last night; I didn’t watch last night’s show, so don’t know if it was an update or repeat.) I won’t hide it: I’m not a fan. She’s a talented lawyer and, now, journalist, but chooses to use that talent in ways more flash than substance.

What’s bothering me today is that Grace attended the hearing, and sat right next to Masha throughout her testimony. I don’t begrudge Masha moral support; I can’t imagine what she’s experienced. But Grace, as a journalist, further shreds her credibility in my mind by being an on-the-record advocate for her source, however sympathetic the cause.

I guess CNN doesn’t understand the difference between an impartial interviewer, and a slick partisan.