"Slander" and "defamation of character," not to mention invasion of privacy, are serious issues. Some expert in law and ethics could probably lay out a rock-solid argument and convince me Florida attorney Todd J. Hollis deserves to win his case against Tasha C. Joseph, creator of the web site http://www.dontdatehimgirl.com, a "cost-effective weapon in the war on cheating men." The web site includes a database of former boyfriends who are "cheaters, liars, and cads." Any woman who registers can contribute a name, or see if someone's already dished dirt on her prospective date.

A slightly rougher version of this little essay originally appeared in my own blog. I've spent time recently re-reading portions of Howard Zinn's 1995 book, A People's History of the United States. It's quite fascinating, and in my life, quite timely. The sweet Jeffersonian gloss of "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" notwithstanding, Zinn conceives of all American history as a dialectic, on the one hand, between the self-serving of big government and big money, and on the other, the struggles of every-day people for self-determination. Zinn examines the antislavery, labor, women's, and antiwar movements as examples of "pesky" popular reform efforts that have nevertheless shaped government, and the lives of every-day people, for the better.