Why is it a school’s job to prevent kids from having overfilled backpacks? Where are the parents in all this? Do they not care about their kids’ health? (Rhetorical question, people — I work with kids, and have found myself very disappointed at times with how little some parents care.)

It appears that Mel Lastman is learning, the hard way, that there are instances where a parent cannot waive the rights of his or her children. (Interestingly, this tenet was highlighted in last week’s episode of The Practice, when Lindsay explains to Ellenor that a contract with the father of her unborn child doesn’t preclude the child from later suing for rights.)

Congratulations to all the winners of the first Online Journalism Awards. Salon (which astute readers of Q will recognize as one of my favorite reads) won the General Excellence in Online Journalism award for original web content; APBnews.com won four awards, despite their difficulties this year. There are a ton of excellent sites here, too many for me to look at in one night.

14 Remaining Netscape Users Rejoice Over Release of Netscape 6.

The one annoying thing about my Sony Clie is the case (a leather wraparound case that makes it too bulky for my front shirtpocket); that’s why I want this case so badly. I wish that I knew how to read Japanese, and that this page had an address to which I could write to inquire about availability.

Dahlia Lithwick has weighed in on yesterday’s arguments before the Supreme Court; her basic take is that there were a lot of traditional roles reversed by the Justices.

(I’ve mirrored the transcript and MP3 files of the Supreme Court oral arguments, by the way.)

Eric Boehlert has one of the most incredible articles I’ve read on the obvious disparity between traditionally conservative and liberal media coverage of the ongoing election saga. A representative quote:

It’s as if the impeachment debacle created a minimum standard for conservative bile, and now everyone simply takes it for granted that the right-wing press will serve up bitter, resentful, ad hominem attacks on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Is this crap really still going on? In all honesty, given the relatively great possibility of a Bush presidency, the Republicans should probably lay off of Clinton at this point; I have a good feeling that there are a ton of skeletons in Dubya’s closet. Hell, even the things that we know about up to this point (the coke, the DUI and avoidance of rehab, the entire Texas Rangers deal) would make for four years of Presidential hell, easily.

Yesterday was World AIDS Day, as well as A Day With(out) Weblogs; you can see the home page that appeared on this site here.