[gorbachev]

Congressman Tom Lantos passed away, so his seat is vacant. He was from the district that covers San Francisco and parts of Silicon Valley.

People are speculating that Lawrence Lessig could decide to run for that seat:

http://tieguy.org/bl...g-for-congress/

Lawrence Lessig is a Stanford University Professor who has fought against content providers on copyright related issues for years. He's recently stated that he's changing his focus from fighting draconian copyright laws to fighting corruption among our legislators.

It'd be really interesting to see a "troublemaker" like him in Congress. It would be REALLY interesting to see him chairing a committee that works on copyright issues.

[MinnDarwin]

Damn! I wished I lived there, he'd get my vote!

[gregnnn]

He'd be great, I'm not sure his talents would be best applied in Congress. I wonder if he could get more
done under the radar, or some influential appointment.

[Septimus]

Wow. If Larry Lessig ran for Congress, that would be incredible. I'm a huge fan of his.

[gregnnn]

http://lessig08.org/

Seems as though he's considering it.

[gorbachev]

Holy crapola!

[Septimus]

Join the Facebook Group, if you think he should run:

http://stanford.face...gid=13417986140

EDIT: It occurs to me that this thread is veering into being by its very nature political. I guess we should avoid discussing the pros and cons of his running and instead limit it to news about whether he does or not.

This post has been edited by Septimus: 20 February 2008 - 03:49 PM

[Septimus]

I know it pales in importance compared to the SG election season, but here's a cool interview with / article about Lessig and his possible candidacy.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080...r-congress.html

[gorbachev]

http://www.news.com/...tml?tag=newsmap

He's not running

[Septimus]

Yeah, apparently he looked into it and there's just no way he could win against Jackie Spier.

Still, we can all get behind Change-Congress.org (when the site goes live). (Seriously, I actually think that SGers on EVERY part of the political spectrum will believe in this so I'm putting up the notice just so people can look if they want when it's up. Forgive me, Mods!)