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The Difference Between Porn And Policy
by Bara Vaida
Freshman Rep. William Janklow, the former Republican governor of South Dakota, mistakenly implied last week that the White House displays pornography on its Web site.
At a House Government Reform Committee hearing on the prevalence of pornography on file-sharing networks like Kazaa and Morpheus, Janklow said in his opening statement, "We all know that when you go to whitehouse.gov, you are going to get a pornography Web site." That is the official Internet address of the White House.
The site Janklow meant to mention is whitehouse.com, a pornography site often used as an example of why Congress should create a place on the Internet where pornography could exist separate from other online content.
When asked on Tuesday about his comment at the hearing, Janklow said, "I misspoke" and that indeed he meant the Web site, whitehouse.com. He noted that when he was governor, he created a Web site to help parents protect their children online. He also said Congress should pass a law that would give an agency the power to "neutralize" misleading Web sites that contain obscene material. "What adults do on their own time is their business, but that doesn't mean when you surf the Web that you should have ... this stuff thrown in your face. There ought to be a way to flip those Web sites off."
White House officials for years have tried to purchase the dot-com version of the White House's online home, but its owner, New York City resident Dan Parisi, has set a sale price that is "too high" for the White House to pay, a spokesman said.
Senate Panel OKs Security Nomination
The Senate Commerce Committee last week approved the nomination of Charles McQueary to be undersecretary for science and technology at the Homeland Security Department. The panel vote was unanimous and occurred without debate.
McQueary recently retired as president of General Dynamics. His private-sector work also included stints at AT&T/Lucent Technologies and AT&T Bell Laboratories, and he is a former member of the National Defense Industrial Association's board. McQueary has degrees in engineering, mechanical engineering and engineering mechanics from the University of Texas.
At the White House, meanwhile, Faryar Shirzad has been named special assistant to the president and senior director for international economic affairs. He succeeds John Cloud in that position.
Shirzad most recently was the Commerce Department's assistant secretary for import administration. Before joining Commerce, he was the lead international trade policy coordinator for George W. Bush's presidential transition team. And from 1997 to 2001, Shirzad served as the international trade counsel on the majority staff of the Senate Finance Committee, under then-Chairman William Roth, R-Del.
Before his government service, Shirzad was an international trade attorney for the law firms of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and Robins, Kaplan Miller & Ciresi.
Copps Makes Staff Changes At FCC
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps made several changes in his personal staff last week.
Jessica Rosenworcel will become his legal adviser on issues related to competition and the effort to provide universal telecommunications service to all Americans. Jordan Goldstein, who currently fills that role while also serving as Copps' senior legal adviser, will shift to providing advice on media and consumer protection issues. He will remain the senior legal adviser.
Alexis Johns, currently Copps' legal adviser on media and consumer protection issues, will move to the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau. And the job of Paul Margie, who handles spectrum and international issues for Copps, will be unaffected by the changes.
Rosenworcel has worked at the FCC since May 1999. She is currently legal counsel to the chief of the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau. Before that, she was an attorney in the policy and program planning division of the Common Carrier Bureau.
News From The Lobbying Front
Lorine Card, a telecom specialist who had been doing lobbying and government relations work for the Potomac Hudson Group for the last couple of years, is now running her own operation, Card & Associates, news organizations reported last week.
Card, whose husband is Dutko Group President Brad Card and whose brother-in-law is White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, is a former lobbyist and operator of the political action committee for MediaOne Group, the company now known as AT&T Broadband. Her partner at Potomac Hudson, public-relations specialist Valerie LoCascio, had been at the Bozell Sawyer Miller Group, and she also is leaving Potomac Hudson to run her own business.
Elsewhere on the lobbying front, WorldCom has appointed Seth Maiman as legislative counsel of federal government relations. Maiman moves from WorldCom's office of state government affairs, where he has served the past six years on issues in Maryland, New Jersey and the District of Columbia. Maiman previously was legislative director and administrative assistant to Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and he ran the 1994 re-election campaign of Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y.
Microsoft has lured Malcolm Lee away from Cisco Systems to take the position of senior policy council and director of international policy and strategy. He will work in the Redmond, Wash., office. Lee joined Cisco in 2001 and worked on many of that firm's Pacific Rim trade issues. Before that, he was deputy assistant secretary of State on international telecommunications issues.
Maureen O'Leary, vice president of communications, is leaving the Competitive Telecommunications Association (CompTel) at the end of the week to start a new job as director of news and public information at the National Academy of Sciences. Gail Lawyer, who has been CompTel's director of communications over the past year, will replace O'Leary.
Americans for Fair Electronic Commerce Transactions has appointed Robert Hirshon as national counsel. The coalition opposes passage of the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act, a model law that would set rules for licensing computer products. Hirshon most recently was president of the American Bar Association. He practices law in Portland, Maine, where he specializes in commercial litigation.
And TechNet's New England branch is scheduled to host a roundtable of high-tech CEOs with Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., on March 21 in Waltham, Mass. Markey recently was named to the new House Homeland Security Committee and is the ranking Democrat of the Energy and Commerce Telecommunications and the Internet subcommittee. On March 24, TechNet is scheduled to host a fundraising lunch for Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., in Palo Alto, Calif.
White House Honors Mentors To Students
The White House has chosen 10 individuals and six institutions to receive the 2002 presidential awards for excellence in mathematics, science and engineering mentoring. Each award includes a $10,000 grant to provide continued mentoring.
The individual winners are:
- Enrique Barrera, a Rice University engineer who uses his "material magic show" to spark elementary and secondary school enthusiasm for science.
- David Bynum, a biochemistry professor at State University of New York at Stony Brook, who mentored 38 undergraduate students in molecular biology.
- Louis Dale of the University of Alabama-Birmingham, who has provided mentoring to students for 30 years.
- Fiona Goodchild, an education director at the University of California at Santa Barbara who developed partnerships with schools to enhance science teaching
- Robert Gray, an electrical engineering professor who recruited more women into the electrical engineering field.
- Steven Greenbaum, a City University of New York physics professor who mentored some major figures in academia.
- Chung-Chiun Lee, a Case Western Reserve University chemical engineering professor who mentors female high-schools students.
- Martha Mecartney, a University of California at Irvine associate professor of engineering who has worked on several mentoring programs.
- Sara Wadia-Fascetti, a Northeastern University associate professor of civil engineering who has worked with local Boston students.
- And Sara Young, the American Indian Research Opportunities director at Montana State University at Bozeman who seeks out mentoring programs in rural areas.
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