Came across a LJ post of an American soldier from a post on MetaFilter.

If you voted for Bush, didn’t vote, or voted no on gay marriage, I hope you get drafted.
I hope they stick you in my unit, and you go with me to Iraq when my unit goes back in September. I will laugh when you see what soldiers in that country face on a daily basis. I hope you work with gay soldiers too. I did. One of them saved my life. Think he shouldn’t have the right to get married? Fuck you. He fought just as hard as I did and on most days, did his job better than me. Don’t tell me gays don’t have the same rights you do.
Think the war in Iraq is a good thing? I’ll donate my M-16 to you and you can go in my place.

I respect his emotions. Being a low level soldier in a warzone with body count increasing all around you must definitely not be easy. But being a 19 year old kid, I think his preferences are pretty much in line with the huge number of people in his age group who preferred Kerry. And those would have been his views even if he wasn’t in the Army.

Interestingly, go through this thread of conversation between this guy and another soldier and draw your own conclusions about whether his rant against Bush was a result of his being bored with a ‘tedious’ job. Also, note what the other soldier said about the voting pattern within the army!

Internetizens rejoice! For the first conviction of a spammer has happened and a jail-term served!

Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., one of the Internet’s top 10 spammers, according to watchdogs, was convicted in the first felony spam case — just up the road from Fool HQ in Loudoun County, Va. He and his sister, Jessica DeGroot, were both found guilty by a jury that then recommended a jail term of nine years for Jaynes and a fine of $7,500 for DeGroot.

What’s important here is the nature of the convictions: intentional spamming. Jaynes and DeGroot were convicted not for the alleged fraudulent nature of their millions of email solicitations — Jaynes has amassed a reported fortune of $24 million hawking products like penny-stock pickers — but for sending unsolicited junk and forging IP addresses to cover their tracks.

[emphasis mine]

It really is a significant judgement, because as the emphasized portions of the above excerpt indicate, the conviction is purely for spamming and not for some fraud or scam. This means that spamming is being (rightly) recognized as a felony and is being dealt with accordingly.

But of course this is just the beginning. One long jail-term for a spammer, one snall step in the fight against spam-kind!