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Really remarkable interview between Chris Matthews and Bishop Thomas Tobin, who banned R.I. Congressman Patrick Kennedy from receiving communion because of Kennedy’s support of abortion rights.

Matthews, who is Catholic and indicates in the interview that he is pro-life, hammers the bishop on a single point: if you’re going to withhold communion from a legislator because of his undertanding of the law, what specific law would you have him make instead?

And even more to the point, Matthews asks, if abortion is to be illegal, what would the punishment be for performing one? Prison? For how long? Who would be punished? The woman? The doctor? Medical staff?

The Catholic church, as other ecclesiastical bodies do, has a persuasive moral argument against abortion. But as Chris Matthews says, once a church heaves legal arguments atop its moral ones—as the Catholic church has done in denying Kennedy communion for supporting something that is legal—it must start advocating for the specific punishment of criminal acts. In other words, to paraphrase Matthews, if you think abortion should be illegal, you need to start arguing that women and their doctors should be going to prison. Not many people go that far.

I want to be clear. I’m not making my own opinions known here, except to the extent that I think Matthews is right: if you think something should be illegal, you should plan for the consequences of its enforcement. And I don’t see the Catholic church, at least in the person of Bishop Tobin, doing that.

I’m a capitalist. And I understand the necessity of lowering operating costs, even when it means layoffs.

But Hyatt in this case deserves a boycott because they lied to their workers. Hyatt told its workers it would be bringing in temporary staff to help cover shifts holidays and vacations. Hyatt had its $15/hr workers train these new $8/hr workers—and when the training was done, Hyatt fired the old housekeeping staff.

So I ask my family, most of whom are business people or travel for work, to insist that their companies not patronize Hyatt. Because it’s one thing to cut costs; it’s something else—it’s sadism—to lie to their employees, fire them with no warning, and help create hundreds of uninsured, both the temps and the newly unemployed:

Williams, a single mother of a 13-year-old with asthma, stocked up on medication before her insurance runs out at the end of the month. Last week, the former Hyatt Regency Boston housekeeper also had to cancel an airline ticket she’d bought the day before she was laid off to go see her father in Barbados. She hasn’t seen him since 2005, and isn’t sure when she’ll see him again.

Both grew up in New England, and both weren’t exactly sure why they reacted so. Kennedy had just always been there, they said.

I’m many years too young to remember Chappaquiddick, though my introduction to Ted Kennedy was ultimately through Joyce Carol Oates’ novella Black Water, a reimagining of that event. After living in Boston for seven years, though, I’ve found his presence is everywhere. Everywhere. This death is a loss in so many senses here—of suddenly not finding something that was always there, of there being a hole, of not knowing your way, and having no words. The whole place and its people are at a loss.

My sincere hope is that this focus on Kennedy, the long-time Senator and champion of the underprivileged—despite or because of his own privilege—enhances a clear focus on his last crusade, namely, health care. There would be no greater tribute to a conflicted man than to take the most conflicted issue of our time, one that he took on as his legacy, and sort it out.

Godspeed.

Based on the syntax of that last sentence, you can tell I’m exhausted. But I got to meet some folks that I’ve admired for a long time, such as Dan Gillmor, and got to promote the 2009 Knight News Challenge winners.

I’m conflicted. This conference was the last big set of tasks from now until the fall, so I’m glad I can rest a bit. But it was why I wanted to work with MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media—a chance to rock out with media innovators and meet a few of my long-time heroes.

I’m glad there’s a full year until the next conference, but I hope I get to convince all of these folks to come hang out at MIT before then.

So again, not only did Giles not bother to do research on how Twitter actually works and how it’s actually used, she and the rest of the production staff didn’t bother to do an acceptable job on the research they did do.

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So perhaps I’m biased when I don’t see a problem with Google archiving so-called orphan works, publications that have been abandoned by both author and publisher, are out of print, and are effectively if not technically out of copyright. I don’t see a problem with making available works that no one can easily see/acquire, that no one is promoting, and that no one is making money from—but that may, and often do, still have great value.

I’m also biased, however, in favor of one of the great archival minds of our age, Robert Darnton:

Critics say that without the orphan books, no competitor will ever be able to compile the comprehensive online library Google aims to create, giving the company more control than ever over the realm of digital information. And without competition, they say, Google will be able to charge universities and others high prices for access to its database.

The settlement, “takes the vast bulk of books that are in research libraries and makes them into a single database that is the property of Google,” said Robert Darnton, head of the Harvard University library system. “Google will be a monopoly.”

The question for Darnton and others, though, is: is this a bad thing? Google does not somehow become the exclusive copyright holder to orphan works. Other groups and companies are welcome to do the same thing and to also make money from it. And this particular monopoly is, contradictorily, limited and temporary. There will be well-funded competitors. There’s no indication that Google wishes to charge for access—it’s fair to assume Google will monetize the collection through targeted advertising as it does with search results and within Gmail. The original orphan works don’t disappear.

So I don’t begrudge Google its ambition. While experience shows that powerful groups try to control archives as a way of shaping history, experience also shows that seemingly dominant businesses, such as General Motors and Microsoft, are inevitably outflanked. And most important, as Schmidt explains in the Auletta interview, Google thrives only in so far as it is trusted. It’s a business that deals in user data, and that demands trust. Trust broken once is trust lost, so it’s in Google interest to welcome competing ideas, to accept criticism, and to be, above all, open.

Bonuses do indeed exist to keep executives loyal and hard-working, as the article says. Bonuses can and should get larger when companies have to compete for talented executives.

But bonuses also have the effect of making stars of those executives. Bonuses are often used as the measure of talent. In the abstract, they cause executives to lose humility—if I’m making a $50 million bonus, I must be seriously awesome. And in practical terms, bonuses signal to others that particular executives are worth inviting to be on boards, to speak at conferences, to represent business interests to foreign governments.

That is, by making stars of some executives, bonuses can take the focus off the actual goal: motivating people to do quality work for the company.

The Times article hints at all that. But it’s worth saying it explicitly: when it comes to loyalty and success, bonuses follow the law of diminishing returns.

No one can get in the head of New Yorker writer David Denby, but to read this piece on Wonkette—one that eviscerates Denby’s criticism of blogs and exposes serious flaws in his own writing/research ability—is to understand perfectly the relationship between old-school and new-school writers.

Dear President Obama,

Here is a list of the first 10 things you should do as president:

1. Fly to the White House in a helicopter.
2. Walk in.
3. Wipe feet.
4. Walk to the Oval Office.
5. Sit down in a chair.
6. Put hand-sanitizer on hands.
7. Enjoy moment.
8. Get up.
9. Get in car.
10. Go to the dog pound.

— Chandler Browne, age 12, Chicago

The interviews also indicate that Mr. Bush was convinced by top administration officials, led by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, that any overt attack on Iran would probably prove ineffective, lead to the expulsion of international inspectors and drive Iran’s nuclear effort further out of view. Mr. Bush and his aides also discussed the possibility that an airstrike could ignite a broad Middle East war in which America’s 140,000 troops in Iraq would inevitably become involved.

Instead, Mr. Bush embraced more intensive covert operations actions aimed at Iran, the interviews show, having concluded that the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies were failing to slow the uranium enrichment efforts. Those covert operations, and the question of whether Israel will settle for something less than a conventional attack on Iran, pose immediate and wrenching decisions for Mr. Obama.

What this says is, a visible, overt attack will ignite a multi-country full-scale war, but an invisible, covert attack will result in no overt reprisal. Specifically, for Israel with American help to eliminate the Iranian reactor at Natanz with a tactical raid or aerial bombardment, that would cause a region-wide war, inevitably involving the 140,000 American troops in Iraq. But to achieve the exact same result—the elimination of the Natanz reactor—through espionage, no overt retaliation could occur without Iran admitting that its security isn’t up to snuff.

The latter sounds much better.

It makes me thankful that we have people willing to do just that, at least given legitimate ends and a strong chain of command.