The first thing to consider whenever talking about any law regarding the regulation of games is the medium’s First Amendment protection. This was first called into question back in 2002 when a U.S. District Court judge, Stephen Limbaugh, ruled that they did not in fact, deserve such protections. This was overturned in 2003 when the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, citing other unusual works and their First Amendment protections, and the simple fact that video games are a “novel medium” does not negate the right to First Amendment protection.

So fast forward seven years to today. Since that time, several states have tried to pass legislation to restrict the sale of violent games to children, and spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to do so, and each time these states have failed to make it stick. Why is that?

Well, it goes back to the very first thing to consider – games as protected speech under the first amendment. We may not like gory, schlocky, ham-fisted violence carnivals, but we as citizens have every right to produce them. To stop this would require the United States to create an exception in the First Amendment for games, which to date has only been done for porn, which one would be hard-pressed to equate games to porn. After all, if there are no Federal regulations on films, or books, why should games get set up for a metaphorical headshot?

Of course, no law as presented tries to restrict this: That’s true enough, but here is the sticker. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, we are guaranteed that no state may make a law that deprives citizens of our general rights, which we can interpret to include our entrepreneurial freedoms and freedom of enterprise. So logically, no state may enact a law that stops a store from selling unregulated material to whomever they want.

Further, to this point every law proposed suggests that government regulate these sales based on the Entertainment Software Ratings Board’s E through AO rating system. This goes against the Federal code of ethics, in which the government may not endorse a private enterprise. So that’s right out.

With the legal status of the laws or potential laws established, let’s look at the practical side of things.

One wonders how states or districts would enforce such laws, with many police departments stretched thin already, especially here in Detroit. Things aren’t as cushy as they look on Detroit 1-8-7. It’d be a waste of time and resources.

And further, the gaming industry does everything it can to make families aware of the content in the games they buy for their children. The ESRB has websites, pamphlets, point-of-sale documentation, shelf liners, all of which they distribute and are placed in stores to help parents make good decisions for their kids. It doesn’t take a whole lot of time or energy to take a look at what one’s son or daughter is asking after and determine whether it does or if it doesn’t have a place in the home. Of course, if one DID take more time on the subject, it could be a great jumping off point for some rather potent discussions between parent and child, and provide some great opportunities for parents to get involved and create some learning opportunities for kids. Everybody wins in that situation.

The fact of the matter is that legislating against games, whether they be violent or otherwise, is not possible from a legal standpoint. The furor that arises from this issue is the same that showed up when rock music first appeared, or TV and movies actually depicted couples kissing and Rhett Butler told Scarlett that he didn’t give a damn. It’s the same threat to our nation’s “family values” that was posed by Gangster Rap, and that “dilemma” was solved with a sticker.

Certainly there are games out there that kids should – perhaps even must – not be allowed to play. However, the answer to the problem does not lay within creating new laws, and new restrictions on our Constitutionally-declared freedoms. The answer lies in education, and a little bit of dedication and interest on the part of our families. Retailers as well, could do better in observing the ratings suggestions and in many cases – following their own corporate policies by keeping sales within those guidelines. Our legislators however, and our judges, need to keep out of it. They’ve got bigger and better fish to fry.

Indeed, ‘Six Days’ is being billed as a true-to-life depiction of Operation Phantom Fury during the second battle of Fallujah. While other games have been released by other groups, including MTVu/Viacom and Gamelab, to bring up social issues, Atomic Games dismisses those other games as ‘historical fiction.’

The game actually tracks and relates their experiences, and is intended to be more of a ‘documentary’ than simply a piece of electronic entertainment. A game-amentary, as Atomic likes to put it. Peter Tamte, president of Atomic Games, related to the Wall Street Journal that ‘Six Days’ is intended to “replicate a specific and accurate timeline — we mean six days literally,” says Mr. Tamte. “We track several units through the process and you get to know what it was like from day to day.”

Sergeant Eddie Garcia, a Marine sergeant and Purple Heart recipient who was wounded during the first days of fighting in Fallujah, has been a consultant for Atomic Games from the beginning of the project. While many military-themed games make use of consultants to maintain accuracy in their presentation, Garcia’s experiences make their way into ‘Six Days’ with much more detail and clarity.

Aside from tweaking how soldiers communicate with their superiors, and walking developers through the battle tactics that marines used on the battlefield, Garcia provided Atomic Games with his diary – one similar to those that many soldiers kept while in the field, to detail notes about their positions and activities each day. In one instance, Garcia noted the exact time and place where he launched an illumination flare, which will later be incorporated into the game.

The team at Atomic even found it necessary to build a new game engine, to incorporate the Marines’ fighting style. Instead of barging in through the front door, Marines in Fallujah would choose to knock down the concrete and rebar buildings with bulldozers or by calling in air strikes. This heavy use of destructible environment is immediately apparent in-game. The quality, and the advances in this technology will also go toward creating new training simulators for the military.

The announcement of the game has drawn some criticism from industry professionals, pundits and military alike. The recent news that Atomic Games would be consulting with former insurgents in some manner during the production of the game has had some sitting up in their seats. Some say that it’s too soon, ‘Six Days’ will be the first game on the ongoing war in Iraq, and will also carry the distinction of being the first game based on a simultaneously occurring event.

Recently G4TV interviewed some currently active duty personnel in Army and Marines, and asked for their take on the game. Most common among interviewees were views expressed and shared by U.S. Army Sgt. Casey McGeorge, who said “As a combat veteran and as a gamer, I have no problem whatsoever with the game…As long as it’s made as realistically as possibly, I believe that this could be a good thing for both combat veterans and for the war in general.”

And perhaps McGeorge is correct in this regard – since the Vietnam Conflict, American military conflict has been portrayed in the media as something other than humanistic, that the actions taken during battle are somehow removed from the people involved. And perhaps, the interactive nature of the game, placing players right in the middle of the firefight in Fallujah, may give them a different understanding of the situation.

However, despite the documentary-style portrayal of the battle in Fallujah, ‘Six Days’ does lack one aspect of the documentary – and that is commentary.

“We’re not trying to make social commentary. We’re not pro-war. We’re not trying to make people feel uncomfortable. We just want to bring a compelling entertainment experience,” says Anthony Crouts, vice-president of marketing for Konami, the game’s publisher. “At the end of the day, it’s just a game.”

As it happens, he is not to become the next President of the United States.

Barack Obama, then, the former senator from Illinois, will ascend into the White House on January 20th to become the 44th president of our nation. His story is history, and if for no other reason after the next four to eight years, we will remember him for that. Depending on who you ask, he will be the first biracial, or the first black president of our country. Either way you look at it, it is a tremendous step forward for the United States in terms of racial equality and perception.

But that is, of course, a non-issue in the greater scheme of things. That is not to say that what his achievement means to the issue of civil rights and race relations is to be diminished or trivialized in any way, far from it. Rather it is a credit both to him and to the nation, that instead of dwelling on what it means to have a man of African descent as Commander-in-Chief, the focus can instead be on what really matters. Restoring strength to the country’s economy, managing our military conflicts and the stabilization of the Middle East and western Asia, renewing America’s efforts toward energy independence and preparing the country to again take the lead in technological and scientific innovation.

What, then, can we hope to see from this man after he is inaugurated in the early days of 2009?

Unlike many Republicans and Republican-leaning centrists, I do not look at this as a portent of disaster ahead. Though, as Obama said in his acceptance speech, “there will be sacrifice.” Already I have seen damage done as a result of President-elect Obama’s stated policies, in this case the intent to raise the Capital Gains tax. A good friend of mine, a realtor, lost a number of his listings as clients decided not to pursue a real estate sale, knowing their net profit would not be worth the sale of their holdings. This mass drawback of listings may cost him his job. I suspect he isn’t the only realtor facing a similar issue tonight.

Yet, there are qualities that I do admire in our soon-to-be president, things that are worth emulating, things that are worth ensuring he follows up on. Obama has been an unusually tech-savvy candidate. In no other election have we had a candidate who is as informed on the issues that affect technology businesses in the way Obama is. Though President Bush has recently added a position to his administration to address the issue of copyright, certainly to the approval of the ESA, the RIAA, MPAA and other such organizations, it is the president-elect who has the right idea, or even espouses any idea at all, on such issues as network neutrality and the proliferation of broadband Internet connectivity.

He has also proposed significantly increased direct access to government officials, through the creation of weekly Internet-based ‘town hall’ meetings. While it is yet to be announced what technology this would utilize, whether audio and video options would be put to use or if simple IRC channels would be put into play remains to be seen, it’s a great idea that can hopefully be implemented effectively.

Moreover, Obama is the first presidential candidate – perhaps appropriately at this point in history – to leverage technology to unite his supporters and rally them. Some have called him the first Web 2.0 candidate. It’s certainly true that Barack Obama had a better website than John McCain, but Obama went a step further, utilizing SMS messages, and even the development of unique applications for Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch devices. Without a doubt, this is the future of the political campaign. There will not be a viable candidate in the future who does not make use of these vital pieces of technology.

Obama has proposed, no, promised trillions of dollars in new spending on new programs. It is unavoidable, the money will have to come from somewhere. That ‘somewhere’ is the pocket of the American taxpayer – all of them. Despite his promises to the contrary, taxes will have to go up. These promises must be broken in order to fulfill his other ones. Promises of national health care, free money for college, funding for the arts and sciences. Everybody wants these things in some way, but the money must come from somewhere.

As a business owner, I am not as troubled as others may be. My company is structured as a C-corporation, so its income is not tied to my own. And I am okay with saying so publically, my income will not cross any of the thresholds Obama or his associates have stated would be the bar for a tax increase – or as they put it, a “restoration” to Clinton-era levels. (Which, after eight years of lowered taxes, is hard to take seriously as anything but an increase.) Though we all know by now, sole proprietors, limited partnerships and S-corporations will be fair game, and will suffer under Obama’s proposed tax policies.

I believe we will see a lot of incorporations before the end of 2008 as a result.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

After all, as patriotic as it is to pay more taxes, most Americans rightly know they are already patriotic enough, by that barometer.

It is important to note that we are not necessarily headed for a silver-lined Morning in America however, despite what Obama’s iconic logo would have us believe. Most states have elected Democratic representatives and senators, and indeed even on the federal level the Senate is only 60 Republican seats away from a filibuster-proof Democratic majority.

There is nobody who can rightly believe that uncontested power is good for a democratic nation. For the last two years, there has been a Democratic majority and it has been the least-approved of, least accomplished Congress in history. Many of the old players of our most recent boondoggles, vis a vis the housing market and the Freddie and Fannie flops, like Maxine Waters, Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank will still be around. Except now they’ll have even more support.

With a Democratic executive, a Democratic legislative, a likely-to-become Democratic judicial and many Democratic-leaning states, one wonders how our celebrated system of checks and balances will hold up in the years to come. This is an issue we must be vigilant about. Not for partisanship, not out of fear for what may come to pass that we disagree with, but more for the vital underpinnings of what makes our system of government work best, what enables us to enact such a smooth transition of power and that such a transition can even occur. For one ideology to rule utterly, that is no longer a democracy and it would behoove us to remain keenly aware of the fact.

Ultimately, we as Americans must take care to remember that the election season is over – we are no longer divided by the goal of the electorate, but are again bound by the indissoluable ties of nationality. Again we have but one overarching goal, and that is to improve and perfect our wonderous Union. Whether that be by improving our businesses, improving our relations with each other, improving our families or our communities, that is the goal we must now share.

If one might be inclined to shy away from this new president, let them at least embrace one thing: it is time to put away the pettiness of partisanship, so that we can work together toward a common goal. Should you not care for the man, at least respect the virtue his office. I think the man who will be president has espoused at least this one goal, of which we can all get behind with open minds and whole hearts.

Though Barkley has some interesting ideas on the American presidency – notably that the American president, despite being the most powerful person in the free world, does not have an impact on a person’s day to day life. I call this an interesting idea, because lately it seems that by and large, a lot of folks have this weird belief that President Bush has been climbing into their window at night and sucking their blood or something. Though I do believe Barkley takes the notion a little too far, as he continues to say “realistically, whoever the president is doesn’t have a huge effect on anybody’s life, to be honest with you.”

Noting the intended policy decisions by both Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain in this current election, I think this could not be further from the truth. In a world where a President Obama would levy increased taxes on the population making anywhere from $42k-$300k per year, where fees would be inflicted on companies that don’t provide health care despite paying additional taxes to provide for the nationalized program, or where a President McCain would tax health care benefits for the first time in history, there are very real effects that the average citizen would experience, acutely and directly.

Barkley does make a number of good points with regard to race and education. Being but a stone’s throw outside the Detroit Public School system, his points are more keenly felt. In the wake of a shooting death at one of the local high school, Barkley’s point that “(unless) we as black people stop killing each other, not getting our education, we have to do better. Racism does exist. It is always going to exist, but until we as a people stop killing each other and stop not getting our education we are never going to be successful” hits harder than ever. He isn’t just speaking for his home state of Alabama. A similar cancer plagues Michigan, it plagues Louisiana, it plagues even our major cities like Los Angeles and New York.

Though he’s no economist – Barkley makes no bones about how the Republican party “ran (this) economy into the ground.” It’s not for a complete lack of awareness, I think Mr. Barkley simply buys into the Democratic party line that the Republican president caused all our woes, when in fact congressional and house Republicans have been pushing for years to enact the regulation which would have forestalled if not prevented the economic crisis we now face. Of course, regulation is not necessarily a Republican precept, so it’s understandable that one might not quickly come to such a conclusion, but the evidence is out there.

Regardless, overall I could get behind a Barkley administration. His heart seems to be in the right place and with the right state advisors behind him, I think he could make some good things happen regardless of ideology. One doesn’t need to be a Liberal or a Conservative to want better schools for our children and better economic opportunities for our citizens. It’s not a bipartisan issue to want to improve our states and bring up the level of our general welfare.

It’s not even a political thing. It’s an American thing.

And now here they are, posting illegally-obtained emails from Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s personal email accounts. Private family photos. Personal email contact lists, including her husband, and other family friends. Phone numbers of her children. (who all but one are minors, by the way)

The accounts have since been taken down, and while Imageshack and 4chan – where the group who claims responsibility was formed – had them for awhile, those have since been removed as well. But Gawker, knowing that this information was obtained illegally, and knowing that this information serves zero purpose in exposing any alleged use of personal email for state business. They’ve gone ahead and posted this stuff for the sole purpose of being spiteful and hurtful, because their authors’ and/or editors’ politics don’t mesh with hers. Gawker, which has spent so long masquerading as a legitimate media group has shown itself for what it really is, little more than a garbage tabloid. Except I don’t think even the National Inquirer would run this story.

As far as I’m concerned, this is beyond low.

I may display a little partisan bias here, in noting that you never see this kind of behavior displayed on behalf of the Republican party. You never see costumed idiots rushing the stage at the Democratic speeches and conventions. You never hear about the families of Democratic officials being dragged out into the public eye, the way Governor Palin’s has this last month. (And let’s leave the Kennedys out of this, most of them are officials themselves, and Billy Carter reveled in his own infamy, as did Roger Clinton.)

But I will promise you this, reader: Had it been Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi I’d be equally angry.

I am angry because this is not the political process. It is not even the process of justice, if one believes there is justice that needs to be served to this woman. It is simply the result of blind fanaticism, taken to a foolish and idiotic extreme, all in the name of readership numbers.

I am angry at the hypocrisy in the Internet ‘elite’, who clamor for privacy in all things only to lash out and violate someone else’s.

And I am angry at Gawker, for stooping to this level. While some will say that “they’re only a bunch of blogs,” I think it is reasonable to say that blogs have long become mainstream enough media that as long as they are breaking original stories, they should be beholden to the same rules of journalistic integrity as any other media employee.

This won’t blow over anytime soon, as far as I’m concerned. I hope other people will see this issue for what it is as I do. I hope people stop patronizing their sites and providing them ad revenue. I hope people stop providing them with readers to justify their banner pricing. Their behavior is no way to run a media organization.

I would just as soon get my news coverage from Perez Hilton. At least with that dude you know what you’re getting into.