Pretty big news -- if long past surprising -- that Rosenberg co-conspirator Morton Sobell copped to the spy ring after maintaining his innocence for the past half-century.

And an excerpt as revealing of the Grey Lady as of Sobell:

In the interview, Mr. Sobell drew a distinction between atomic espionage and the details of radar and artillery devices that he said he stole for the Russians. “What I did was simply defensive, an aircraft gun,” he said. “This was defensive. You cannot plead that what you did was only defensive stuff, but there’s a big difference between giving that and stuff that could be used to attack our country.”

(One device mentioned specifically by Mr. Sobell, however, the SCR 584 radar, is believed by military experts to have been used against American aircraft in Korea and Vietnam.)

"However"? Is that the "offensive" use of firing against the planes that are bombing your country?

Very nice piece in the New York Times today on Step It Up 2007's National Day of Climate Action Apr. 14 and the general attempt to get lawmakers to take climate change seriously.

Step It Up is currently the gargantuan Distributed Event in the DIA universe, closing in on 1,000 separate local actions a month out from the action. (There's a short description of what the Meetup-like tool does on this page.)

And the seamless blending of online components with in-the-flesh activities testifies to the capacity for creative activism to inspire passion and get big in a hurry: