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To: tiquer who wrote (22004)	12/7/1998 11:05:00 PM
From: Gerald R. Lampton	Respond to of 24154

The message you and I should obviously get from all of this, South Carolina dropping out, the Microsoft discovery request, is, it's a going to be a long war of attrition. South Carolina is only the second casualty, Texas, of course, being the first. And the steady drumbeat of criticism from people in the media and in academia, constantly beating on public officials about how it is so unfair that poor Microsoft has this double standard applied against it, about how AOL/Netscape makes the whole lawsuit obsolete, or whatever the latest spin is, has only just begun. But these facts, this ongoing propaganda campaign that will not end until the case is over, should be no surprise. All of this was to be expected, since, as these experienced lawyers knew, they were taking on the largest, most powerful corporation in the world. No, it's not that it was going to be a war of attrition, and the Attorney General of South Carolina just wasn't prepared for battle. No, as we discover from a WSJ article paraphrasing the Attorney General of South Carolina's reasons for dropping out: Mr. Condon said he was influenced by economist Milton Friedman's position that government intervention in the technology industry would hurt innovation and reduce corporate profits. interactive.wsj.com So that's it: Milton Friedman says the lawsuit is a bad idea, and therefore we drop the lawsuit -- just like that. I mean, the Wall Street Journal saying, "It's time to call off this whale hunt," wasn't enough to do it. If it had been any other economist, this AG would have soldiered on. If F.A. Hayek were still alive and had said, "Dump this turkey," this AG would have said, "No way, Jose!" But Milton Friedman, that's just too much pressure for this mere public official to bear. ;) Or, maybe he was just looking for an excuse. It must be really frustrating to be Joel Klein right now.