As Saturday draws near, racing fans around the world wait with great anticipation for the 54th running of the 12 Hours of Sebring. The race has a long history that dates back to the 1950s when the first race was run at an old Army Air Force base several hours from Tampa, FL. In the world of sports car racing, and possible motor racing in general, the 12 Hours of Sebring ranks alongside two other famous endurance races the 24 Hours of Daytona and of course the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Over the years governing bodies, rules and manufacturers have changed, but one thing has remained the same. Sebring remains an important endurance race, chiefly because it's the first lengthy test many teams have before the Le Mans 24. It's also true that since the race garners such international interest, it's the first real debut in race trim for many cars. This year we will witness the unveiling of several cars including the much anticipated Audi R10.

Though the race has a long and venerable history, it has also enjoyed a recent surge in popularity due to the American Le Mans Series and sports car racing in general. The series, which models its rules after those of the ACO and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, has made European sports car racing more accessible to North America. Through growth in the ALMS, Sebring which is owned by the founder of the ALMS, has also grown its attendance numbers.

Stay tuned for further articles this weekend as we enjoy the 54th Annual 12 Hours of Sebring.

Need evidence that the Patriot Act isn't working? Look no further than the incident that occurred in Chapel Hill North Carolina. As some of my friends have blogged, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar apparently ran down 9 students on the campus of UNC Chapel Hill. When questioned about why he did it, Taheri-azar claimed that he did it to avenge the American treatment of Muslims. So how did this happen? There are lots of explanations about why people do criminal acts and then try to justify it with some sort of political motive. However, one thing is certain, the current incarnation of the Patriot Act can do little to stop these "one man army" types from waging war on the American people.

Jeff A. Taylor, a Charlotte resident and UNC graduate, writes:

"Box cutters, airliners, rental cars. This is how you make war on a free society from within. A Ryder truck, fertilizer, plastic barrels. These are the building blocks of terror. A quick mind and dark heart are the only two really indispensable... components for making mayhem."

He goes on to explain that the danger of the Patriot Act is not the obvious encroachment on civil liberties, but the false sense of security it gives us. The powers given to government agencies allows them to collect unprecedented amounts of information, however Taylor argues that the real intelligence need to prevent terrorism can not be mined from cell phone records or credit card account activities. Worse, the sheer amount of information collected creates the problem of information overload, whereby useful data can not be easily extracted from the noise of extraneous information.

The sad part is that politicians tout the Patriot Act as some sort of catch-all legislation that will prevent the next 9-11 attack. As evidence of its effectiveness lawmakers point to the lack of any further attacks since the act's inception. However this is a dangerous and faulty conclusion, one which ignores the very failures that lead to Sept 11th. Complacency and blind trust placed in government programs following the original World Trade Center attack gave citizens a false sense of security. In the years between the attacks, everyone believed the programs were working because there had not been another attack. This was not the case, and as a result it took a major terrorist act to call these programs into question. Unfortunately we seem to be traveling down this path again, only this time under the guise of the Patriot Act.

Admittedly, over the past few years stocks have taken a beating both in the market and in the minds of private investors. Four years after the fact, losses from the tech bubble still weigh on folks minds. But all that could be changing, a Wall Street Journal article suggests. The Journal notes a definite increase in the number of stock and bond purchases, which they extrapolate as increased interest from the private sector.

Unfortunately I'm not convinced that the increase in brokerage activity has anything to do with increased confidence in the stock market. While we'd like to think that reforms like Sarbanes-Oxley and certain tax breaks are encouraging more folks to save, the unfortunate truth is that much of the influx is from cash that's been sitting on the sidelines for four years. To put it simply, investors can't keep their money out of the market.

Lawyers be damned, that's what I'm saying. Rumor has it local tobacco product maker Reynolds American is seriously considering jumping into the "smokeless tobacco" market. The reason being that cigarette sales are down; in fact they have fallen every year since 1981, according to the USDA. Sure, it sounds like a viable plan but wait a minute we aren't talking about the declining sales of beanie babies or eight track cassettes. We're talking about cigarettes, a product that's absolutely been linked to cancer. The product liability of which has darn near bankrupted the industry.

That's why it was no surprise back in 1985 when RJR tried to divest its self of the stigma by buying Nabisco, and focusing some of its marketing on consumer products. Of course many years, a leveraged buyout and lots of lawsuits later, the company continues to make cigarettes. So at what point does the company just throw up its hands and say to hell with it, let's expand tobacco operations? Surely the management at RJR doesn't think that smokeless tobacco products are free from danger. It's only a matter of time before trial lawyers get a hold of a couple thousand people with lip and gum disease and sue the remaining pants off this company.

Look, I think folks should be free to do what they want with their free time, including smoking cigarettes. At the same time I think folks should take some personal responsibility and not blame someone else because they developed cancer as a result of smoking. However, I have little pity for an industry that by in large lied about the effects of smoking, and then later tried to cover up the fact that they knew about it.

Ultimately the original decision to spin off the cigarette business was a defensive one. Given the legal climate, it's only a matter of time before punitive sanctions imposed by the courts put this dying horse out of its misery. On some level the management probably believes it can squeeze a little more profit before the entire thing goes up in smoke (so to speak).

Face it, when it comes to corporations that mismanaged, misrepresented, and generally screwed over the little guy (Enron included); RJR Tobacco in its many forms sits high atop the list. When history judges this one, I hope that this company's name serves as a bold reminder of how a corporation shouldn't do business.