New confirmation that the U.S. remains the world spamming leader comes from Sophos. Sophos, which gets its data from spam-attracting "honeypots," said 43% of the world's spam comes from the U.S., 27% combined comes from China and Korea. (The caricature is from Sophos' French site.)

Earlier this month, readers of this blog will remember, we reported on a CipherTrust study that 86% of the spam it collects at client sites comes from U.S. addresses, although many spoof foreign addresses.

What we have, I think, is yet-another bunch of greedheads being protected by the Bush Administration. Legitimate business is constantly getting whacked in the reputation by hooligans who refuse to pay people, or who rape the environment, or who cheat their customers, and in every single one of those areas we've seen executive and regulatory orders protecting this garbage.

The problem is that the inevitable backlash could really saddle businesses with burdensome regulation. But those who are supporting crooks have brought it on themselves.