Monday, May 19, 2003

Good Man Leaves. Ari Fleischer will be leaving the White House in July. That's too bad -- I liked this guy, unlike most other WH Press Secretaries, but I can see why he's leaving -- he's probably only seen his wife of six months for a total of one month, given the nature of the job. I hope he does well. Where's Margaret Tutwiler (former Press Secretary for then-SecState James Baker III)? Damn, I... [Kim du Toit] This is a shame. Fleischer was a rather bad liar (as the article illustrates), which made it refreshingly easy to tell when the government was lying about something. But on the other hand, now the job will be open for Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who would fit in much better in the White House. 3:28:40 PM    comment () Wayne LaPierre Rebukes CNN for their False AW Story. PHILLIPS: Well, if the ban on assault weapons expires, what kind of weapons would be legal? LAPIERRE: Kyra, let me say this to start: I'm glad you ran the story because apparently the only difference between 'The New York Times' and CNN is that when a reporter for 'The New York Times' fakes a story, he's fired, and at CNN he's not. Your bureau chief, John Zarrella, deliberately faked the story yesterday and intending to show that the performance characteristics of banned firearms on the list are somehow different from the performance characteristics of firearms not on the banned list. He was -- he was implying that these were machine guns or fully automatic guns. That's not true. PHILLIPS: Mr. LaPierre, I have to stop you there. No one fakes stories at CNN and John Zarrella definitely did not fake a story at CNN. You're very off base. I'm going to let you say your opinion, and let's have a conversation, but don't accuse our reporter of faking any stories, sir. LAPIERRE: Let me say it again. In front of the whole country, your reporter faked that story yesterday. It deliberately misread... PHILLIPS: All right, we're going... LAPIERRE: There's no way it could be true and I challenge CNN to defend it. [FirearmNews.com] This is why I think the fuss over that New York Times reporter is silly. The media blatantly lies in their stories all the time--not just one person, but the entire industry. 11:59:13 AM    comment () The price of gold has jumped up to almost $365/ounce! 10:56:39 AM    comment () There's a lengthy new entry in Salam Pax's weblog. He went to Basra with his friend Raed, who is working for a relief organization, and reports on what he saw. There are also many pictures, but unfortunately Salam switched image servers and the new one isn't responding (probably overwhelmed by the demand). 10:07:42 AM    comment () New public Groovespaces. Over the last couple of days 2 new public Groovespaces were started. Groove-Wireless technology is a space started by SB Chatterjee to discuss the potential of  Groove and Wifi networks. Neil Finlayson of Mysterian also started a space where you can have a look at their Radiology Manager medical Solution in Groove. btw : Rainer Volz is maintaining a list of these and other public Groovespaces [Jeroen Bekkers' Groove Weblog] 9:52:32 AM    comment () Drug testing kids. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer defended the court's decision to allow schools to test students for drug use, calling it "a reasonable way to stop children from experimenting with narcotics." He said drug testing for participation in extracurricular activities helps people who don't want to use drugs. A student ''can say to his friends, `Well, I want to go out for sports next year, well, I want to join the debate team, well, I want to be on the newspaper, so you see I can't.' '' Drug Czar John Walters clearly agrees. And schools everywhere from Texas to Illinois to North Carolina are showing a disturbing interest in their students' urine. But it doesn't work. Reports Saturday's New York Times: [A] new federally financed study of 76,000 students nationwide, by far the largest to date, found that drug use is just as common in schools with testing as in those without it. [Hit & Run] Leftist idiots who complain about "conservative" Supreme Court appointees such as Scalia should remember that Breyer is a Clinton appointee who is widely regarded as a counterweight to Scalia. 9:13:17 AM    comment () I briefly looked at "Tinderbox" on one of the OS X systems at work, and discovered that it can save files! This suggests that the inability to save on my Mac OS laptop is a bug, and not just some limitation of the demo. That's rather bad! 9:02:37 AM    comment ()

© Copyright 2006 Ken Hagler. Last update: 2/15/2006; 1:54:40 PM.