13 June 2001

Bush Europe Backgrounder Hilarious spoof travel notes on Salon for Dubya on his first European trip. Journalism and Democracy Excellent reminder not to take journalism for granted by Bill Moyers in The Nation (Via Craig Burton): Well, as we learned in the 1960s but seem to have forgotten, government is about who wins and who loses in the vast bazaar of democracy. Government can send us to war, pick our pockets, slap us in jail, run a highway through our garden, look the other way as polluters do their dirty work, take care of the people who are already well cared for at the expense of those who can't afford lawyers, lobbyists or time to be vigilant. It matters who's pulling the strings. It also matters who defines the news and decides what to cover. It matters whether we're over at the Puffy Combs trial, checking out what Jennifer Lopez was wearing the night she ditched him, or whether we're on the Hill, seeing who's writing the new bankruptcy law, or overturning workplace safety rules, or buying back standards for allowable levels of arsenic in our drinking water. Come again? Barney, blag, bosh, and brass monkeys? Whether or not you need a translation, this fabulous dictionary of London slang is hugely entertaining (via Boing Boing) 12:46:04 PM