Wednesday, October 15, 2003

D'oh! Amateur journalist Glenn Reynolds and professional journalist Andrew Sullivan learn a valuable lesson about reliable sources. Reynolds and Sullivan pimped a story by WorldNetDaily columnist and talk-radio guy Kevin McCullough that claimed Ed Asner was a fan of Stalin's. Turns out that Asner's statements (about which who the hell cares anyway?) were grievously misquoted by McCullough, who also managed to misquote himself. "It's hard for me to understand  how McCullough could have made this mistake," says Reynolds. Hmmm. Could it be because he wanted it to be true, 'cause that would, like, show how dumb all those peacenik liberals really really are? Might that impulse explain the credulity of others, too? Indeed. 2:53:11 PM    comment []

Erskine Bowles: "Next year, I promise you the seat of Sam Ervin, the seat of Terry Sanford, the seat of John Edwards will be in the hands of a Democrat." I would be happy to talk to Bowles, Burr, and any other contender for the Senate seat about setting up a campaign weblog. 2:08:31 PM    comment []

The Hill: "Grassroots growing fast in cyberspace." 2:04:21 PM    comment []

Elizabeth Spiers on the Quattrone case: "I'm pretty sure I remember a collective 'oh, fuck,' from the boys at 11 Madison Avenue the day CSFB chief John Mack announced that Quattrone was under investigation. If there were any real distance between Quattrone and the mothership, no one would have been worried. If they're not panicking now, it's only because SEC retribution has been less than swift and they've had two years to absorb the shock." 1:58:30 PM    comment []

Several chapters from an important book about the security flaws in electronic voting machines are available for free online. The book, Black Box Voting: Ballot-tampering in the 21st Century, will be on sale at Amazon and other usual outlets, but portions can also be downloaded in PDF form from the site linked in this sentence. Black Box Voting was written by Bev Harris, who runs a well-known website by that name. It was edited by the N&R's own Lex Alexander. I covered this subject recently for Baseline. It is very serious stuff. 8:25:53 AM    comment []

An interesting conversation about campaign blogs between David Hoggard, a Greensboro City Council candidate who has one, and Bruce Ashley, a mayoral candidate who doesn't. They're just kidding about stealing that blimp, I think. Hoggard: "Incumbents may think that they can’t post freely because they fear that their constituents might more clearly see whom they actually elected to office. Fear of failure is not a good trait for an office holder to have, nor does such a trait make for a very good blogger." 8:13:14 AM    comment []