Thursday, October 30, 2003

Michael Kinsley: "More puzzling is whether the politicians and their advisers who build these alternative realities don't yet realize that there's this thing called the Internet, or whether they realize it and don't care. It is the work of minutes to Google Lefkowitz's storyline into shreds." 5:35:20 PM    comment []

Al Hunt makes the most of his weekly token liberal slot on the WSJ op-ed page with a blistering column (not posted--c'mon, Taranto, share the wealth...er, maybe that's the wrong thing to say to the WSJ...but you know what I mean). Anyway, says Hunt: "The Iraq war is going badly...The press should cease referring to this as the post-war stage." "American policy continues to be riddled with confusion and contradictions." Hunt cites the Washington Post, saying we are devoting too many resources to finding those elusive weapons of mass destruction, and thus starving ourselves of more useful terror-fighting assets. I don't know if Hunt is more a Cassandra or Chicken Little. But a lot of what he says sounds plausible, and that's alarming as hell.  8:59:39 AM    comment []

John Edwards is using his campaign blog to rally opposition to Bush judicial nominees, posting a petition against them: "The Senate must reject the nominations of President Bush's anti-civil rights judges, especially Charles Pickering, Priscilla Owen and Carolyn Kuhl. President Bush is turning the judiciary over to the very far right wing of his party, which will mean an era of extreme conservative judicial activism. If President Bush continues to remake the federal courts in the direction he is heading, rights all Americans cherish will be gutted." As with his vote against the Iraq aid package, the power of Edwards the Senator lends some heft to Edwards the candidate. He's not just saying what he would do as President, he's saying what he is doing as a Senator. The campaign blog is thus doing double duty as a Senator's blog, which is interesting in itself. 8:33:16 AM    comment []

Fair and balanced and scripted from above: Fox News vet tells all. "If, on any given day, you notice that the Fox anchors seem to be trying to drive a particular point home, you can bet The Memo is behind it." 8:21:54 AM    comment []

Dave Winer: "Dean was a good first step. Clark clearly has missed some opportunities. Edwards is doing some things right. What we haven't done is define what over-the-top would be. What do we want?" Dave wants to take a road-show version of BloggerCon to San Francisco and maybe New York. Great idea, but I hate to see the rest of the country left on the other side of a digital divide. There's only one Dave, but there are a lot of us who have learned from him and with him, and we should be doing the same thing wherever we are. My UNCG continuing education classes are set for March and April. All bloggers are invited to help me teach these sessions. I'm thinking of actually setting up a blog in the first half hour of the class and going from there. I'd be happy to go to Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Charlotte if people there want to get something going. Blogging is a real-world expression of the bumper sticker that says think globally/act locally. So we should act locally. 8:19:37 AM    comment []