Friday, January 02, 2004

According to Carolina Progressive, the grand total of Meetup members signed up for NC statewide races is five -- one supporter of Ballantine for governor and four for Burr's Senate run. That's how 2004 begins. Wonder what the tally will look like in June, or September. 5:02:28 PM    comment []

Web-based philanthropy: DonorsChoose lets people fund needs identified by public school teachers. Nice. Many-to-many, a middleman that adds value, distributed giving. A teacher might post the need for, say, a piece of lab equipment, and anyone who really likes that teacher, or that school, or science, or whatever, can donate directly to that cause. The DonorsChoose organization vets the proposals, collects the dough, and purchases and delivers the goods. Almost all of the money flows through to the end users. From the site: DonorsChoose presents a new business model for accomplishing good works. Typically, a nonprofit organization must pay itself to assess needs and design services for a particular group of people. At DonorsChoose, motivated teachers--who know their kids better than anyone in the system--perform this essential task for free. Correspondingly, a foundation pays itself to evaluate the programs designed by nonprofits and to channel funds to the most worthy programs. At DonorsChoose, citizen-philanthropists perform this task. DonorsChoose started in New York -- now former teacher turned software magnate turned philanthropist Michael Brader-Araje has brought it to North Carolina. 1:58:26 PM    comment []

frograbbitmonkey: "Every time Frodo isn't rolling around in filth and self-pity, he's _glowing_, and every one around him is laughing--IN SLOW MOTION--and this power to glow and make the movie slow to a crawl is truly a greater evil than any power Sauron wields." 1:18:48 PM    comment []

Bob Herbert rips into the case against Darryl Hunt, the Winston-Salem man who was wrongly imprisoned for 19 years for a murder he didn't commit: "The authorities did not want to release Darryl Hunt under any circumstances." The NYT columnist will continue his series on Monday. The Winston-Salem Journal has a done a lot of work on this story and put together a convenient, frequently-updated archive. 1:06:38 PM    comment []

Josh Marshall says the case of outed CIA operative Valerie Plame has grown muy caliente: "They're guilty as sin. It's now crystal clear that from the very beginning the folks at the White House have known who did it. And pretty clearly the president didn't see anything wrong with it, or didn't care, because he didn't try to do anything about it." Meanwhile, Glenn Reynolds says Bob Novak is "not legally entitled to keep quiet if subpoenaed. And I don't think he's ethically entitled to, either." Says Insty of the choice between the opposing imperatives of protecting the press and safeguarding national defense: "Of course, for a lot of people the answer is, 'whichever will hurt Bush.' Well, yeah, and for a lot of other people the answer is, "whichever will HELP Bush." But those aren't the real questions. There is a hierarchy of values here, with Novak's rights (or privileges, per Reynolds) weighed against his obligations. Glenn (who has pooh-poohed Plameout) says Novak should give up his sources, or be compelled to do so. Caliente. 12:51:26 PM    comment []