Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Josh Marshall was named Blogger of the Year by The Week magazine as part of its first annual Opinion Awards. I'm down with that choice -- although there could have been a lot of correct choices. Jeff Jarvis has the scoop from the awards ceremony. 7:07:20 PM    comment []

Months of careful research have yielded the following analysis of the bring-your-dog-to-work effort at the offices of EdCone.com: --time spent rolling on the floor: up 86% --terms of endearment uttered: up 92% --good vibes: up 51% --pleasant conversations with drunks on S. Elm St.: up 39% --laughing: up 64% --bio breaks by the railroad tracks behind Dixie Lock and Key: up 81% --neighbors keeping dog treats in their offices: up 77% --lunch crumbs on office floor: down 94% 6:53:25 PM    comment []

A Confederate flag will fly in Lee County on MLK Day -- and nobody seems to mind. January 19 is Robert E. Lee's birthday. It helps that the flag in question is not the fetishized rebel Battle Flag. N&R: "Black civic, church and NAACP leaders have said the Robert E. Lee Society has every right to celebrate its heroes." 9:00:59 AM    comment []

Andrew Sullivan cites the Fallows article and says the Bush administration should admit its failures of administration and intelligence -- he says the good things accomplished in Iraq outweigh the mistakes, and that not acknowledging the mistakes will hurt us in the future. (Link via Halley.) Sullivan: I don't think it would kill the administration to fess up...They were human errors, compounded by a certain ideological fervor. I think, given the overall achievement, that they were entirely forgivable. One consequence of that screw-up is that almost any future argument for pre-emption based on intelligence will be extremely hard to win. Ditto, the view that deficits don't matter could well lead to an inability to take military action in the future, since the country will be unable to afford it. In that sense, the Bush administration's errors have undermined the crux of their own foreign policy. That's a loss. And, with a little more modesty and skepticism, it was preventable. 8:56:24 AM    comment []

NYT: "Hitting His Stride, Edwards Is on Heels of Front-Runners." The article says Edwards lacks organizational strength in Iowa. Online tools of the type his campaign has been rolling out could make a big difference on that front in upcoming primaries. I'm trying now to get inside the Edwards campaign to learn more about online strategy -- it's a more traditional setup than the Dean campaign, you can't just email staff and get responses, so I'm working the channels and hoping they'll talk to me. 8:42:02 AM    comment []

Front-pager in this morning's WSJ about non-Jewish kids having ersatz Bar Mitzvah parties. Funny -- last night at dinner we were talking about Elijah's Bar Mitzvah party. He doesn't want a big one, nothing fancy. Lisa and I, still reeling from the fact that he wants to have a Bar Mitzvah in the first place, couldn't be happier with his decision. He's his own man. 8:27:39 AM    comment []