Monday, September 13, 2004

I'm scheduled to be on the Brad & Britt show, FM 101.1, Tuesday morning at about 7:30. We'll be talking CBS and the fact-checking power of blogs... 9:41:27 PM    comment []

Glenn Reynolds: "The Internet...is a low-trust environment. Ironically, that probably makes it more trustworthy. That's because, while arguments from authority are hard on the Internet, substantiating arguments is easy, thanks to the miracle of hyperlinks." Indeed. And so when Insty says that Michelle Malkin "responds" to Eric Muller, we can see for ourselves that her "response" is many days old, and thus not relevant to the Muller post he cites, which in turn we can see to be a 2,300 word, detail-rich article that contains links to documents that seem to be well above CBS standards, documents that are not at all helpful to Malkin's cause and which she seems to have ignored entirely, and we can also see that this long artcle contains just a single end-note mentioning the guy Glenn says Muller relies upon too heavily. Reynolds: "For bloggers, admitting an error means you've missed something, and now you're going to set it right." UPDATE: Now I get to admit an error and set it right: As noted in the comments below, Malkin appended an updated response to her post of September 8. Mea culpa. Glenn's misstatement of Muller's overreliance on Neiwert, who seems to have been cited one additional time amid the thousands of words and countless documentary references Muller and Robinson posted before today, remains in play. UPDATE part deux: Glenn takes the time to explain his distaste for Neiwert, and to chide Oliver Willis, but still fails to address his unjust dis of Muller's work, which in turn props up Malkin's shoddy and dangerous argument. I don't blame Glenn for resenting Neiwert's words, but Muller was caught in the crossfire. It would be enormously helpful for Instapundit to render a clear opinion on the Muller-Malkin debates: who do you believe, Glenn? Has Malkin made a case for internment, or has she smeared a large group of people but come up with little more than a case, as Muller says, "In Favor of Limited Pragmatic Measures against Japanese Americans During World War II."? UPDATE Tuesday morning Glenn Reynolds: "I meant my remarks as criticism of Neiwert, rather than Muller, and I didn't phrase them properly to reflect that. My apologies."  In a move both gentlemanly and scholarly, Instapundit links to his own apology at the top of his page, rather than just burying it as an appendage to yesterday's news. 2:38:30 PM    comment []

With US Airways broke again, maybe it's time for an airline based here in the Triad. We used to have a pretty good one, y'know... 2:12:15 PM    comment []

The Chapel Hill News covers OrangePolitics.org. Ruby Sinreich: “It’s easy to get information on national issues...Information on local issues is harder to get, and individuals have much more opportunity to actually make a difference in local issues. At the local level, one or two people can go to a board meeting or write a letter, and actually change the system. That’s the amazing thing about local politics. You really can make things happen.” It seems too early to tell what the year-old site may or may not be able to do in terms of mobilizing people around political issues. I nomimate Roch Smith Jr. to create a Guilford County political forum site. 2:02:49 PM    comment []

Erskine Bowles releases a detailed health care plan (full plan here.) He spends a good chunk of the 16-page document on ways to pay for his program. Related: Justin Catanoso on health care costs and small business. Bowles previously published a 43-page jobs plan online, which inspired SC Democrat Inez Tenenbaum to follow with a similar document. 12:40:08 PM    comment []

News & Record editor John Robinson wants to let this whole silly dustup with Mayor Holliday die...just as soon as he gets in last licks. 12:13:01 PM    comment []

Hey, Keith Holliday: Doc Searls has something to tell you. "What smart cities and counties want is to create the conditions where enterprise can flourish. Fat fiber to doorsteps, provided at a fair and reasonable price, without usage restrictions intended to favor a single industry, is the way to do that." 9:15:34 AM    comment []

A spiffy campaign site from Judge Robby Hassell. I emailed him to say that a more personal touch would be great -- I know he probably doesn't have time to run a blog, but even a pinch of blog flavoring would spice up the page -- an update every so often, in his own words, to let us know him better and keep people coming back to the site. 9:14:06 AM    comment []

Who lost Fallujah? Marine general James Conway: "We follow our orders." WaPo: "Some senior U.S. officials in Iraq have said the command originated in the White House." 8:54:23 AM    comment []

Eric Muller comes back to the starting place: the cover of Malkin's book. In this long post, he exposes the cover, and Malkin's arguments about it, as a synecdoche for Malkin's shoddy research and casual regard for the truth. 8:46:59 AM    comment []

The CBS memo story goes from blogs to the NYT op-ed page in five days -- the media digestive process working at warp speed. I was going to write about the whole thing this morning, but early-riser Dave Winer said pretty much what I wanted to say before I got out of bed. If the memos are indeed false, heads should roll at CBS. But the longer this story stays in the news, the more people can focus on Bush's Vietnam era service, which doesn't seem good for Bush, or relevant to the campaign at hand. 8:05:10 AM    comment []