Tuesday, September 20, 2005

I'm generally pretty sanguine about political scandals, whether they involve graft or hummers from interns, not because I don't think they are important but because they are so commonplace and inevitable and reflective of human nature. Anyway, when they start arresting people, it's time to pay attention. The headline calls Safavian an "ex-White House Aide," but that hardly captures the fact that he resigned suddenly last week. Josh Marshall, who's been on the Abramoff/Delay stuff forever, has more, as does Raw Story. 3:19:06 PM   permalink   comment []

Grab the hairspray, honey: American Idol auditions in Greensboro. 12:20:49 PM   permalink   comment []

Contrary to a statement in this comment thread, Truth & Rec exec director Jill Williams says no commission members have resigned, and that no co-chair has discussed doing so. She does say these are tumultuous times for the panel, with the issues of race raised by Hurricane Katrina putting pressure on the group to define the boundaries of its next round of hearings, which are supposed to address the relationship of the past with the present and future. The comment thread is fascinating to me -- people seem to view any open-mindedness about the process as a blanket endorsement of it, and to hold it to standards that allow only for absolute success or utter failure. Why? 12:12:34 PM   permalink   comment []

Chris Bowers: "Somehow, I have turned into a blogger who can only disagree with others, and who rarely, if ever, offers others the benefit of the doubt." 11:56:07 AM   permalink   comment []

Behind the NYT paywall...Kristof says Pakistan's Musharraf is "nuts" for lashing out against critics of rape as a tool of punishment and social control in his country. After citing examples of both sanctioned rape and nutty Musharraf comments, Kristoff says, "while he's a nitwit on social issues, General Musharraf has proved himself to be a good economic manager...his reforms will help undermine fundamentalism and sexual violence in the long run...So let's give Mr. Musharraf a free-trade deal - but only on the condition that he clamp down not on Pakistani women fighting against rape, but on Osama bin Laden." Tierney contrasts the bang-up job done by Wal-Mart after Katrina with the performance of FEMA. He says FEMA needs a cost-conscious, mission-focused leader, but manages not to mention HeckuvaJob Brownie at all while working in several paragraphs on the Clinton era. Best line: "How often do you suppose someone at Wal-Mart headquarters dispenses $500,000 and doesn't bother keeping track of it?" Meanwhile, people are having a tough time getting to the paid content -- I ran into some of the same problems, the trick is to log out of the system once you get in, then sign in again... 8:36:31 AM   permalink   comment []

Justin Catanoso uses a blog exchange between John Robinson and me to pimp his BizJournal (last item on page). 8:09:01 AM   permalink   comment []

Herb Everett posts about the podcasting session at Converge. Less tech, more touch is the way he's headed. 8:05:20 AM   permalink   comment []