People get the government they deserve So by now you’ve probably read somewhere about Mike Hawash, the U.S. citizen and Intel engineer, being held on secret charges, at a secret location, without access to council. Talkleft is definitely the place to go for news and commentary on this issue (for example, this). This is happening […]

Russert, Then and Now I came across this statement by Meet the Press‘s Tim Russert, from a December 1997 appearance he made on CSPAN’s Booknotes. Here’s Russert talking about when he started at MTP in 1991: The first call I made when I became moderator [was to Lawrence Spivak, the founder of Meet the Press]. […]

How to Weight Links? Upon reflection, the post turned out a bit boring and I almost didn’t post it. But a promise is a promise. Click here if you’re excited by the issue of weighting links. AB

Don’t read too much into this… …Comedy Central is running an all-Sandler Saturday Night Live Marathon. At this very moment, they are playing an episode hosted by Heston, and the skit is The President is Illiterate. The opening bit: “Wanna have some fun?”…”When President Dexter [Heston] gets here, let’s tell him this is Senator Powell’s […]

Links Updated Welcome to Gary Hart, Mad Prophet, Punning Pundit, India West, and Trivial Pursuits. All are good, but I particularly recommend the last two. AB UPDATE: I’m about half way to my second cell (to see my ranking, it’s easiest to do a “ctrl-f” and search for “angry bear”), keep the links coming! Tomorrow, […]

Shorter John Kerry In this case it’s shortened so that more people will read it, not because the full text is long and rambling. Go read the whole thing. The elipses and emphasis are mine April 5, 2003 | I don’t think it gets better in public life, and certainly not in mine, than to […]

Smoking Ban Update Some good comments on my earlier smoking ban post. So I did a bit of Googling and I found this Reason article (Reason is a Libertarian/Objectivist magazine). The Reason article does a good job of showing why this result makes no sense. For example, The American Heart Association attributes 35,000 heart disease […]

Scary Rumsfeld’s statements on Iran and Syria are a few days old now, but in case you missed them, here’s one: “These deliveries pose a direct threat to the lives of coalition forces. We consider such trafficking as hostile acts, and will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments,” Rumsfeld said. And there are […]

You Almost Have to Admire… …such single-minded (or simple-minded?) devotion: “Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes,” the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, blithely told CongressDaily. From a NY Times editorial yesterday. AB For the “more important” category, might I suggest winning? Fewer casualties? Paying for the war?

You must take a look at this picture. As Digby would say, this picture is “Another example of why homeschooling by idiots is a very bad idea”. I could make some point about how it’s logically incorrect to take the dumbest or most extreme member of a group and project their idiocy onto the entire […]