The Internet Explorer team has a blog. That’s cool. They also have a wiki. That’s mildly flabbergasting. Looks kind of like it’s working, though.
Author: Bryant
Glenn Reynolds, July 19th:
MORE: Hugh Hewitt:
Ask yourself what would be going on in Washington, D.C. tonght, and on the network news, within the blogosphere, and in the morning papers, if it had been revealed that Condi Rice was the target of a criminal investigation for removing classified handwritten notes from the government records relating to terrorism.
I think we know. But it’s early yet — this may get more attention from Big Media tomorrow.
CNN, July 20th, front and center story:
Samuel Berger, former President Clinton’s national security adviser, is under federal criminal investigation for allegedly removing classified documents and handwritten notes from a National Archives screening room during preparations for his testimony before the 9/11 commission. Berger acknowledged that he “inadvertently” removed some documents.
New York Times, July 20th:
President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, removed classified security documents from the National Archives while vetting them in preparation for testimony before the Sept. 11 commission and has become the subject of a criminal investigation, his lawyer said Monday night.
Mr. Berger removed at least two versions of a memorandum assessing how the government handled intelligence and security issues before the millennium celebrations in 1999, his lawyer, Lanny A. Breuer, said. He also removed notes he took about classified documents, the lawyer said.
Glenn Reynolds, July 20th:
SISSY WILLIS says that the New York Times is way behind the curve on the Berger story. “In an inversion of Winston Churchill’s famous comparison of the speed of lies vs. truth, the blogosphere had already promulgated and commented upon the information contained in the AP report yesterday afternoon and evening before the Times had had a chance to put its pants on, so to speak.”
Some people are never satisfied.
Also: I think Sandy Berger should resign from Kerry’s campaign right now. I think he’s at the very least an idiot for doing whatever it is he did. How do you “inadvertently” remove classified documents? That’s really sloppy, and one has to suspect dishonesty. This case was leaked now by the Republicans for political reasons, I know, but Berger is still an idiot. In fact, he’s an idiot for remaining involved with the Kerry campaign while this was going on.
And that’s what passes for interesting for me. Five del.icio.us links per box, one box between each pair of entries, most recent links first. All my stuff. I want a slightly lighter grey for the box color, or darker, or something. I’ll fiddle later.
Also later: a big box somewhere containing just the 10 most recent del.icio.us links overall.
I’ve been using del.icio.us for a week and a bit now and it feels like a habit, so I will point out my personal little bookmark clickstream. The cool thing is that I can subscribe to your clickstream and get a friends page that aggregates the bookmarks of the people I find interesting. This works for me.
At some point fairly soon I may hook this up to this weblog in some interesting manner. In the meantime it’s a good way to keep track of evanescent interests. And if you have a del.icio.us account that you don’t mind sharing, share it in comments.
iTunes users may be pleased to discover that much of the 9/11 Commission hearings are available via the iTunes Music Store. This link will do something useful if you use iTunes, and if you don’t, I have no idea what will happen. Something useful, here, is defined as a page which contains the hearings among many other things. I’ve been unable to find a more useful direct link.
I tracked down a copy of the new Sean Stewart novel, Perfect Circle, and it’s good enough to be worth waiting eight years for, let alone the four years it’s been since Galveston. So no complaints here.
A little about the milieu, first. It’s the modern world, akin to Mockingbird, with that touch of elemental unexplained strangeness. Like Mockingbird, it’s set in Texas; like many of Stewart’s novels, it’s about family. In the author’s notes for Mockingbird, he says that “I had in mind something that would ‘fit’ with Resurrection Man, but with the quantities of light and dark reversed; a scary comedy, as it were, rather than a brooding novel with occasional jokes.” I think that Perfect Circle is a better match for those words; it echoes the relationship between death and family described in Resurrection Man through a lens crafted of punk music and Texas.
If I was going to write a cover blurb, on the other hand, I’d say something like “Perfect Circle establishes Sean Stewart as the American Nick Hornby,” which would make all the High Fidelity fans happy until they read any of his books besides Perfect Circle. This is why I’m not in marketing.
And come to think of it, Perfect Circle isn’t a comedy, either. So never mind the whole thing and just read it already. There are not one but two chapters on Salon, so you’ve no excuse not to fall in love.
I just clued into the other thing that bugs me about the Annie Jacobsen story. Michelle Malkin, among others, writes smugly that this event highlights the stupidity of a policy against secondary questioning of more than two Arabs per flight. See also Ann Coulter’s racist whine, which Annie Jacobsen cited in her original article.
But Annie Jacobsen also noted that the 14 Syrians on her flight were… pulled aside and questioned in LA. This was confirmed by government officials. So, ah, doesn’t that kind of undercut the concept that the airlines have a policy against questioning groups of Arabs?
A lot of people aren’t thinking that one through. Or, more to the point, they’re assuming that a policy restricting “secondary questioning” means that airlines can never under any circumstances pull aside more than two Arabs per flight.
It’s also worth noting that the original source for the information about this policy, John Lehman, never said that he knew the policy was in effect. He said he thought it was still in effect; which, of course, was reported without the element of uncertainty inherent in “I think.” Paying attention is hard! And why should Mr. Lehman worry about getting the details right in something so important as the 9/11 hearings, anyhow? They seem like a fine forum to promulgate unverified beliefs about our security.
I am eternally grateful for the presence of sane people on this planet.
A summary: Annie Jacobsen got worried because she was on a flight with a number of Middle Eastern men acting in a manner which she found suspicious. Cue blogosphere firestorm. Some people pointed out that no responsible flight attendant would act as described. But, you know, evil Muslims are a better story.
And the aforelinked sane person said “You know… that’s what devout Muslims do on long flights. They pray, because they need to pray five times per day.”
Turns out Jet Li is making his good movies over in France these days. Bob Hoskins and Jet Li, together again! Plus Morgan Freeman, although I can’t watch Morgan Freeman these days without thinking of my friend Jamie’s blockbuster Morgan Freeman idea. He wants to make a movie in which Morgan Freeman is, you guessed it, the grizzled wise gentle cop chasing a serial killer. But Freeman turns out to be the killer in some particularly vile and sadistic fashion.
Anyhow, this looks great.
The governor of Mosul, Mashaan al-Juburi, was just assassinated. This follows massive car bombings in Mosul a couple of weeks ago.
Mosul is a key city because it’s a key point of friction between the Kurds and the Sunnis. Juburi’s appointment was not without controversy and violence, to say the least; his early speeches resulted in a demonstration during which US troops fired on demonstraters. The details of the event are unclear: the US claimed that the demonstrations were violent and the demonstraters claimed they weren’t, which is as you’d expect in any case for both sides of the story.
This means that Mosul’s had two governors leave office in the last few months, by the by. Not exactly a model of stability.