Jere dug up a fascinating piece (original) describing the contents of a laptop formerly used by Al Qaeda. I sorta hope the journalist made sure the government had a copy of the hard drive while he was investigating, but either way, it’s a great article.
Kerry’s advocating a neighborhood watch program to keep an eye out for terrorists. This wasn’t so palatable (original) back when it was Ashcroft’s idea (original), and it isn’t so palatable now.
This is a follow up to my earlier post on Jim McCarthy and Off Wing Opinion (original), in light of further contemplation on my part and Eric’s post-mortem post (original). On reflection, I’m pretty comfortable saying that there are potential issues here. Blogs may not be newspapers, but allow me to quote Jim on using blogs for PR: “Blogs opened up a new front. It was a process of germination. The plan was to construct ideas with the media that would act as a filter so they would read subsequent pieces of information with the lens that you created.” ...
An Iraqi judge warrant was issued for Ahmed Chalabi’s arrest today, on charges of counterfeiting. A warrant was also issued for his nephew, Salem Chalabi, for murder. There are two basic possibilities here. One: Ahmed Chalabi is guilty, in which case it’s about time we started admitting that the guy behind a lot of our evidence against Iraq (original) is a liar and a crook. Those Iraqi defectors? He found them. He made up the meeting between Muhammad Atta and Iraqi intelligence in Prague. He may have been slipping information to Iran. He made up wacky stories about Saddam (original). He had the New York Times in his back pocket. Talk about a brilliant con man… ...
This clip (original) is pretty surreal. A Fox news host is quizzing Disney’s president about the new Disney computer for kids, and he takes a sudden right turn into attacking him for sponsoring Gay Days (original) at the theme parks. That’s what I call good clean utterly insane fun.
I really enjoy Eric McErlain’s Off Wing Opinion. It’s a great sports blog, very well written, with a lot of hockey coverage that I’d otherwise not get. Eric’s a Republican, and from time to time he makes political posts. So what? For that matter, Jim Pinto is pretty conservative, and it doesn’t stop me from reading Baseball Musings. Again, why would it? If I had to agree politically with everyone I talked to, there are a lot of good people who I’d never see again. ...
A while back Jere commented that he thought the best way to handle gay marriage civil disobedience was to stop giving out marriage licenses — you still make the point about equal treatment, but you don’t give out licenses which are unlikely to remain valid. Benton County, Oregon, agrees. (original)
What I’m doing during the interminable classic rock segments is cranking up Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and pretending that’s the DNC soundtrack. It works particularly well when CSPAN goes to a flag waving shot: the combination of flags and dance music has that edgy mechanical appeal that Madeline L’Engle ascribes to IT on Camazotz. The people dancing are a little out of sync with the music, but you can ascribe that to a failure of the controlling intelligence.
Glenn Reynolds is curious about Atrios. More precisely, since Atrios has unveiled as Duncan Black, who works for a group that’s partially funded by George Soros, Glenn Reynolds wants to know why nobody’s making a fuss about it. The money quote: “… if I were working for, say, Richard Mellon Scaife, I think somebody — like, say, Duncan Black — would be making something of it.” As it happens, Glenn Reynolds has a paying gig with Tech Central Station, which is funded by the DCI Group, which is a top-notch Republican lobbying organization. So I guess Glenn actually is working for Republican money-men after all. Funny how that works out.
At MTV’s Rock the Vote event, Howard Dean told the audience (original) there are two bills in Congress to reinstate the draft. “If you want a draft, vote for George Bush!” Bad, bad Howard. No biscuit.