Deep Throat

So now we know the identity of Deep Throat. Is this story now so old that it's not really that big a deal? I'm sure tomorrow's papers will make a big splash about it because we do love to navel gaze. I just wonder how many people on the street actually care. It certainly would have been a sexier story if it had been Al Haig or someone equally conspicuous.

W. Mark Felt, eh? Who remembers the name John Hazelwood?

Here's an interesting part of the AP story: "Felt had hoped to succeed mentor J. Edgar Hoover as FBI director after Hoover's death, but was passed over by Nixon for the job."

So Nixon was brought down by a guy who was upset he didn't get a promotion. Don't get me wrong, Nixon screwed up. But let's not forget Foyt's motivations may not have been totally pure.

G. Gordon Liddy's point is accurate as well: "If he were interested in performing his duty, he would have gone to the grand jury with his information."

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Blog name change

I'm tired of being fearless. From now on, I'm just going to be me.

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Frames

A commenter from an earlier post asks (repeatedly) the question: "How do you write a story without a frame?"

The answer: You can't write a story without a frame. Every article must be approached from a certain viewpoint. But this seemingly simple observation is lost on many people in this profession. They believe in the frame of objective journalism. That reporters and editors regularly put down their personal ideologies to create evenhanded reporting. They don't.

This profession would be a lot better off if we'd admit this fact. Frames do exist. As I said in my post, the way the same information is portrayed in different media proves the existence of frames. The New York Times chose to cover the report in one way; the New York Sun chose to go in a different direction. Is one frame more correct than the other?

Let's try to start making these frames as fair as possible and maybe we can earn back some of the public trust. Or, let's stop pretending that there's any way to frame the news objectively and just adopt a partisan press mentalitiy like the British.

The greatest problem is that so many don't see there's a problem.

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Critically thinking about the press

Len Witt interviews a University of Texas journalism professor over at pjnet. He thankfully points out that most of her complaints -- complaints that reflect most members of the academy and many activist organizations -- are thrust from a liberal position. De Uriarte and many of the professors with whom I've come in contact believe the problem with the press is that they aren't liberal enough. Her response to Witt's query:

That charge of bleeding hearts and right wing pundits is so threadbare it hardly merits response. The academy is supposed to be a forum for the free exchange of ideas in the interest of developing critical thinking skills. And if you read the Hutchins Commission (and significant bodies of ethics codes since their 1947 standards were set) you find that standard 3 states that the public can expect the press to provide "a forum for the exchange of comment and criticism." So how do we do that if we have not developed critical thinkers?

Whenever questions become "irreverent" or hard to respond to those labels of bleeding hearts and liberal bias get tossed out as silencers. No wonder in 25 years the press has not been able to diversify. That's one of the silencers to minority points of view.

So, the allegations of liberal bias are nothing more than a diversion. "Hardly merits response." That's not exactly as free exchange of ideas, is it? She cites the "Media Reform" conference in St. Louis as a step in the right direction. As I mentioned earlier, that conference was organized by activists who believe the press needs to adopt a more leftist tone.

According to the latest report, nearly 6 in 10 Americans believe that the press is biased. But, more respondents thought the media favored John Kerry than George Bush. Surveys show that reporters and editors are overwhelmingly liberal. Being critical thinkers, shouldn't we examine whether this evidence has anything to do with problems of credibility? Forgive me for not believing that the answer to this problem is for the press to adopt a more adamant left-wing position. I'm not trying to single out de Uriarte; she just represents the position of many members of the academy.

I recently found an interesting letter to the editor in a media journal while doing research for my thesis. A professor complained because the New York Times hadn't covered a press conference from 22 U.S. House members who gathered to protest the Gulf War. The author accused the press of a pro-war bent and argued that a conventional frame had prevented the editors and reporters from exposing readers to non-traditional (read far-left) viewpoints.

Other academicians make the same arguments -- notably Herman and Chompsky who assert that a corporate-influenced, right-wing bias pervades the media and prevents any true discussion of issues important to most citizens. These professors are correct. The media is right wing -- from their perspective. They sit so far to the left of the average citizen that everyone looks right wing. Twenty-two members of Congress represents about 5 percent of the 430 House lawmakers. Most members of the academy represent this 5 percent of the ideological spectrum.

I'm not so sure we can look to this group to identify what's wrong with the press. Perhaps, after I receive my doctorate, I'll join the academy and try to examine some of these issues from my perspective. I wonder which university will want to hire me? I'm a critical thinker, but I do I think the correct way?

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Make poverty history

Great post about misguided celebrities and the "Make Poverty History" campaign.

"We need trade justice, not free trade . . . ensuring poor countries can feed their people by protecting their own farmers and staple crops.” With that, the campaign destroys any claim it might have to serving the interests of the poor.

It might seem sensible at first glance to argue that nascent industries in developing countries need to be protected so that they can withstand competition from rapacious multinationals. But the evidence shows the opposite.

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BBC bias

A former longtime reporter describes the "center-left concensus within the BBC which colours its entire output and undermines its solemn pact with the public to present the news impartially." Here's a good bit:

Aitken’s last posting was as a reporter for Today during the build-up to the Iraq war. “The whole tone of the programme was hostile to the notion of a war,” he says. “It was not presenting a balanced view of the situation and explaining the reasons why intervention might be justified.

“I made a point of arguing this case in the morning editorial meetings, and that put me in a very bad odour with Kevin Marsh, the editor.”

Why did BBC journalists feel so strongly about Iraq? “They cannot bear President Bush because he’s a Republican and an evangelical Christian. The sight of a Labour Prime Minister going into battle alongside such a man was more than many BBC people could stomach.”

Sounds familiar.

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Memorial Day

I love this true story about Colin Powell's response to a question about America's use of military force:

We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we’ve done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own, you know, to seek our own lives in peace, to live our own lives in peace. But there comes a time when soft power or talking with
evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.

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Atlanta Child Murders

This isn't making national news, but it's pretty remarkable that an Atlanta-area police chief has officially reopened some of the Atlanta Child Murder cases. Couple of good articles in the Atlanta Journal-Consitution this morning on the topic. Essentially, quite a few people think that Wayne Williams was falsely accused of the child murders because he was black and would be a less incendiary culprit than a white guy. One of these doubters is the former sheriff who was convicted of contracting a hit on his successor.

Sounds like the investigation will come down to re-examining some of the evidence with newer CSI-like techniques. For instance, blood found in Williams' car was matched type-wise to one of the victims. But, a DNA match would obviously prove more conclusive. Some worry that the blood can't be examined, since it's been sitting in storage for 25 years.

Even if the blood matches, Williams was only convicted of the murders of two adults -- none of the kids. The authorities blamed him for the rest of the murders and promptly closed the case. Makes sense that some people are wondering why he wasn't tried for at least some of the kid murders if they were so sure he did it. Williams has never confessed to any of the murders.

Of course, one bit of history does side with the official line. After Williams was arrested, the murders stopped.

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Al Jazeera

Not exactly an accurate headline. Allegations confirmed, perhaps. But nice to see the ACLU guy getting some ink.

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Women's lib

Great post. Take the quiz.

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Kursk

Two books have been released regarding the Kursk submarine tragedy. Some experts believe that 23 sailors survived the explosion and lived for 3 days while the Russians bumbled through rescue efforts. Interesting review of the books in the London Guardian. Good insight:

[The two authors] do, however, agree on the background to Putin's mystifying slowness in grasping the significance of what had happened; both attribute it to a bureaucratic reluctance by Russian officialdom to be the bearer of bad news.

At the Arctic headquarters of the Northern Fleet, Admiral Popov reflected on how to respond to the disappearance of the Kursk. "Admiral Popov [Commander of the Northern Fleet] had been trained and groomed under the Soviet system. He knew the two golden rules were never take or admit responsibility for failure and never be the one to give bad news to your military or political bosses," Truscott writes. "So, confronted with what seemed like evidence of a huge disaster, Popov did what a long line of senior officers had done before and after him. He did nothing. It had been the same in the days immediately after Chernobyl in 1986. It was the Soviet way and it came naturally."

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Reliable Hearsay

Great analysis of the Washington Post's use of anonymous sources.

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The Dog That Didn't Bark

Great column in Editor and Publisher about the Linda Foley incident and the subsequent lack of fallout.

Foley decided to improve the odds and issued another statement to me. In a further clarification of her clarification, Foley insists that she “doesn't believe that our service men and women would knowingly fire on journalists and innocent civilians.”

So follow the logic. It is the U.S. military, not the troops, who targeted journalists. But if an occasional service man or woman just might have fired a tank round or two into the Palestine Hotel and killed some journalists, or dropped a bomb on Al Jazeera’s studio in Baghdad using the coordinates from the U.S. military (both cited in her letter to President Bush of April 8 th demanding an investigation), they didn’t do it “knowingly.”

It recalls the gag epitaph on former Nazi space rocketry pioneer Werner von Braun’s tomb: “ I aim at the stars---but sometimes hit London.” Or was that the Nazi military?

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Pressthink on Newsweek

Another great column from Jay Rosen. He asks a simple question: Is the press a political animal?

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Amnesty International report

Great story in the New York Sun about the latest Amnesty International report:

UNITED NATIONS - Amnesty International singled out America yesterday for human rights violations and accused it of creating an environment that "grants license" to other nations to abuse rights.

In a scathing annual report released yesterday, Amnesty specifically highlighted the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. But critics said that the London-based Amnesty fails to distinguish between democratic systems where human rights abuses are criticized and prosecuted and dictatorial regimes that punish critics.

Exactly. Lumping the U.S. and other democracies with dictatorships is an example of moral relativism run amok. (See Ted Kennedy's remarks about Abu Ghraib reopening under new management.)

The article is a great example of how the media can choose to frame a topic. The NY Times presented the report in a totally different way -- just presenting the allegations and giving the White House two paragraphs to refute it. The difference highlights how political ideologies affect newsroom coverage. Clearly, the Sun went out of its way to balance the anti-U.S. sentiment whereas the Times felt no need to find defenders of the U.S. beyond the cursory White House quote.

So which is the biased newspaper? Your answer to that question probably depends upon your vote in the last election. Maybe objective journalism is a moving target.

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Lebanon

Great reader on the Lebanon. Note how many links to outside sources are embedded in this account of recent history. That's the beauty of reading your news on the Internet -- you know longer have to take somebody's word for it.

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The Big Mac

I've always been a fan of The McDonald's double cheeseburger. For some reason, their double cheeseburgers prove far superior to those produced by other fast-food restaurants. It shouldn't be that way, of course. A double cheeseburger is just a cheeseburger with another patty, right? But, McDonald's double cheeseburger's beat's a double cheese from Burger King every day of the week. I can't explain it.

Ever since The McDonald's put the double cheeseburger on their $1 menu, I've had a hard time ordering anything else. I always enjoyed a double cheese as much as a Quarter Pounder or a Big Mac, so why should I spend the extra $1.25? Tonight, I decided to throw expense to the wind. I bought a Big Mac. My first in probably 3 years.

Friends, the Big Mac is a tasty sandwich. I'll never again go so long without one. The Special Sauce, the extra bun in the middle, the lettuce shards -- they all combine for one delicious treat.

Long live the Big Mac!

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Bloggers Take Center Stage

Oops. Forgot to mention I was heading to the beach for three days. I'm back. Interesting column from WSJ on bloggers changing the mainstream media.

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Foley Gate

It appears that Linda Foley is the next Eason Jordan. She's the latest media executive to accuse U.S. troops of targeting journalists. These kinds of innane opinions used to stay hidden by the people who frame the news. Now the blogosphere exists. Good.

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More on Newsweek

Great column from Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine on the Newsweek affair. Referring to a David Brooks column, he says:

But by not criticizing the report, the net message of this otherwise spot-on column is that press people defend press people, that we circle our wagons around our screw-ups, that we stick together first. Especially today, with the press' trust in tatters, that is the wrong message.

What we should be saying is that we criticize each other first and we accept those criticisms first because we want to get to the truth together.

When the still-surprisingly-employed Dan Rather screwed up with his memoes -- and after my readers here forced me to comment on that as a media story not a political one -- Rosen and I were pointed to as liberals who criticized Rather along with the conservatives. That may have been apparently factual but it was the wrong conclusion: We were journalists criticizing journalists because we should.

"Still-surprisingly employed Dan Rather." That's good writing.

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Emperor Norton

There's just so much raw knowledge out there -- waiting to be found on the Internet.

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Quake

Pretty interesting research coming out on the giant earthquake and tsunami that killed 176,000 people earlier this year. This is a fascinating description of what exactly happened:

At that spot the Eurasian plate was being pulled downward by the descending Indo-Australian plate. The quake released the edge of the Eurasian plate, which sprang up, lifting the ocean floor and sending the sea water off in the giant wave that killed so many, the researchers reported.

And how about this:

And the temblor "delivered a blow to our planet" that was felt for weeks, noted a team of researchers led by Jeffrey Park of Yale University. His group calculated that the quake caused the planet to oscillate like a bell, at periods of about 17 minutes, which they were able to measure for weeks afterward.

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A nod to the other side

TalkingPointsMemo is upset because the media are making it sound like "nuclear option" in refrence to ending the filibuster was invented by the Democrats. Seems like a legitimate gripe because I seem to recall hearing a Republican use the term first. It's not really derogotory is it? Just honest. No one would argue that it's not a big -- nearly nuclear -- deal to do away with the filibuster. That said, if the media are saying that the Dems came up with the term, then they should correct themselves. I stand with Marshall on this one. Mark your calendar.

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Anti-Americanism

Drezner makes an interesting point:

Let me put this more bluntly: assume that the Newsweek goof was of the maximal variety -- i.e., despite Gitmo prisoner claims, it turns out that no Qu'ran was ever flushed down any toilet. Should it nevertheless be considered a major foreign policy problem that this report triggered significant protests in Afghanistan, a populace with good reasons to support the United States? In today's New York Times, David Brooks is right to point out the blogosphere's misplaced foci, and suggests that "radical clerics in Afghanistan" used the story to trigger outrage. What bothers me is that it was too damn easy for the clerics to whip up anti-American sentiment.

No comment. Just acknowledgement.

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Million Dollar Baby

Finally saw Million Dollar Baby. If you've seen it, read Ebert's review. If you haven't, go see it.

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Ethiopian Elections

Good blog roundup of the promising elections in Ethiopia.

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Vacations and unemployment

A press release from Expedia (aimed at drumming up vacation business) details a survey showing that Americans take the least vacation time among six industrialized countries. It will surely find its way into many newspapers and newscasts over the next 24 hours. A journalist following its lead will likely present a story that concludes Americans are overworked by their employers -- an oft-repeated viewpoint that fits neatly into the "America Sucks" frame.

But an enterprising reporter could choose to dig a little deeper and find a new angle. Here's a table to illustrate my point:

Country		Vacation Days		Unemployment Rate
America		12 days		5.2 percent
Canada		20 days		6.8 percent
U.K.		23 days		4.7 percent
Netherlands		25 days		7 percent
Germany		27 days		11.8 percent
France		39 days		10 percent

Clearly, one can't read too much into these numbers. The British, for example, receive more vacation days than Americans and also enjoy a lower unemployment rate. But, the two countries with the largest allotment of vacation time (Germany and France) also share the highest unemployment. Paid vacations are great there, if you can first secure the paying job.

This comparison needn't be in the lede or anywhere close to the top of the story. But, at some point, a reporter would do well to point out to readers (or find a source to point it out) that companies and countries with exorbitantly generous benefits often fail to compete on the global scale. (See Ford and GM.)

Maybe Americans don't take enough time off, but perhaps other countries grant too much time for vacation. Presenting both sides of this issue would serve readers well and illustrate that bugaboo of our profession -- objective journalism. Unfortunately, I suspect that few of my colleagues would agree.

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WSJ editorial on Newsweek

Good editorial from the Wall Street Journal regarding the Newsweek mess. It blames journalists' disdain for the military as part of the problem. It concludes:

We have all been reading a great deal lately about both the decline of media credibility, and the decline of both TV news viewership and newspaper circulation. Any other industry looking at such trends would conclude that perhaps there is a connection. Certainly a press corps that wants readers to forgive its own mistakes might start by showing a little more respect and understanding for the men and women who risk their lives to defend the country.

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Follow-up on Yalta

Here's the last piece I'll post on the the subject of Yalta. Drezner's got a nice post on the hub-bub and notes that Bush didn't say anything that groundbreaking. But, this is a great point:

However.... Bill Clinton never met an apology he didn't like on the international stage, in part because he knew that admissions of past error -- even if slightly exaggerated -- played well abroad. If Bush picks up this trope from Clinton -- and doesn't abuse it -- then liberals are protesting about this way too much.

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Newsweek's Take-Our-Word-For-It World

Yet another dead-on commentary from Jay Rosen. He recommends:

Under these conditions, it is imperative that journalists in the United States raise their standards for reliability, because the consequences of being wrong--for themselves, for their profession as a whole, and for others far removed--are graver. The most difficult part of raising standards is not to figure out what to do that might improve reliability, but to admit that standards weren't as high as they could have been in the first place.

For professionals who have achieved a certain standing this is hard because it requires some humbling first: We aren't as good as we need to be.

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Triumph

Here's video of Triumph the Insult Dog interviewing Star Wars fans waiting for tickets to the upcoming movie. It's hilarious. Were I a grown man dressed up like a Jedi, I wouldn't try to match wits with a comedian and a camera. These fans chose to exercise no such restraint.

The Filet-o-Fish line may be the funniest.

(Hat tip: JP, formerly of QP.)

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Newsweek Retracts

Props to Newsweek for not waiting 12 days to retract their story.

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Star Wars

Dan Drezner points out that George Lucas recently admitted that the last two Star Wars films stunk up the joint. Basically Lucas left all the good parts for the one due out this weekend. I'm looking forward to it.

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Bullseye

Via Instapundit, Jeff Jarvis sums up what the Newsweek story should tell us:

This mistake cost people their lives, put the lives of our soldiers in the Mideast at risk, damaged the American position in the effort to defend itself and spread democracy, and damaged the already tattered reputation of journalism.

And to what end? ... then why report it except to play one of two games:

Show-off -- in which the journalist delights in knowing something no one else knows and wants to tell the world before everyone else does, even if it's not assuredly true.

Gotcha -- in which the reporter think he has exposed something somebody wanted to hide.

An incident such as this should force us to ask what the end result of journalism should be. Is it to expose anything we can expose? Is it to beat the other guy to tell you something you didn't know?

Or is it to tell the truth?

And if you don't know it to be true, is it reporting? If you rely on unnamed sources and unconfirmed reports, is it journalism?

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Media bias

Concerning the Newsweek article about the U.S. military flushing the Koran, I'd say Instapundit's directly on target with this one:

People died, and U.S. military and diplomatic efforts were damaged, because -- let's be clear here -- Newsweek was too anxious to get out a story that would make the Bush Administration and the military look bad.

Read the story about Newsweek's gaffe that led to the riot-inducing article. An incredible disregard for journalistic standards. No wonder the public views journalists with such disdain.

The amazing result of stories like these is the collective ability of the news media and journalistic academia to ignore them. The biggest difference between lawyers and journalists is that attorneys realize they've got a credibility problem.

Meanwhile, journalism schools are busy hyping conferences like this one. Look at the speaker list -- it's a full court press from the left. That's the real problem, you see, the media's too far to the right.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing Newsweek's staff of conspiring against the military or President Bush. I'm merely suggesting that had one staffer who actually voted for Bush been on the copy desk that night, he or she might have expressed some concern and the tidbit might have been held. Instead, a collective groupthink OK'd the story, and the results were disastrous. One day, the media may really want to look at this broad lack of ideologicial diversity.

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Dave Chappelle

Dave Chappelle is one of the funniest people on TV. According to Time, his trip to South Africa isn't as lurid as we've heard (no drugs, not mental collapse.) Sounds like it's a little overwhelming to sign a $50 million deal, and maybe some of his friends weren't being good friends.

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It's cool, ese

The Muted Guerrilla exposes the mainstream media bias against Mariachi players. He forgets the film that really opened the door to this blatant form of bigotry.

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Renegade Trustees at Dartmouth

So two renegade trustees got elected to the board of Dartmouth. They made their bid to get on board because they thought the school was losing its focus -- a pretty common complaint.

The blogosphere (driven primarily by Powerline) had everything to do with the campaign to get them elected. Perhaps this is a harbinger of things to come. I wonder how many disenchanted alumni will be emboldened to make a similar move?

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Formal Night

So, I'm teaching English a couple of nights a week over at a local technical school. While knee-deep in graduate school work a few weeks back, I mentioned that it'd be great to celebrate the conclusion. The class agreed and suggested we get dressed up for the occasion. (OK, maybe I suggested we get dressed up.) Anyhoo, I ended up teaching in my tuxedo last night while the students were dressed to kill.

Here are the pictures:


Michelle, Tammy, Kyle, Me, Ambaye, John, Andre.


My wife baked cookies for the occasion.


Sometimes I like to spruce up the lesson plan.

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Fearless forecast

Bill Gates thinks cell phones will overtake iPods in the near future. I bet he's right. We'll probably look back in a few years and think it was awful quaint how we downloaded our music from the Internet onto our computer and then manually -- with a cable! -- moved the music over there. How archaic!

Soon we'll just have earphones for our cell phone and a 80-gig hard drive full of music that we downloaded wirelessly. With Wi-Fi cell phones already a reality, I'd say we're less than 3 years from this scenario.

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Who knew?

It's official, everything's on the Internet. Here you can listen to R. Lee Ermey's rendition as a Marine Corps drill instructor from the film Full Metal Jacket.

That, by the way, is a fantastic film. It was based on the book by Gustav Hasford, "Short Timers," which is a good read.

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Fox and Blogosphere

Pretty interesting post on the success of Fox News. I'm of the mindset that Fox is so popular because it meets a market niche (conservative, or at least not mind-blowingly liberal), but this author argues it's more to do with low costs and interesting anchors.

We both agree on this point:

That's what most of the blogosphere does. Fox News and the blogosphere are, from a business model standpoint, very very similar.

I don't have a news budget. I can't go off for a week to do a story. If I can't get the data I want with a phone call, an e-mail, and a Google search, chances are I'm not doing the story. I can't afford to.

But if there are millions of people like me, then it's possible that pictures and interviews and first-hand accounts are going to be available from someone. And they will be shared. That's what happens on scaled community blogging sites of all kinds.

And that's the future.

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Syrian border

Great commentary on the ongoing battle near the Syrian border over at the Belmont Club. They make the argument that this is the final push against the terrorists. First Tikrit, then Fallujah, and now the Syrian border. Next, I guess it'll be Syria.

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Vegas confirmation

In March, I detailed my recent trip to Vegas in which I decried the subtle changes in odds that are increasing the advantages for the casinos. Smart Money magazine has also noticed the trend:

In perhaps the most significant shift, an increasing number of casinos don't allow the dealer to hold on "soft 17," the term for a 17-point hand that includes an ace. Continuing the hand improves the house's odds by about 0.2%. It doesn't sound like much, but on a table that sees $100,000 in wagers on a given day, that adds $200 to the house's take.

Of course, that's not keeping me from a return trip in September with my brother. We're staying here. I've found the best odds can still be found downtown.

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NY Times and credibility

Some New York Times staffers have completed a report on problems of credibility at the newspaper. Here's the article, but the full report doesn't appear to be available yet. This sounds pretty good:

As examples, the report cited limiting anonymous sources, reducing factual errors and making a clearer distinction between news and opinion. It also said The Times should make the paper's operations and decisions more transparent to readers through methods like making transcripts of interviews available on its Web site.

Don't see anything about increasing diversity of opinion among its staff, but perhaps that's too much to ask. The report also suggests making it easier for readers to contact writers and editors -- a simple, yet highly effective, way to increase credibility.

But, I can't say this is too inspiring:

The committee asserted that The Times must respond to its critics. The report said it was hard for the paper to resist being in a "defensive crouch" during the election but now urged The Times to explain itself "actively and earnestly" to critics and to readers who are often left confused when charges go unanswered.

I don't think the problem with media credibility is that the media aren't responding vociferously to attacks. It's that the media often gets things wrong, covers things from a biased perspective, and often spotlights the wrong topics. Any solution must fundamentally address these issues, not how the media respond to attacks.

The article quotes the latest credibility numbers that show an incredible lack of faith from the general public. Good. This report is a welcome sign that the New York Times recognizes that there's a problem, which is the first step toward any solution.

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Tim Blair

Good reminder from Tim Blair about what the mood was like after the Spanish elections. Even the Economist was glum.

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American mistakes

Pretty stunning quote from President Bush regarding the concessions made by FDR at Yalta that allowed the Soviet Union to conquer the Eastern bloc countries:

We will not repeat the mistakes of other generations, appeasing or excusing tyranny, and sacrificing freedom in the vain pursuit of stability. We have learned our lesson; no one's liberty is expendable. In the long run, our security and true stability depend on the freedom of others.

These are the kind of admissions Americans need to make. Apologizing not for getting involved in the affairs of other countries -- but for not doing the right thing after we got involved.

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Excessive

Here's a great story on a great topic. I guess I'm one of these parents worried about today's over-sexualized culture.

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Timezones

Maine's thinking about leaving Eastern Standard Time. Not a bad idea because it's so far east, the sun rises and sets at odd times up there. I'm interested in this topic, of course, because I summer in Maine.

I have no reason for mentioning any of this, except that I've always wanted an excuse to say "I summer in Maine." Unfortunately, I'm not the first to say it.

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Dartmouth

Interesting story on the upcoming Dartmouth trustee election. Not usually of interest, but this one's framed within the academic freedom context.

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Easy bake, baby. Easy bake.

A truly delicious treat. Don't knock it till you try it. I've had the stew topped with biscuits and the barbecue and beans topped with cornbread. Why, why, why in name of the seven mad gods that rule the sea did I wait so long?

Those dumplins look tasty. No?

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Thesis

Just turned in the first 34 pages of my thesis for review. Not sure if it will achieve my goal, but it feels good to get a chunk of it out of the way.

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Filibuster fever

I decided to read this column by editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It details her reasons to suppor the filibuster to keep Janice Rogers Brown from becoming a federal judge. I thought it'd be interesting to see exactly what Tucker saw as her reason for disqualification. Take the time to read the column.

This appeared to be one of Tucker's better insights:

She has no respect for precedent and frequently uses her rulings to express far-reaching opinions on matters not directly before the court. When parents of a child who had committed suicide sought to hold the school district responsible, Brown went beyond disagreeing with them.

She also wrote, "The public school system is already so beleaguered by bureaucracy; so cowed by the demands of due process; so overwhelmed with faddish curricula that its educational purpose is almost an afterthought." She would be a true "activist" judge, something conservatives claim to abhor.

Not sure the judge's views are so far out of the mainstream on that one.

Tucker also points out:

Speaking to the Chicago chapter of the Federalist Society five years ago, she said, "The New Deal . . . inoculated the federal Constitution with a kind of underground collectivist mentality. The Constitution itself was transmuted into a significantly different document.

Not many historians would disagree that the Supreme Court fundamentally shifted the power granted to the federal government during the New Deal era.

Tucker can't seem to help speaking highly of the judge.

While she occasionally rankles her colleagues with barbs hurled their way, there's no doubting her quick wit. In a dissent in a 1996 anti-trust case, she wrote: "The quixotic desire to do good, be universally fair and make everybody happy is understandable. Indeed, the majority's zeal is more than a little endearing. There is only one problem with this approach. We are a court."

But then she quickly regains her composure and adds: "Her intellect notwithstanding, she has no business on the federal bench. Her views are well outside the mainstream."

Ms. Tucker repeasts one line again and again: "Just doesn't belong on the federal bench."

Perhaps, if she keeps repeating herself, she'll convince someone she's right. She didn't convince me.

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The Muted Guerrilla

My brother-in-law now has a blog. There goes the neighborhood.

His take on the story of the woman stripped of her Ms. Disability crown for not being disabled enough is quite interesting. I feel I have a newfound understanding of his (slight, mind you) disability. Perhaps I'll quit speaking slowly while addressing him.

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