Politics

This is Anna Badkhen

The most compelling stories from a newspaper reporter in Iraq are being penned by Anna Badkhen, a 29-year-old foreign correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle. She frequently writes stories that bring first-hand accounts from frontline soldiers home, such as her article this morning of a Marine platoon outside Sada, a town near the Syrian border that's one of five controlled by insurgents: The mortar rounds hit in the early morning. The first one, a harbinger of the assault to come, ... (read more)

2005/10/01

Throw the Book at Google

Jim Minatel, an acquisitions editor at Wiley for one of my books, believes that Google's plan to turn web-crawling googlebots loose on print libraries is a clear violation of copyright. I'm not so sure. If I had a copy of the world's most useful computer book (let's call it Movable Type 3 Bible Desktop Edition), and I made a practice of sending one page of the book to people who asked a question answered by that page, would I be violating Wiley's copyright? Selective quotation of a book is fair ... (read more)

2005/10/01

Grover Cleveland Will Have His Revenge

Blogs for Bush contributor Mark Noonan: I really do urge our Democrats to step back from the edge -- you are sitting in a lake of gasoline and you are playing with fire. We on our side will only put up with so much before we start to pay back with usury what we have received. DailyKos diarist Hunter: This is the world you forged and, unfortunately for you, I'm beginning to take a fancy for it. Welcome to the politics of your own party, finally sprouting from the ground on which you planted the ... (read more)

2005/09/30

Bill Bennett Races to Judgment

The crime rate would go down in the U.S. if blacks were aborted, former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett said during his nationally syndicated radio show yesterday: ... it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. The belief that a particular race is ... (read more)

2005/09/29

Tim Russert Presses Aaron Broussard

Tim Russert used Meet the Press this weekend to teach Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard a lesson -- the next time New Orleans is destroyed by flood, he should be more factual during his emotional breakdowns. Russert played back Broussard's last interview on the show, in which he related a gut-wrenching story about the death of a colleague's mother in a nursing home after the storm. True to form, Russert didn't have the spine to accuse Broussard directly of being wrong. He quoted ... (read more)

2005/09/26

Don Feder Works in Mysterious Ways

Former syndicated columnist Don Feder, a well-known conservative writing for the Boston Herald from 1983-2002, believes that Hurricane Katrina was God's wrath, and he has run the numbers to prove it: Katrina hit New Orleans one week to the day after the Sharon government carried out the forced removal of some 9,500 Jewish residents of Gaza and parts of Samaria. ... 9,500 Jews were driven from Gaza. Most are still homeless. Roughly half-a-million Americans were displaced by Katrina. Based on ... (read more)

2005/09/21

Democratic Response: Thanks from Louisiana

In the weekly Democratic response to the presidential radio address Saturday, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco thanked the people who reached out to the Gulf after Hurricane Katrina, supporting President Bush's plan to offer "extraordinary" federal support for the region's recovery. "Only the resources of the federal government are adequate to the challenge ahead," she said. The text of her remarks: Good morning. This is Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. I speak for a grateful state ... (read more)

2005/09/18

Two Americas, One Bridge

People would go up the bridge every time they lined us up for the buses and the buses wouldn't come. People in groups would go up the bridge trying to go across the river. People who had family across the river couldn't get across the river. They were not letting us out of there. -- Denise Marsh, a Convention Center evacuee interviewed on This American Life (audio attached) For all you people who think we are races in Gretna, please leave your address, we will be glad to bus all the criminals ... (read more)

2005/09/17

Senate Testimony Signifying Nothing

Andrew Hyman, a conservative attorney who has been promoting John Roberts vigorously since his selection by President Bush, abandoned the judge in response to his answers during the first day of the confirmation hearings: It now appears very possible to me that President Bush has nominated a pro-Roe vote in place of an anti-Roe vote. It appears from this morning's testimony -- and I could be wrong about this -- that Judge Roberts will probably affirm the so-called right to obtain an ... (read more)

2005/09/15

Justice Junction, What's Your Function?

The primary job of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee is to run out the clock and help John Roberts say as little of substance as possible during the confirmation hearings. Some of them are better at this than others. Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions used his alloted time yesterday to make Roberts walk through the process of how a case reaches the Supreme Court and becomes a decision: SESSIONS: So the lawyers from both sides then appear before the court, over in the Supreme Court ... (read more)

2005/09/14