Politics

Remembering the Kennedy Memorial

There's an open air memorial in Dallas near the spot of President Kennedy's assassination. Designed by Philip Johnson, the memorial consists of a 50-foot-square concrete box with 30-foot-tall bare walls that surround a flat granite slab inscribed with the president's name. Outside, a plaque contains the following inscription: The joy and excitement of John Fitzgerald Kennedy's life belonged to all men. So did the pain and sorrow of his death. When he died on November 22, 1963, shock and ... (read more)

2006/03/16

InstaPundit on Alan Colmes

Glenn Reynolds, the publisher of the InstaPundit weblog, was a guest on the Alan Colmes Radio Show last night. The interview, which I've attached as a 17-minute podcast, was to promote his new book An Army of Davids, which has the subtitle "How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths." No knock on Reynolds, whose blog I enjoy in spite of our political differences, but the interview made the book sound like technoutopianism. Since the ... (read more)

2006/03/08

Name All Five Freedoms

In a telephone poll of 1,000 Americans reported by the BBC, 22 percent could name all five Simpsons but only 1-in-1,000 could name all five freedoms delineated in the First Amendment. I'm curious to see whether weblog readers are smarter than telephone owners. Without cheating, use the comments of this entry to name all five freedoms. I'm already on record with my guess on the Drudge Retort, and I got three out of five, leaving off one that's an extreme personal embarrassment. One of the ... (read more)

2006/03/01

Damon Wayans Makes His Mark

New York Daily News columnist Stanley Crouch blasts Damon Wayans' attempt to trademark the word "N---a" for a clothing line and other uses, a story I covered for Wired News: He wants to put it on apparel and whatnot. So far, he has not been successful but one can imagine young American kids wearing that word emblazoned on clothes and listening to rap "songs" in which the N-word frequently appears, in conjunction with "bitches" and "hos," among other denigrations. Of course, there is a defense. ... (read more)

2006/02/28

Wikipedia Fights for Prophet Muhammad Cartoons

The controversy over the publication of editorial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad is playing out on Wikipedia, where an image of a newspaper page containing the cartoons has been removed eight times within the past week alone. An internal poll of Wikipedia editors strongly favored the publication of the image, which puts the online encyclopedia in the same position as media organizations that have taken criticism for reprinting them. "Making and also looking the figures of Mohammed is ... (read more)

2006/02/20

Columnist: 'Blacks are No Longer Rioting'

In the Washington Post this morning, columnist David Ignatius makes a few jaw-dropping racial generalizations in a piece comparing Muslim outrage over the Muhammad cartoons to African-American reaction to the N word: I think the Muslim world could learn something about tolerance from African Americans. The United States still abounds with racist images, but blacks are no longer rioting in the streets or burning down buildings. ... We haven't abolished racism, but by working honestly at the ... (read more)

2006/02/10

Astronaut Launches Tirade

I visited Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, last July, spending an afternoon at the tourist exhibits and launch pads. The original countdown for space shuttle mission STS-114 was underway, and we were taken by bus to see Discovery on launch pad 39B. Though the pad obscured everything but the top of the shuttle's external tank and booster rockets, the sight of the spacecraft was the highlight of the trip. I think I started to cry a little. Science rocks. ... (read more)

2006/01/23

No-Fly Canadian Linked to Hezbollah

I've been following the story of Sami Kahil, 38, a Canadian shoe store owner denied entry to Mexico Jan. 5 because his name appears on the U.S. no-fly list. Few American media have covered the incident, in spite of the fact that the U.S. was concerned enough about Kahil's presence on a plane to scramble fighter jets to escort it across the country. Kahil has become a cause célèbre in Canada, doing television interviews, hiring attorneys and soliciting the help of Amnesty ... (read more)

2006/01/16

Mexico Bars Canadian over U.S. No-Fly List

A story today in the Canadian media ought to get more coverage in the U.S.: American fighter jets intercepted a Air Transat plane flying from Toronto to Ixtapa, Mexico, on Thursday because a passenger appears on the U.S. no-fly list. Canadian citizen Sami Kahil, 38, was denied entry to Mexico and detained one night in jail, then sent home in the company of Royal Canadian Mounted Police: U.S. fighter jets shadowed Kahil's flight after American officials declared the plane was not cleared to ... (read more)

2006/01/08

Little Red Book, Big Fat Apology

New Bedford Standard-Times Editor Bob Unger has responded to the Little Red Book hoax that ran in the newspaper, acknowledging that the original story should not have run until they interviewed the student making the claim: We -- reporter and editors -- failed here because we put our faith in what two college professors told us. We should have held off publishing the story until we had a chance to judge the student's credibility for ourselves. The student's name continues to be kept private, to ... (read more)

2006/01/04