Politics

Anna Badkhen's coverage of the East African drought has taken her from Kenya to Somalia, where she filed a report marking 15 years of anarchy and the shooting of a local radio journalist as he traveled to a seminar. The topic of the event: "reducing violence in Somalia." ... (read more)

2006/04/07

Who Keeps the Metric System Down?

In a Washington Post remembrance of the late Reagan Press Secretary Lyn Nofziger, longtime friend and political rival Frank Mankiewicz claims that they worked secretly to kill the metric system in the United States: ... during that first year of Reagan's presidency, I sent Lyn another copy of a column I had written a few years before, attacking and satirizing the attempt by some organized do-gooders to inflict the metric system on Americans, a view of mine Lyn had enthusiastically endorsed. So, ... (read more)

2006/03/29

Humility Equals History Plus Time

An e-mail received by the Drudge Retort: How long did it take for your Jewish handlers to force you to remove the Charlie Sheen/9-11 story the other day? A comment on Workbench: Two people witness an event (Jews and Palestinians) and you decide that Jews are simply not credible. You don't want credible, you want to continue to be a racist, Jew hating, angry young man. When I was young, I can recall studying some of the more horrific moments in history and thinking myself fortunate to live in ... (read more)

2006/03/28

Give Justice Scalia a Hand

When Justice Antonin Scalia received little consideration for promotion to Chief Justice, I wondered how well he'd take life as a second banana to John Roberts. Recent events suggest he isn't handling it well. After making public remarks about Gitmo detentions that could force his recusal from an upcoming case, Scalia left a Catholic mass Sunday and made an obscene Sicilian gesture to a reporter. As he was leaving the mass, Scalia was tossed a softball question by a Boston Herald reporter about ... (read more)

2006/03/28

East Africa Suffers Worst Famine in Decades

I've written before about the journalist Anna Badkhen, who filed incredible reports from Iraq for the San Francisco Chronicle on the day-to-day lives of soldiers and Iraqis. She's now in Kenya, covering a drought across East Africa that has left millions of people dependent on food aid that's running out: Now Isaaq's family -- her husband, Nur Muhammad, and their children, ranging in ages from 1 to 10 -- have no livestock to sell, and nothing of their own to eat or drink. They left the bush and ... (read more)

2006/03/26

Rachel Corrie: The Show Must Go Away

The current issue of The Nation has a great cover story on My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play created from the e-mail and journal entries of the American activist killed in Gaza by an Israeli bulldozer in March 2003. The play was supposed to begin yesterday at the New York Theatre Workshop off-Broadway, but it has been postponed indefinitely because the theater chickened out. Here's artistic director James Nicola's explanation: In our pre-production planning and our talking around and listening ... (read more)

2006/03/23

Katherine Harris Had Me at 'Herlo'

When the number of people drawn to your Internet flamewar reaches critical mass, it becomes a This is Your Life episode where anyone you've ever angered might pop out from behind the curtain. I'm waiting for a few people to appear, such as the guy I tried to beat up at Bentley College in 1986. I've always wanted to know if I landed at least one bruise with my flurry of sting-like-a-butterfly blows. Though I'm loathe to admit this, Katherine Harris is kind of hot. The 2.8 she's pulling on Am I ... (read more)

2006/03/16

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

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