Politics

Art Bell Threatens Lawsuit Over Weblog Comments

Talk radio host Art Bell is threatening to sue me over comments posted by readers on Workbench. At first I thought it was a hoax, but the emails check out. Writing from the Philippines with an email address at KNYE, the radio station he founded while living in Pahrump, Nev., Bell suggested several times he'd pursue a lawsuit in an email exchange that began Wednesday (full transcript): I am the real Art Bell and your column and the responses to it have just been called to my attention. I am ... (read more)

2006/10/23

Creative Commons and the Eldred Decision

Lawrence Lessig quantifies how well Creative Commons is doing: Creative Commons launched the licensing project in December 2002. Within a year, there were more than 1,000,000 link-backs to our licenses (meaning at least a million places on the web where people were linking to our licenses, and presumptively licensing content under those licenses). Within two years, that number was 12,000,000. At the end of our last fundraising campaign, it had grown to about 45,000,000 link-backs to our ... (read more)

2006/10/19

Santorum: Protecting the U.S. from Lord Sauron

In a meeting with the editorial board of the Bucks County Courier Times, Sen. Rick Santorum used J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings to explain his support for the Iraq war: Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the "Eye of Mordor" has instead been drawn to Iraq. Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien's 1950s fantasy classic, Lord of the Rings, to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq ... (read more)

2006/10/18

God Hates Blogs, Journals, Spaces and Some Photo Sharing

Bloggers are going to hell one entry at a time, according to Kevin D. Denee of the Restored Church of God's Ambassador Youth magazine:Should teenagers and others in the Church express themselves to the world through blogs? Because of the obvious dangers; the clear biblical principles that apply; the fact that it gives one a voice; that it is almost always idle words; that teens often do not think before they do; that it is acting out of boredom; and it is filled with appearances of evil -- ... (read more)

2006/10/08

NoWomenJustMen: The Roster at Most Tech Conferences

I heard from one of the organizers of the Spring Experience, an enterprise Java conference organized by NoFluffJustStuff that I criticized for assembling a 38-speaker roster than doesn't include a single female. He never responded to my request to run his e-mail in full, but this quote sums it up: We sought out a qualified speaker who was female. She is on your list. Unfortunately, she is in very high demand (as one would probably expect!) and in the end could not commit due to a scheduling ... (read more)

2006/10/07

Handle 'Scumbag' with Care

The original meaning of the slang term scumbag was a bit more specific than "despicable person" -- it meant "used condom." The New York Times once put a scumbag in its famous crossword puzzle and angered readers. Former Rep. Dan Burton called President Clinton a scumbag in 1998, sparking press attention in the word's unsavory origins. Now that I've told you this, please enjoy the following metaphor from Dennis Byrne's commentary about the Foley scandal in the conservative weekly Human Events ... (read more)

2006/10/05

Foley's Abuse of Teens Should Draw Bipartisan Disgust

I'm glad that some right-wing partisans such as Michelle Malkin are outraged about Mark Foley's sexual exploitation of Congressional pages and the inaction of House GOP leaders who knew he was behaving suspiciously and did nothing to investigate: There is a time and place for attacking the Dems and the MSM. Now is not that time. Parents need assurance that their kids are safe on Capitol Hill. If Beltway GOP elites can't understand this, they are beyond hope. The Wall Street Journal editorial ... (read more)

2006/10/03

War Widow Brought Bush to Tears

In a personal visit with President Bush, the widow of a soldier killed in Afghanistan claims she brought him to tears and admonished him, "It's time to put our pride behind us and stop the bleeding, for all of us." The anecdote appears in a Washington Post front-page story this morning about the president's private feelings regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. [Hildi] Halley, 41, lost her husband, National Guard Capt. Patrick Damon, also 41, in June in Afghanistan to what officially was ... (read more)

2006/09/25

Katherine Harris Clowns Around in Sarasota

An AP photo taken Tuesday at Sarasota-Bradenton Airport combines two of my favorite things -- Katherine Harris and sad clowns: One of the best things about Harris is that she keeps firing staffers, reducing the chances that someone will might tell her things like "don't do a photo op in front of a suicidal clown." But as much as I love this photo, I have to question the decision to place a giant mural of a sad clown at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport. Is that really what you want to ... (read more)

2006/09/22

Air America Struggles to Stay Afloat

I'm a day one listener to Air America Radio, yearning to hear liberal talk since Rush Limbaugh first slouched towards a microphone in the '80s. I've never understood how there could be no market for it, especially in places where conservative gasbags saturate the air. In Jacksonville, at least three different stations broadcast Limbaugh's show live, so you can travel the length of the area and keep up with the latest world crisis or societal moral collapse caused by the Clintons. Air America's ... (read more)

2006/09/15

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