Politics

Liberal Site Raw Story Frames News Articles from Other Sites

The liberal news site Raw Story makes a regular practice of framing articles from other media sites, displaying the pages at a Raw Story web address with additional advertising. This technique was the subject of a widely publicized copyright and trademark infringement lawsuit in the late '90s between a small news site and several media giants. Some examples from Raw Story's current front page: British to evacuate consulate in Basra after mortar attacks, The Telegraph Zoo celebrating rare dove ... (read more)

2006/10/30

Republicans, Campaign Ads and Stem-Cell Research

I caught a little of Rush Limbaugh's show this afternoon as he attempted to gnaw his own leg off to escape the trap he stepped into by taking on television's Michael J. Fox. As medical experts continue to weigh in on the authenticity of Fox's symptoms, Limbaugh could only defend himself by creating an alternate universe in which he provided a dispassionate factual rebuttal to Fox's claims two days ago, not obscenely pantomimed mockery of a 45-year-old man stricken with a severe nervous system ... (read more)

2006/10/26

Rush Limbaugh Mimicked Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's Disease

As Rush Limbaugh accused Michael J. Fox of exaggerating the effects of Parkinson's disease, he impersonated Fox, jerking his head and arms wildly back and forth. I try not to criticize human caricatures like Limbaugh, because their shtick depends on regularly offending people. Every time a liberal blasts Ann Coulter, a cash register ka-ching goes off in her vestigial brain. But the sight of Limbaugh mocking the symptoms of a Parkinson's sufferer hits a new low. From 700,000 to 1 million ... (read more)

2006/10/26

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

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