Politics

Finding Good Blogs in a Sea of Spam

The 16 free WordPress hosts I began in February have been a gigantic maintenance hassle because of spammer abuse, but they have lauched two cool new sites: The Ad Whisperers, a blog about TV commercials, and Political Fretwork, a liberal blog that mines the press for political news. Last night, Ad Whisperers linked to a phone commercial that has an unusual selling point -- our company will stick with you through all the changes in your life -- even sexual orientation: You may have seen the new ... (read more)

2007/04/20

Councilman: Stop Apologizing to American Indians

I filed my first story today for Watching the Watchers -- a Republican city councilman in Texas thinks its time to stop apologizing to American Indians: A Houston city council member said on his radio talk show that the U.S. should "stop the continuous apology for what was done to the American Indians" and drop federal programs and treaties that provide casino rights, educational support and welfare. Michael Berry, a Republican councilman in his third term and mayor pro tempore who hosts a ... (read more)

2007/04/02

Eliot Spitzer Files UDRP to Take EliotSpitzer.Com

New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer appears to have begun legal proceedings to take the domain names eliotspitzer.com and eliotspitzer.org away from Eric Keller, a New Jersey online candy retailer who registered them in 2001. A Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) arbitration began today regarding the domains at the National Arbitration Forum. Arbitrators will decide whether the domains were registered and used in bad faith, whether Keller has legitimate rights in the names, and whether ... (read more)

2007/02/22

Iraq Poll Touted by Drudge Doesn't Add Up

There's a word curiously absent from Matt Drudge's story about a new poll of 800 Americans on the Iraq War: In the wake of the U.S. House of Representatives passing a resolution that amounts to a vote of no confidence in the Bush administration's policies in Iraq, a new national survey by Alexandria, VA-based Public Opinion Strategies (POS) shows the American people may have some different ideas from their elected leaders on this issue. ... The survey shows Americans want to win in Iraq, and ... (read more)

2007/02/21

Barack Obama 1, John Howard 0

I haven't started paying much attention to the presidential race, but I was impressed with how Sen. Barack Obama handled harsh criticism from Australian Prime Minister John Howard regarding his position on Iraq. Obama, who gave a speech opposing the war in 2002, has introduced a bill to prevent President Bush from increasing troop levels in Iraq and to remove U.S. combat forces by March 31, 2008. On Sunday, the conservative Bush ally played the terrorists-love-Democrats card on a news program, ... (read more)

2007/02/12

Obama Loses TechCrunch Endorsement

A lesson to all presidential candidates courting the Web 2.0 vote: Don't get snippy with Michael Arrington. After Arrington reported that the My Barack Obama social networking site was displaying a racist user-created group in a find-a-group tool, Obama new media director Joe Rospars lamented that he was playing gotcha instead of covering "the real story." Arrington's response: This isn't Washington DC politics, and you shouldn't assume I have some racist or other bias against your campaign. ... (read more)

2007/02/12

Re-Elect Rogers and Rogers Rabbit

I've secured my first endorsement for RSS Advisory Board chair: it's like running for president of your own imaginary treehouse. with rabbits. "hello, my name is rogers, and this is my rabbit running mate, rogers. we're running for imaginary treehouse president on the rogers-and-rogers-rabbit ticket." ... (read more)

2007/02/03

Filing a Mickey Mouse Lawsuit

My seven-year-old son's a huge fan of Mickeyroni & Cheese, boxed Mickey Mouse pasta sold at Disney World that occasionally makes it to the local Disney outlet store. (The combination of rehydrated Vermont cheddar cheese, 1.5 tablespoons of milk and semolina pasta shaped like a rodent's head is pretty good.) When he heard yesterday that Disney has discontinued the product, my son announced that he was going to sue the company to force them to continue making it. My wife replied that "you should ... (read more)

2006/12/31

'Quite a Few Martinis Were Consumed'

Ron Nessen, the press secretary for President Ford, tells the San Francisco Chronicle about the 1975 assassination attempt on Ford by Sara Jane Moore in San Francisco: Nessen recalls that as the shots rang out, he looked for a car in the waiting motorcade that already had its doors open. He jumped into a car with Donald Rumsfeld, who was then Ford's White House chief of staff. After racing from downtown, the Ford motorcade drove onto the tarmac at the airport, and the presidential party hurried ... (read more)

2006/12/27

Lies, Damned Lies, and Charles Krauthammer

In his column today, Charles Krauthammer attempts to spin the election as an earthquake that was oh-so-close to being no big deal, really: ... the difference between taking one house vs. both -- and thus between normal six-year incumbent-party losses and a major earthquake that shakes the presidency -- was razor-thin in this election. A switch of just 1,424 votes in Montana would have kept the Senate Republican. In the final numbers on CNN, Jon Tester defeated incumbent Conrad Burns by 2,847 ... (read more)

2006/11/10

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