June 30, 2005
'Et tu, Slate?' - 07:37 AMI love Slate.com - Today's Papers is the best source for a smart, cross-referenced news snapshot you'll find - but they frequently tend towards being overly clever or perverse for the sake of perversity. One method is attacking a widely...
June 29, 2005
'Victory' - 05:57 PMLet me be the millionth person to say this, but MT-Blacklist is absolutely wonderful. While Movable Type's "Delete Trackback" function appears to be blinkered, MT-Blacklist made quick work of the offending links and simultaneously banned the IPs linked to. I...
June 27, 2005
'Cleanup' - 06:13 PMHello again! I'm posting this from the airport in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. I'm tanner, well rested, and a little irked that this place had so much wear and tear on it while I was gone. I've upped the post-retention time...
June 17, 2005
'Filler' - 06:00 PMTeresa Nielsen Hayden spins a variation on this week's theme over at Making Light: Paul Graham’s The Submarine talks about one of the secret engines of the world: the PR industry. “Suits make a corporate comeback,” says the New York...
June 16, 2005
'Democracy Data & Communications, L.L.C.' - 11:45 PM(From a continuing series) "Do you need to generate calls from grassroots advocates to Capitol Hill when a vote is scheduled to take place in a few days? Are you launching a response-oriented issue advertising campaign that needs 800-number support?...
'Then as Farce' - 03:04 PM
Guess the source: "[We] have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. [We] have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are...
June 15, 2005
'In the Land of U.Z.' - 02:01 PMI only link to a few conservative blogs because I consider the blogroll on the left to be an endorsement, and there aren't that many right-wing blogs I think it's worth your time to read. Instapundit is only on there...
'They Get That From Your Side' - 07:39 AM
You know, you try to teach them good manners and proper etiquette, to sit up straight and respect their elders, and then they go out and do something like this. KIRKUK, Iraq -- Police and security units, forces led by...
June 14, 2005
'The Universe Did Not Come Into Existence in the Order You Discovered It' - 07:54 PMVia Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings, this piece from the American Street nips a nasty little meme in the bud: The current British memo being debated is dated July 21, 2002. It was prepared in advance of a meeting between...
'Math is Hardnosed' - 12:35 PM
Pejman Yousefzadeh writes on RedState.org: The New York Times has a truly bizarre editorial on The Deal involving judicial filibusters. One bizarre portion is the following: Last month, 14 senators injected some sanity into the situation by signing on to...
June 13, 2005
'What Republicans Need' - 09:34 PMMatthew Yglesias nails something that's until now been a scattered cluster of notions in my head: But one new idea liberals should consider adopting is to stop conceding that Republicans have tons of nifty new ideas. Artur "When Republicans were...
'Defining Astroturf' - 06:45 PM
(Hey, I've been noticed. Hello, Making Lighters!) In my previous post on the subject I ended by asking, "When is an astroturf group not astroturf?" In the resulting post and comments thread spawned over at Making Light, several different flavors...
June 12, 2005
'A Man on the Inside' - 02:38 PMFrom the New York Times today: Under pressure from the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has agreed to adopt the recommendations of a presidential commission and will allow the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, to help...
June 10, 2005
'Best of the Blogs' - 02:57 PMMy few (my happy few) readers out there will probably have noticed the list of blogs over to the left already, but I figured I'd give some of them a quick introduction and encourage you all to check them out....
'Money, Mouths and Militaries' - 10:40 AM
In the same vein as my previous post on Iraqi troops, the Washington Post today has an excellent article on their current state of readiness: "I know the party line. You know, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Army, five-star...
June 09, 2005
'A Little Letdown' - 10:42 PMWell, the Senate confirmed William Pryor today. That's the third of the three nominees the filibuster deal allowed to the Senate floor for a full vote. It was always understood that, with the Republican majority in the Senate, any Bush...
'Trust, but Verify' - 06:50 PM
Via Instapundit, we find Michael Ledeen, of the National Review Online, very unhappy about the lack of coverage on Iranian torture:...
'Predictions' - 07:32 AM
A couple prognostications from us here at Rational Grounds. There will not be peace until the ethnic and regional militias in Iraq are gone. A government that accepts or embraces independent armed forces within its borders is not in control....
June 08, 2005
'Deceiving Us Has Become an Industrial Process' - 09:39 PMThe post title is a quote from this Making Light post from the end of 2004. It concerns an organization called Common Good, who purport to be a grassroots organization "dedicated to changing what it calls the lawsuit culture." But...
'Who's Really Surprised?' - 07:20 AM
I know I'm not alone in being entirely unshocked by this: Tobacco companies are getting off light, with the government mysteriously not seeking $130 billion dollars in damages to fund an anti-smoking campaign. Instead, they're going with $10 billion. Gee,...
June 05, 2005
'Groundhog Day' - 08:00 PMI'm stealing this post title from somebody, but I can't seem to find the original article. George Bush had a press conference on Tuesday that a lot of government and media people thought was pretty misleading. Shocking, I know. But...
June 04, 2005
'Best of the Web' - 08:16 PMI'd like to introduce a regular feature for this blog, tentatively titled Best of the Web. This feature should have two main benefits: first, the low effort level involved will help train me to update this thing regularly; second, it...
June 03, 2005
'A Puzzling Naivete' - 07:22 PMI'm starting a degree in international relations this fall, so I suppose that subject is a good place to start this blog. I'd like to address a disturbing phenomenon I've noticed in a lot of otherwise clear-headed and cogent publications....