I’m a little surprised this isn’t getting more press — it certainly would seem to deserve it: As you may or may not already know, senatorial fossil Strom Thurmond (R-SC) turned a sprightly 100 years old last week. Thankfully ol’ Strom is (finally) stepping down from his Senate seat, so while D.C. was shut down […]

This is a RIOT: Get Your War On takes on Henry Kissinger “So, Henry Kissinger is in charge of the 9/11 probe! That’s like putting Robert Mugabe in charge of the Department of Agriculture.” That’s the best summary of the situation I’ve heard yet…

OK, this is more than a little unbelievable. As you may know, many people have been calling for a thorough investigation of the circumstances that led to our disastrous unpreparedness for the 9/11 attacks. And as you may also know, President Bush has been fighting tooth and nail to keep such an investigation from happening. […]

It appears that ignorance is once again on the march. NPR’s Morning Edition reported Tuesday morning on the latest battle between creationists and sensible people over whether to teach evolution in the schools, this time in Atlanta, Georgia. The school board there, bowing to pressure from local religious nuts, has decided to put a sticker […]

So, about that election… As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo so eloquently puts it, “Well, that really could have gone better.” We (I’m a Dem, if you hadn’t guessed by now) lost big yesterday. The Senate races tell the tale of the tape: Ron Kirk in Texas; Jean Carnahan in Missouri; Ted Strickland in […]

Well, it looks like we have the first big development of Election Day 2002: Harvey Pitt, the chairman of the SEC who has managed to thoroughly bungle every attempt to reform that agency, has finally gotten the hint and resigned. See the story at reuters.com for all the gory details. Personally, I’m thrilled about this: […]

Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo has an interesting perspective on the mounting evidence that the D.C. snipers weren’t just killing people in D.C., but had instead made a cross-country pilgramage, leaving a trail of bodies along the way. “[I]t was only when they shot five people in a matter of hours on (I believe it […]

So over the weekend I got talked into attending the big rally in downtown DC against war in Iraq. It was certainly a huge enough event; the organizers estimated 200,000 attendees, which I think is a little optimistic, but even so the sheer scale of the thing was impressive. I’ve written in this space before […]

I can’t believe I’m writing this: Today, Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN), maybe the last fire-breathing liberal in the Senate, died in a plane crash, along with his wife and children. If you spend any time paying attention to politics, you know that the cardinal rule of the professional politician is a simple one: avoid controversy […]

As an Ohio native, I’ve spent a lot of time explaining to people here in DC that Ohio is more than “flyover country”. Ohioans are smart, sophisticated, and savvy when it comes to technology. Except, apparently, for their governor: “Tech savvy” US governor shuns email Ugh. Thanks, Gov. Taft, really — you sure know how […]

The AP is reporting that the prime suspects in the sniper shootings that have been keeping all of us who live in Washington on our toes have been taken into custody! “President Bush was told that federal authorities were reasonably sure the case had been solved, a senior administration official told The Associated Press on […]

I can’t even begin to fully explain how exciting this is! Back in the Olden Days of personal computing (i.e., the late 1980s), Mitch Kapor — the designer of the seminal spreadsheet program for the IBM PC, Lotus 1-2-3 — teamed up with Jerry Kaplan to produce one of the most innovative, forward-thinking, startling products […]

According to the latest mozilla.org status update, support for synchronizing the Mozilla address book with PalmPilots and other PalmOS devices has just been checked into the code base for the upcoming Mozilla 1.2 release. Let me just take one moment to say… WOO-HOO!!! 🙂 This is great news. This has been one of the big […]

Microsoft has just announced their new Office file format, XDocs . That noise you hear is the sound of millions of people scratching their head at once, trying to figure out what the heck XDocs is. The MS Web site describes XDocs like this: “XDocs,” a code name for the newest member of the Microsoft […]

You know, you would think being married to a politician would teach you not to shoot your mouth off on the phone. But you’d be wrong… Netanyahu’s Wife: Israel ‘Can Burn’

The world’s best browser just got better — Mozilla 1.1 was released to the public this morning. Improvements over the already-terrific 1.0 revision include better standards compliance, improved performance and stability, new window icons, a greatly improved JavaScript Debugger, and much more. Check it out!

Tara Sue Grubb, Libertarian candidate for Congress in North Carolina’s 6th District, is the first Congressional candidate ever to have a Weblog. What’s more, her first post is pretty damned winning. Excerpt: What about a twenty-six year old female running against an aged, eighteen year career politician? We are polar opposites in many ways. Despite […]

For most Americans, the word “Vietnam” is just shorthand for an ugly war that we managed to botch. Which is a shame, because the Vietnamese have a long and fascinating history, in which America’s involvement plays only a minor part. They categorize their war against the American Army as just one part of their decades-long […]

Count up one more mainstream media outlet that sees the value of blogging as a communications channel — InfoWorld columnist Jon Udell has launched the first of what are promised to be many InfoWorld blogs. Put this next to Salon’s entry into the field and blogging starts looking more respectable all the time!

If you’ve been reading The Washington Post lately, it’s hard to miss the emerging outlines of what could be thought of as the economic Nightmare Scenario — the worst-case scenario in which the tentative recovery we’ve been slogging through over the last year is strangled by a plunging Dow and collapsing consumer confidence. It’s not […]

For those of you under the impression that we still live in a free society, a quick look at this page ought to bring you back to reality: Operation TIPS – Terrorist Information and Prevention System What is Operation TIPS? It’s a new program from those Friends of Freedom (TM) at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The […]

Here’s another name to add to your list of Deep Throat suspects — Diane Sawyer. A fascinating article on Sheila Lennon’s weblog from the Providence Journal fingers Sawyer as a prime (and undermentioned) suspect. Today Sawyer is a big-shot journo, but back in the Watergate era she was a special assistant to White House press […]

It’s pretty rare that I agree with ex-Reagan speechwriter and conservative ideologue Peggy Noonan. It’s even rarer that I agree with the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal (shudder). But Noonan has been on to something recently. She’s been urging the Bush administration to retire the term “Homeland Security” from its lexicon. Her argument? […]

So what with it having been the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in on June 17, there’s been a new rash of speculation about the identity of Deep Throat, the legendary anonymous leaker who guided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein towards the truth about Richard Nixon. Of course, speculating about who Deep […]

My latest article for the Online Community Report newsletter, entitled “Lessons From the Anthill”, is now available for your consideration. Look it over and let me know what you think!