The one thing that Howard Kurtz is good for is memorializing the conventional wisdom. Today he administers last rites to the McCain campaign in light of his cash crisis followed by the defections of several senior figures from the campaign.
You heard it here back in March. (See also McCain's madness.)
Gonzales Knew About Violations, Officials Say
Two senior Justice Department officials said yesterday that they kept Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales apprised of FBI violations of civil liberties and privacy safeguards in recent years.
The two officials spoke in a telephone call arranged by press officials at the Justice Department after The Washington Post disclosed yesterday that the FBI sent reports to Gonzales of legal and procedural violations shortly before he told senators in April 2005: “There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse” after 2001.
It is a sign of how dysfunctional our government is that this man is still in office. ( Not to mention that the same questions must be asked about Gonzales's boss.) The question presented is whether these are truly exceptional times, or whether the current crisis — the public's complete loss of trust in the government, the government's complete lack of interest in whether the public trusts it — is a sign of some deeper structural failing in our form of government.
New role for Howarth: My friend David Howarth has been promoted to the Liberal Democrat's front bench, and will be serving as shadow Solicitor General.
“I will use the role to demand answers from the Government on their role on the BAE Systems scandal and will fight for electoral reform as well as taking part in debates on criminal justice and the reform of the legal system.”
Another smart move by the LDs.
This is a cool example of a blog getting results. Follow the link if your care about either blogs or baseball.
(spotted via rc3.org)
The Carpetbagger Report points out the weird incongruity between two facts. On the one hand, the high (relative) degree of assimilation/economic opportunity of Arabs and other Muslims in the US, a fact likely correlated with the relatively lower rate of homegrown Muslim terrorism here. And on the other hand, the xenophobic right's attempt to make life so miserable for Muslim immigrants, a policy that seems designed to ensure that we start having problems like certain countries in Europe.
(I'd note that opportunity and assimilation isn't perfect inoculation, but even so, it surely helps.)
Stuff like this can have profound (and unhealthy!) effects on the shape of a market.
Joho the Blog: Laminated lock in and lock out. Verizon (according to the AP) has been removing the copper lines from the houses to which it is attaching fiber lines. This means you will have difficulty going back from FIOS, the Verizon fiber product. Also, Verizon is not required to provide other phone companies with access to its fiber lines, the way they are for copper lines. Verizon thus at once accomplishes a laminated lock in and lock out.
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