Speaking of (1) old stuff I’d meant to comment on, and (2) journalistic objectivity… Saul Hansell is, on the whole, a solid tech reporter, but golly, what do you think his view on net neutrality regulation might be? F.C.C. Seeks to Protect Free Flow of Internet Data In a move to make good on one […]

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I’d flagged this Techdirt post by Mike Masnick to say something about but never quite got around to it. It’s part of a broader critique of journalistic norms of—or pretensions to—objectivity that’s been currently lately, for many good reasons.  But I’ll at least say a word for the idea of maintaining some neutrality rules at […]

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I feel like you don’t see quite so many good old fashioned blog rants anymore, so it’s sort of nice to see Freddie DeBoer let one rip over at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen. The first part is a long criticism of what Ross Douthat’s been up to since taking his gig at the New […]

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Megan sez: That’s a bold prediction.  I’m skeptical.  I think it is more likely is that this thing passes, and fails spectacularly.  There are too many moving parts, and if any of them breaks, the whole thing rapidly starts to spin out of control and eat a gigantic hole in the deficit.  If it does […]

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It seems like every year someone feels obligated to remind us that the Economics Nobel isn’t a real Nobel Prize because it’s not one of the categories established by Alfred Nobel’s will. Yglesias does the honors this year, implying that this is some sort of strange scam where the Bank of Sweden somehow convinced people […]

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According to the narrative that appears to have been in place by Saturday, reactions to the news that Barack Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize were sharply split on partisan lines: Democrats celebrating and conservative Republicans reacting with “outrage.”  Now, between Twitter and my RSS feed, I woke up to a whole slew […]

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Does Jeff Sessions phone up Kim Jong Il late at night to thank him for leaving some small sliver of doubt about who is the worst living human being on the planet?

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So, the video in my previous post—rather half-assedly assembled on a late-night whim in my apartment (and judging by the comments, I should really tidy up said apartment a bit next time such a whim strikes)—seems to have become a whole lot more successful than I’d have thought possible. What I’d love to do in […]

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Addendum: I guess the folks claiming Democrats want to repeal those PATRIOT provisions missed the Senate’s hearings, where Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) says, right around 165 minutes in: Your testimony concludes in very all-or-nothing fashion that the roving wiretap authority, the  215 order authority, and the lone wolf authority should all be continued, should be reauthorized. […]

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Yes, I know I’ve been going on about this nonstop, but humor me, it’s rare enough that I manage to genuinely care about something Congress is doing, and once my soul is crushed on this one, it’ll probably be a while before you have to put up with such a spectacle again.  So for those […]

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