So it turns out that I’m going to be on a panel of journalists assigned to pepper Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr with questions at a National Press Club event tomorrow, which will focus on privacy and civil liberties issues. Festivities kick of at noon; come check it out.

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For a while now, as regular readers know, I’ve been a frequent contributor to the remarkable, super smart tech news site Ars Technica. A few months ago they became part of the Condé Nast imperium, which has allowed them to begin expanding their coverage in a variety of ways.  And, as it turns out, I’m [...]

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Update: Skip to the bottom for the Cliffs Notes version.
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a post about the intersection of race and crime that dovetails with a conversation I had shortly after learning my friend Brian had been shot last week. I got to thinking about how the economic effects of past racism create breeding grounds for [...]

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So, I’ve been to see Brian, and can confirm that he is, modulo “shot repeatedly,” doing well. But it looks like insurance will only cover part of the costs of treatment, so Spencer Ackerman has set up a PayPal fund, if anyone feels like chipping in; just click through to his site and hit the [...]

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I feel like I ought to say something about this, now that the news is apparently out, but for the moment everything’s coming out as a string of profanities. So I’ll limit myself to this: (1) Brian Beutler is awesome. If you read his phenomenal reporting, count yourself lucky. If you know him, count yourself [...]

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Well, this is obviously incredibly flattering:
Among the many dark tidings for American conservatism, there is one genuine bright spot. Over the past five years, a group of young and unpredictable rightward-leaning writers has emerged on the scene.
These writers came of age as official conservatism slipped into decrepitude. Most of them were dismayed by what the [...]

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As long as I’m doing film recommendations, I should note for the benefit of those of you in the D.C. area that AFI in Silver Spring will be screening Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville this weekend, with matinees Saturday and Sunday, and one final showing next Wednesday evening. It’s a surprisingly libertarian-flavored movie, especially given that Godard [...]

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After a debate watching party here in DC last night, Glenn Greenwald spoke for a bit and took some questions from the mostly-progressive crowd about how Democrats can more effectively counter Republican narratives.  The audio quality is not exactly stellar, but I did manage to capture some of the Q&A on my phone:
Greenwald in DC, [...]

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Video of Saturday’s arrest at the Jefferson Memorial is now on YouTube.  I’ll have a more complete writeup at Ars Technica later, but here are some stills:

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So, among my many character flaws is a tendency to overgeneralize my own reactions—to assume that, though we may disagree along any number of dimensions, other people’s thought processes work roughly the same way my own do. I wrote the post below on the assumption that just about everyone would share approximately my response, which [...]

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