So, until Wednesday, I hadn’t taken much notice of the whole “Tea Party” phenomenon.  Like about 98 percent of public protests, it had struck me as little more than a stunt, guaranteed to reduce a legitimate argument to a spectacular competition for the dumbest, craziest slogan. Protests may—occasionally—make sense when either you need to draw […]

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I always feel like I  ought to try to make it out to these “Twin Tech” events for professional reasons but dear God, if an evil genius designed a venue with the goal of driving me to shoot myself in the face, they’d come up with something like this place.  Would anyone with a scintilla […]

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Yglesias finds this from an interview with Rachel Maddow: Biggest misconception about pundits: That we all hang out together. I don’t know any of these people. Maybe all the pundits are hanging out and not inviting me. […] By her bed: Comic books. I read comics sometimes and graphic novels. I appreciate that genre. So, […]

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Fleeting thought spurred by anticipation of Built to Spill doing Perfect from Now On at 9:30 Club tomorrow: This apparent trend of long-running indie bands performing classic albums in their entirety (Mission of Burma doing Vs. at Black Cat a while back was stellar) is presumably partly a function of a new generation discovering seminal […]

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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 […]

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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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